#3: More Fiction

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson wrote a controversial piece in the New York Times titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa", in which he asserted that the Bush Administration twisted intelligence to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

And then we learned that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative -- rather mooting the "covert" point of her job.

An investigation ensued. Fingers were pointed, and Cheney's office began to take some heat.  An aide became human asbestos.  According to his testimony in his case, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (formerly Chief of Staff for Vice President Cheney and assistant to President Bush) was authorized to disclose information that "was intended to rebut the allegations of an administration critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson" -- classified information that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent.

Libby was convicted and faced 30 months in prison for obstructing the investigation.  No one was charged with the crime of releasing classified information.

Now, given the gravity of the situation -- the specter of our nation's post-9/11 moral authority frittered away by going to war under false pretences; the country at war and lives lost to stop Iraq from exporting or using weapons of mass destruction that may never have existed; the allegations of the Administration feeding false information to the press; allegations of treason; the possibility that a well-informed detractor's family was being threatened by the Administration; and a potential smoking gun pointing right at Cheney (for a change) -- well, something had to be done.

What would you do, in the middle of this dark night of the soul?  Libby did what any God-fearing, upright Republican citizen would do: he published a book.  He reissued his one and only novel, complete with publicity tour, less than three months after his conviction.

And what a perfect book for the job!  I won't quote from it, because I would have to change the "adult content" setting on my blog.  Suffice it to say that it contains media-distracting, stomach churning scenes of bestiality, child prostitution, pedophilia, necrophilia... the list goes on. The press ate it up. Copies sold on eBay for stratospheric amounts. And predictably, public debate moved from treason and weapons of mass destruction to topics beloved by one and all: right wing dirty books.

 

The Administration was apparently satisfied.  Bush commuted Libby's sentence to a $250,000 fine, calling the original sentence of 30 months in prison "excessive".

And Libby's book? It is still in print, though you can now buy a used copy on Amazon.com for as little as one cent.  An excellent example of the Art of Fiction as Smokescreen -- and well worth the price.