Thursday, July 21, 2005

Trying to hide the leaking elephant

Bush did his best to bury the Rove story - but the effort has failed miserably:
A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials...

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

As Kos points out, this is the Washington Post's top story today.

The interesting part will be to see Bush's strategy from here on in. The administration tried spinning, but the press wouldn't take "I won't talk about that" for an answer. Now the best diversion available has proven ineffective - and frankly the Dems deserve credit for not overblowing Roberts as an issue such as to distract attention from Rove.

Is there anything else in the Republican arsenal, aside from trying to discredit the entire CIA as well as Fitzgerald personally? And are they crazy enough to give that a go?

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