Reply #152: "Spy Another Day" Village Voice, 11-24-04

[coeur_de_lion]

by Jarrett Murphy
Spy Another Day
Are spooks getting purged for others' leaks? Inside the white house war on information
November 24 - 30, 2004

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The shakeup at the CIA is being painted as a crusade against agency employees who leaked secret information to the media. If so, it's another front in the wider Bush administration campaign against unauthorized disclosures of inconvenient facts.

Four CIA officials have departed since the election and others may follow. New York Times columnist William Safire last week called them "pouting spooks at Langley who bet on a Kerry victory." A memo to agency employees from new spy director Porter Goss calls on them to "scrupulously honor our secrecy oath." Newsday reports that the lancing of leakers came at White House request.
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Not everyone buys the theory that the CIA purge is a hunt for leakers. "My own impression is that most leaks don't come out of the CIA," says Michael Scheuer, the veteran agent who anonymously penned Imperial Hubris, a book critical of the conduct of the war on terrorism since the mid 1990s. Scheuer, who retired on November 12, believes most leaks spring from the Defense Department or the White House. Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill, the Senate ethics committee is probing Alabama Republican Richard Shelby for allegedly leaking details of suspicious phone calls the National Security Agency intercepted on September 10, 2001.
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The administration's crackdown on leaks began last year, when a July 2003 syndicated Robert Novak column reported that the wife of WMD whistleblower Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, was a CIA officer. The release of her identity might have violated federal law, and the Justice Department launched a probe.

But the investigation has raised eyebrows for its broad attack on the use of confidential sourcing. Some White House employees, at Democratic senator Chuck Schumer's suggestion, have been asked to waive any confidentiality agreements with reporters. Investigators have sought records of phone calls to a long list of journalists. And several reporters—including at least one who never wrote about Wilson's wife—have been threatened with jail time for not discussing their sources.
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