1. Estella U. Barry - June 14, 2013

   Pity McClellan. He has a tough task–to depict the president as caring about the leak even though he is doing nothing about it. The White House could well end up being ensnared in this scandal. The early signs are that there was indeed a plot to get Wilson (and destroy the career of his wife). The news reports indicate that some administration officials–perhaps only one or two–are upset about this and are willing to talk to reporters. If they’re willing to talk to reporters, they might be willing to speak to prosecutors. The CIA must be committed to pushing the issue, otherwise it would not have requested an inquiry that places the White House in the crosshairs. Before this, the CIA and the White House had engaged in tense scuffling concerning the uranium-from-Niger controversy. But Tenet’s request for an investigation was the bureaucratic equivalent of going nuclear. Now the Justice Department is in the spotlight. Will it go ahead with an investigation that threatens the White House? And will its decisions in this case be regarded as credible and not influenced by politics? Schumer says that he is rounding up more Democrats to join his call for a special counsel. In the meantime, McClellan will have to keep on dancing.

2. Kris E. Stuart - June 24, 2013

   The answer to that mystery – why was Rove involved – may be more crucial to unraveling who was behind the illegal leaking of Plame’s name and the subsequent cover-up than even the identity of which Bush officials passed the information to right-wing pundit Robert Novak for his infamous column on July 14, 2003.

3. Maricela Baird - June 27, 2013

   The press corps—and bloggers—will likely compile a yards-long list of occasions when the president has denounced leaking, but it’s worth asking the philosophical question: Can the president even be a leaker? For a leak to be real, it has to be unsanctioned. Once a piece of secret information gets unwrapped (by the president no less), it’s not a leak, it’s part of a communications strategy. It’s national policy. So, maybe he’s not a leaker.

4. Gold Price - June 29, 2013

   The court documents do not say that the order to Mr Libby to share classified information with a reporter specifically referred to the identity of CIA agent Ms Plame-Wilson. However, her husband, US diplomat Joseph Wilson, was at that moment a leading critic of the Iraq war. In an article in the New York Times, Joe Wilson had contradicted the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq’s supposed nuclear weapons programme. Retaliation There’s speculation that the revealing of his wife’s identity as a CIA agent was meant as retaliation – to discredit a political opponent. Democrat Senator John Kerry, the former presidential candidate, says it makes no difference if Mr Bush did or did not specifically target Valerie Plame-Wilson with the authorisation of a leak: “It’s really part of the same effort to discredit Joe Wilson and to credit illegitimate arguments for going to war in Iraq and the fact is the bottom line remains that if the President of the United States is authorising, for political purposes, the release of classified information, you have a very serious issue.” No comment The White House will not officially comment on this new development in the CIA leak scandal. That wouldn’t be appropriate because of the ongoing investigation and unresolved court case involving Scooter Libby. But White House officials do whisper to the media that president Bush has certainly done nothing illegal. When a president decides to disclose classified information, for whatever reason, the information automatically ceases to be classified. So legally, President Bush may be fine. But politically he has added to his mounting credibility problems.

Leave a Reply