Valerie Plame Blasts WaPo Editorial Page As "State Propaganda Entity"
October 18, 2007 -- 4:54 PM EST // //
For obvious reasons, this blog always enjoys it when public figures aggressively criticize Fred Hiatt's Washington Post editorial page. And here comes another figure who may be able to make some real noise doing so: Valerie Plame.
Plame, the husband of Joe Wilson who was of course outed as a CIA agent and found her career at an end as a result, is settling a bunch of scores with journalists and others in a new forthcoming book. The Associated Press got its hands on an advance copy of her effort:
She has kind words for Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who led the leak investigation and forced several journalists to testify about their sources. She said she didn't understand why "well-meaning but self-righteous talking heads" decried that effort.Clearly, Plame is gearing up to hit back at Judith Miller, Fred Hiatt and the rest of the gang here."It was the Pentagon Papers or Watergate turned on its head," she writes, adding, "These reporters were allowing themselves to be exploited by the administration and were obstructing the investigation."
After reading a Washington Post editorial criticizing her husband, Plame writes that she "suddenly understood what it must have felt like to live in the Soviet Union and have only the state propaganda entity, Pravda, as the source of news about the world."
Look, whatever you think of the Wilsons, the Plame case didn't exactly put the press in its best light -- whether it was the endless misreporting on the story or the mindless deification of Miller as a First Amendment martyr, as a kind of cross between Clarence Darrow and Gandhi. So it'll be particularly interesting to see how media figures react now that Plame is trying to have her say about them. Of course, they can always just ignore it, and probably will.
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