This issue has been categorized by the chairman of the Republican National Committee as "bigger than Watergate". No shit! The White House is currently under attack by the CIA. This may not be a bad thing. The rumors are currently pointing to the President's office (Karl Rove) and the Vice-President's office (Lewis "Scooter" Libby). The implications and possible fallout from this are the biggest thing I've ever seen. Pay attention. The Big Boys are playing. And they are playing for keeps. It may end with both Bush and Cheney being toast.

For most of what you need to know about where we're going here, read this clip from the lead article in Thursday's Washington Post ...

As the White House hunkered down, it got the first taste of criticism from within Bush's own party. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) said that Bush "needs to get this behind him" by taking a more active role. "He has that main responsibility to see this through and see it through quickly, and that would include, if I was president, sitting down with my vice president and asking what he knows about it," the outspoken Hagel said last night on CNBC's "Capital Report."

Hagel is a Republican, even if not much of a loyalist, and he's pointing at what everyone's saying: that the problem centers on the vice president's office. And people are adding a name: Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff and close advisor.

A mountain of rumor doesn't amount to a single fact. But two respected ex-CIA officers have now publicly pointed to the vice president's office -- a good sign, I think, that that's what they're hearing from ex-colleagues at CIA. An increasing range of circumstantial evidence points in that direction. And now a United States Senator of the president's own party has suggested the same.

If true, Libby's involvement would mean much more than a rapid escalation in his attorneys' billable hours. Much more.
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Editorial: Scandal/Who outed CIA agent Plame?

Call it Wilson-Plame-gate. It's not about cigars and blue dresses; it's about the security of this nation and the danger of revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative. In a word, it is serious.
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Here are two posts about former CIA analysts and their take on this...

On the Newshour

This not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been under cover for three decades. She is not as Bob Novak suggested a "CIA analyst." Given that, i was a CIA analyst for 4 years. I was under cover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the CIA unti I left the Intelligence Agency on Sept. 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it. The fact that she was under cover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous. She was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she works with overseas could be compromised...
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The White House, Congress and the CIA

Missoula, Montana: This incident has the smell of a White House dirty trick, but isn't the significance of the leak being overblown? After all, lots of people in Washington and elsewhere must have known of Ambassador Wilson's wife's connection to the CIA.

Mel Goodman: The incident is not being overblown because it is a violation of a federal statute and it reveals the essential cynicism of the Bush administration. There was no need to leak this name; it was done only as an act of political revenge to make sure that other critics did not come forward. Very ugly!!
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Brad DeLong has a couple of posts on some of the implications of this...

The Valerie Plame Affair: Unclear on the Concept

A great many people seem to be unclear on one or more of the key concepts in the scandal revolving around the continued presence in the White House and out of jail of Bush aides who give aid and comfort to our enemies in time of war by blowing the cover of CIA operatives who are actually hunting for weapons of mass destruction.
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Andrew Sullivan Needs Help

Andrew Sullivan is confused about what is happening in Washington. So a precis of the Plame affair seems called for to tell him what it is "about":

www.AndrewSullivan.com - Daily Dish: Well, I sat down yesterday afternoon and tried - no, really tried - to understand what this whole Wilson-Plame "scandal" is about...

Let me help:

1. The CIA has declared bureaucratic war on the White House staff.


2. On the journalistic leak front, CIA Director George Tenet or those "familiar with his thinking" have told reporters that the two senior White House aides who called at least six Washington jouralists in an attempt to destroy Valerie Plame Wilson's cover as a CIA operative did so "purely and simply for revenge," that the leaks were "wrong" and "mistaken."


3. On the legal front, the CIA has requested that the Justice Department begin an investigation into the leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson's status. In late July, the CIA filed a report stating that a crime had been committed. Three weeks ago, the CIA reported to the Justice Department that the crime had in fact damaged national security.


4. The FBI has begun a criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's status as an intelligence operative.


5. The White House staff doesn't care. Nobody on the White House staff thinks the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's status is at all a big deal.


6. The CIA clearly disagrees. The CIA clearly thinks this is a very big deal indeed. A Director of Central Intelligence who wants himself and his deputies to have long careers and to have influence on policy does not attempt to deprive a president of his trusted servants--not matter what. A CIA Director would take the steps that Tenet has taken only if one or more of the following (in decreasing order of probability) were true:
   
   
   
   1. The evidence and charges against the president's trusted servants is so strong that, when the affair is over, the president will admit that he was done a favor.
   
   
   2. This bureaucratic war is the first strike in a campaign to change the government--to replace the bad viziers Andrew Card and Karl Rove with good vizier Colin Powell, who will direct a government interested in what is good for the country rather than one interested in short-term political advantage and neoconservative theology.
   
   
   3. This bureaucratic war is the result of the fact that the CIA feels backed into a corner: they believe that arousing the president's intense wrath is worth it, for they believe the White House staff has crossed a key line in the politicization and abuse of intelligence that should not be crossed.
   
   

That's what the Plame Affair is "about."
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This piece is from the writer that first wrote about the criminal aspects of this leak.

CIA Leak Is Big Trouble For Bush

Scott McClellan, White House press secretary, falsely accused me of rigging the truth. But before we get to that, the news of the day: the Bush administration is responding ridiculously to reports that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether White House officials revealed the identity of an undercover CIA officer to punish or discredit an administration critic.
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And last, but not least, Billmon has some interesting thoughts on some of the fallout we may be seeing from this.

Double Vision