the return of yellowcakegate?

The story's not about yellowcake now though, it's Valerie Plame. I was speculating over email w/a group of friends a few weeks back on what would happen here.. think it'll explode?

Impacting...

unless more people pay attention to it, it's not gunna do shit, unfortunately. funny how things are different than 8 years ago, when all possible allegation against that Administration immediately resulted in a Great "Public" Outcry.

yup. and some republicans "wonder" why so many democrats hate bush.

as much as i'd like to see this get legs and get rid of the creeps in the oval office -- and the most delicious irony here is, that dubya's dad was responsible for the law that penalizes those who leak the names of intelligence officers -- i fear that it won't.

This is the cover story in Newsweek (the one we get tomorrow) with all the stuff I mentioned abt Rumsfeld.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/972362.asp?0cv=KB10&cp1=1

Calpundit is writing very clearly on this story...tons of stuff just on his front page, and nice recaps every so often. He doesn't list Fleischer as a suspect, now I'm going to have to figure out where I read that.
http://www.calpundit.com/

Maybe it was over here at Sensing (he's a military/Pentagon guy, good perspective):
http://donaldsensing.com/2003_09_01_archive.html#106468048283627674

Josh Talking Points thinks it's Tenet:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/sept0304.html#0928031038am

Good recap here as well:
http://www.ospolitics.org/blog/archives/2003/09/29/the_valeri.php

And don't forget the fabulous Note!
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/TheNote/TheNote.html

The National Review checks in with the opinion that Wilson was just a lefty Arab sympathizer anyway:
http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200309291022.asp

GHWB, 1999: "I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors. "
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/1999/bush_speech_042699.html

Til now, where it could bite Bush and co visibly in the arse. I can see future possible informants preferring prison time, then working for a system that has so many holes.

Howard Kurtz on covertnamegate:

The Wilson case has parallels in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair has plummeted in popularity after his aides leaked the name of a BBC source, government scientist David Kelley, who had questioned Blair's evidence on Iraqi weapons. Kelley committed suicide after his name was made public.

If recent history is any guide, federal investigators are unlikely to discover who the leakers are. In 1999, a federal appeals court ruled that independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr and his staff did not have to face contempt proceedings for allegedly leaking damaging information about President Bill Clinton because no grand jury secrets were disclosed. The next year, a former Starr spokesman, Charles G. Bakaly III, was acquitted of making false statements about his role in providing information to the New York Times.

In 1992, Senate investigators said they could not determine who leaked confidential information to National Public Radio and Newsday about Anita Hill's sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas during his Supreme Court confirmation. In 1989, then-Attorney General Richard Thornburgh launched an unsuccessful $224,000 investigation of a leak to CBS of an inquiry into then-Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.).

The part that puzzles me - Andrea Mitchell is supposed to be one of the leakees here. Today she went up to Rove and asked him if he was the leaker, and tried for a follow-up when he said no. What does that mean?

so which six journos were contacted?

1. novak fer sure
2. a national review writer fer sure
3. andrea mitchell most likely
4. jon king of cnn most likely (very friendly with bush)
5. someone from fox? brit hume? (their best journo)
6. maybe bob schaeffer from cbs? someone from the ny times? washington times? ny post?

I'm having trouble with this sentence:
Asked about the possibility of an internal White House investigation, McClellan said, "I'm not aware of any information that has come to our attention beyond the anonymous media sources to suggest there's anything to White House involvement."

Nice disparaging of 'anonymous media sources' there, but what does the bit after that mean? Did he leave out a word...
"to suggest there's anything to implyWhite House involvement"
"to suggest there's anything to encourageWhite House involvement"
"to suggest there's anything to haveWhite House involvement"

I think it's the first, as in 'there's not anything to it'. Am I being naive by trying to figure out WH doublespeak?

Then he's a clod who deserves a smack in the face. It's the name of an UNDERCOVER AGENT. Does the man think all spies act like James Bond or something?

She is a case officer in the CIA's clandestine service and works as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction. Novak published her maiden name, Plame, which she had used overseas and has not been using publicly. Intelligence sources said top officials at the agency were very concerned about the disclosure because it could allow foreign intelligence services to track down some of her former contacts and lead to the exposure of agents.

Hm...is there any legal precedent for him to force him to do so in court, say, or could he just plead the Fifth? Which would be hard given that he's already admitted talking to somebody, so.

We don't know:
1. if it was a senior administration official at the White House who allegedly leaked
2. what the exact status of Plume's employment at the CIA or what her title was.
3. what the damage of leaking her position was

We do know:
1. this issue may be just as political as it is legal
2. the people with the most to lose are in the Bush cabinent
3. the people with the most to gain are Democrats
4. that our president, as usual, is sitting on his hands and not coming out like a leader. If the guy had any sense of himself or his role, he'd be in front of the cameras and mugging "I will not tolerate any sort of unethical behavior in this White House. I am not aware of any of these allegations to be true. I am confident that my staff would never compromise the security of our intelligence. However, I welcome the Justice Department in getting to the bottom of this."

however, yeah, this is the same leaking practice that happened during the summer when the one reporter with the discouraging story on iraq was "revealed" to be gay & canadian.

Ashcroft cannot perform an objective investigation. An independent investigation needs to be launched, and the phone logs of the White must be released. There will be no email records, as way back, Bush's people said that they will not use email as it leaves too permanent a record.

As Blount noted, #3 is irrelevant. We do know that her identity is classified (scroll down to the '11 questions' part) and that release of her identity was unauthorized and unguessable by the media, so there's as much as #2 as we need to know (unless you think that the CIA is being retroactively hysterical about this, and I don't know why they would be). As for #1, both the Novak column and the Time article that revealed the name cited "administration officials" as the source of the name, and Novak specifically said "senior administration officials." So unless you think Novak is lying on that specific detail, we do know what level of administration employee is involved.

Your point about this being political and legal is well taken, though. But that doesn't make the legal part of it go away...I think we may eventually see a bipartisan call for investigation/independent counsel.

FWIW, a coworker I'm close to is a diehard Bush supporter and he's feeling incredibly troubled by this events and betrayed by the administration.

(xxxx-post and hi badger!)

I think that nearly any action he takes at this point could be construed as obstruction of justice, so he's playing it safe.

there's only a handful of senior white house officials too. that's cabinet level posts. those blogs everyone has mentioned have pared that list down to a shorter list, and obviously Karl Rove is at the top of every one.

Agreed. Everything Bush might say or do will seem like obstruction of justice. Why not have a few terrorist alerts and freak out over the California recall, and everyone just might forget anyway.

http://stream.guardian.co.uk:7080/ramgen/sys-audio/Guardian/audio/2003/09/30/300903borger.ra

woo hoo! oh no!

what evidence does borger provide?

Haha! Um, sorry, but I like it when people realize that politicians lie. Let us know what he thinks as events unfold.

As we've seen, this has been dragged and stretched to stop a slower news day from happening. What I see so far, is that everyone involved is running to cover their tracks. But tis too late: the CIA was founded on secrecy. Even if Plame is/was a 'minor operative', the holes in the system are plainly showing. Their credibility in the intelligence racket is now nearly nil. (Not the first time, I know, but will the CIA go down in history as an organisation of Keystone Kops?)

Another question: even though Novak "leaked" it, what will happen to his credibility? Will he be fired like Bob Arnot was (from MSNBC)? All a journo has working for him is his integrity.

This is more than lies, it is potentially treason. Even I didn't think the administration would go that far. I think everyone's feeling betrayed, just some of us are feeling *even more* betrayed than before! :)

#3 is not irrelevant in terms of political fallout. It is thus relevant, very relevant.

For #2, being "classified" is hardly descriptive when discussing a CIA employee. It's vastly more important what her role/title was. And at this point, it's unknown what that was.

For #1, on who exactly leaked it, Novak's source could be rendered moot if it was already known who Plume was and what she was doing for the CIA. In other words, if her cover had been blown before Novak knew about it, if a lot of people knew who she was, then what's the point? And like it or not, that's a possibility. It may be remote, it may not be.

I realize for some of you--me included, to some degree--tend to take a guy like Josh Marshall as an honest, credible source for assessment on an issue like this. And to his credit, he has even done some primary reporting on it. But he has a stake in this too, and his political persuasion heavily influences how he sees this matter. Oh, he'll claim to be objective but the reality of the situation is that he doesn't like this administration, doesn't trust the White House or anything about the foreign policy team, and it flavors the way he looks at everything. He's hardly objective. So should that make us trust him less or more? He's not out there trying to get both sides of the issue, he's been there from minute one playing defense for Wilson. I'm just not comfortable with that.

What about what this guy thinks, among others?
http://www.danieldrezner.com/archives/000771.html

It's not to say that you're right or wrong teeny. But there are credible, logical avenues of thought that are completely ignored by the left on this issue because of the political gains to be made. It's simply foolish to ignore that aspect, especially given the desperate opportunism so rampant. This may be an issue that takes down the White House, but right now there's a lot of speculation going on. The Rove accusation is particularly specious; all these brave journalists who won't go on the record but claim to have the facts...it's hardly credible until someone has the balls to come forth and finger Rove. Hell, if there were six journalists involved and this is such a crime, you'd think one of them would have gone straight to the Justice Department anyway. I mean, if you knew someone was planning a murder, wouldn't you have an ethical inclination to tell somebody? If Plume was indeed some sort of covert agent, then blowing her cover could have easily put her life at risk.

This kind of reminds me of the time Clinton was hosing a subordinate in the Oval Office (like when he got head while making a phone call--you go dawg!) Back then, people were saying no one that smart would do something that stupid or reckless. If this thing is true and it was Rove who did it or was involved, it's obvious that he's not as bright as some have given him credit.

In 1992, Rove was fired as a consultant for the Bush-Quayle Texas campaign, after officials suspected that he was the source for a column by Novak and Roland Evans that portrayed the Texas presidential operation as in disarray. Rove was accused of making up the story because of a feud with the campaign's chairman, Rob Mosbacher Jr., whom the column reported, erroneously, was to be dumped.

At the time Rove denied he was the source, and he said the column was false. "

Also, I do my own objective analysis, and don't need right-wing bloggers' plausible-deniability-pumping and "intellectual honesty" appeals to substitute for it. Cf. Instapundit. The guy's now even more of a joke than he ever was. I'm willing to believe that Drezner has something to say, but I don't deem it worth my time to read him. If there's no story here, we'll find out in time. I agree that Josh Marshall may have read some things too favorably so far, but whenever I've considered that he has, I've also found ways in which I could be wrong.

But it doesn't mean that anyone in the upper stratus of the Bush admin committed the crime.

Gabb I'm not really sure what your venom is for Glenn Reynolds is--his commentary on his blog is generaly minor compared to the vastness of his linking and quoting. I mean, he's certainly as credible as dudes like Alterman or Krugman. And how exactly do you do your own "objective analysis"? That's a pretty curious description. No really, it is. I find it nearly impossible to have "objective analysis" on anything anymore.

I see your point if we're strictly talking about political fallout...if someone actually dies because Plame's position is compromised, things could get really horrible.

I was reading your inital three points and framing my responses to them in the context of the law. The CIA's statement to the Justice Department that she was classified and that the leak was damaging is enough to invoke this law.

Again, I'm not denying or ignoring the political aspect of this, and there *is* a lot of speculation going on. I'm only using what has appeared in the conventional media and government record to make my points (although I have linked to a variety of blogs that speculate). I am trying in my own head and in my own posts to keep facts and opinions separate, and likewise to keep the world of powerplay politics separate from the world of law.

I agree with you teeny that it's certainly hard to separate fact and opinions separate. I really don't trust either side to discern what the "truth" is; even if the truth is known it still always seems to end up a matter of context. And that context always seems decidedly political.

I think speculation on what kind of undercover operative/analyst Plame had been, as well as speculation on whether this was known to some Washington insiders (speculation based on.. ??), is not relevant: it's a felony for a government official to blow the cover of a covert agent, plain and simple - if she's only a lower-level agent or not deeply undercover, that doesn't make the law any less broken.

As far as spin, well, everyone has to fight their way through it if they're not swallowing it whole. I worried for a long time that it might be nothing more than a conspiracy theory which matched up a bit too well with my own opinion of the Bush administration. Until it hit the front pages of the Washington Post. The smoke and partisan spin comes in great measure from the blogosphere parsing every available detail and causing further confusion when arguing back-and-forth with every new poster on the message boards who doesn't know the facts to date. So you have a bunch of people fussing around with a good dose of faulty logic based on (usually) uninformed assertions about the people involved ("Wilson is a left-wing Bush-bashing partisan!") how the CIA operates or ought to operate (i.e. "She can't be a covert operative if she's an ambassador's wife!" "She can't be undercover if her name was posted on the Internet as Wilson's wife!") etc.

As for Instapundit? He just wrote that the BIG scandal is that the Bush admin sent Wilson to Niger in the first place, based on a speech Wilson made against the Iraq war well after the fact (which, as we all know, must make one a Bush-hating lefty wingnut, not a reasonable person..). Then he spends some time critiquing journalists and politicians who expressed any number of diverse reactions to this story, saying "journalists" (nice vague catchall there) are "pronouncing a scandal" while they "know the truth and won't report it."
Uh.. ?? This is the problem with Glenn Reynolds. Faulty substitutions of one-liners for reasoned arguments, and deliberate & misleading use of vague terminology. He doesn't do it all the time but it can be rather infuriating particularly on the subject of Iraq..

Rove is a bully and completely ruthless (anyone read that GQ profile of him? terrifying), I wouldn't be surprised if it was him but know there are no facts to support this yet.

Wilson was a Clinton appointee. The mission was paramount--you know digging up WMDs and all that--and Wilson's views on the war, even after the fact, don't really seem like he was aligned politically with the Bushies anyway. So I'd say that is pretty scandalous. Who on earth would appoint someone with an opposing political view to work on an essential credibility issue?

Furthermore, at least six journos--um, if they weren't or aren't journos what are they--know who the source is. And unless Washington has changed drastically since I was there, more than six have known for a long time now. If there was a serious lapse in security issues like blowing covert cover, where is the sense of duty to run straight to the DOJ with it? The truth IS there and ISN'T being reported. Why aren't the other five raising their hands like Novak? That's an odd breach of ethics in my book. Reynolds has a lot of faults but this one seems a little petty.

Rove is a bully. He's right in line with every other bully in that position ever I might add. You don't get the job for being anything less than one.

One of the big issues that I think the average American doesn't understand is the concept of journalistic ethics. (Not trying to be elitist here; it's just that it's stuff that's taught in J-schools and not much discussed otherwise.) If Novak made a promise to a source that their identity wouldn't be revealed, revealing the source is breaking the code of ethics. It would destroy his personal reputation and damage the integrity of all journalists. Yes, it would be against the law to withold the information if he was subpoenaed, but that's the risks journalists take when they make this deal with sources. See the Vanessa Leggett case for this idea in action. (I linked to the NRO to kind of make a point about this idea, but if you don't like the NRO, just Google her name.

I hope none of this is coming off as an attack on you, Don...just trying to bring some extra information to your points. ILE is pretty lefty and I really really like it when we get some centrist/right/libertarian voices, so keep it up please!

fuck fuck fuck

ah fuck it, teeny/weiner fite! :)

[Yes, ILX is very lefty and I usually don't have the time or patience to wade in to anything because of it. But I'm used to it: my undergrad degree is in journalism and you can imagine the minority status of a Libertarian in that environment (or in my freelance writing environment.) The bigotry is pretty astounding at times. You choose your fights carefully as a result. But when reasoned discussions happen it is very enriching. I am surprised this thread has not digressed into ad hominem attacks and wild-assed parse fights but I'm sure it will.]

Anyway, I am thus well aware of journo ethics and keeping a source secret (and undergrad was so damn long ago that I can't remember the major court cases that have supported it over the years.) The point I'm trying to make is that what if a journalist is in a situation where a source offers up something like this--the opportunity to blow the cover on a covert operator. Well, there's ALWAYS the opportunity to tell the source that anything off the record that is potentially illegal--like blowing covers and shit--is never off the record. I mean, I know in the cutthroat mentality of the DC pit bulls that saying no to a story might be stupid but wouldn't there also be an ethical position in that, too? I am not a working journalist in the sense that I'm not doing investigative reporting on that level but I can assure you that I'd have a BIG problem blowing a covert's cover whether it was legal or not. I personally think the ethics here are shaky--there have been many, many arguments against the use of unnamed sources and some institutions are positively addicted to them.

I still don't see Rove behind this. And calling for an independent counsel at this juncture is right out of the Official Loyal Opposition Playbook.

that's about as funny as "legal ethics." and probably less enforced than legal ethics, too ... i've yet to hear of a journalist being disbarred (and i've got a list the length of my arm of those who should be).

So the fact that she's been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised. When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, 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 overseas and let's out them and then see how they like it. They won't be able to stand the heat... I say this as a registered Republican. I'm 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 with no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it. His entire intent was correctly as Ambassador 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 were nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend that it's something else and to get into this parsing of words, I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this."

LARRY JOHNSON: What is clear in this case is that there were other reporters who had the integrity and good judgment to recognize that this was a political hatchet job that this was not about real news. I like Bob Novak and I have been on his other show but in this case he got it wrong. And to hide behind the parsing of words that she was an analyst so therefore it's okay. No, it's not okay.

There are a variety of people who work for Central Intelligence Agency who are undercover and to cover this -- to protect them for a variety of reasons – and there have been people who start off as analysts that go on as operators. The principle, the sacrosanct, it's just like protecting sources for journalists, we have to protect the clandestine officers. I commend George Tenet for pursuing this.

TERENCE SMITH: Is there any evidence so far that any damage to national security or individuals has resulted from this?

LARRY JOHNSON: No, not to my knowledge but that's not the issue. It is the principle. You do not -- it is not up to the journalists to decide which officer they are going to out. We saw this in the 70s with Marchetti and others and Philip Agee who outed officers and they were killed. I don't want to wait until we get a body count. The principle's established: do not divulge the names of these people. In my own career trainee class I did not know Joe's wife last name; we went by our first initials.

TERENCE SMITH: You were in the same class with her?

LARRY JOHNSON: I was in the same class with her. I was Larry J. In fact, when I first saw her last name I didn't recognize her until one of other my classmates who's out now called me up and said, hey. To realize this is a terrific woman, she's a woman of great integrity and other people that don't know her were trying to suggest that she is the one that initiated that. That is such nonsense. This is a woman who is very solid, very low key and not about show boating.

Hardball (MSNBC - 9/30/03):

CHRIS MATTHEWS:  Don't you think it's more serious than Watergate, when you think about it?

REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN ED GILLESPIE:  I think if the allegation is true, to reveal the identity of an undercover CIA operative -- it's abhorrent, and it should be a crime, and it is a crime.

CHRIS MATTHEWS:  It'd be worse than Watergate, wouldn't it?

GILLESPIE:  It's -- Yeah, I suppose in terms of the real world implications of it.  It's not just politics.

Seriously, this is going to be one hell of a war.

I cannot pretend to be objective. I still know that Bush was not elected president. Just because one is part of the loyal opposition doesn't mean that what one knows or believes is wrong. Although there are some people that still sit around chewing about the legitimate points that the Confederacy might have had, i'm comfortable accepting the Union was right, and want to continue from there. Now i want to continue with an independent investigation into the actions of the Bush White House without wondering if Ashcroft can get over his fear of calico kitties enough to handle the job.

Anyway, I read the profile of Wilson in the current Washington Post, and I don't see quite how being against the Iraq war indicates any partisan political alignment per se - I'm trying to imagine this from the standpoint of someone who was an expert on the region and knew what the effect of starting a war there would be, and who went on a mission to check WMD information for the CIA only to have the White House ignore it and assert the contrary in a major address. All criticism of the war and the faulty intelligence that was used to justify it is not necessarily just political maneuvering if you view it from the standpoint of our country's best interests, because it seems we've really gotten ourselves into a quagmire and senior administration officials are not doing anything to improve the situation.

BTW I think what the Bush flaks are peddling is that her cover was already blown and that the CIA was not making an effort to keep it secret by the time Novak et al blew it. Clearly, Tenet had issues with Wilson (maybe these "issues" sprung from Tenet's dealing with Rove or whatever) so it's not implausible (nor has it been proven otherwise) that Tenet was running his mouth long before 6 journos got wind.

Now that the story has blown up, I keep wondering why 6 journos are sitting on their hands and not saying anything...Novak's the only one who's talked. The others haven't even addressed the issue yet. They wouldn't need to reveal the source to do so. Maybe they're all working on book deals.

But the server is always slow whenever I need it most.

It worked for me. It also looks like he gave to both Bush and Gore ($1000). Well, at least some dude who fits his name and occupational description and locale did. Whatever.

FWIW, here's what the Wall Street Journal is opining on the issue this morning, since I know most of you around here would never dare soil your hands on it. Let alone pay for the subscription:

"Political Intelligence"

"We've been knocking our heads trying to figure out how a minor and well-known story about an alleged CIA "outing" has suddenly blossomed into a Beltway scandal-ette. The light bulb went off reading Monday's White House press briefing.

"Right out of the box, Helen Thomas asked if "the President tried to find out who outed the CIA agent? And has he fired anyone in the White House yet?" OK, the point of this exercise is to get President Bush to fire someone. But whom? That answer became clear when the press corps quickly uttered, and kept uttering for nearly an hour, the name "Karl Rove."

"Of course! The reason this is suddenly a story is because Mr. Rove, the President's political strategist and confidant from Texas, has become the main target. Joseph Wilson, the CIA consultant at the center of this mini-tempest, had recently fingered Mr. Rove as the official who leaked to columnist Robert Novak that Mr. Wilson's wife works for the CIA. Mr. Wilson has offered no evidence for this, and he's since retreated to say only that he now believes Mr. Rove had "condoned it." The White House has replied that the charge is "simply not true." But no matter, the scandal game is afoot.

"The media, and the Democrats now slip-streaming behind them, understand that the what of this mystery matters much less than the who. It's no accident that Tony Blair's recent and evanescent scandal over WMD evidence concerned his long-time political aide and intimate, Alastair Campbell. We're also old enough to recall what happened to Jimmy Carter's Presidency once his old Georgia friend Bert Lance was run out of town. If they can take down Mr. Rove, the lead planner for Mr. Bush's re-election campaign, they will have knocked the props out of his Presidency.

"The political goals must be paramount here because the substance of the story is so flimsy. The law against revealing the names of covert CIA agents was passed in 1982 as a reaction against leaks by Philip Agee and other hard-left types whose goal was to undermine CIA operations around the world. This case is all about a policy dispute over Iraq. The first "outing" here was the one Mr. Wilson did to himself by writing an op-ed in July for the New York Times.

"An avowed opponent of war with Iraq, Mr. Wilson was somehow hired as a consultant by the CIA to investigate a claim made by British intelligence about yellowcake uranium sought in Niger by Iraqi agents. Though we assume he signed the routine CIA confidentiality agreement, Mr. Wilson blew his own cover to denounce the war and attack the Bush Administration for lying. Never mind that the British still stand by their intelligence, and that the CIA's own October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, since partly declassified, lent some credence to the evidence.

"This is the context in which Mr. Novak was told that Mr. Wilson had been hired at the recommendation of his wife, a CIA employee. This is hardly blowing a state secret but is something the public had a right to know. When an intelligence operative essentially claims that a U.S. President sent American soldiers off to die for a lie, certainly that operative's own motives and history ought to be on the table. In any event, Mrs. Wilson was not an agent in the field but is ensconced at Langley headquarters. It remains far from clear that any law was violated.

"The real intelligence scandal is how an open opponent of the U.S. war on terror such as Mr. Wilson was allowed to become one of that policy's investigators. That egregious CIA decision echoes what has obviously been a long-running attempt by anonymous "intelligence sources" quoted in the media to undermine the Bush policy toward Iraq. Mr. Bush's policies of prevention and pursuing state sponsors of terror overturned more than 30 years of CIA anti-terror dogma, and some of the bureaucrats are hoping to defeat him in 2004.

"As recently as Monday, the New York Times hung its lead story around a leak that the Pentagon had somehow not got its money's worth from the $1 million it had spent mining some of Ahmed Chalabi's intelligence tips. We'd love to see a declassified bang-for-the-buck analysis of the tens of millions the CIA has spent paying sources who claimed to have Saddam Hussein in their sights. If CIA Director George Tenet can't control his bureaucracy, then President Bush should find a director who can.

"Which brings us back to the politics. The Democratic Presidential candidates are naturally all over this pseudo-story, calling for a "special counsel" and Congressional probe. They can suddenly posture as great defenders of the CIA and covert operations, though some of them spent the decades before 9/11 assailing both. And if they can't get Mr. Bush to give up Mr. Rove, perhaps they can keep the story going through next November.

"At least we can be thankful that Democrats buried the independent counsel statute during the Clinton years (see related article). "Leak" investigations are notoriously fruitless in any case and typically a waste of Justice Department resources. It's especially amusing to see the media whose lifeblood is leaks feigning outrage. We trust that Mr. Bush and Republicans on Capitol Hill understand that if they throw Mr. Rove over the side, the blood in the water will really be theirs."

Though as always I suspect there's worse that I just don't read. Andrew Suillivan/Ann Coulter/David Horowitz NOT to thread.

Clinton's weaselling was pathetic and sad, but seeing as it was about private pecadillos and nothing directly tied to NATIONAL SECURITY, I place it on a completely different level.

The entire point about the woman's cover being blown already is moot to me because it appears that it was only blown within a small circle of the US intelligence community before these geniuses in the White House ran to the newspapers. And anyway, even if it turns out that this woman's cover was nonexistent at the time this shitstorm started, what kind of short-sighted moron sets a precedent where the lives of operatives in the intelligence department are held hostage by capricious dolts outside of the theatre of operations?

(The preceeding rant is completely unsupported speculation, BTW, but I would expect that comes through in the self-satisfied indignant tone.)

...Responding to assertions by some Republicans that he had been driven by partisan politics to make an issue out of the disclosure of his wife's name, Mr. Wilson told CNBC on Tuesday night that he had given $2,000 to Senator John Kerry's campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination and that he had met several times with advisers to Mr. Kerry. He said he and his wife had given $2,000 to Mr. Bush's campaign four years ago. Records show that Mr. Wilson also gave $1,000 to Al Gore in 1999.

[...]

But the House majority leader, Representative Tom DeLay of Texas, said: "You have special counsels if you think the administration is trying to cover up or obstruct justice or is not interested in this issue. It is quite obvious to me that the White House and the administration are very upset about this issue..."

the kind who would break the law once with (perhaps) innocuous results in order to threaten future such reprisals should the CIA attempt to show that the emperor has no clothes

Dan -- perhaps finger fucking a subordinate and having a little assplay isn't directly related to national security in the manner that, say, outing a covert operator is, but the indirect ramifications of being that irresponsible and reckless is enormous. It's the reason the CIA doesn't like it's agents getting laid on the clock. Letting your guard down like that has no place on a job that comes with 24/7 responsibility. The consequences are far too great. You're right Dan that it's a different level since it involves notching the bedpost in private--let's skip the fact that Bill humidored Monica in the Oval Office, his "private" activity once took place while he made phone calls in the name of the nation's business--but it seems to me that parsing one criminal act like perjury and another like treason with gravity as a basis for prosecution is a little bit specious. What's wrong is and was wrong. Different levels yes, but there should be criminal consequences for both.

I do not see the place where I disagree with your central point, which seems to be the two-pronged attack of "What's wrong is wrong" and "Treason is worse than perjury". As far as I'm concerned, the Clinton thing is in the past; it happened and we should get over it and learn from it. It seems that someone in the Bush administration failed that last crucial step.

and now even the Moonies are piling on.

thanks to Neal Pollack's blog.

I mean, I'm glad Americans are quick to denounce Crime™ but it's an absolute certainty that 95% of the Americans who want an independent council don't even know what one is. With the new TV season in full swing, baseball in the playoffs, and the first round of parent-teacher conferences, I'd be willing to bet that 95% of America has no idea who the fuck this Wilson guy is. Or his wife.

These people don't know what the DoJ is for; I'd be willing to bet that 75% of the people reading this thread don't know explicitly what the purpose of the DoJ is. 95% of America doesn't even know who runs the DoJ. They don't even know that the guy who runs the DoJ put modesty towels over the titties on statues where he works. This poll is 100% irrelevant.

But if I were Bush I'd quit hiding and come out swinging for something.

The book "Bush's Brain" describes Karl Rove's tactics, and this fits nicely. Also, Rove was fired from the first Bush's '92 campaign for leaking to Novak before over info about a man named Mosbacher, even though Novak still insists it was not Rove.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/sept0304.html#0929031229am

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2003_09_28_atrios_archive.html#106485236682794928

i apologize for being overzealous in my belief in Rove's guilt. It's wishful thinking mostly, but it's not entirely.

http://www.calpundit.com/archives/002312.html

Rove was wishful thinking on behalf of lots of people, and despite the nastiness of the guy I still don't think it fits his M.O. He's not that reckless. I personally don't think he's even that good. I haven't seen him put together an upset on anything, and it's when the chips are down that a key advisor becomes essential. Right now, keeping the president behind closed doors is something that seems like a total fucking blunder of instinct, policy, and strategy.

Blowing a CIA operative's cover is a felony. --> Someone at the White House blew a CIA operative's cover. --> Someone at the White House committed a felony.

A CIA operative under deep cover is not known to be a CIA operative. --> Valerie Plame was outed as a CIA operative. --> Valerie Plame is no longer under deep cover.

NONE OF THIS IS TRUE NOW THAT VALERIE PLAME'S PHOTO IS IN VANITY FAIR.

The basic story is this - the docs were provided to the Italian journalist by an Italian private consultant who was a former Italian intelligence officer. The consultant had received them from an asset of Italian intelligence, identified to the consultant as a disgruntled employee of the Nigerien Embassy in Rome, who otherwise passed on to him mostly authentic documents about North African affairs important to the consultant's clients, including Islamist terrorism. The upshot of the basic story is that Italian intelligence concealed its identity in passing the docs to a private party who gave them to the media. Later, Marshall asserts that Italian intel knew that the consultant (whom Marshall earlier introduced as an 'information peddler') would pass the docs to foreign embassies and expected the consultant would likely pass them to the media.

Beyond the basic story, it's not completely clear what Marshall is saying. The key passage says that, at the same time ("at least as early as the beginning of 2002") that the US was aware that "the Italians had the forged documents in their possession," "Italian intelligence operatives were surreptitiously funneling copies of the documents" to the security consultant. So he appears to be saying that, at a minimum, the US already knew about the yellowcake docs before they were passed to the media and foreign embassies via the consultant. What else is Marshall saying? Nothing explicit, but is he implying that the US knew that the documents were "forged"? And when he says, generically, "the Italians" is he implying that the US knew that the docs were being passed to the consultant? A previous passage suggests maybe not. He writes that, "in late 2001 and 2002," italian intelligence was distributing (presumably directly) summaries of the yellowcake docs (or the docs themselves? it's unclear) to various foreign embassies, including those of the US, UK and France. So perhaps the US knew of the docs only because Italian intel told the US directly, but this reference to several countries within a broad date range is ambiguous - it leaves open the possibility that any two of the countries were not told directly about the docs until middle or late 2002, and does not state which country learned first). It also sounds like he's suggesting that the US knew that italian intel instructed the fake Nigerien employee to pass the docs, though his timeline here suggests that he either hasn't established this or is being coy about it - he says that the instructions were given in late 2001, and that the US knew of the docs only "at least as early" as early 2002.

Extra innocent question: who are the clients of the 'security consultant'?

http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2004/8/1/164011/5334/8#8