Hang on, kids. It gets worse.

So it was in this Robert Novak column that the identity of whistle-blower Joe Wilson’s wife was revealed. Wilson’s wife happens to work undercover for the CIA, and the revelation of her identity to Novak by “senior administration officials” ruined her career, and potentially endangered the lives of her contacts overseas. It’s also illegal.

The ultimate irony in all of this is that Wilson’s wife worked on “weapons of mass destruction issues,” which means the revelation of her identity undermines a carreer of work for the CIA to control the proliferation of WMDs — the very reason we allegedly went to war with Iraq in the first place. These “senior administration officials” are willing to sacrifice national security vis-a-vis WMD proliferation in order to save face on those “sixteen words.”

Novak told Newsday today that he didn’t seek out the information, but that administration officials brought it to him, clearly an effort to ruin the life of a man who has dared to question the integrity of the White House case for war.

It’ll be interesting to see what kind of reaction this story gets from the White House, from talk radio, and from the pro-war blogosphere.

If this kind of thing had happened in the Clinton administration (and it did), there’d be outrage all over the right (and there was).

This is dangerous shit. This White House is willing to prioritize its own political integrity ahead of national security. It’s hard to understand why anyone in the White House would leak such information — putting their careers and their freedom on the line — without approval from the most senior of positions. If they did, they ought to be fired, and prosecuted. If they were ordered from anyone in Bush’s inner circle, and that person isn’t fired, it’s time to start tossing around the “I-word.”

Thanks to reader Jon H for the pointers.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2003 at 12:21 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.