The American Spectator

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Also, have I seen the official CIA pronouncement that Miss Plame was not a "covert agent" covered by the law written to protect agents and their networks?

p>Methinks the maiden doth protest too much. She is trying to cover her nepotism and in the aftermath enrich herself. br> -- KWS /p>

Did Plame Lie? I believe she did, and I also believe she will get away with it. She would never have appeared before Waxman's committee if there was the slightest chance that she would be prosecuted for perjury. Her "oath" to tell the truth was a sham. Had the Republicans been in control of Congress, she would have appeared only under subpoena, and then would have taken the Fifth Amendment.

p>Elections have consequences, as we now see clearly. br> -- Bill Storey br> Rancho Murieta, California /p>

The justice demanded by Mr. Tabin in this Orwellian horror show known as the Plame investigation will never come to pass. The Bush Administration and particularly the Justice Department are incapable of such actions because they have neither the will nor the desire to fight back. For reasons completely inexplicable to many of us, Mr. Bush long ago abandoned the battle field and ceded his moral high ground to the Democrats who, under the direction of Rep. Waxman on Friday, gave one of the most memorable performances of Orwell's Animal Farm seen in Washington to date.

Having dispatched the Republicans in November, as Orwell's pigs did to the human population, the Democrats, with Waxman in the starring role of head pig Napoleon, put on a show trial that even Joe Stalin would have envied. The normal rules of inquiry were mysteriously fixed from the get go; with questions carefully crafted and areas of inquiry completely off limits.

Whether Ms. Plame was "covert" at the time of her "outing" by Richard Armitage, not Messrs. Cheney, Rove or Libby (a point of no consequence to the Committee) was never established. The fact that Mr. Fitzgerald, after some 2 and a half years, could not produce an indictment for this crime, was of no concern to Waxman. A simple inquiry and her subpoenaed personnel records would have easily put the matter to rest. But of course, that was never the point of this farce. Rather, it was to allow Ms. Plame and others to carelessly throw out the word covert, without proof or justification.

The high drama of this perverse morality play came when Attorney Victoria Toensing, author of the federal statute dealing with the protection of identities of covert agents, Title 50 sec. 421, attempted to drop the curtain on Waxman and his merry band of henchmen. Of course, Waxman would have none of it, as he consistently badgered and interrupted Ms. Toensing.

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