Free Republic

Today at Tigerhawk, National Review’s Andrew McCarthy offers an explanation for Armitage’s behavior: First, while it now seems abundantly clear that the leak of Plame’s identity did not violate the covert agent identity protection act (50 U.S.C. 421 et seq.), this was a subject of considerable debate for the first several months after the story broke. It was not obvious back then. Second, it is still not crystal clear to this day that the leak could not have been charged under the espionage act (18 U.S.C. 793(d)). This statute has been used in the past to prosecute leaks of government...

The rogues' gallery of those who acted badly in the CIA "leak" case turns out to be different from what the media led us to expect. Note that we put the word "leak" in quotation marks, because it's clear now there was no leak at all, just idle talk, and certainly no smear campaign against Joseph Wilson for criticizing President Bush's Iraq policy. It's as if a giant hoax were perpetrated on the country--by the media, by partisan opponents of the Bush administration, even by several Bush subordinates who betrayed the president and their White House colleagues. The hoax lingered...