I’ve written before about the “senior administration official” leaking the identity of a CIA covert operative to the press, as revenge for her husband embarrassing the White House, a story Robert Novak ran. The story-behind-the-story was astounding, but got very little press at the time. Now that the CIA has requested a Justice Department investigation (which in fact has been underway for a while), and has publicized that request in the media, the media is reviving it–a little bit.
Billmon has been beating the drum on this story for the past couple of days.
One of Billmon’s commenters wondered, if the administration is willing to pull a dirty trick like this over a relatively piddling matter, what are they doing with the really important stuff? One shudders to think. And we can clearly drop the “if”: The fact of the CIA’s request makes it clear that the story is not bogus. Someone in the administration who is placed highly enough to find out Wilson’s wife’s secret identity, and vindictive enough to violate federal law and put her and her contacts’ lives at risk just to get back at her husband: Carl Rove comes to mind.
Later: Even some well-connected Republicans are appalled:
Compared to this, all of Clinton’s peccadilloes look like an mildly diverting scene from an Oscar Wilde production … Let me make this as plain as possible — I was an unpaid advisor for the Bush-Cheney 2000 campaign, and I know and respect some high-ranking people in the administration. And none of that changes the following: if George W. Bush knew about or condoned this kind of White House activity, I wouldn’t just vote against him in 2004 — I’d want to see him impeached. Straight away.
There’s lots, lots more out there in the blogosphere, but this is some of the juicy stuff.
Slate thinks the leakers were acting on a confused notion of a nepotism gotcha against Wilson, without considering the CIA security ramifications.
It makes some sense–after all, how stupid could these people be?
http://slate.msn.com/id/2089156/
I don’t know. The Slate column does make some sense, but regardless of the exact form of retribution they were seeking, they were being either amazingly dumb or amazingly arrogant–maybe they had some idea that what they were doing was not simply immoral but also illegal, and figured “we are above the law.” That wouldn’t surprise me.
Myself, I still favor the more mafia-esque story that the leakers were trying not to clumsily emasculate Wilson in the media, but to hurt him and his. Maureen Dows has called the Bushies the Kennebunkport Mafia, after all.