There's been something nagging at me about the whole Wilson/Plame affair. The motive behind the leak of Valerie Plame's name always seemed a little screwy to me, and I wondered if everyone had gotten it wrong.

Think back to when Wilson's editorial came out: the main question was, how credible is this guy? The British seemed to think he'd been fed a line and had fallen for it; that his investigation was too shallow and credulous. And it wasn't clear why Wilson had been selected for the mission in the first place.

So what is the immediate effect of leaking the fact that his wife is a CIA employee -- possibly a covert operative -- who dealt in intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction?

Instant credibility, that's what. The implication is that he has information from, or at the very least can draw on the knowledge of, the WMD expert to whom he happens to be married.

Meaning that the leak came not from a Bush loyalist (much less Bush himself) wanting to punish Wilson for his apostacy, but from an internal opponent of Bush's policy, seeking to give Wilson a credibility transfusion. And many of the diplomats and other career people at State -- and the CIA is part of the State Department -- have been visibly displeased with Bush's policies.

I hadn't heard anyone mention this angle, and figured that I must be missing something, at least up until now. Mark Steyn was apparently thinking along the same lines:

On his own, Wilson comes over like a total flake — not a sober striped-pants diplomat but a shaggy-maned ideologically driven kook whose hippie-lyric quotes make a lot more sense than his neocon-bashing diatribes for leftie dronefests like the Nation. This is a guy who says things like, ‘Neoconservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both.’ He spends his days dreaming of the first sentence of his obituary: ‘Joseph C. Wilson IV, the Bush I administration political appointee who did the most damage to the Bush II administration.’ Imagine Michael Moore and his ego after dropping 300lbs on the Atkins diet and you’re close enough. By revealing the fact that Mrs Wilson is a cool blonde CIA agent, all you do is give her husband a credibility lacking in almost every aspect of his speech, mien and coiffure.

It's just an hypothesis, not a conclusion; I'm well aware I could be wrong. But this is the time for hypotheses and questions, not for conclusions.

The verifiable facts we have are scant and inconclusive, and the veracity of all players on all sides -- politicians, intelligence apparatchiks, and journalists -- is dubious. Anyone who has already made up their mind, based on what we have to work with at this stage, is acting from partisanship rather than any honest desire for sound security and responsible government.