Columnist draws on thin connection

To the editor:I often find myself fascinated with Gene Lyons' column. In his recent piece titled "Beam me up, Scotty" he managed to drag up the old Valerie Plame story and attempted to dust it off and give it new life. Apparently he was willing to believe Scott McClellan if Mr. McLellan was going to say what he wanted to hear. Unfortunately, Mr. McLellan's words fell short of Mr. Lyon's view of the truth, so Mr. McLellan must still be lying.

Yet in a piece supposedly dealing with obfuscation, Mr. Lyons omitted any mention of Richard Armitage. It was Mr. Armitage, you will recall, who admitted to leaking Ms. Plame's identity. The truth, of course, really never mattered much to Mr. Lyons. The Plame case offered him the opportunity to attack the credibility of President Bush and his administration and that, after all, is what it is all about.

But perhaps I do Mr. Lyons an injustice. Perhaps all he really wanted was the opportunity to link the phrase "Beam me up, Scotty" to Mr. McLellan, and dredging up the Plame case offered it to him. Or perhaps he had a deadline and this was all he could come up with. After all, it is the curse of op-ed writers that they often write because they have to say something, not because they have something to say.

SHAPLEY R. HUNTER, Thebes, Ill.