I would like to again thank Clarice Feldman of American Thinker for being on the show yesterday, I’m getting a lot of email telling me that she really puts the Plame Game together in a concise and understandable context, and I agree.

Clarice also eluded to an article that was coming up at American Thinker and here it is. An excerpt:

“The prosecution has rested in the Libby Trial, and like a fish left out in warm weather, a strange and unpleasant odor is becoming more and more apparent as the sun shines on case. NBC News, which has recently taken a turn to the left, plays a particularly prominent role in the prosecution’s case. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is fighting hard to make sure reporter Andrea Mitchell’s testimony is not heard, and is asking the jury to buy some highly implausible notions about a key FBI interview with NBC’s Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert.

Gagging Mitchell

The prosecution is still trying hard to keep Andrea Mitchell from being called as a defense witness. In a pleading Friday, the defense is trying just as hard to get court permission to call her. The prosecution argues that the defense cannot call a witness just to impeach her, and the defense says that is not their only reason to call her, that she has other evidence to provide, and that a fair trial cannot be had without her being called and questioned by the defense.

In the period leading up to the disclosure of her status in the Novak case, Mitchell published a series of leaks (clearly from Department of State sources and just as clearly part of the CIA-State Department interagency war) aimed at the CIA’s intelligence gathering. Among the interesting points in her stories:

- On July 14, 2003, just as Novak’s article hit the newsstands, Mitchell made clear she was having a spat with Armitage (the first to leak), indicating the he wasn’t returning her phone calls any longer and that he had chosen an appearance on Fox instead of NBC.

- On October 3, 2003, the very day that Armitage made his secret admission to the FBI that he was Novak’s source, Andrea Mitchell publicly said that everyone knew about Plame, something she twice has tried unpersuasively to minimize once NBC became involved in this case and the knowledge of her boss, Tim Russert, became an issue.”

Read the rest.

As yours truly wrote about this has been a game on the part of the MSM from the beginning. But it’s also important to remember that the game has two parts. Remember the story begins with Wilson going to Niger on suggestion of his wife (a case of nepotism which can get one fired in federal service), that was designed to throw off the dogs of war so to speak. When the war was imminent the plan switched to one of decrediting the effort and embarrassing the President.

This is not withstanding the Niger question which has been wrongly reported as being bogus, when in fact we know that Iraq had in fact been trying to buy uranium (as were a lot of different rogue nations), but the deal didn’t get finalized as Wilson went to Niger to “tip them off”. This is fundamental to understanding the the French effort to discredit the Niger report was just to discredit the war - the French were in the trade game and had been for a while.

It’s interesting that at the same time-frame Senator Rocky was in the region telling Syria and other Arabs that we were coming, thus sending up additional flares of caution to those involved in the illegal trade of uranium to rogue nations, as well as other concerns “sensitive” to the Senator’s interests.

There is much more to the story to come, stay tuned.

UPDATE: Two other good articles to help you understand the Plame Game, Ann Coulter in WND and again Fedora at Free Republic with a good researched article about some of the particulars of Plame’s non-status.