Semi-Daily Journal

According to USA Today (yeah, I know, I know, but that's where I found it. Google News, I swear) the CIA did contact the White House about this in July.

Very well put. But there's also the possibility that the guy who spilled the beans to the Washington Post was from the WH instead of the CIA:

http://www.needlenose.com/pMachineFree2.2.1/weblog.php?id=P484

Maybe amid word that this was going to escalate, one of the innocent members of the WH press/communications shop decided he didn't want to go down with the ship ... and blew the whistle on the actual culprits.

Very well put. But there's also the possibility that the guy who spilled the beans to the Washington Post was from the WH instead of the CIA:

http://www.needlenose.com/pMachineFree2.2.1/weblog.php?id=P484

Maybe amid word that this was going to escalate, one of the innocent members of the WH press/communications shop decided he didn't want to go down with the ship ... and blew the whistle on the actual culprits.

If that were the case, wouldn't Allen and Priest have identified him as a senior White House official rather than a senior administration official?

ABC's The Note said this morning that 480 out of 500 journalists they talk to think the senior administration official was Tenet or "somebody familiar with Tenet's thinking."

Tenet was my first guess, too, before the clues I mention in the post linked to above (sorry for the double-post, BTW). Probably still my first guess; I'm just exploring the possibility that it might be someone else ... or even both, somehow.

I presume that if it was Bartlett, "senior administration official" would be a way of protecting his identity more effectively -- even to the extent of throwing suspicion on Tenet.

"The British Government has learned that Karl Rove did not leak the identity of an undercover CIA operative for petty political revenge..."

Larry Johnson, identified as a "former CIA analyst," on the Newshour tonight said that he was in training with Ms. Plame 30 years ago and that she was undercover and that she is a "very solid" person.

Excellent precis of the situation, Brad. Here's a question that I almost hate to ask, though: isn't there a significant chance that the leaker(s) will never be uncovered? Most likely, none of the contacted journalists will ever reveal who contacted them, because doing so would ruin their reputation for confidentiality in Washington -- and thus their journalistic careers. So how will the FBI ever find out who did it?

"When the facts aren't on your side, play dumb" seems to be Sullivan's credo.

It's all so complicated, I can't make heads or tails of this matter. I wish it were as clear cut as a failed land deal connected to a failed savings and loan.

You know, Sullivan ought to have some clue about stories in which personally-sensitive information is made public. Such as the identity of someone seeking out sexual encounters under a pseudonym. Hypothetically speaking.

There's nothing hypothetical about it:

http://milkyloads.tripod.com/

David Neiwert is beginning a series on right-wing treachery at his blogspot http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/ Many of the examples will be of the "America First" crowd-- did you know that Charles Lindbergh helped to design the Luftwaffe that strafed Spain, blitzed London and killed tens of thousands of Americans?-- but there are plenty of modern day examples. The last two big spy cases, Hanssen and Katrina Leung have also involved right wingers.

True to form, most of those who have sold out their country have been "conservatives". This may explain why "conservatives" are so strident in denouncing traitors. There are so many in their ranks the problem seems acute to them.

A problem that has been festering even longer than the Plame affair is the congressional dissatisfaction with the CIA. Last week the House Intelligence Committee sent a letter to Tenet complaining of significant deficiencies in intelligence agencies’ gathering of information on WMD in Iraq and in their work on alleged ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

I wonder how these various and circular charges and counter charges are related, how they serve the interests of those involved.

These professions of confusion ring rather self-serving and hollow, as it's already been established that pointless, petty smears are the modus operandi of the Bush political operation:

Gay AND Canadian!!! (Washington Post, 7/18/2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A8158-2003Jul17?language=printer

And the denial:

"A White House spokesman, meanwhile, disavowed the incident: 'This is the first we've heard of it, and it would be totally inappropriate if true.'"

It's like deja vu all over again. You would think even Andrew Sullivan would be able to figure this one out.

Well (to quote a former president :), considering that the administration eagerly seized upon every bit of evidence that would support invading Iraq, while ignoring contrary evidence, even setting up a special office in the Pentagon, any claim that the CIA fooled the White House is clearly ridiculous.

Unless one believes that the CIA set up the whole Iraq war.

I'm tired of this story until I start hearing some names and people going on the record. This should be investigated and if Justice can't do it than Democrats should demand an independent counsel.

The only way anyone is going to get any truth about this story is for the fraud of Unnamed Sourcing to end!

There are now, officially reported, seven journalists who were aprroached and asked to name Plame.

Those journalists have editors.

Therefore those editors also know who made the approach but because of the unnamed sourcing FRAUD refuse to supply the name of the lawbreaker and have therefore become accessories after the fact.

As we have learned from a journalist for a British newspaper, the Guardian, the information about Plame was put forth by karl Rove.

On this side of the Atlantic, however, Rover has denied that he outed Plame.

There are at least seven journalists and who knows how many editors at major U.S. newspapers including the Washington Post and the new York Times WHO KNOW THAT KARL ROVE IS A LIAR AND A FELON.

Yet they persist in protecting him becuase of the LEGALIZED BLACKMAIL of unnamed sourcing.

Who will be our Emile Zola?

This bureaucratic war is the first strike in a campaign to change the government--to replace the bad viziers Andrew Card and Karl Rove with good vizier Colin Powell, who will direct a government interested in what is good for the country rather than one interested in short-term political advantage and neoconservative theology.

I have to admit that I never truly understood the theory proposed by Bush's supporters that a less than brilliant and less than experienced president could simply "surround himself" with capable advisors. After all, how would he select them?

Now I understand. It is a self-selecting process. You surround yourself with good and bad advisors, the bad ones eliminate themselves by committing felonies, and you are left with a smart and honorable team. Simple.

This bureaucratic war is the first strike in a campaign to change the government--to replace the bad viziers Andrew Card and Karl Rove with good vizier Colin Powell, who will direct a government interested in what is good for the country rather than one interested in short-term political advantage and neoconservative theology.

I have to admit that I never truly understood the theory proposed by Bush's supporters that a less than brilliant and less than experienced president could simply "surround himself" with capable advisors. After all, how would he select them?

Now I understand. It is a self-selecting process. You surround yourself with good and bad advisors, the bad ones eliminate themselves by committing felonies, and you are left with a smart and honorable team. Simple.

"True to form, most of those who have sold out their country have been "conservatives"."

This is utter nonsense. Most traitors are either Communists or just plain greedy (they're in it for the money). And trust me, the Luftwaffe didn't need Charles Lindbergh, they were perfectly capable of designing an air force for themselves.

I love the way the Democrats are screaming "treason!" when they just didn't care about classified leaks during the Clinton administration, and when they did their best to cripple the CIA in the Carter and Clinton years.

Sounds like the man at the center of this wants to bang his head against the wall over the hysteria:

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20031001.shtml

And, how come all the usual suspects are ignoring the "showboat" husband, Joe Wilson. If his wife's "secret" is such a big deal, he shouldn't have gone public with his role (hilariously inflated, btw) by writing an Op-ed for the NY Times.

Once he did that his connection, through his wife, to the CIA was fair game. Indeed, it seems to me that if the Times editors knew how he got the assignment, it was unethical not to disclose that to the readers.

But it is interesting to see people who never uttered a peep of protest about the damage Otis Pike and Frank Church did to the CIA, in such a dither about "treason". Ann Coulter, call your office; the lunatics are again in charge of the asylum that is the comments section of the Semi-Daily Journal.

>>I love the way the Democrats are screaming "treason!" when they just didn't care about classified leaks during the Clinton administration, and when they did their best to cripple the CIA in the Carter and Clinton years.>>

Even assuming that's correct, does it excuse the aactions of the Bush administration?

Isn't the illegal disclosure of a CIA operative a very serious matter?

Did the Bushies do anything about it from July until recently?

Is there any reason to believe the leaker was not an someone senior in the administration?

>>Once he did that his connection, through his wife, to the CIA was fair game. >>

What???

The crime was against the government - it potentially endangered members of the CIA and their contacts and the ability to gather intelligence.

If you write something I don't like, may I kidnap your employer's children?

Lugo, Charles, you are both pushing falsisms. Traitors have appeared from all ranks as have patriots.

Don't get too hung up on journalists not revealing their sources. Or despairing that the name of the leaker will never come out. Here's why:

6 or so journalists (and their editors) do know the real identity of the leaker. If someone is made to stand in for that person, they will make it clear that the wrong person is taking the fall (perhaps by telling Julien Borger of the GUardian).

If the CIA does a full investigation and can't get enough evidence to convict without the journalists, then (but only then) they can be made to speak. If that happens, they are not going to lose that much credibility with future sources--after all, they will have been made to tell by a court of law. But for them to leak beforehand lowers the chances that you'll have all the other juicy leaks coming out of the White House right now, which are pretty important leaks for the future of this country.

The biggest problem, it seems to me, is if Ashcroft finds a way to bury this, and the news media gives up the ghost. But I've got to believe Tenet or someone close to him will make sure that doesn't happen.

PBS News
9/30/03

This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been under cover for three decades. She is not as Bob Novak suggested a "CIA analyst." Given that, i was a CIA analyst for 4 years. I was under cover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the CIA unti I left the Intelligence Agency on Sept. 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it. The fact that she was under cover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous. She was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she works with overseas could be compromised...

For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal... and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that, well, this was just an analyst. Fine. Let them go undercover. Let's put them go overseas. Let's out them and see how they like it...

I say this as a registered Republican. I am on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear, of an individual who had no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it because the entire intent was, correctly as Amb. Wilson noted, to intimidate, to suggest taht there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision-making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy, and frankly what was a false policy of suggesting that there was nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend it was something else, to get into this parsing of words.

I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this.

- Larry Johnson - retired counter-terrorism official at the CIA and the State Department.

"If his wife's 'secret' is such a big deal, he shouldn't have gone public with his role."

If it is the case that all CIA agents' family members sign an agreement not to describe their own non-covert activities, and not to write for prominent newspapers, and if the agents agree that once this agreement is broken they are to be considered "outable," then Patrick is making sense.

If this is not the case, Patrick is just, as usual, flailing around hysterically, trying to concoct a magical formula to make the evil liberals go away, seizing on bubble gum and bat guano and whatever other ingredients he can put his hands on in quest of that alchemical triumph.

>> Once he did that his connection, through his wife, to the CIA was fair game.

So we can out your wife as a dominatrix, Paddy?

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec03/leaks_09-30.html

PBS Discussion

Clear my thinking here. Didn't I read that the CIA as early as July filed two reports with the Justice Department. One said an operative had been named, the other that the naming of the operative had done damage to US intelligence efforts. I'm seriously asking, 'cause there has been a lot of chatter about the White House pretending nothing had happened, but not much about Justice having taken no steps till yesterday. The CIA apparently reports an average of about one operative being ratted out per year, over the past 5 years. Has Justice waited this long to investigate in prior cases? If not, there is even more explaining to do.

"Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it because the entire intent was, correctly as Amb. Wilson noted, to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision-making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy, and frankly what was a false policy of suggesting that there was nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack."

Precisely!

Patrick, you cannot be serious? Novak better find a new profession if he doesn't understand the fuss. Compromising national security for political retribution is as serious a charge as it gets. Wilson's political actions do not allow anybody to compromise our intelligence assets. Doing so is a form of treason.

There is no such thing as fair game. Those with access to classified information are not allowed to release it until it is declassified. Novak has no business in Washington if he doesn't know this. If you want to continue presenting yourself as knowledgable, you shouldn't want to associate yourself with this nonsense either.

If the charges are true, heads better roll.

Per Andrew's link, Novak:

"During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it.""

The above extract basically makes it a case for plausible deniability. Per this piece, they only stated she worked for the Agency.

IMHO, Novak's excuse for using the word "operative" toward someone working at the CIA places the whole scenario on very shaky ground.

It'll be interesting to see how things play out.

Why the certainty that Novak's leak came from the White House?

This is a very partisan White House and administration. Who in that group could conceivably be considered to be not a 'partisan gunslinger.'

Well, I can think of one person who served in his position under both Clinton and Bush: Tenet.

Wow, this is fun.

Every blog with comments is flooded with partisans of the party in power suggesting that the rule of law is no big deal, and that investigating the man at the top is somehow distasteful, even if (as was not the case under Clinton) laws were actually broken.

I'm really enjoying it.

The fact that DeLong has such a strong, predictably partisan opinion on something so outside his area of expertise makes him seem like a political shill, like Paul Krugman. Passion in moderation is a good thing, in excess it is intellectual diabetes.

What's your area of expertise, eric? passion, moderation, or diabetes?

Offhand, I'd say someone who's been part of an administration would have some idea how people within administrations were supposed to behave, eric, but perhaps your experience in reading others talking about it is more extensive.

I'm guessing not.