After what seems like months of this impenetrable, three-ring media/political circus, I have finally had a thought about the Plame Affair… no, not the one which everyone else has had… “Say What?????!!!” coupled with a plea for aspirin. This thought is original to me, and I have not seen it suggested anywhere else, and that is…

What if practically everyone inside the Washington Beltway was already vaguely aware that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA? What if this was such common knowledge that practically everyone involved really cannot remember how they came to know it, or who first told them… especially if it came about through casual social gossip?

Well, really, it would account for a number of supposedly clever, politically adroit politicians and reporters suddenly stuck in the spotlight, fumbling for an answer to the question “Who told you, and when did you know?”

Practically anything sounds better than “Everyone knew, I don’t know and I forget when!”