Yeah, maybe that was a bit hasty

Josh Marshall is right that Novak did the damage in outing the CIA front the moment he published his July story. I had considered that that was the case- but it doesn't make Novak's behavior substantively much better. It's clear that Novak was taking political potshots at someone he had already been involved in harming. That's a jerk thing to do.

A lot of bloggers and commenters have suggested that Novak did nothing wrong by writing that column. I disagree. I am not a journalist nor was I ever a journalism student, but what Novak did was either stupid or unethical. Stupid if he, as a very old hand in Washington, failed to see the harm in outing a CIA operative (his words in that July 14 column, despite his later protestations that she was merely an analyst). And unethical if he knew what he was doing. To say that he was doing a journalistic duty is bizarre. Does that somehow mean the 5 (or is it 6? pardon my innumeracy) other journalists who received the leak didn't do their duty? You don't have a professional obligation to print everything a source tells you- nor, as this case demonstrates, is there a moral reason why you have to write the "whole truth" in all cases. If the potential harm of writing something far outways its potential good, don't do it.

Nice Going, Bob

According to this Washington Post article(Link), the exposure of Joseph Wilson's wife as a CIA operative has, in turn, exposed a CIA front company. Now, I think Robert Novak, in printing the leak in his column, has done a terrible thing, but I could almost excuse this as a horrendous error, a mistake. I thought, maybe he didn't know the danger of his actions, or that the leaking constituted a felony on the part of the leakers. But I can't bring myself to give him the benefit of the doubt anymore.

Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, had listed the front company as her employer when she donated money to the Gore 2000 campaign. On CNN yesterday, Novak mentioned the name of the front company, saying:
"There is no such firm, I'm convinced," he continued. "CIA people are not supposed to list themselves with fictitious firms if they're under a deep cover -- they're supposed to be real firms, or so I'm told. Sort of adds to the little mystery."
I guess Novak's intent was supposed to be that A) Plame was a Democrat; Democrats Bad and/or B) CIA people aren't supposed to do that, therefore Plame was doing something improper/wasn't really deep cover.

This is rank partisanship, kids. Anyone who thinks that so-called Bush hatred is poisoning our discourse/civilization etc. And refuses to acknowledge that this leak was a Big Deal, anyone who thinks that some college yahoo with a "Bush is Evil"poster is more important than jeopardizing the lives and missions of people whose job is to protect this country from winds, is blinded. Someone did harm to my country's collective safety, and did so for no more justifiable reason than to punish the White House's critics.

What angers me most about this is that the people who did this are not traitors- they don't seek America's destruction. But they certainly aren't patriots either. By acting so carelessly with classified information, and by treating critics of Bush so vengefully, the leakers (and their enabler) have demonstrated a peculiar lack of patriotism. If information is classified it should be treated as such- our intelligence services, in concert with the intelligence services of our allies, have prevented several major terrorist attacks in the past few years- perhaps thousands of lives have been saved in this fashion. Not only have Bush, his administration, and partisans politicized our intelligence apparatus and diverted it toward minor threats and away from greater ones, it appears that they have at best condoned and at worst instigated an act that both damages our intelligence in a vital area and put lives in danger. Shame on them.

The most charitable thing I can believe about Bob Novak is that his almost tribal fealty to the party in power blinded him to the significance and danger and recklessness of his actions. Of course, the worst is that Novak intentionally outed a CIA front, or that he's playing ball with people who did. Which scares the pants off me.