Dems and the Wilson/Plame Love In

If this were theatrical, it would be farce.

WAXMAN: The meeting of the committee will come to order.

Today the committee is holding a hearing to examine how the White House handles highly classified information.

In June and July 2003, one of the nation's most carefully guarded secrets, the identity of a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson, was repeatedly revealed by White House officials to members of the media. This was an extraordinarily serious breach of our national security.

President George W. Bush's father, the former President Bush, said, and I quote, "I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who expose the names of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors."

Today, we'll be asking three questions. One, how did such a serious violation of our national security occur? Two, did the White House take the appropriate investigative and disciplinary steps after the breach occurred? And three, what changes in White House procedures are necessary to prevent future violations of our national security from occurring?

For more than three years a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak for its criminal implications. By definition, Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation had an extremely narrow criminal focus. It did not answer the broader policy questions raised by the release of Miss Wilson's identity. Nor did it seek to ascribe responsibility outside of the narrow confines of the criminal law.

As the chief investigative committee of the House of Representatives, our role is fundamentally different that Mr. Fitzgerald's. It's not our job to determine criminal culpability, but it is our job to understand what went wrong and to insist on accountability and to make recommendations for future -- to avoid future abuses.

Fitzgerald didn't find any wrong doing, because there wasn't any, not because the focus of his investigation was narrow. This hatchet job by Waxman is ludicrous beyond bounds of reason.

Read this thing. Waxman continuously postures Plame's position as being covert. I'm still trying to figure out how that could be if she was listed in Who's Who as Wilson's wife and as working for the CIA. You'd think a covert op wouldn't have that knowledge in the public realm.

Get this from Wilson (Plame):

WILSON: It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover.

Furthermore, testimony in the criminal trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, who has now been convicted of serious crimes, indicates that my exposure arose from purely political motives.

Within the CIA, it is essential that all intelligence be evaluated on the basis of its merits and actual credibility. National security depends upon it.

The tradecraft of intelligence is not a product of speculation. I feel passionately, as an intelligence professional, about the creeping, insidious politicizing of our intelligence process.

Fascinating. Though not supported by any facts. The serious crime Libby was convicted of had nothing to do with the outing of Plame. Anyone with an attachment to reality will be able to view the conclusions of Fitzgerad's investigation and clearly conclude that nothing was done that was criminal. And the first outer of Plame was in fact not a White House insider.

Nice to see that the change in political powers in Washington has not changed any lack of contact with reality by the players.