[W]hat has surfaced is repulsive. If I thought I had seen dirty political tricks as nasty and vile as they could get at the Nixon White House, I was wrong. ... Indeed, this is arguably worse. Nixon never set up a hit on one of his enemies' wives. ... This is the most vicious leak I have seen in over 40 years of government-watching. Failure to act to address it will reek of a cover-up or, at minimum, approval of the leak's occurrence - and an invitation to similar revenge upon Administration critics.This July story from Newsday was one of the first. This July piece from The Hill is a reminder that this was an issue before the Justice Department got a formal CIA referral.
From the last few days, Clifford May in National Review makes the rather odd defense that leaking Plame's name was no big deal, because lots of people knew she worked for the CIA. "Who didn't know?" he asks, which raises even more questions about how careful this Administration is on such security matters. Daniel Drezner, who acted as an unpaid adviser to Bush's 2000 campaign writes:
What was done here was thuggish, malevolent, illegal, and immoral. Whoever peddled this story to Novak and others, in outing Plame, violated the law and put the lives of Plame's overseas contacts at risk. Compared to this, all of Clinton's peccadilloes look like an mildly diverting scene from an Oscar Wilde production.Tags: daniel drezner, john dean, joseph wilson, valerie plame
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