PrintRush to judgment
Today, the editors of the Washington Post at last inform their readers that the Fitzgerald investigation may well lead to no indictments:
[S]o far, in the accounts given by reporters about their conversations with administration officials, no such crime has been described. What has been depicted is an administration effort to refute the allegations of a critic (some of which did in fact prove to be untrue) and to undermine his credibility, including by suggesting that nepotism rather than qualifications led to his selection. If such conversations are deemed a crime, journalism and the public will be the losers.
Since the fake charges against the Administration were aired early in that paper by Walter Pincus, who obviously had a personal relationship ith the Wilsons, and clearly came from Wilson,Plame, and his cohorts, McGovern and Johnson; and since clothing them in anonymity served to make their incredible claims seem plausible when revealing their identity would have allowed the reader to more honestly assess the merits of their charges about the Niger trip, the editors might consider a long overdue in—house look at how they themselves made the public the losers in this affair.
Clarice Feldman 10 19 05
