Fair Game

I watched Fair Game last night, an American drama based on the memoirs of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson, played by Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. Plame was a CIA operative at the time of the Iraq War. Wilson was a retired diplomat with experience in Africa and Plame's CIA colleagues approach him to travel to Niger to try to confirm reports that Iraq were trying to purchase yellowcake uranium for use in a nuclear weapons program. 

Wilson's advice was that these reports were false and the film gives the impression the CIA did all it could to dissuade the White House from making the claim that Iraq were harbouring WMD's. The point of course is now moot, America did invade Iraq on the justification Saddam Hussein did indeed have a WMD program. At the time however, Wilson wrote an op-ed in The New York Times explaining his concerns that Washington were using Intelligence reports that were not accurate. Subsequently a leak, allegedly from the White House, outs Plame as a CIA operative and her career is effectively ended. 

As much as I enjoyed the film as a fantastic piece of film making, I was also astonished as a journalist student the relevance to a number of topics we have discussed in recent weeks and months. Robert Novak, who revealed Plame's identity in a Washington Post piece, was never charged with a crime, though it is illegal for anyone to knowingly distribute classified information, because there was no evidence that Novak knew Plame was a covert agent. However, the subsequent reporting from outlets, in particular FOX news, was sensationalism at its worst. The following clip from right-wing commentator Sean Hannity is perhaps the best (or worst) example of hack journalism http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmUzF6ccsxk.