BIG SCANDAL HITS WHITE HOUSE
CIA Agent's Identity Was Leaked to Media

From the Washington Post via Eschaton:

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity is a violation of federal law.

The officer's name was disclosed on July 14 in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak, who said his sources were two senior administration officials.

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

For more, click here.

This is a pretty big deal. The long and the short of it is that a couple of unknown, highly placed White House officials did something really stupid. (That is, "stupid" is a relative word here. The Bush administration has been doing stupid things continually from the moment they came to power: this is stupid because they're probably going to get caught.) The Republicans have been approaching politics with all the zeal of Nazi Brownshirts for some time now--just look at the Tom DeLay engineered drive to remap congressional districts in Texas. This time they may have gone too far. Purposely blowing the cover of a CIA operative in order to punish her husband for criticizing the administration is insane even by conservative standards. As NY Times columnist Paul Krugman has observed, these guys don't give a rat's ass about what's good for the country; they just want power at all costs and screw everybody else.

Eschaton is all over this one, exploring all the damning ramifications. Go check it out (be sure to scroll down to read the earlier Sunday entries on this).

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