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Witch Hunt

The New York Times reports that the Senate Intelligence Committee will conduct hearings on American spy agencies’ use of cover to protect the identities of intelligence officers.

Senator Pat Roberts (R-BS) explains why:

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said on the CNN program “Late Edition” that the committee was “going to go into quite a series of hearings in regard to cover.”

[snip]

“I must say from a common-sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the C.I.A. headquarters, I don’t know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert,” Mr. Roberts said. “But generically speaking, it is a very serious matter.”

It’s more than a little sick to me that Senate Republicans are more concerned with propping up their flimsy defense of Rove, Libby, Bolton, Cheney, Gonzales, Fleischer, Card, et. al. than with protecting our nation’s security. But they’re politicians, and to hope that national security would trump partisan spin is to engage in a bit of Pollyanna-ish daydreaming.

Almost more troubling is the fact that this New York Times article slips a little Republican spin into the story by neglecting to fully identify the source of a quotation.

After quoting Roberts, reporter Scott Shane thankfully points out that numerous colleagues of Valerie Plame have stepped forward to debunk misleading Republican assertions:

A number of Ms. Wilson’s former colleagues have spoken out in recent days, saying the exposure of her cover was a serious offense.

In a letter to Congressional leaders last week, 11 former intelligence officers said that even if the law was not violated, “we believe it is appropriate for the president to move proactively to dismiss from office or administratively punish any official who participated in any way in revealing Valerie Plame’s status.” The letter added, “Such an act by the president would send an unambiguous message that leaks of this nature will not be tolerated.”

Larry C. Johnson, a former C.I.A. analyst who organized the letter, said in an interview that “there are lives on the line” in the leak of an operative’s identity, because foreigners known to have met with the operative may come under suspicion.

Immediately following Johnson’s quote, however, is a rebuttal from a man identified only as “another former C.I.A. officer”:

But another former C.I.A. officer, Reuel Marc Gerecht, called Ms. Wilson’s cover “very, very soft” and said cover “is the Achilles’ heel of the agency.” He said cover is too often easily penetrated by foreign intelligence agencies.

Shane neglects to mention that Reuel Marc Gerecht is a Senior Fellow at Project for the New American Century — a neocon think tank formerly directed by John Bolton.

It recently came to light that Bolton testified to the Grand Jury in the Plame case. (The Next Hurrah has some thoughts about why Fitzgerald might have wanted Bolton to testify). A quick google search on Gerecht’s and Bolton’s names turns up 4,500 results.

Gerecht is hardly a non-partisan source, and should have been identified as a former CIA operative and as a current fellow at a conservative think tank — especially since he may well have a conflict of interest in the case.

It’s subtle, but it’s how spin is spun.