I bet it will turn out that someone in Cheney's shop gave Novak the interview. The Post beat the Times on this story, and the Times will now see how long they can keep it on the front page. In the meantime, it is turning into "silly season." The Politicians want the same rules as the Mafia Dons get. "It's Business, not Personal."
"There's an unwritten rule in politics that no matter how rough the politics gets, families are off limits, particularly spouses and children.
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October 2, 2003
Inquiry Into Leak About C.I.A. Officer Is Said to Widen
By DAVID STOUT NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON, Oct. 2 — The uproar over who disclosed the name of a Central Intelligence Agency officer to a newspaper columnist intensified in both a political and a bureaucratic sense, as three senators who are women denounced the leak as an affront to women and reports emerged that the federal investigation was widening.
The Associated Press, citing a senior Justice Department official it did not identify, said the inquiry could extend beyond the White House and the C.I.A. itself, to include the State and Defense Departments and possibly other agencies.
At the White House, the chief presidential spokesman, Scott McClellan, said at an early-afternoon briefing that as far as he knew, no one at the White House had yet been subpoenaed or interviewed. He added that President Bush "wants everybody to focus on getting to the bottom of this investigation" and that administration staff members had been instructed to cooperate fully.
The White House has asserted that the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft, whom Mr. Bush nominated for the post, can do a professional and thorough inquiry. But Capitol Hill Democrats have said an outside counsel is necessary to avoid conflicts of interest.
The name and occupation of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame, was disclosed in a July 14 column by Robert Novak shortly after her husband, the former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly questioned the value of intelligence that the Bush administration had cited to justify the military campaign against Iraq.
Critics of the administration have asserted that someone leaked the information about Ms. Plame to get back at her husband. Mr. Wilson himself suggested early on that Karl Rove, the president's top political strategist, was behind the leak, but the White House dismissed that notion as "ridiculous."
Mr. Novak has recently written that the identity of Ms. Plame was made known to him in an almost offhand way, that the C.I.A. never told him beforehand that disclosing her name would endanger anyone, and that he would not have named her if he had thought there would be any danger.
The uproar over the disclosure has become, at the very least, a big distraction for the White House just as Mr. Bush and his strategists would rather be gearing up for the 2004 election. And the three senators' complaints today would not be expected to help Mr. Bush's standing among women who vote. In the 2000 election, Mr. Bush fared badly among women, capturing 43 percent of their vote to the 54 percent that Al Gore got. (Ralph Nader got the remaining 2 percent.)
On Capitol Hill, the three senators held a news conference to denounce the leak as both a shabby political move and an insult to professional women.
"We women senators are here to call attention to the dangerous precedent set by the unlawful disclosure of a C.I.A. operative in retaliation for her husband's criticism of the Bush administration," Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, said. "As mothers, as women in nontraditional careers, this situation is most troubling to us."
"Now, we have seen arrogance from this administration before, but now we see intimidation," Ms. Boxer said. "Wives and other family members are fair game. They are sending the signal that nothing is off limits in politics. And speaking for myself, let me just say this: While we in public life expect the attacks, expect the slings and arrows, we do not believe that our families deserve this kind of treatment."
Senator Mary Landrieu, Democrat of Louisiana, said: "There's an unwritten rule in politics that no matter how rough the politics gets, families are off limits, particularly spouses and children. This administration or some part of this administration, or maybe the whole administration's political machine, has abandoned that long-standing principle."
Senator Debbie Stabenow, Democrat of Michigan, complained that "we now have a professional woman who may in fact see her career as she knows it gone, certainly in the situation that she is in." The senator said she had received calls "back in Michigan from women that are very outraged, as well as from women's organizations, who are extremely offended."
In a separate news conference, Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, the House minority leader, said it was "very important" that an independent outside investigator be appointed.
nytimes.com |
