NBC WON'T REPORT VALERIE PLAME'S NAME -- but in a nugget from today's Robert Novak column that I haven't seen noted elsewhere (though I've been surfing a lot less than usual) we learn that it's listed in Who's Who. And, of course, it's been all over the papers for days.
Is this barn-door idiocy on the part of the press, or an attempt to make this seem like a bigger deal than it is? I mean, this story could still amount to something -- and I still don't know enough to say -- but this just seems silly. Once you say it's Wilson's spouse, it seems to me that you've given the game away.
UPDATE: I'm wrong. At least, reader Derek Willis sends this plausible argument:
Is this barn-door idiocy? No. NBC won't report the name for the same reason that the Washington Post won't - both have internal policies against naming covert CIA employees, whether operatives or analysts (see WP writer Vernon Loeb's comment here: link). This is a fairly common practice, although it obviously is not held by everyone - and that's a choice for each media outlet to make. But sticking to an internal policy - especially as it related to naming intelligence agency employees - isn't idiocy at all. Once people in government suspect that a newspaper or TV station might not be consistent in disclosing names, it could have a chilling factor in their decisions to talk to the press. Sources and reporters have to know where each other stand on these types of things.
Seems a bit late in the day, but if everyone followed this principle I imagine we'd be better off.
ANOTHER UPDATE: The Washington Postagrees that the horse has left the barn:
Why is the Washington Post publishing Plame's name?
An intelligence official told The Post on Sept. 27 that no further harm would come from repeating Plame's name.
