[swilhelm73]

A useful summary I think.

[.cnI redruM]

Sullivan put that one to bed rather succinctly. Too bad Schumer and Daschle are too busy hyperventilating to listen....

[mrsmith]

"there are nuances that I've missed"

The main one IMHO is that administrations have always given "deep background" information to journalists that would include classified information that the journalists agreed not to publish.

So the lib press is going to criticize the Bush administration for doing what every administration has done.

And the press is going to gag them knowing that every administration has done this.

Thye only do that to Republican administrations of course.

As to why the subject came up with the journalists, I assume it had to do with explaining frau Wilson and her husband pushing the Niger story to the BBC.

[swilhelm73]

Overall, I don't see how on earth one can credibly claim any likelyhood this came from the Whitehouse.

Let us consider the scenario Wilson and the Democrat's press is trying to make;

Rove, or someone else at a high level is worried about Wilson's criticism. So, they decide to try and shut him up. They don't blackmail him. They don't use anything from his FBI file - which worked so well for the last administration. They instead out of the blue go public with the fact that his wife works for the CIA.

Now, this is almost guaranteed to keep Wilson talking, and to give him a far more damaging point to make...so why on earth would Rove or someone similar do this? It makes no sense...at all.

The fact that there was no threat made to Wilson to shut up or else means this did not come from the White House.

So it seems to me you are left with two possibilities.

1) Someone at the CIA believed that Plame sending her Bush hating, and patently unqualified, husband on a critical investigative mission is at best unethical, and possibly illegal, and therefore wanted to go public with the charge. This is certainly the tack from Novak's original article.

2) Lacking any real case and desperate to go after the President - as Wilson has proven to be - he, someone siding with Wilson at the CIA, or perhaps a combination, set up Novak by hinting at the possible wrong doing in Plame's involvement with the mission.

[Myrddin]

Wilson's bio names his wife, Valerie Plame. It is on an internet web page. There is no "leaking" going on here.

[mass55th]

How does someone, sent on an investigative trip set up and paid for by the CIA, get away without putting his investigative findings down in an official report to the people who sent him? Something is rotten in Denmark and I believe Mr. Wilson has some 'splainin' to do.

[LiteKeeper]

SPOTREP

[Utah Girl]

This explanation makes as sense. I think. I think it is much ado about nothing.