Tread lightly on the things of earth

I’m fascinated like a rabid news junkie following the finally-escalating CIA / White House / Wilson / Plame / outing-a-CIA-agent leak / coverup story, which is now all over the place online, in the papers, and on the Sunday AM talk shows. (See links sideblog — contents currently listed in main page left sidebar — for some of the emerging online stories.)

Disclaimer: I’m widely read but not particularly politically savvy (read Joshua Michael Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo for someone who is).

But I don’t think anyone needs much savvy to see the significance of this story:

1. At least two senior White House/Administration officials outed undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame via Robert Novak at the Washington Post in his July 14 column, Mission to Niger.

   This is a federal felony offense. And it’s arguably real treason — it risks national security and people’s lives — rather unlike Ann Coulter’s nonsensical understanding of treason.

2. Plame was allegedly outed as revenge against Ambassador Joseph Wilson for consistently publicizing that the Iraq/Niger yellowcake uranium purchase claim was bogus both before and after Bush used it as a reason for war in his SOTU speech.

   (Wilson is the diplomat sent to determine the claim’s veracity; Plame is Wilson’s wife. I noted a bit of this in my July weblog entry on these SOTU “16 words” and a sideblog entry on Wilson.)

3. The White House did nothing/denied/covered up — or, impossible to rule out yet, planned — this criminal act.

Ironically, outing a CIA operative is a felony offense because George H.W. Bush worked tirelessly to make it one. In fact, as Atrios points out, GHWB said of this kind of offense (on 26-Apr-1999) —

Even though I’m a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.

[Much quality linkage provided by Jeanne at Body and Soul]

2003-09-30 update: William Rivers Pitt takes no prisoners in his review and assessment of what’s going on in TomPaine.com essay The Most Insidious of Traitors (also archived at Truthout).

2003-10-01 update: On yesterday’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer, former undercover CIA analyst Larry Johnson says —

Let’s be very clear about what happened. This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not as Bob Novak suggested a CIA analyst. …

So the fact that she’s been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised. When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised. For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that well, this was just an analyst fine, let them go undercover. …

This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear of an individual with no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it. His entire intent was correctly as Ambassador Wilson noted: to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy and frankly, what was a false policy of suggesting that there were nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend that it’s something else and to get into this parsing of words, I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this.

[clued by Daily Kos]