Rove

I'd say there is a fairly good chance that Karl Rove didn't do anything technically illegal when he revealed to reporters that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA operative. I do hope we learn how he knew such classified information himself. I don't see how anyone can claim that the CIA would put an operative in a front company if it wasn't a secret that she worked for them. But the criminal outing statute is very narrow, so the intent may be the issue.

However, the rush by the right to defend Rove as somehow heroic by revealing this, is absurd. Even if Wilson was 100% wrong in his public statements, that wouldn't come close to justifying the leaking of classified information. If Wilson was wrong, wouldn't there be plenty of non-classified info & spin that could supposedly discredit him?


As Andrew Sullivan so clearly put it, "Just a thought experiment: can you imagine the WSJ calling to give, say, Sid Blumenthal a medal for outing a CIA operative to counter misinformation in the Bosnia campaign?"

I'd say that's exactly the right parallel.