Oops. I didn't even know Kleiman was a Blogcritic, and I didn't see his Blogcritics post from this morning on this matter. It is here.

Excerpt from a great post at CalPundit:

Say what you will about Clinton and his disaster of a personal life. And there's no question that he fought to win -- quite skillfully and not always fairly. But he didn't do anything like this. In fact, I can't think of an administration since World War II that would have done something like this. It would have given pause even to Nixon's henchmen.

I doubt that blowing Valerie Plame's cover actually did much harm in the end. But that doesn't matter. This episode exposes the viciousness and amorality at the very heart of the Bush administration, and I hope it opens some conservative eyes about the nature of the administration they support. These guys are not who you think they are and they aren't pursuing their policies for the principled reasons you think they are. After all, if they went to war with Iraq because of a genuine commitment to humanitarian relief and Middle East democracy, don't you think they would have paid a little more attention to postwar planning? What does it tell you that they didn't?

Remember: this is not just some run of the mill political dirty trick. It's perilously close to treason. No truly principled conservative administration would do a thing like this, and the fact that they've been trying to dodge it for two months tells you everything you need to know about them.

The National Review was quick to ask the White House for phone records to see if Clark had called Carl Rove.

The White House should just as quickly cough up phone records of calls and email Novak made during that period to the White House (though he could have called the two senior administration at home or met them for an expensive lunch).

Both the House and the Senate should investigate this matter and see if, in fact, President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney knew anything about this clearly dirty political and illegal smear campaign that may have out the life of a covert operative at risk, and thus the national security of the United States of America. If Rove knew about this, which it appears he did, then it is likely that both Cheney and Bush knew, as well.

The White House is clearly discombobulated by this. Check out the press gaggle this morning.

The White House won't come out and say it, but the facts are: 1) President Bush could demand that anyone on his staff come forward and tell him if they did this. 2) President Bush is refusing to do this.

The script is: "The Department of Justice is handling this."

Yeah, fine. But whose White House is it? I seriously doubt the DOJ would mind if the boss over at the White House asked a few questions of his staff, yet the White House is acting as if its hands are tied.

Josh Marshall:

The White House has no intention of taking any action to deal with this unless and until they are compelled to by a criminal investigation. The key quotes: "But the aides said Bush has no plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role in revealing the name of an undercover officer ... 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."

In other words, their public line is that they have no reason to believe anybody at the White House was involved -- evidence to the contrary turned up by the CIA apparently notwithstanding. They want to see if they can brazen it out.

"Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, 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."

Guess who?

Daddy, in a speech when the CIA building was named after him.

I'm shocked there isn't outrage from all the conservatives at Novak and the senior administration duo who leaked the name.

If a progressive columnist had published the name of a CIA agent married to a critic of the policy of Clinton and it had been leaked by 2 of his senior administration officials, they would be calling for treason trials.

And they'd be right.

Intelligence assets have nothing to do with Democrat or Republican. This is and should be a non-partisan issue.

Just updated the story with more credit where credit is due.

There is some hope in that speech. When Tenet introduced Bush, he mentioned his parachute jumps and Bush said:

You mentioned the parachute jumps, Director. I landed very proud. Jumped out of the plane at 12,500 feet, fell at 120 miles an hour for 7500 feet, pulled the rip cord, floated down into the tranquil sands of Yuma, Arizona. And said to my wife, "Now what do you think?" She said, "I haven't seen a free fall like that since the '92 election." (Laughter)

Brian, since you seem to be trying to drag me into this by name, but appropos of nothing and without any sort of actual content to your statement, I'll respond on the same grounds.

Um, I'm rubber and you're glue, and uh, whatever comes next!

Personally, I think it is quite obvious that Atrios, Glenn Reynolds, Newt Gingrich, Michael Moore and Bill O'Reilly are all reptilian aliens. It's obvious! You see it, right?

via Drudge NOVAK RESPONDS: 'NOBODY IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CALLED ME TO LEAK THIS'

Careful, Brian. Your habit of diving headlong into any story that might scandalize Bush is building your reputation as the boy who cried wolf, or at least someone who could use some Depends.

For those who don't follow the link: Novak tells Drudge that no one from the Bush gang leaked anything to him, and that Valerie Plame, though a CIA analyst working on the issue of WMDs, was not a covert operative or spy.

I doubt Novak told Drudge anything. He probably just got an advance copy of Novak's column.

Regarless of how Novak got the story, senior administration officials were still peddling the story to other reporters. And it still is against the law.

"The two White House officials hatched an astonishingly illegal and hateful strategy. They called at least six Washington reporters and revealed that Joseph Wilson's wife was a covert operative for the CIA."

Steve makes a fair point. Here's another fair point: the above statement from the original post here contains at least two MAJOR factual inaccuracies, according to the latest reports.

Except Novak is wrong and perhaps his CIA source wasn't aware of the damage the leak would do. Wilson's wife was undercover as an energy analyst.

Which endangers people working for US corporations abroad who aren't even CIA operatives because they might be suspected of it (Danny Pearl was accused by those who murdered him of being a CIA agent).

Basically, Novak fucked up as did those who leaked to him and other reporters.

I found Novak's explanation of his decision to print the story to be a bit puzzling.

Yep. He writes:

When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson's involvement in the mission for her husband -- he is a former Clinton administration official -- they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives'...

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.

The disclosure could have broken more than one law. In addition to the federal law prohibiting the identification of a covert officer, officials with high-level national security clearance sign nondisclosure agreements, with penalties for revealing classified information.

That wasn't news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.

Steve Rhodes wrote: "Regarless of how Novak got the story, senior administration officials were still peddling the story to other reporters. And it still is against the law."

I don't doubt that you are correct, Steve. I was just passing on the gist of what was up at Drudge.

They main thing now is that Novak denies the lead is coming from the 'Bush White House'. Also, a major point is that Mrs. Wison's. husband went on a tirade against Rove publicly in July...and Why did it take the Post almost 3 months to push the story? It's old news. It's that there seems to be some good news coming out of Iraq these days and this report is coming out. Iran is flaring up really nasty. I don't think this one has any real juice.

CalPundit has a good roundup of the clueless right-wing reaction to this scandal.

I guess national security isn't such a big deal anymore.

Larry Johnson, a former counter-terrorism official at the CIA and the State Department, on the Newshour:

This 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.

InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds, naturally, is embarrassing himself on this one.

A roundup.

Tom Tomorrow has some good advice for the right-wing blogosphere struggling so hard to pretend there isn't a scandal here:

Word to the wise, from someone who acknowledged that Clinton was lying right out of the gate: if you want to ever have a shred of credibility, you have to concede the obvious.

for the record, someone please state EXACTLY what is obvious, for the purposes of later comparison to what we may or may not find out. please include the names of the leaker(s) and the nature of plame's relationship to the cia (which goes to determining what possible crimes may have occured).

based on what i've read, the leakers should probably be fired and referred for prosecution, but some of this story seems less than obvious.

also, i visited calpundit and the assessment there seems to be that conservative reaction is far more nuanced than the "clueless right-wing reaction" claimed above.

some people are searching for excuses, others for answers.

i dont find much difference between calpundit's ultimate position and my own: leaker identity and plame's exact job are keys.

the white house seems to advocate firing the leakers AT A MINIMUM.

Good roundup, in attractive chart form, of excuses/defenses here.

It became a big story because it was announced the Justice dept. was investigating it.

Chris, did you read any of the quotes I posted or what Johnson said? Plume was undercover. Printing her name in Novak's column blew her cover.

As Josh Marshall points out, Novak was singing a different tune earlier:

Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover

NEWSDAY, July 22, 2003 Tuesday
By Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce

Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the
information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They
thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."

Salon:

At least three key points of Novak's argument have all proven faulty: that the CIA officer in question is simply an analyst, not an undercover operative, so no harm came from making her identity known; that it was her idea to get her husband involved in investigation claims about Saddam Hussein; and that the unfolding leak investigation is "routine."

Salon speculates on a prime leaker suspect:

Criminal leak investigations are notoriously futile, and the identity of the administration officials who illegally blew the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame may never be known. But one name keeps coming up, and so far it hasn't provoked a specific, emphatic White House denial: Lewis "Scooter" Libby, assistant to the president and Vice President Dick Cheney's powerful chief of staff.


On Wednesday the New York Daily News reported that "Democratic congressional sources said they would like to hear from Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby." On MSNBC's "Buchanan and Press" on Wednesday, Pat Buchanan asked an administration critic who claims to know the leaker's name point blank if "Scooter Libby" was the culprit (the critic wouldn't answer). And Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska made a veiled reference on CNBC this week, suggesting that President Bush could better manage the current crisis by "sitting down with [his] vice president and asking what he knows about it."






But below the surface there's even more chatter. Says one former senior CIA officer who served under President Bush's father, "Libby is certainly suspect No. 1."

Libby might feel more secure if the White House would issue a blanket denial about his involvement, the way it did for Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, who was the focus of attention early in the week as the possible source. At a press briefing this week, White House spokesman Scott McClellan was adamant: "The president knows [Rove] wasn't involved ... It's simply not true."

more

John Dean also writes in Salon than the Bush administration is even worse than Tricky Dick's.

Just read the Dean article. It's an excellent idea:

I thought I had seen political dirty tricks as foul as they could get, but I was wrong. In blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame to take political revenge on her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth, Bush's people have out-Nixoned Nixon's people. And my former colleagues were not amateurs by any means.

For example, special counsel Chuck Colson, once considered the best hatchet man of modern presidential politics, went to prison for leaking false information to discredit Daniel Ellsberg's lawyer. Ellsberg was being prosecuted by Nixon's Justice Department for disclosing the so-called Pentagon Papers (the classified study of the origins of the Vietnam War). But Colson at his worst could barely qualify to play on Bush's team. The same with assistant to the president John Ehrlichman, a jaw-jutting fellow who left them "twisting in the wind," and went to jail denying he'd done anything wrong in ordering a break-in at Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office, where the burglars went and looked for, but did not find, real information to discredit Ellsberg.

But neither Colson nor Ehrlichman nor anyone else I knew while working at the Nixon White House had the necessary viciousness, or depravity, to attack the wife of a perceived enemy by employing potentially life-threatening tactics.

So let me share a bit of history with Ambassador Wilson and his wife. And, well aware that gratuitous advice is rightfully suspect, let me also offer them a suggestion -- drawn from some pages of Watergate history that till now I've only had occasion to discuss privately. Long before Congress became involved and a special prosecutor was appointed, Joe Califano, then general counsel to the Democratic National Committee and later a Cabinet officer, persuaded his Democratic colleagues to file a civil suit against the Nixon reelection committee. And that maneuver almost broke the Watergate coverup wide open. In seeking justice from the closed ranks of the Bush White House, Wilson and Plame should follow a similar strategy.

I'm actually planning on seeing Ellsberg speak at A Clean Well Lighted Place for Books in San Francisco at 7 pm on Friday. It should be interesting to hear what he has to say on all of this.