The intellectual weaklings here will whine that you didn't put "EX-cia"
in
your title. lol

"GW Chimpzilla" <gw@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:4CwEe.177093$_o.100862@attbi_s71...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats attacked President Bush's response to a

top

aide's role in outing a CIA operative on Saturday, turning their radio

address

over to an ex-agent critical of his actions.

Larry Johnson, a former CIA agent and registered Republican, accused
Bush

of

flip-flopping on his promise to fire anyone at the White House implicated

in

the leak and said Americans deserved better.

"We deserve people who work in the White House who are committed to

protecting

classified information, telling the truth to the American people, and

living by

example to the idea that a country at war with Islamic extremists cannot

focus

its efforts on attacking other American citizens who simply tried to tell

the

truth," Johnson said.

Democrats have urged Bush to fire top adviser Karl Rove or revoke his

access to

classified information after he was identified by a reporter as being a

source

in the leak of Valerie Plame's name two years ago. The leak came after
her
husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson, accused the White House of

twisting

intelligence to justify an invasion of Iraq.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is leading the probe into the

unmasking

of Plame, whose identity and role at the CIA were made public in a column

by

Robert Novak. Novak cited "two senior administration officials" as his

sources.

It is against the law in certain circumstances to knowingly reveal the

identity

of an undercover CIA officer.

According to articles on Saturday in the Washington Post and Los Angeles

Times,

Fitzgerald is also looking into potential discrepancies between the

accounts

given to investigators by Rove and vice presidential aide Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, and the accounts given by journalists who have testified.

For example, the Post, citing an anonymous source, said that Libby has
testified that he learned about Plame from NBC correspondent Tim Russert.

But

Russert has said he gave no such information to Libby, who is Vice

President

***** Cheney's chief of staff.

Rove testified that he and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper

discussed

welfare reform in their conversation and only spoke about Plame near the

end of

the call, the Post said, citing lawyers involved in the case. However,

Cooper

has said he does not recall talking to Rove about welfare reform.

Bush said this week he would fire anyone who was found by a federal
probe

to

have acted illegally in the case, but critics accused the president of

lowering

the "ethics bar." Bush and his aides have at times in the past been

broader in

asserting that those involved in the leak would face consequences.

Cooper told a federal grand jury that Rove told him Wilson's wife worked

for

the CIA, but did not disclose her name. Cooper has also said he discussed

the

Wilsons with Libby.

Johnson was one of a handful of former intelligence agents who testified

at a

Democratic-sponsored hearing on the leak on Friday. He said he knew Plame

from

a training program, but only as "Val P" because participants were told

that

would help protect their identities.

Some of the White House's defenders have sought to minimize Plame's role

at the

CIA to argue the leak was not a national security issue. "We must put to

bed

the lie that she was not undercover," Johnson said. "For starters, if she

had

not been undercover then the CIA would not have referred the matter to
the
Justice Department."

The Los Angeles Times reported that in the prosecutors' search to learn

how

knowledge of Plame's identity spread through the administration and the

news

media, several State Department officials were questioned about a

classified

memo that mentions her name.

<http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=politicsNews&storyid=20
05-07-23T183356Z_01_N2298007_RTRIDST_0_POLITICS-BUSH-LEAK-DEMOCRATS-DC.XML>