Censoring the lapdogs

Can there be a more fundamental misunderstanding of the Fitzgerald inquiry and the last two years of revalations surrounding the uncovering of a CIA operative?

This scandal's greatest importance lies, Weimar-like, in its ability to distract the public's attention, energy and commitment from more important questions. In this regard, Fitzgerald's investigation also resembles in spirit and effect the efforts to impeach Bill Clinton over his affair with a former intern.

Fitzgerald's most lasting legacy in this case will not be as a prosecutor. It will be as a censor. He has built his case around the discussion of possibly classified information -- Plame's name -- by government officials with journalists. He is sending a message -- one that President Bush fully endorses, even as it creates severe complications for him -- about the dangers of talking to journalists about national security matters.

Right...talking to journalists about national security matters is a crime of the highest order to Bush. That indeed explains why he's fired Karl Rove.

The little bit of light that Judith Miller has shed on her "entanglements" with "Scooter" Libby shows that the household gods and goddesses of Beltway reporters depend on these relationships with "former House aides" to provide pre-gurgitated courses of Executive branch propaganda. The reporters get their "access" and the White House controls the message. Everybody happy. And we, the reader, remain blissfully ignorant. That's not censorship. That's cleaning a very dirty house.

And writing that the Fitzgerald investigation shares the "spirit and effect" of the Starr inquisition is intellectual dishonesty of a very high order. It was obvious, from the leaks coming out of his office alone, where Starr was going -- pornography printed in our greatest newspapers; I defy anyone to tell me what Fitzgerald is going to do next week. And sex with an intern is of a very different "spirit" than disclosing the name of a CIA operative.

Then Hoagland just goes batshit crazy:

The separate prosecution and conviction of Larry Franklin, a Defense Department official who was investigated for discussing classified information with journalists, two former officials for a pro-Israel lobby group, and an Israeli Embassy official, sent the same message.

Wha? Discussion of classified information with an Embassy official of another country is often called...um...treason. But addressing his larger point, yes the cases are nearly identical. In both, a conspiracy was launched to create a whisper campaign among favored members of the press to, in one case, defend U.S. policy misjudgments in going to war in Iraq, while in the Franklin case, sway U.S. policy towards a Hawkish stance on Iran.

The threat Fitzgerald seems to be aiming at the martini and merlot set of press elite and their friends in power terrifies them so that they are striking out, blindly, at an investigator who hasn't even showed his hand yet. Billmon, typically, says it far more eloguently.

The prospect of espionage charges, of course, is giving the lapdog pundits a bad case of the fantods. On what will they subsist if their official sources are too frightened to pass out a steady diet of classified doggy treats -- premasticated for easy digestion?

It's interesting to note that the real journalists, those who deal in real secrets, like Sy Hersh, aren't in the crying poodle chorus. Sy's sources already know that the long hand of official retribution could come down on them at any time. But now the official sources who hand feed kennel-bred columnists over martinis at Jack Abramoff's restaurant are feeling the same chill breeze. Is it any wonder their pets are yapping about First Amendment rights?