The National Review Drops all Pretense of Being a Legitimate Magazine

In their coverage of the Plame affair, the writers at the National Review have cast off all pretense of being actual journalists. Currently the National Review Online features three of the looniest articles you'll ever come across.

The first, posted a few days ago by Cliff May, is either an example of mind-numbing stupidity or pure agitprop (I suspect the latter given that May is clearly smart enough to read and write). In the article, May claims that it was David Corn, not Bob Novak, who first outed Valerie Plame, despite the fact that Corn's piece was published days later and in direct response to Novak's piece. May's argument rests on the fact that Novak did not clearly state that Plame was a "covert operative" in his column. As anyone with half a brain knows, however, this is a distinction without any relevance. If you're a covert agent, the fact that you've been identified as working for the CIA is more than enough to blow your cover. May certainly knows this, which means his article is pure propaganda, designed with the sole intention of misleading people.

The second article, by Mark Levin, has the intriguing lead-in "Did Valerie Plame Out Herself?" Of course, nowhere in this rambling incoherent piece of nonsense does Levin come anywhere close to answering his own question, except, I suppose, in a resounding negative. He begins by arguing, with no logic or evidence to back it up, that Plame was never a covert agent. He then asserts that Plame herself is responsible for everything that has happened. What exactly did she do? It's not clear. Apparently her treacherous act was suggesting that her husband, a former diplomat with connections throughout North Africa, would be a good person to send to Niger. Levin argues that "Plame affirmatively stepped into what she knew might become a very public political controversy, given her husband's predilections." By "predilections," Levin apparently means the fact that Wilson had voted for Al Gore. Levin merely asserts (contrary to fact) that Wilson was a partisan Democrat and outspoken war critic at the time he was sent to Niger. Even if this was true, however, Levin makes no attempt to explain why Plame's actions warranted having her identity exposed by the White House. Like May's, Levin's entire article is pure rubbish, but unlike May, I'm not sure Levin knows its rubbish. I'm not sure Levin is clever enough to be a propagandist.

The third article, by Andrew McCarthy, is simultaneously the most interesting and the most outlandish. McCarthy's article is the most interesting because, unlike the others, it introduces some new facts that the rest of the media has largely ignored. McCarthy points out that in the legal briefs filed by the New York Times, Time Magazine, and other media outlets, their lawyers argued that prior to Novak's column, Plame had been"outed" twice previously in connection with past CIA security breaches. It's an interesting argument, and it's easy to see why the lawyers made it; if Plame had been outed previously, then Fitzgerald's need for Miller and Cooper's testimony would be less clear. Predictably, however, McCarthy instantly leaps from these facts to rather ridiculous accusations of media hypocrisy and liberal bias. McCarthy claims that the "liberal media," particularly the Times, is "currently spearheading the campaign against Rove and the Bush administration." He claims that this is rank hypocrisy given the position that these organizations previously took in their brief.

Needless to say, this argument is silly on a number of levels. First, why should journalists and columnists be bound by an ultimately unsuccessful legal argument concocted by the lawyers for their respective news organizations? I highly doubt that the reporters themselves played any role in the brief-writing process. Second, and most glaringly, what evidence is there that these news organizations are out to get Rove or the White House? The "liberal media" has known all along who the leakers are, and they sat on that information all the way through Bush's reelection campaign. Not only that, but they fought all the way up to the Supreme Court to keep their secret. Judith Miller is currently in jail, and Matthew Cooper was prepared to go (in Cooper's case we now know that he was solely protecting Rove). Of all the baseless charges of "liberal bias" over the years, this is easily the most ridiculous. Just this past weekend, both the New York Times and Washington Post printed front-page stories that can only be described as pro-Rove spin vehicles, relying entirely on anonymous sources sympathetic to Rove. The few editorials that have been penned so far have been remarkably restrained, merely calling for the White House to explain its previous, clearly bogus statements on the matter. McCarthy's allegations could not possibly be more off-base or more transparently partisan.

Yet that's pretty much par for the course at the National Review. Though many of its writers are intelligent people, and they occasionally have interesting and important things to say, the magazine as a whole is a partisan rag which is all too often filled with pathetic and cynical propaganda.