Abstract

Leak: Slime, Not Crime?

The author claims the Bush administration may have exploited leaked information about the identity of a CIA operative for its own political ends. "I want to know." So says George W. Bush now, speaking about the source of the leak that revealed that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson is a CIA operative. But when conservative columnist Robert Novak published an article on July 14 citing "senior administration officials" that blew the cover of Valerie Wilson, Bush showed no interest in finding out anything about the leak; a leak that may have undermined national security; a leak that appeared to be aimed at punishing or discrediting Wilson, who had challenged White House Iraq policy, especially its prewar use of the claim that Saddam Hussein had been shopping for uranium in Africa. It was only after the CIA requested, two months later, that the Justice Department investigate the anti-Wilson leak that Bush and the White House paid public attention to it. He wants to know -- but he'll leave the inquiry to John Ashcroft's Justice Department, not a special counsel. The early evidence suggests that the White House -- whether directly behind the leak or not -- did try to exploit it. The White House, it seems, was not ignoring the leak because of its anonymous origins, as McClellan suggested; it was pushing the story -- amplifying the leak rather than containing it.