Want fair, balanced? Separate intelligence, politics

Jewish World Review ^ | Dec. 3, 2003 | Jonathan Gurwitz

[SJackson]

In a July 14 column, syndicated journalist Robert Novak wrote about an obscure mission to Africa in February 2002, made by Ambassador Joseph Wilson at the behest of the CIA. Wilson, who had held diplomatic posts in the region, was charged with investigating reports that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger.

Novak wrote: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger." From these two sentences began what has come to be known as the Plame Affair.

Wilson accused the White House of leaking his wife's name — a possible felony — to punish him for criticizing President Bush's policies on Iraq.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., the Senate Intelligence Committee's ranking Democrat, called the disclosure of Plame's identity "vile" and "highly dishonorable."

"Retribution is their (the Bush administration's) method," Rockefeller said. "They go after the people they don't like."

"This is an extremely serious situation," added Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., also a member of the Intelligence Committee. "In their effort to seek political revenge against Ambassador Wilson they are now attacking him and his wife and doing it in a fashion that is not only unacceptable, but may be criminal."

By the end of September, television commentators, editorial pages across the country and Democratic leaders in Congress were calling for an independent counsel to investigate who leaked Plame's name and why. Lost in the rush to pin the scandal on the White House was the question of nepotism and the propriety of a CIA employee vouching her husband for an assignment.

The FBI consequently opened a full-scale criminal investigation into whether Plame's name was illegally leaked. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales ordered White House employees to preserve all documents and correspondence related in any way to the Niger investigation, Wilson and Plame.

"If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it and we'll take the appropriate action," Bush told the press.

No issue in Washington has engendered greater bipartisan consensus than the belief that intelligence and the people who gather it should be immune from politicization. For nearly three decades, the Senate Intelligence Committee has embodied this belief and the principle that partisan differences on national security end at the water's edge.

Or so we believed.

[Joshh86]

"Retribution is their (the Bush administration's) method," Rockefeller said. "They go after the people they don't like."

Typical liberal hypocrisy, c'mon this describes their standard tactic.