[J_Bravo]

So basically we have a Senior Offical [b]INSIDE[/b] the White House leaking that there was a leaker.

This scares me a lot. We don't need any more bad news and the press will go crazy if there is an actual arrest of some White House aid.

YUCK!

[AppyPappy]

(cough) Karl Rove (cough)

[WL-law]

If you read carefully Wilson's own words cited in the story, he says that "V.P. Cheney's office expressed an interest in finding out more about a Niger/yellowcake connection."

Wilson is careful not to say that Cheney REQUESTED Wilson to go the Niger.

The leak from the WH was intended to expose the poor management practices in the CIA, where agents at some intermediate level apparently can take it upon themselves to act based on "expressions" from the Executive branch, expressions that are not nearly at the level of a direct REQUEST.

So it appears that Wilson's wife was in-the-loop of some mid-level hatched project based on vague statements from Cheney, and Wilson's wife used the opportunity to get some work/exposure for her husband, who was perhaps "under-employed" at the time. Pure nepotism, and worse, since Wilson was obviously hostile to the Bush administration.

Wilson did little, issued a useless report, then went directly to the NY Times to get the biggest bang for his buck for his 15 minutes of fame associated with this "assignment".

Dispicable.

[proxy_user]

I love this level of abstraction. All these houses and desks and offices doing bad things. Is there anyone sitting in them, or at them?

[linkster]

The initial premise is WRONG. President Bush DID NOT say they tried to sell uranium. He stated clearly that the British REPORTED this. WHICH IS TRUE!

[mass55th]

So how come Wilson isn't under the gun for publicly releasing the fact that he was sent by the CIA on what was probably a "top secret" fact-finding trip? Where did he get off publicly challenging the President on information he gleaned from a trip the year before? It's obvious he was on the payroll of the government for that trip, and whatever information he discovered, should have been turned over to whoever sent him...not made public. I'd like to know who hand-picked him for the trip and why? It's getting to look more and more like his wife was the one who set the trip up for him. And, the CIA won't even confirm that she was undercover. For all we know, she could just be some CIA employee who's never worked as an agent. As Novak said, he notified the CIA that he was planning a story on Wilson's wife and they couldn't give him a good enough reason why he shouldn't publish her name. If two officials in the White House are guilty of sharing this info with the press, then they should have to pay. But there's more guilty people in this whole thing than just those two White House officials. I'd say the CIA has some explaining to do about this woman's role in sending her husband overseas, as does Wilson for his being a blabber-mouth.

[Republican Red]

I think this title is very misleading.

The Justice Department is trying to pinpoint the source of a news leak that identified the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson as a CIA officer. They are not investigating the White House.

"Senior administration officials" were the suspected leakers. Senior Administration Officials could be CIA officals, FBI official or Dept. of Agriculture officials for that matter. No where does it state that the White House is under invesigation except as being part of whole administration.

[kaboom]

Why would the CIA maintain an "undercover" agent who was the spouse of a federal official already tasked with information gathering? It just sounds fishy, like some police chief having his wife being a NARC. If everyone knows that she's his wife, what kind of information do they expect to get? Or is this just some double dipping into the Fed payroll?

[Rebelbase]

Did Bush purge the W.H. of all X42 appointees, staff, etc.? If not, then he deserves whatever happens by these people acting badly.

[Porterville]

Tennet... should've of fired the bastard... new tone??? I hope Bush starts breakin' out the whop-ass.