What is going on with this outing of a CIA agent? According to the NY Times, and contradicting mycorrection here, Lugar and Kerry DID out an agent:
We referred to this other analyst at the C.I.A., whom I’ll try and call Mr. Smith here,” Mr. Bolton said. “I hope I can keep that straight.”
Mr. Bolton could. But two senators – Richard G. Lugar, the Indiana Republican and committee chairman, and John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat – apparently could not. Both identified the analyst, Fulton T. Armstrong, in the hearing.
Though Mr. Armstrong had been identified in news reports two years ago about his dispute with other officials over intelligence involving Cuba, that was when he was the national intelligence officer for Latin America, and his name was no secret. When the Bolton nomination resurrected the old accounts, however, the C.I.A. asked news organizations to withhold his name.
Nice to know Kerry is still true to form:
Mr. Kerry defended himself. “Senator Lugar had already mentioned it,” he said, “and it had already been in the press.”
And on a slightly different note, we have this silliness:
Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee wrote Gonzales on Thursday asking him to “provide an explanation as to why no charges have been brought” against government officials who leaked the name of Valerie Plame.
It is illegal to reveal the names of covert operatives.
In response to the Democrats, Gonzales said he is confident that Patrick Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney from Chicago who is the lead prosecutor on the case, is “proceeding on a basis that he thinks is appropriate and that at the appropriate time the matter will come to a head.”
Could it be there was nothing criminal done?
At any rate, I am interested in the Lugar/Kerry flap if you have info. The indefatigable Tom Maguire has more.
mds
Well, to be fair to Senator Lugar, I think it was a difficult requirement to maintain. Perhaps he even thought it was a meaningless requirement, in context. I mean, let’s refer to a former national intelligence officer for Latin America who was involved with a 2002 imbroglio over Cuba that included John Bolton. But we’ll call him “Smith,” because no one in the world has access to the content of old newspapers. As I recall, “everyone already knows” was apparently a valid defense in the Plame matter, and is even more applicable to Senators Lugar and Kerry here.
space
Could it be there was nothing criminal done?
I say this with complete candor: if there is a statute crminalizing the inadvertant release of an CIA officer’s identity I am unaware of it.
The allegation in the Plame case was that the leaskers deliberately released Plame’s identity. While the jury is still out, so to speak, as to whether there was an intent to disclose Plame’s identity, there was alm,ost no such intent in the Lugar/Kerry case…and that is assuming that “Smith’s” identity really was a secret.
SherAn
No, you were correct, and the “corrections” are wrong. A Google search proves without a shadow of a doubt that the agent’s name was in the public domain LONG BEFORE the hearing in question. Still, it would have been better if Lugar and Kerry had stuck to the script.