Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Kerry Forgives Administration for Plame Leak?

Others are doing a great job of covering all the hypocrisy and silliness surrounding the firing of Mary McCarthy. I won't try to duplicate their efforts.

I will point out though, that I was pleased to see John Kerry give the White House an implicit pass on the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity. As has been reported in lots of places, Kerry said this to George Stephanopolous about the CIA leaks and Mary McCarthy's firing:

A CIA agent has the obligation to uphold the law and clearly leaking is against the law, and nobody should leak. I don't like leaking. But if you're leaking to tell the truth, Americans are going to look at that, at least mitigate or think about what are the consequences that you, you know, put on that person. Obviously they're not going to keep their job, but there are other larger issues here.


Of course, the administration leak(s) about Valerie Plame were intended to suggest that:

1) Joe Wilson's wife at the CIA helped him get assigned to go to Niger; and,
2) Wilson had misrepresented his findings there.

Both of these allegations were upheld by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, in its report on the problems with intel that led to incorrect conclusions about Saddam's program of WMD.

So it seems to me that to the extent that Kerry is saying that truth is a defense, then Patrick Fitzgerald might need to think about closing up shop.

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