It only took three months, but the controversy surrounding the Bush White House outing an undercover CIA agent is finally hitting the big time. As regular readers know, I’ve been fairly obsessed with this story since July, but now it’s reached a level where something very serious almost has to happen. I mean huge.
Let’s take a moment to recap if you’re just joining us. The CIA sent former-U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger last year to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to acquire yellowcake uranium for a nuclear weapons program. Wilson discovered the claim was bogus and issued a report to Bush administration officials. The White House proceeded to ignore Wilson’s report and repeat the uranium allegation on multiple occasions, including in the State of the Union. Wilson came forward to explain that he had first-hand knowledge of the inaccuracy of Bush’s claim, kicking off the Niger-gate scandal.
Almost immediately, the administration tried to diminish the story by attacking Wilson’s credibility. As part of the attempted smear, two unnamed “senior administration officials” told conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was involved at the CIA in sending Wilson to Niger in the first place. Though the claim was later proven false, Novak repeated the leak in his nationally syndicated column, outing Wilson’s wife — an undercover CIA agent who investigates weapons of mass destruction — based on a tip from his two White House sources.
It’s hard to know where to begin with the list of problems — legal, ethical, practical, moral, political — that this touched off. The White House, by leaking classified information, placed a CIA agent’s career in danger, jeopardized the safety of her contacts around the world, and, almost certainly, committed a few felonies.
Since this occurred in July, the national media has ignored the controversy, unwilling in most instances to report a single detail to the public. This disregard for the story ended late-Friday with an MSNBC story reporting that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate the White House for the illegal leak.
“The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that the White House broke federal laws by revealing the identity of one of its undercover employees in retaliation against the woman’s husband, a former ambassador who publicly criticized President Bush’s since-discredited claim that Iraq had sought weapons-grade uranium from Africa,” MSNBC reported.
We’ve learned an enormous amount of information in the last 72 hours. The most complete information came via a front-page article in yesterday’s Washington Post.
The Post reported that an unnamed “senior administration official” explained that two White House officials “called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife.” In other words, it wasn’t just Novak. The White House was desperate to try and smear Wilson. They approached at least six DC reporters to leak the information about a CIA agent; Novak was the only one scummy enough to run with it.
The senior administration official who served as the Post’s source said the leak “was meant purely and simply for revenge.” The source also said that one of the White House leakers described Wilson’s wife as “fair game” after Wilson went public with his criticisms.
The Post’s source is effectively confirming everything we’ve known (and feared) about this controversy since July. On July 23, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan responded to questions about Novak’s column by dismissing accusations that the White House would illegally leak confidential information about a CIA agent. “That is not the way this White House operates,” McClellan said.
We now see, obviously, that this is exactly how this White House operates.
I’m trying not to hyperventilate here, but this is a scandal with the potential to do irreparable harm to Bush and what’s left of his presidency. This is an easy-to-understand scandal involving serious crimes committed by top officials in the White House.
What’s more, there is practically no defense. I’ve been checking with conservative sites all weekend. A few are turning on Bush, but most GOP loyalists are silent, trying in vein to think of a justification for such reprehensible behavior. This isn’t about sex with an intern; it isn’t even about lying to the world about Iraq and WMD. These are felonies committed at the highest levels. Some individuals at the Bush White House belong in jail. It’s really as simple as that.
Identifying the Novak Two who were responsible for the leak becomes a fairly straightforward task. As Tapped explained in July, “When reporters cite ‘senior administration officials,’ they generally mean the vice-president, the cabinet secretaries, those with cabinet-rank, the chief of staff, maybe the deputy chief of staff, and a couple of other really senior advisors. It’s a fairly limited pool.”
Wilson thinks one of the people responsible is Karl Rove. Though we don’t yet know if that’s true, it would still leave the mystery of who was the other responsible White House official.
Keep in mind, it can’t be just anyone. Most White House officials don’t have the clearance to obtain classified CIA information in the first place. These two not only obtained the information, but shared it with at least a half-dozen reporters out of petty spite against an unknown administration critic.
At the end of the day, the Novak Two almost certainly violated the Intelligence Protection Act, the National Agents’ Identity Act, and the Unauthorized Release of Classified Information Act. Intentionally outing an undercover CIA agent out of spite also borders on treason.
Think that’s over-the-top? Consider the sentiment of former President Bush in 1999: “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.”
Kevin Drum at Calpundit, by no means a reflexive anti-Bush partisan, summarized this matter perfectly on Saturday. “[I]t really makes you face up to the true contemptibility of the whole affair,” Drum said. “Think about it: two top White House officials, the ones who run this country and are supposed to guard the security of our country, blew the cover of a CIA agent solely to gain some petty revenge on a minor political opponent. I just don’t know how much worse it gets than that.
“As much as I despise the team in the White House, I always thought that — in their own way — they were doing what they thought was best for America. I never thought they would betray their own country just out of spite. I really didn’t,” Drum added. “But if they’ll do something like this, they’ll do anything…. [T]hese are radical ideologues who care about nothing except staying in power and will do anything, no matter how craven and malevolent, to get what they want.”
What happens now? The CIA has concluded this is serious enough to urge the Justice Department to take action. John Ashcroft will be under intense pressure to ask the FBI to launch a formal investigation of the White House. Pressure will be equally intense in both chambers of Congress for official investigations from lawmakers.
Many Democrats are arguing, accurately, that leaving this in the hands of John Ashcroft is absurd and that an non-partisan investigator should be named, perhaps through the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office. Some of you no doubt recall that the Independent Counsel Act expired in 1999, but as the Post explained today, Ashcroft can still appoint a special counsel to investigate the White House.
There’s no easy way out of this one. Bush can’t blame unreliable British intelligence, Bill Clinton, Congress, activist liberal judges, Osama bin Laden, or the French. High-ranking people in the administration are going to loose their jobs over this. And if there’s evidence that Bush knew about Plame’s outing in advance, he could very well be one of those people.
Expect a whole lot of updates on this story.