Good news... Good Dem strategy - Calling for 'damage assessment' (Plame) [View All]

[salin]

The balance between pushing the Plame Story... then letting the Press run... then as the press slows down pushing it again (this time to get at the significance of the leaks)... which will fuel the media/press coverage again... has been an effective way to manage/deal with the story. I think I read somewhere that 8 of 10 people thought the leak story was potentially serious. I still do not think that most of the public has really processed just WHAT was compromised - on the basic fairness issue folks are responding (wasn't good/fair to out the woman and ruin her chance to make a living, and possible safety... morphed into wasn't good/fair to risk the livelihoods and lives of other agents associate with her). But the fact that she - and the networks blown - were about gathering intel on WMDs. That this little "leak" may have compromised our ability to thwart WMDs from falling into terrorist hands (one of the major reasons we were given for going to war with Iraq). But those charges seem so OUT there - that folks tune out and hear "pure politics" (as the bushco is trying to spin).

So push an investigation... based on national security... a 'damage assessment'. Leave unspoken the question why the whitehouse, the NSA, and the CIA didn't do this back in July.

SO here we go - let us wish them success.

Democrats seek assessment of damage caused by outing of US intelligence agent

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Leading Democrats sent a letter to the US agency tasked with safeguarding America's intelligence capability, seeking an immediate assessment of the damage caused by the outing of a CIA (news - web sites) agent's identity.

Top Democrats in the US Senate, including Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, asked the National Counterintelligence Executive headed by Michelle Van Cleave to undertake an immediate review of whether US intelligence has been compromised by the leak.

"The exposure of one of America's undercover intelligence officers by an official of the US government constitutes the most egregious form of betrayal," read the letter by Daschle, and fellow Senate Democrats Carl Levin, Joseph Biden, and John Rockefeller.



more: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20031015/pl_afp/us_cia_iraq_politics&cid=1521&ncid=1480