WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?

Tuesday, July 19, 2005
Washington, DC

Sultry. That's the word I've been looking for to describe the feel of this dense, tropical air on my skin. Marcia came up with it in the garden last night. Sultry. Perfect. The closest I'd come was sensuous, after my 12-mile bike ride with Shelly, yesterday afternoon. We were both surprised I'd made it all the way down to the river and back, only needing to walk the bike back up one steep block of Massachusetts Avenue.

Anyway, for whatever reason, while everyone else has been complaining of the oppressive heat and humidity, I've been getting off on it. Maybe because I've been shrouded in San Francisco fog for so long that the feel of a hot summer night on my bare skin takes me straight back to high school, and boys with fast cars. Hurtling through the night on Virginia back roads. Blacktop strips through forest and farmland. Luxuriating in newfound freedom. The first stirrings of kundalini energy tingling at the base of my spine. A hint of danger in the air.

What a very pleasant surprise to feel that again...

For the moment, all is quiet at the Pink House. Everyone is off doing their day, leaving me in the kitchen with the house computer, CNN on the TV, dogs sprawled in front of the fans, a week's worth of The Washington Post piled up waiting for me to catch up on the ongoing saga of Karl Rove and the White House leak.

Just below the fold on today's front page, "Bush Raises Threshold for Firing Aides in Leak Probe". Originally, he vowed to fire the person who leaked Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative to the press. Now he'll only fire the leaker if a crime was committed. Proving that will be a hard dollar, considering the definition of the crime in question.

Bottom line: the standard requires proof of intent to harm national security.

When all the sturm und drang dies down, at worst, they will only be able to prove intent to harm Valerie Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, and the credibility of his report that Saddam Hussein was not actively seeking yellowcake from Niger.

So here we are again. Back to the sixteen little words that helped pave our way to war.

My right wing-nut friends keep telling me all this will go away soon. It's a non-issue, they insist. It will blow over like a desert dust storm. Nobody cares. It's all in the past. Forget the sixteen words. And then comes the Downing Street Memo. "Old news," says Carl Frank at a party in Georgetown, while dancing a gavotte on the grave of the European Union. The Karl Rove thing? About to blow over. Give it a couple more days.

But I don't jump up and down and predict prison terms for our perps. No no no. I just lay back in the weeds and wait, reflecting on my old friend, Pat (Yapcinko) Lansdale.

Pat was the second wife of Major General Edward Geary Lansdale, whom he met in the Philippines. Lansdale supposedly wrote the book on covert warfare. He was sent to the Philippines in the early '50s as "kingmaker" for his friend, General Magsaysay. Sure enough, Magsaysay went on to become President of the Philippines, thanks in great part to the efforts of Ed Lansdale. Part of Lansdale's mission had been to defeat the "communist" (today's "terrorist") Huk guerillas. According to the legend, it was Pat Yapcinko who introduced Lansdale to the leader of the Huks. Part of Lansdale's strategy had to do with getting next to the enemy. From this strategy came much of his mystique.

And what, pray tell, might the enemy stragegy have been? Could it have had something to do with getting close to the legendary spy?

I like to call it my "Silk Domino Theory" and it has to do with legendary spies falling into the silken arms of beautiful Asian women. Beautiful, patient warriors - in for the long haul.

Decades later, in McLean, Virginia, when I was negotiating with Lansdale over the rights to his collection of songs from the war in Vietnam, Pat pulled me aside and suggested I learn her secret of "ruling quietly from behind the screen".

Instead of lock horns with Lansdale and his little cadre of ex-CIA agents like Lou Conein, who was always in my face about "this better not be an anti-war film", she was saying, essentially, just lay back in the weeds and wait for your shot.

They're all gone now. And I'm still here in the weeds, watching and waiting, with the sultry summer air on my skin.

And I'm thinking. Running everything I've just read back through my head. And I'm saying to myself, there's something amiss here. All the attention is on Rove. And his piece of the puzzle is sliced paper thin: he confirmed there was a story floating around about Joe Wilson's wife being a CIA agent and that it was she who had recommended him for his fact-finding trip to Niger, thus setting up the "nepotism" scandal without leaving his fingerprints on the outing of Plame. Because Rove didn't know her name. Or speak it.

Hang on, says me. Rove is a red herring. It's the other guy we want to be looking at. The "senior administration official" who is "no partisan gunslinger". Who might also be "the person who has been briefed on the matter". Who appears to be a lawyer involved with the case.

By the way, who is Judith Miller protecting? It couldn't be Rove. He's being ever so liberally dangled in front of the Gaping Maw of 24-hour "news". If the administration didn't want him out there, he'd be somewhere else.

The beauty part is, there is no way of proving any kind of intent to harm national security with his wee piece of the puzzle. Forget about Rove.

So, who is Non-Gunslinger Guy? Could that be who Judith Miller is protecting? And could she be in for a huge reward, after playing the part of media martyr to the hilt, thus gaining for herself the high ground in this decidedly low-down deal? Who is she protecting? And why?

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Thanks to my dear pal Sal for posting this item on her Daily Sally.