Valerie Plame Wilson - Tuesday AM

In a rare attempt to unbury the lede, I provide this: President Bush: "I want to get to the bottom of this."

The WaPo continues to work this, with the front page story by Mike Allen and Dana Milbank, and Howard Kurtz, Walter Pincus, Dana Priest and Susan Schmidt credited in the footnote.

Quick take - The WaPo has discovered the TIME magazine article! And tea-leave readers will ponder this juxtaposition:

An article that appeared on the Time magazine Web site the same week Novak's column was published said that "some government officials have noted to Time in interviews . . . that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction." The same article quoted from an interview with I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, saying that Cheney did not know about Wilson's mission "until this year when it became public in the last month or so."

Well, the same article quoted Ari Fleischer and attributed a quote to Condaleeza Rice; why single out Libby, hmm? Who is still my first round pick for this, BTW.

Now, I have been pushing what Josh Marshall would describe as the "damage control" theory - a lot of these leaks are coming from White House staffers intent on protecting President Bush. Two straws in the wind blow my way, so I will seize them:

A senior official quoted Bush as saying, "I want to get to the bottom of this," during a daily meeting yesterday morning with a few top aides, including Rove.

And, in reference to the timing of this - why did the story break when it did - we get this:

Word of the Justice probe emerged over the weekend after the CIA briefed lawmakers on it last week.

So, lawmakers got the news, and then a "senior administration official" leaked everything to the WaPo for their Sunday edition. Josh Marshall guessed the source to be George Tenet, but pointed to evidence that it was damage control; the timing in today's WaPo seems to be consistent with the damage control view.

I am starting to feel a bit like the engineer who was on the Titanic - I am encouraged that I seem to have a good sense of just how the ship is sinking. KIDDING!

UPDATE: Jack Shafer does not see a prosecution at the end of the tunnel.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey fails to alarm me:

...it's relatively routine thing. These leaks get investigated all the time. Occasionally somebody gets caught, but it's pretty rare. It's a lot rarer any directors of Central Intelligence would wish.

And later:

HEMMER: What does it mean if she's an analyst or operative and not a spy? Is that less serious? Is that the suggestion?

WOOLSEY: Well, most of the time in the business, people don't really use the word "operative." Analyst would normally mean -- if that's true -- that she worked usually in Washington, that she would be able to admit to people that she worked at the CIA. And it would not be nearly so serious a thing.

If she was a clandestine service officer, an officer who worked in the field, recruiting informants, spies, or undertaking covert action, then naming her really would be a serious matter. And we apparently have a factual dispute, from what Mr. Novak said there, about whether she was a clandestine service officer or not.

MORE: Good job by "Swopa", who notices that Howard Fineman is getting damage control style leaks from inside the White House. I dispute his hopelessly partisan analysis, of course, as he would mine.

Comments

[Jon H]

"Word of the Justice probe emerged over the weekend after the CIA briefed lawmakers on it last week.

So, lawmakers got the news, and then a "senior administration official" leaked everything to the WaPo for their Sunday edition."

And Bush did his Fox interview where he claimed he gets all his news from his employees...

[Jane Finch]

Question: would the VPs chief of staff not talk to the President's chief of staff before doing something like this? I've seen damage control at a high level (okay, a knee high level..it was a Canadian provincial government) and no one would just go out by themselves (ie, without the Big Guy's chief of staff) without a plan.

[TM]

It certainly doesn't look well planned. One explanation could be that there is factional strife in the WH - Cheney's folks protecting him (and themselves), Bush folks protecting Bush. Rove, or Card, for example, might actually be leaking to make sure that Cheney's team can't engineer a push for a "Save Dick (and Scooter)" cover-up.

It would have to be heavy talent, though - I wouldn't think anyone else would just free-lance on this.

[Swopa]

I have a little more analysis on the factional strife front in my neck of the blogosphere.

Instead of a damage control operation after the CIA briefing last week, maybe one of the innocent members of the WH press/communications shop decided he didn't want to go down with the ship ... and blew the whistle on the actual culprits.

[TM]

OK, Swopa, very useful links. Now, the actions taken by someone leaking this to protect Bush would be very similar (I imagine) to the action taken by someone leaking this just to protect themself.

Since there has never been a successful prosecution under this statute, the idea that someone has the worry of being an accessory after the fact strikes me as overblown.

I am inclined to think they are doing their job as they see it, which is to serve the President. However, if you are more comfortable with the alternative motivation, well, whatever.

[Swopa]

As with most things in life, it's probably a combination of motivations.

Like you say, the fear of being prosecuted may not have been great. Then again, would this person have gone to the press simply because his coworkers did something that was not only wrong, but stupid? Probably not.

Combine all of those factors, though . . .

[penis]

do penis enlargement pills work for you ?

do penis enlargement work for you ?