Poor ol’ Porter Goss. He’s our
nation’s chief spook, but he’s got no sense of timing. Goss, head of the CIA, published a piece on Feb. 10
expressing outrage that Bush-administration secrets were being leaked to
the media by anonymous sources. In particular, he was tapping the fact that
Bush’s secret and illegal program of spying on U.S. citizens had been
made public. Leaking such classified information, wailed Porter, “can
tip the terrorists” to technologies and tactics the CIA uses. He
implied that leakers are low-life traitors. Unfortunately for Goss, his indignant screed lacked
much punch, because on that same day a story ran showing that one of the
chief leakers of secret intelligence has been — guess who? —
the Bushites! It seems that Scooter Libby, the former top staffer to Dick
Cheney, admitted to a grand jury that he had leaked secret information to
reporters in 2003 in a political effort to show that Iraq had weapons of
mass destruction. That’s not all — Libby testified that he was
“authorized” to reveal the official secrets by his
“superiors.” Hmmmm. Only three people in the White House could be
considered Libby’s superiors: Cheney, Karl Rove, and George himself!
So, Porter, which of these are you calling a traitor? And will you be
calling them to account? The problem for our democracy is not that there are
too many “unauthorized” leaks but that the Bushites are hiding
too much. For example, who leaked Valerie Plame’s name? How many
times did Ken Lay and Jack Abramoff visit the White House? Who was on
Cheney’s secret energy task force? How about coming clean on torture
and on the global network of secret prisons? What’s up with all the
no-bid contracts with Halliburton? And the list goes on and on.
This article appears in Feb 23 – Mar 1, 2006.
