CIA Leak Is a Poor Excuse for a Scandal
The Democrats seem to have learned a valuable lesson from Republicans about how to attack a popular president: First, take some complicated incident that no one outside the Beltway understands. Trumpet it as a "scandal." Denounce the president as the biggest scoundrel this side of Spiro Agnew. Demand that the FBI, an independent counsel, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and every gumshoe under the sun investigate this shocking breach of ethics. Then sit back and watch the election returns roll in.
It was a surefire winner for the GOP with Whitewater. That's how Bob Dole became president in 1996, right? No doubt this strategy will work equally well for the Democrats today as they desperately try to turn the tale of Joseph C. Wilson IV and his Mata Hari wife into a full-blown scandal.
For those of you who have more important things to do, let us briefly recapitulate the action so far: Wilson, a former U.S. diplomat and a vocal critic of the administration, was dispatched by the CIA last year to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from that African country. He came back with a clean bill of health for Saddam Hussein. When this didn't dissuade President Bush from invading Iraq, Wilson was outraged. He wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times on July 6 accusing the president of bamboozling the public into the war. The administration replied by pooh-poohing his original report (which was never written down) and suggesting that British intelligence sources provided confirmation of the Iraq-Africa uranium link.
Robert Novak wrote a column on this incident in which he suggested that Wilson's Niger assignment was the result of nepotism because his wife worked for the CIA. Wilson furiously charged that the administration had leaked this information in an attempt to intimidate him and demanded that Karl Rove -- whom he named as the leaker without providing any evidence -- be "frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."
At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department is now investigating. But the media and the Democrats won't be satisfied until some sort of special counsel is appointed, even though the independent counsel statute was euthanized by both parties a few years ago.
By all means, let's have an inquiry. If in fact someone in the administration deliberately leaked the name of a CIA undercover operative, he or she is a creep who should go to the slammer.
