The only way we even know the name of Valerie Plame (and fame seeking hubby Joe Wilson) is that that former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage leaked her name as a CIA officer to columnist Robert Novak. That is what set in motion the long drawn out Plamegate affair in which only Scooter Libby was convicted of something other than leaking her name. So you would figure that the supposedly biographical movie scheduled for a November USA release about Plame, Fair Game, would feature Armitage front and center as the principal villain. Right? Wrong. The fact is that "Fair Game" has tossed Richard Armitage down the memory hole. The man who is responsible for the reason that any of us even know who Valerie Plame is appears nowhere in the extensive IMDB cast credits for this movie.

Of course, the aforementioned Scooter Libby (David Andrews) who did not leak her name is listed. Also listed in the cast is the Armitage-leaked name of Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts), fame seeking hubby Joe Wilson (Sean Penn), Nervous Analyst #1 (Louis Ozawa Changchien), Chauvinist Analyst (Sean Mahon),  Head Paparazzo (Harry L. Seddon), Four Seasons Waitress (Satu Rautaharju), Starbucks Employee (Angela Lewis), and Turkish Embassy Guest (Marsall Factora). However, as for the person who made the "Fair Game" movie possible by leaking Valerie Plame's name, he appears nowhere in the cast credits.

On Saturday’s Fox News Watch, as FNC correspondent Douglas Kennedy appeared as a member of the show’s panel, after host Jon Scott’s introduction to the show’s first segment – which involved President Obama’s response to the underwear bomber – Kennedy characterized Scott’s introduction as sounding "like it's written by Dick Cheney in his bunker." Complaining that he was ideologically outnumbered on the panel after left-leaning panel member Judith Miller – formerly of the New York Times – was critical of Obama, Miller declared, "Now, wait a minute. I am very, very liberal on a lot of issues," prompting Kennedy to exclaim, "You went to jail to protect Dick Cheney! Come on!":

The Washington Post printed Robert Novak's column about his brain tumor today, but it substantially edited the ending. The Post removed a mean-spirited quote from Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame attacking Novak that appeared in the version distributed by Creators Syndicate.

The original column by Novak ended like this (emphasis added, more below the fold):

There are mad bloggers who profess to take delight in my distress, but there's no need to pay them attention in the face of such an outpouring of good will for me. I had thought 51 years of rough-and-tumble journalism in Washington made me more enemies than friends, but my recent experience suggests the opposite may be the case.

But Joe and Valerie Wilson, attempting to breathe life into the Valerie Plame "scandal," issued this statement: "We have long argued that responsible adults should take Novak's typewriter away. The time has arrived for them to also take away the keys to his Corvette."

The US media seems to think that their job description includes deciding what information is and is not legal to leak and print- never mind that we elect Presidents, Senators and Representatives to do this, not members of the scribbling class. This arrogance and complete lack of care for their fellow Americans was famously demonstrated in the NSA and SWIFT banking exposes by the New York Times resident anti-Americans, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau. However, these are not the only such cases. Recently, Risen has once again exposed classified data with the aid of hidden law-breakers in the government. In this case, Risen exposed a CIA-Mossad operation to destabilize Iran. Risen has been subpoenaed by a federal court to reveal who gave him this data, but predictably, he sees his mission of aiding America's enemies and assisting said enemies to kill American citizens as more important that assisting the government to uphold laws about leaking sensitive information. And equally predictably, the rest of the mainstream media is rallying to his defense. Haaretz, an Israeli news source, reported on the topic today, casting Risen in the role of victim.

Update (17:35): Paul Colford with AP e-mailed me with an updated obit posted at 14:40 EST that had more information. See more at bottom of the post. Philip Agee, a leftist who exposed fellow CIA operatives by name in a book he published in the 1970s has died in Cuba. Agee's perfidy was one reason Congress in 1982 passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. If that doesn't ring a bell, that's precisely the law that Bush administration critics charged Karl Rove and/or Scooter Libby violated in the "outing" of CIA agent Valerie Plame.Yet while the Plame case was a media obsession for roughtly four years, the AP's Will Weissert buried that detail deep in its January 9 obituary. What's more, the wire service practically painted Agee's defection to Cuba as retirement from CIA work to the private sector: