Topic: NewsBusters
An Aug. 3 NewsBusters post by P.J. Gladnick attacks Alec Baldwin for stating that, in a Huffington Post item on what he'd do if he were president, he would "prosecute whoever is responsible for outing Valerie Plame as a CIA agent" by insisting that Richard Armitage -- and only Armitage -- leaked Valerie Plame's name:
At this point you would think that Baldwin would lash out at the leaker, Richard Armitage, or at Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald for protecting Armitage by failing to prosecute him despite knowing that Armitage was the guilty one from the very beginning of his laughable investigation.
[...]
All this outrage and Baldwin still continues to miss the obvious targets of Armitage and Fitzgerald.
[...]
Of course, facts won't deter Baldwin from flailing foolishly away. He concludes his blog with another demand for the prosecution of whoever leaked (hint: Richard Armitage) the sacred name of St. Valerie:[...]
And, Alec, you owe us an explanation of how you could write an entire rant about prosecuting whoever leaked Valerie Plame's name without once mentioning the name of the leaker, Richard Armitage, or the Special Counsel, Patrick Fitzgerald, who refused to prosecute him.
Nowhere does Gladnick even mention the name Scooter Libby, despite the fact that Libby did in fact also leak Plame's identity to reporters. Gladnick -- like fellow NewsBusters Noel Sheppard and Mark Finkelstein -- is making the absurd argument that because Armitage leaked Plame's name to Robert Novak, and Novak was the first to report it ahead of the reporters to whom Libby leaked, Libby's leak somehow magically didn't happen.
