at this point i am not actually sure Mr Novak exists.
What a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive!
Any compassion for the leakers or the leaked upon?
The leakers' agony
By Tony Blankley
As events unfold from the white hot revelation that two senior Bush administration officials may have leaked the identity of a covert CIA employee, along with the political and governmental effects, do not neglect the very human drama of the story. As a former Reagan White House staffer, and as Newt Gingrich's press secretary for seven years, I have been involved in leak hunts ?- both as the hunter and the(falsely) hunted.Major leak hunts are always damaging to the institutions in which they occur. The greatest of WhiteHouse scandal/tragedies ?- Watergate ?- mostprobably started when a "plumber's unit was created to hunt down a leak. And, in the related activity of seeking a mole (an enemy double agent) inside intelligence agencies, both the CIA and British Intelligence almost ripped themselves apart during the 1960s and 1970s in their various hunts for disloyal employees.
But unlike most leak hunts (and all mole hunts), the presumed leakers in this case are not consciously disloyal to President Bush: quite the contrary. Assuming the basic outlines of the story are true, these leakers were trying to protect the president from what the leakers thought were disloyal CIA employees. The White House and the CIA have been in almost open conflict over the characterization of CIA intelligence assessments related to Iraq and WMD for a half a year now. When CIA Director George Tenet publicly fell on his sword (after being pressed to do so by senior officials at the White House) over responsibility for the 16 words in the president's State of the Union address, CIA employees were out the same day backgrounding reporters on why it was not really Mr. Tenet's or the CIA's fault. At a deeper level, there is a strategic policy difference between the institutional CIA view (which tends to see terrorism as an inextinguishable fever that can at best be kept at a relatively low temperature) and the White House view (that it is an enemy that is susceptible to definitive defeat if enough resources and shrewd policies can be brought to bear against it).
The partially submerged CIA-White House struggle exploded when Ambassador Joseph Wilson went public with his criticism of the president's 16-word African uranium claim. Bush loyalists were justifiably outraged. Dark suspicions of CIA disloyalty hit critical mass. Their blood was up.
It was at that point that the alleged leak occurred. Without hazarding a guess as to the names of the leakers, it is overwhelmingly likely that they were, and are, passionate Bush loyalists (unlike in previous administrations, I do not know a single senior White House official who is not deeply, emotionally committed to the president. There are few if any time -servers on his staff.) Moreover, the men and women with responsibilities for the war on terrorism (out of which pool, doubtlessly would be found the leakers), are passionately committed to the rightness of the president's antiterrorism policies. For them (and for many other Americans), his personal and policy success is actually a matter of national life or death.
Usually, leak hunts are targeted on people suspected of leaking against the institution. Such leakers either disagree with the policy of their boss, are aligned with a different political tribe in the Washington jungle or feel underappreciated by their superiors. Sometimes they are just showing off, or building relationships with reporters. In any of those circumstances, they have already emotionally disconnected themselves from the institution and superior they nominally still serve. Their highest objective is to stay hidden and survive. But almost certainly in this instance, the leakers were trying to help the president they are deeply committed to on both a personal and policy basis.
So, put yourself in the leakers' minds today. They must feel deeply conflicted. Their actions have backfired. Instead of brushing back disloyal CIA political players, there are FBI agents rifling through the White House files of the leaker's coworkers. Democratic Party partisans are crying out for special prosecutors. The president ?- for whom they have been loyally working 14 hours a day (probably to the significant neglect of their spouse and children) ?- is put on the defensive, passively expressing the hope that the Justice Department will get to the bottom of this problem. These leakers ?- being senior officials ?- understand how debilitating the investigation is to their co-workers and the president. The White House is distracted from its primary policy and political duties, while staff-to-staff relations suffer from suspicion and embarrassment.
When each of the leakers sits in his or her living room at night ?- three scotches on the wrong side of sobriety ?- painful thoughts must torment him or her. The choices are ugly. Come forward and confess, thereby saving your president but harming you and your family, perhaps irrevocably (legal costs, humiliation, financial ruin, end of career, perhaps divorce.) Sit tight, hope not to get caught and know that your silence has damaged and may destroy your president, and perhaps your country you care so deeply about. Or drown yourself in destructive behavior and try to forget. From the perspective of time, the leakers would see that the first choice is the right one. We should all hope that he or she gains that perspective quickly.
Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times.
One of the problems on these posts, Perception is that you can't really tell whether people like Frank A Pisa and Joe from Chicago can't read or don't read.
You have put up a great column by Blankley. They are either afraid to comment on it or haven't read it.
Italgato wrote:One of the problems on these posts, Perception is that you can't really tell whether people like Frank A Pisa and Joe from Chicago can't read or don't read.
You have put up a great column by Blankley. They are either afraid to comment on it or haven't read it.
Well aside from the fact that the columnist is the editorial page editor of a media rag -- a paper whose editorial positions I seldom take seriously, just what kind of reaction were you expecting, Gato?
And why, since you seem to read so much into the fact that neither Joe nor I reacted to the article quickly enough for your tastes, are you not accusing yourself of being unable to read -- since you didn't offer comments on the article yourself? (Unless you consider "You have put up a great column by Blankley" to be an especially erudite commentary on the piece!)
But don't get me wrong, Gato.
I love having people like you around.
Nothing helps strengthen a position like having a ham-fisted, impulsive ideologue arguing the other side.
I love ya, Gato, whether you are a man or a woman.
Keep up the good work.
Oh, about the article. Blankley is right. Whoever leaked ought to out him/her self.
MY GUESS: Falling on swords is going to become the national sport in Washington during the next two years.
I believe the leaker is in the CIA or the State Dept and I believe the pres is serious about finding him/her. I would expect the use of every tool provided by the Patriot Act.
I've just initiated myself to the world of 'able2know' and have just caught this thread - so if no-one catched this, then that's understandable as it is about 6mths old - but nevertheless, I'll throw in my opinion.
I'm a student journalist in the UK and I have to say that if it was me, there is no way that I would divulge my source, no matter what the consequences. It's something that's been instilled in me since day one - and I'm even reconsidering my career choice (but that's not the point). Freedom of the press is integral to our news - be it local, national or global, and we HAVE to believe that some journos have a conscience, I know I do.
Nuff sed
