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 Post agrees 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.

Makes sense to me.