No ethics controversy takes up more space in the Ethics Scoreboard files than the Valerie Plame mess, also known as the "CIA leak scandal." Despite volumes and volumes of data, news reports, analysis and commentary from all corners of the media, it remains a story that the general public neither comprehends nor cares about, except to the extent that it has been misrepresented---and it has been spectacularly misrepresented from the start. Now that Ms. Plame, the C.I.A. employee whose identity was exposed, has given testimony before Congress and "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty of lying to investigators and a grand jury, things are a little less murky than they have been since this absurd comedy of deceit, dirty tricks, lies and irresponsibility began almost years ago. Not wishing to rehash the whole sordid drama (Wikipedia has an excellent and thorough time-line for those who are masochistically inclined), the Scoreboard will do a pubic service by answering the key ethics-related questions that have been buried or obscured by other accounts.

1. Did the White House, specifically Cheney, Libby, Rove and others, set out to discredit Joseph Wilson's account of his attempts to verify specific Administration claims of Iraq attempts to acquire material for nuclear weapon research by suggesting to reporters that he was chosen by an anti-administration CIA employee who happened to be his wife?

Answer: Yes. And this was deceptive and unethical, because Valerie Plame did not, and in fact could not, "choose" her husband for this or any other mission. As nobody at the White House had anything but a suspicion that this took place, its effort to discredit the Wilson fact-finding mission as some kind of nepotism was misleading and unjustified.

2. Did Joe Wilson falsely give the impression that he had been "sent" by Vice President Cheney, thus implying that he was "Cheney's guy" and "Cheney's guy" found the story of Iraq trying to purchase yellowcake uranium, as President Bush had stated in a State of the Union Message, a lot of hooey?

Answer: Yes. Cheney did ask the C.I.A. to send someone to investigate, and that someone turned out to be Wilson, a Democratic partisan whom Cheney would never personally have designated in a million years. Wilson, here and at other points in the controversy, set out to deceive and was successful. Understandably, Cheney was upset.

3. Did the Administration officials reveal that Wilson's wife was a C.I.A. employee to "punish him" by hurting his wife's career, as Wilson claimed in his book and public statements?

Answer: Almost certainly not. In her own testimony before the House, Plame described the revealing of her CIA ties to reporters (not to publish, but as so-called "deep background") by officials as having been done "carelessly and recklessly," which suggests neither premeditation or nefarious motives. The theory espoused by Wilson was an extension of the still-popular "Karl Rove is an evil genius" delusion, which the Hate Bush contingent and much of the media accepted without any proof whatsoever. The intent behind mentioning Plame was to discredit Wilson's claim that he was a neutral and fair-minded analyst chosen by Cheney. And indeed, he was not.

4. Did anyone at the White House violate The Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the law that makes it a federal crime to intentionally reveal the identity of an agent whom one knows to be covert? (Special Prosecutor Robert Fitzpatrick was appointed to find out who, if anyone, had broken this statute.)

Answer: No. This is why Fitzgerald brought his only indictment against Libby for obstructing justice. More convincing yet: in her testimony, Plame said that she wasn't sure whether she qualified as a covert agent under the law. It is unlikely that anyone knowingly revealed Valerie Plame's identity as a covert agent if Valerie Plame herself didn't know if she was covert.

5. Was giving her name to reporters wrong anyway?

Answer: Sure. 1) It was used to make the misleading suggestion that Plame was behind Wilson's mission. 2) Whether it violated the specifics of the law or not, revealing the name of any C.I.A. operative who has done intelligence gathering abroad endangers those in foreign countries who worked with him or her. This is why the foreign service, intelligence, and diplomatic communities are furious over the leak. It was not as despicable as what Wilson claimed, but it was certainly, as his wife said, careless and reckless.

6. Should Libby have been convicted of a crime?

Answer: Absolutely. A jury found that he lied to investigators and a grand jury, and the evidence was strong. That's a serious crime.

7. But wasn't he just protecting his boss, the Vice President?

Answer: Probably. So what? The government he works for was demanding the truth, and he lied. The Scoreboard has no sympathy for him.

8. Should President Bush pardon "Scooter"?

Answer: No! The President should not send the message that obstructing justice is anything but a crime, whether it is done out of loyalty or for even loftier motives.

9. Does this bizarre series of events have anything to do with showing that the Bush White House lied about its claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in its brief for attacking that country?

Answer: No, no, no. This was political guerilla warfare by both parties, using deceit, misleading language and the press in a public relations battle after the invasion.

10. In order of unethical magnitude, who are the Scoreboard's Top Ten Miscreants in the Valerie Plame Affair?

Answer: Well, since you asked…

1. Columnist Robert Novak. He was the first one to publish Plame's name and occupation, setting off the whole brouhaha. Then he kept his source, who was NOT a current White House figure or even one of the pro-war Huns and who thus clearly was not trying to "get even" with Joe Wilson, secret while millions of dollars were spent on a pointless investigation and Wilson plied the media with outlandish accusations. If any damage was done to Plame, Novak did it, and did it by his own volition, just because he could, and because journalists disclaim any accountability for what they print as long as the information came from someone else.

2. Richard Armitage. He was the original leaker, Novak's source. Apparently he mentioned Plame's status with the C.I.A. accidentally, in "chit-chat". But if he had come forth and admitted that he was the source of the leak immediately, and he should have, the fiasco would have died in its cradle.

3. Joe Wilson. He lied to the press and public repeatedly. He said Cheney had "sent him" on his mission, which was untrue. He said that he had "debunked" the claims that an Iraqi delegation had attempted to buy uranium in Niger, but in fact, to quote the Senate Intelligence Committee report:

He [the CIA reports officer] said he judged that the most important fact in the report [by Wilson] was that Niger officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Niger prime minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium…The report on [Wilson's] trip to Niger . . . did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in [Wilson's] report lent more credibility to the original CIA reports on the uranium deal.

Wilson lied to the Washington Post, saying that that he had unmasked as forgeries certain documents given to American intelligence that supposedly contained additional evidence of Saddam's efforts to buy uranium from Niger. The documents were indeed forgeries; but, according to various reports on the matter, the forged documents were not available at the time British intelligence concluded that the attempted Niger transaction was factual. Moreover, the Senate Intelligence Committee discovered that he had never actually examined or even seen the documents in question.

Wilson was undoubtedly effective in his goal of making himself look like a wounded patriot and the Bush administration like a bunch of conniving thugs, and the illusory scandal he launched certainly played a key role in eroding support for President Bush and the war---Wilson's ultimate objective. In this he was certainly aided by the Bush administration's evasive conduct as well as the press' uncritical acceptance of Wilson's spin. Well, you did it, Ambassador. You got what you wanted…plus a book, notoriety, all those TV bookings…and didn't let little things like integrity, honesty and fairness get in your way. Pardon the Scoreboard for its lack of applause; you can get that over at the "Huffington Post."

4. and 5. (Tie) Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney. There seems to be little doubt that they encouraged Libby and others to float the Wilson/Plame/C.I.A. argument to reporters in order to undermine Wilson's credibility, not thinking for second about how this might effect various intelligence initiatives or the morale of other covert operatives.

6. President Bush. He said that he would dismiss anyone found to be involved with the leak, but then reneged once it became clear that Rove was implicated. He could have ended the whole matter with one order: "I want to know immediately who discussed Wilson and Plame with reporters." He did not…or if he did, he withheld the truth.

7. "Scooter" Libby. The jury verdict is clear enough.

8. Bob Woodward. After months of the investigation, Woodward suddenly revealed that Armitage had also revealed Plame's status to him. Like Novak and Armitage, Woodward could have ended the whole controversy in a flash, since there could be no crime if Plame's employment had already been revealed to the press.

9. Special Prosecutor Robert Fitzgerald. Why he continued his investigation after he knew about how Novak had learned about Plame is a mystery. The most likely explanation is that he was following up on Wilson's accusation that the White House was trying to wreak vengeance on him by endangering his wife. But special prosecutors are supposed to investigate crimes for which there is evidence, and the partisan paranoid fantasies of Joe Wilson are not evidence. Professional ethics rules make it unethical to pursue a case without probable cause. When Fitzgerald knew no crime could have been committed because Plame's name had already been revealed, he had no probable cause to interview Libby or anyone else.

10. The national news media. Inept, confusing, sensational, biased, and irresponsible. To this day, one can read press accounts that say Plame was covert, and those which say she was not. One can hear Chris Matthews say that Wilson "proved" the yellow cake purchase story was false, and other commentators (correctly) state that Wilson misled the public and the media regarding his findings. And it was the press, through Robert Novak, that created the problem by publishing Armitage's inadvertent "leak," and pursuing too-close relationships with Administration figures that encouraged and facilitated leaks as political weapons.

Dishonorable Mention: Congressional Democrats. In 2005, the Democratic Senate Leader Harry Reid spoke of the Plame Affair when he said,

[t]his case is bigger than the leak of classified information. It is about how the Bush White House manufactured and manipulated intelligence in order to bolster its case for the war in Iraq and to discredit anyone who dared to challenge the President.

This statement is fairly typical of the drum-beat that has come from Democrats, the Angry Left and much of the news media since Novak first revealed Plame's name. It is false and unfair, and has misled the public. It was certainly politics as usual, and if the positions were switched, the Republicans would certainly have done the same. That doesn't make it any less unethical.

Thus endeth the Scoreboard's discussion of the Valerie Plame Affair, an ethical disgrace for everyone involved.

Let us never speak of it again.