Leaks

Well Mr. Tony Blankley has weighed in on the leak of Ambassador Joseph Williams wife's cover. He basically portrays it as a case of institutional rivalry gone wild. The CIA and the White House are not very cozy, a problem that was not helped by the President requiring George Tenet to take the blame for the yellowcake story being in the State of the Union.

The division is over how to fight the war on terror. " there is a strategic policy difference between the institutional CIA view (which tends to see terrorism as an inextinguishable fever that can at best be kept at a relatively low temperature) and the White House view (that it is an enemy that is susceptible of definitive defeat if enough resources and shrewd policies can be brought to bear against it)."

He states that this element of rivalry is what caused the leak to happen. Some White House staffer wanted to shwo the CIA a thing or two and so leaked. Mr. Blankley suggests we put ourselves in the leakers shoes for a moment. "They must feel deeply conflicted. Their actions have backfired. Instead of brushing back disloyal CIA political players, there are FBI agents rifling through the White House files of the leakers' co-workers. Democratic Party partisans are crying out for special prosecutors. The president -- for whom they have been loyally working 14 hours a day -- probably to the significant neglect of their spouse and children -- is put on the defensive, passively expressing hope that the Justice Department will get to the bottom of this problem."

Of course that's all well and good, but while the President may not be directly responsible for the leak, he is still on the hook. If this rivalry is such a serious detriment, why didn't the President take steps to alliveiate it? Why did he allow such a fissure to exist between his staff and the CIA?

Part of the reason is that this administration, like all administrations, basically thought that once they got into power they could do whatever they wanted. That's why there has been friction between Donald Rumsfield and the Military. Between the State Department and the White House. And the CIA.