“My wife has made it…

“My wife has made it very clear that — she has authorized me to say this — she would rather chop off her right arm than say anything to the press and she will not allow herself to be photographed,” [former ambassador Joseph Wilson] declared in October on “Meet the Press.”

That was then, when Bush-haters were decrying the outing of a supposed undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. Wilson kept acting, like this quote, that her identity and even her picture must be kept in strictest confidence lest her safety be compromised. It was this continued secrecy that lent credence to the uproar over her identification.

But this is now:

The January issue [of “Vanity Fair”] features a two-page photo of Wilson and the woman the magazine calls “the most famous female spy in America,” a “slim 40-year-old with white-blond hair and a big, bright smile.” They are sitting in their Jaguar.

Plame is wearing a scarf and big glasses, which just adds to the aura of mystery. In a second shot on their terrace at the couple’s home near Georgetown, she holds a newspaper in front of her face.

“The pictures should not be able to identify her, or are not supposed to,” Wilson said yesterday. “She’s still not going to answer any questions and there will not be any pictures that compromise her.” The reason, said Wilson, is that “she’s still employed” by the CIA “and has obligations to her employer.”

For a situation so allegedly highly-secretive, this is certainly somewhat less than that. Do those “obligations to her employer” apply to all undercover CIA operatives, such that it would be no problem at all to do a photo spread of one of them? I highly doubt that, which would only go to prove that her position is not as covert as Wilson would like us to believe.

So why would Wilson/Plame do something like this?

Wilson, who is pursuing a deal for a book that he says will be about more than just “the outing of my wife,” said they have had to make compromises to maintain Plame’s privacy.

Ahh, now that explains a lot.

(Oh, and I think I’m going to continue to use the “Bush-haters” label as a matter of course. After all, Hollywood has made it official.)

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