Bush's once-mighty empire springs a serious leak

The White House is full of secrets, even secrets predating 9/11. The list of corporate cronies who wrote the Bush/Cheney energy policy hasn't been divulged yet. President Bush made ''loyalty'' the chief virtue of his administration, and loyalty's first test is the ability to keep a secret.

After 9/11, White House secrecy wasn't just a matter of personal, partisan loyalty, it became a matter of national patriotism, and the Patriot Act is all about secrets: how to keep the government's and how to find out yours.

The Bush administration's leak of the name of a CIA officer wasn't so much a secret being disclosed as a fact that the ''senior'' leaker wanted made known.

The leak dovetailed with another reigning aspect of the Bush administration: the predominant male culture of the White House's inner circle.

The import of the leak of Joseph Wilson's wife's profession wasn't that she was a CIA operative, but that she got her husband a job: the trip to Niger to investigate Iraq's nuclear ambitions. It's a schoolyard putdown, if you went to an all-boy's school like Phillips Academy: Wilson couldn't even get a job without his wife's help.

Secrets and testosterone are a powerful mix. Ambassador Wilson, apparently, is aware of the combination's potency. He, too, seems to be supplied with an excess of each.

Wilson outed in the N.Y. Times the Bush administration's bogus claim about the Niger yellowcake that Bush used in his State of the Union address, and the Bush White House outed Wilson's wife for that display of alpha-male behavior. Tit for tat.

That it took nearly three months for the leak to become a big story is a story in itself. In July, when Wilson's commentary ran, followed by Robert Novak's column containing the information about Wilson's wife and her alleged help in getting her husband employment, Bush still seemed ready to cakewalk into a second term.

But the facade of great competence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was already beginning to crack. Where was Saddam Hussein? Where was Osama bin Laden? Where were the weapons of mass destruction? Where were the jobs lost in America?

In the three months since Novak's leak-inspired column, the news that six journalists in all had been fed the leak leaked. And the Democratic primary contest became more serious. Gen. Wesley Clark's late entry into the field underscored the change: A political race is too serious to be left to civilians.

The Bush administration has made a much better show of being civil to women than the new governor-elect of California, but Bush sets the overall tone: The White House is a very guy place. It is his most attractive attribute. Bush looks good in a flight suit. His national security adviser Condi Rice is single, which allows her to run with the boys. Karen Hughes, once part of the inner circle, had to return to her family in Texas.

The claim that Wilson needed his wife's help to be taken seriously is the sort of off-handed insult that the guy-world produces. The leaker most likely was being no more malicious than that: He was putting Wilson down, not putting out a contract on his wife.

But in 2003, wives do work for the CIA -- and even for the Bush administration, though some of the president's men chose to forget it or overlook it.

Bush's continuing decline in the polls has given previously timid Democrats permission to lash out, and they have.

The president has come a long way in a short time from last May's flight deck celebration aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Cracks are multiplying and new weeds are sprouting. Political life has become more serious all around.

These people are still whining because they can't find out who Cheney invited to the energy meeting.

Thanks for reminding me of this story I saw Saturday...

Take a look

Risks for Cheney in energy policy case

Great post. Have you seen this article entitled 'Did the Wilsons set up Bush?'

http://www.brookesnews.com/031310addison.html

Excerpt:

"He [Wilson] reported verbally that he believed it unlikely that Saddam had bought uranium. The manner of his 'investigation' and report was such that the agency felt it could not take it seriously. On the other hand, the British report came from MI6 field agents. I know which one I would trust."

"Both are Dem donors. Nothing at all wrong with that, except that when Plame donated she gave as her employer the name of a company that was a CIA front. Anyone acquainted with the couple would know who her real employer was. (Novak has stressed that her job was an open secret in the beltway). This means that in order to donate to the Dems she exposed a CIA front operation."

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.