Thursday, 03 June 2004

Valerie Plame watch. Daily Kos diarist GDoyle notes a new development in the ongoing effort to find and prosecute the White House leaker who blew a CIA field agent's cover:

President Bush has consulted an outside lawyer in case he needs to retain him in the grand jury investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative last year, the White House said Wednesday.

As I've noted before, blowing a CIA agent's cover is a felony — and there's no getting around the fact that Valerie Plame's cover was blown. And, as Josh Marshall notes, the same inner circle of neocons is also under investigation for leaking classified information to Ahmed Chalabi (who promptly turned around and told the Iranians we'd broken their codes).

I'm not fond of the criminalization of politics — of people using the criminal justice system to achieve partisan political goals — but the litmus test here is that I'm prepared to indict a Democrat if the trail leads to one. You don't risk the lives of our agents and troops for personal political gain.

- Posted by Scott Forbes at 1:34 am. comments.