Plame's colleagues blog to her defense

TPMCafe has a post up on larry Johnson's blog that is worth a read:

By Brent Cavan, Jim Marcinkowski, Larry Johnson, and Jane Doe

We trained and worked at the CIA with Valerie Plame. We presented the following statement at a hearing on Capitol Hill in October 2003. In light of the latest White House sanctioned assault on Valerie Plame and her character, our testimony remains relevant and accurate.

[...]

Clearly some in the Bush Administration do not understand the requirement to protect and shield national security assets. Based on published information we can only conclude that partisan politics by people in the Bush Administration overrode the moral and legal obligations to protect clandestine officers and security assets.

Beyond supporting Mrs. Wilson with our moral support and prayers we want to send a clear message to the political operatives responsible for this. You are a traitor and you are our enemy. You should lose your job and probably should go to jail for blowing the cover of a clandestine intelligence officer.

You have set a sickening precedent. You have warned all U.S. intelligence officers that you may be compromised if you are providing information the White House does not like. A precedent, as one colleague pointed out during our brief appearances, allows you to build out a case based on previous legal actions and court decisions. It's a slippery slope if it lowers the bar.

Clearly, these guys are pissed. Interestingly, they aren't "liberal weenies" but all registered Republicans. The right-wingnut spin machine is in full gear trying its best to create enough he said, she said noise in the hopes that the American public will tune it out as "politics as usual". This is anything but politics as usual. I sincerely hope that Fitzgerald will deliver the goods so that the guilty are punished. It would be sweet were it to be Rove, but possibly even sweeter if it were someone closer to Darth Cheney. Note that while the leaks around LeakGate focus on Rove and to an extent "Scooter" Libby, there are increasing ties to the State Dept INR (Intellegence and Research) which produced a June 2003 memo that apparently made reference to Valerie Wilson (not Plame) that Powell was lugging around on the trip to Africa. Ask yourself again why it is that the White House refuses to release the names of U.S. personnel that John Bolton requested. Is he tied up in l'affaire Plame? He is, after all, one of Cheney's henchmen and you will note that Bolton's star seems to be fading. Could it be because the WH is afraid that he might be implicated in Fitzgerald's report? Hmmm...