Hello My Name is Valerie and I work for the CIA

A few dozen people have been slaughtered in London but that doesn't seem to be as important as who is Valerie Plame and why is she working at the CIA.

This is the story I think. A columnist, Robert Novak, wrote a piece a couple of years ago where he disclosed that some guy named Joseph Wilson, who went to Niger (or Nigeria, I'm not sure, somewhere in Africa though) to look for something called yellowcake, or more precisely, went to Niger to look for some Iraqis looking for this yellowcake, came back and said he couldn't find any, yellowcake or Iraqis or Iraqis looking for yellowcake that is.

This news apparently mattered because later, or maybe it was before Mr. Wilson's trip to Africa, the President said something to someone, it might have been a speech or a press conference, no I'm sure it was a speech, that British Intelligence had also been to this same country and they did find some some Iraqis with this stuff or at least looking for it.

And in this column, Robert Novak said that Joseph Wilson was married to somebody who worked at the CIA, a woman named Valerie, and it was Valerie who had sent her husband to look for yellow cake and this was apparently important because it meant, well I don't know what it meant except that Joseph and Valerie are married to each other and she got him a free trip to Niger to look for something he couldn't find but that apparently someone who works for British Intelligence did.

Well apparently Valerie is or was or wants to be something called a covert operative, which is a secret, special undercover spy, and there are rules about revealing the spy's name or identity to the public although it's not clear that Valerie really is or was such a spy, or at least there seems to be some doubt about whether or not she was the kind of operative that is supposed to be protected by these rules at the time that her name came out. It also seems to be the case that many people in and around Washington DC already knew who Valerie was and what she did or had done for a living but not everyone in the rest of the country was privy to this kind of but not really secret information until Robert Novak published his column.

So that's what happened. Joseph Wilson's wife works at the CIA and she sent him to Niger to look for something he couldn't find but that the President said British Intelligence had found and then Robert Novak wrote a column where he told everyone outside of Washington DC who didn't already know that Joseph Wilson had a wife named Valerie and she was the one who sent him on this trip. And that she worked at the CIA.

But this is where it gets a little tricky. Another reporter, Matt Cooper, also wrote about all this but after Robert Novak did. And another reporter, Judith Miller, didn't write about any of this but maybe talked to someone about it. And Joseph Wilson and other people didn't like it that Valerie's name was published in the newspaper and they thought that the President or someone working for the President had tried to get Valerie killed by putting her name in the paper and telling everyone that she worked for the CIA so they demanded that someone investigate. So a prosecutor was appointed to investigate and he has been asking everyone lots of questions and apparently everyone has answered those questions except for Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller so the prosecutor, a Mr. Fitzgerald threatened to throw them in jail. But Mr. Cooper decided he would testify after the person he talked to about all this, or some of it at least, said that it was really okay if he did testify. Ms. Miller didn't get the same green light or decided to ignore it, however, and now she's in jail. But Mr. Novak isn't and Valerie has now had her picture published several times and given interviews.

And the person who talked to Mr. Cooper, but maybe not Robert Novak or Judith Miller is Karl Rove who works for the President. Except we don't really know what he said because nobody is saying anything publicly except that somebody leaked emails that Matt Cooper wrote to his boss where Matt Cooper said he talked to Karl Rove who told him that Joseph Wilson's wife sent him to Niger to look for the yellowcake and Iraqis looking for yellowcake. Which is what Robert Novak wrote about before Matt Cooper wrote his article and of course before Judith Miller wrote hers because she never wrote anything but is in jail anyway.

And meanwhile the Butcher's Bill in London continues to grow.