AARON BROWN: Why do you think it- people at the Vice President's right hand -- and whether this was criminal or not will be for a jury to decide -- apparently engaged in this effort to, this is my word, certainly, and not yours, trash Ambassador Wilson?

SEN. JOHN SUNUNU: Well, I think they felt that Ambassador Wilson was a partisan, and he certainly was, politically speaking, a partisan, that he may have had specific motives and goals in mind, that were cer- it was certainly counterbalanced by other evidence and other sources of inteligence gathering at the time, and they felt that there needed to some sort of a balance out there. That doesn't justify the specific way that they approached it, but I think that was their concern at the time.

So if you accept this at face value, they thought Wilson was a Democratic anti-war advocate (which I can believe -- they are people who see things in strictly black-and-white terms: if you're not for me, you must be ag'in me), who was publicly put weight behind one specific piece of information which mitigated against going to war, but they knew of all this other evidence which supported going to war, so their response was not a substantive one, to present that evidence and let the public decide, but instead they attempted to defang Wilson by revealing that his wife was a CIA agent.

That's the Republican idea of creating "balance."

It all just barely makes sense even on its own terms. The only thing that really makes sense is that the outing of Plame was an attack and warning to Wilson: "shut up or else", and, in addition, a warning to the CIA: "get with the program, or else". The information that Wilson's wife is a CIA agent isn't "evidence" for or against anything, it doesn't bear on the Administration's position on the war one way to the other, and can only be justified as a legitimate move by a dimbulb such as Sununu dancing as fast as he can to his master's tune.