http://www.slate.com/id/2148555 - - - But there is more than one way in which a case can be played by the book. Under the terms of the appalling and unconstitutional Intelligence Identities Protection Act <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Intelligence_Identities_Protection_Act> (see "A Nutty Little Law <http://www.slate.com/id/2123411/> ," my Slate column of July 26, 2005), the CIA can, in theory, "refer" any mention of itself to the Justice Department to see if the statute-denounced by The Nation and the New York Times when it was passed-has been broken. The bar here is quite high <http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Intelligence_Identities_Protection_Act> . Perhaps for that reason, Justice sat on the referral for two months after Novak's original column. But then, rather late in the day, at the end of September 2003, then-CIA Director George Tenet himself sent a letter demanding to know whether the law had been broken.
The answer to that question, as Patrick Fitzgerald has since determined, is "no." But there were plenty of senior people who had known that all along. And can one imagine anybody with a stronger motive to change the subject from CIA incompetence and to present a widely discredited agency as, instead, a victim, than Tenet himself? The man who kept the knowledge of the Minnesota flight schools to himself and who was facing every kind of investigation and obloquy finally saw a chance to change the subject. If there is any "irony" in the absurd and expensive and pointless brouhaha that followed, it is that he was abetted in this by so many who consider themselves "radical." - - - Christopher Hitchens, a lefty/liberal who has been uncharacteristically rational in recent years, particularly on the matter of the war with radical Islam, nails the absurdity of Plamegate on the head. I don't whether he or Andy Borowitz is my favorite lefty right now---Hitchens because he's actually thoughtful, and Andy because he's actually funny---two characteristics the loons who run the Democrat party these days are massively lacking. - Bob _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
