This is interesting by itself, but taken as a whole the article also confirms a deeper subtext that we've also learned from other stories recently: the FBI investigation is dead serious, it's casting a surprisingly wide net, and it's making a lot of progress.And since one of the sources is a "current administration official" it also makes clear that there's at least one current Bush official who's pretty unhappy with the whole Plame situation and is speaking to the press about it.
And has been talking for a while. Check this excerpt from the Chris Matthews Show from the weekend of Oct. 19-20, 2003. Scroll to the bottom, the section in which Matthews asks his guests, in this case Rosiland Jordan, White House correspondent for NBC News, to tell him something he doesn't know.
MATTHEWS: Do you have anything--anything--anything I don't know you can share with me.Ms. JORDAN: Anything you don't know? I've had a couple of people come up to me at the White House, completely off the record, hoping that the media does not ignore the CIA leak investigation, that we just don't take what we are being told every day, `Oh, it's being investigated and the attorney general is managing the situation properly. There's no need for a special counsel'...
MATTHEWS: So inside White House people would like to see a real investigation.
Ms. JORDAN: There are a few. I wouldn't say it's many.
MATTHEWS: Oh, God.
A FEDERAL CRIME HAS BEEN COMMITED: According the law,both the giver of clasified information,and the receiver of classified information have to both be authorized to do so. Which means this person or persons were pwople at the very top of the Bush adminsstration. And not lower level personel in the adminstration. This is very powerful person who did this,and not just some person who got awhole of top secret files and just decided to leak the information on their own. I believe that the President knows who it it too. I think that the leak investigation is not getting the attention that it really should be getting from the press because they feel that in doing so,they might be cut off from covering stories that involve the President and Whitehouse. I don't believe that the Bush adminstration is taking the beaking of this federal law serious,they don't really to finding out who leaked the name of the undercover cia officer's(operative's)name. I do personally believe that Vice President Richard Cheney's office(John Hannah,Lewis "scooter" Libby,Elliot Adrams)are direcly involved in the leaking of her name the press in order to hurt her husband,Mr. Joe Wilson for openly disagreeeing with the Bush adminstration's position on the war in Iraq. They wanted to get even with him for exposing them for what they were really up to, they wanted to hurt him,and hurt him baddly too.
Posted by Elder Mittchiel C. McClendon at May 15, 2004 10:46 PMI don't believe that the Bush adminstration is taking the breaking of this federal law serious
The Bushistas seem to feel they make the rules rather than follow them.
I've known people like that. If they don'thave their head on straight, they're as dangerous as a baby bottle full of ground glass.