Perfect Example
Of Propaganda

Your editorial promoting Valerie Plame’s biased version of her exposure as a CIA secret agent was a perfect example of the propaganda Jeff Nygaard discussed at his Kimball Library lecture a few weeks ago. Mixing the phrases "treason at the top" and "unspeakable cruelties of the Stalin era" in your editorial charging the Bush administration with exposing Ms. Plame out of "revenge" only inflames partisan passions and actually interferes with your readers’ ability to understand the facts.

And like all propagandists, you twisted those facts. You wrote that the source of the information about Ms. Plame (Richard Armitage) was "somebody at the highest levels of the Bush administration" and charged that her outing was part of an administration plot. You actually wrote that the Bush administration "sought revenge" against her and her husband.

Unfortunately for your argument (and it is hard to believe you didn’t know this), Armitage was, in fact, part of Colin Powell’s team at the state department and well known as an internal administration opponent of the "neo-cons" who supported the ouster of Saddam Hussein. Nobody disputes that and nobody (credible) suggests that Armitage would reveal Ms. Plame’s secret status because Dick Cheney told him to.

Even "The New York Times" reported that Armitage was unaware of Ms. Plame’s undercover status when he spoke to the newspaper that outed her. And all press accounts finally concluded that nobody else in the Bush administration knew she was a secret agent either. You didn’t know this?

And then, of course, you tied all this in with Scooter Libby, claiming that he was a "fall guy" taking the heat for the "treason" of exposing a secret agent when, in fact, his conviction was for an act unrelated to her exposure. You didn’t know this either?

Valerie Plame is out hustling her book and good for her. She has that right. You went to hear her promote that book, got sucked into her story, and forgot your journalistic training that might have reminded you Ms. Plame’s version of reality is as subject to bias as anyone else’s (and, as a spy, she is a professional liar). Consequently, you misinformed your readers about an important subject in wartime and cranked up some unwarranted and needless partisan hatred in the bargain. Whew! It’s hard to conceive of how you could have handled this in away more damaging to civil discourse about important matters.

What is amusing (in a bitter sort of way) is that you did just exactly what you routinely accuse the Bush administration of doing: you knowingly cooked the facts to present a skewed version of the truth to deceive me and suit your own partisan purpose. You also fulfilled Nygaard’s charge that, "Progressive activists often don’t take as much time as they should to do intellectual work."

Bob Frenier

Chelsea

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