In a previous post I went into great detail about how I believe the Special Prosecutor, which the MSM naively believes is investigating Rove, is actually investigating a much larger, dangerous leaking of classified material. That post cearly identifies all the classified material relating to this incident and who was the likely source (Plame, and through her Wilson). Recently Mark Coffey posted on a Christopher Hitchens article which comes to the same conclusion, as have others.

The CIA in general is institutionally committed against the policy of regime change in Iraq. It has also catastrophically failed the country in respect of defense against suicidal attack. (“I wonder,” Tenet told former Sen. David Boren on the very first news of 9/11, “if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training.” Wow, what a good guess, if a touch late. The CIA had failed entirely to act after the FBI detained Zacarias Moussaoui in Minnesota in August.)

…Who is endangering national security here? The man who calls attention to a covert CIA hand in the argument, or the man who blithely says that uranium deals with psychopathic regimes are not in train when they probably are? And we cannot even debate this without the risk that those who are seeking the true story will end up before a grand jury, or behind bars!

Two recent ‘finds’ in the blogosphere lend much more credence to the argument the grand jury is investigating the leaking of Saddam’s nuclear intentions (which was current, critical, national security information of the highest form, unlike Plames employment at the CIA which was apparently an open secret in DC social circles). The first is Rick Moran’s great work on the MSM CIA ‘experts’ who are out there supporting the MSM contention that Rove is the target and the reasons to go into Iraq were cooked up. Here are some excerpts on 3 key players aligned against the administration and with Saddam staying in power

MELVIN GOODMAN
…
There was a suspicion among the William Casey faction at the CIA that people like Mr. Goodman were overstating Soviet nuclear capabilities to push the Administration towards arms control. As we now know, Casey shared President Reagan’s belief that the whole rotten edifice would come crashing down if pushed hard enough.

Guess who was right.

Curiously, Goodman also seems to have joined the tin foil hat brigade on 9/11. Appearing at Rep. Cynthia McKinney’s hearing on Friday that featured panelists who posited theories on 9/11 ranging from the Twin Towers coming down as a result of a “controlled demolition” to the Pentagon being blown up deliberately and not partially destroyed by a hijacked aircraft, Goodman was quoted as saying about McKinney that… “I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom.”
…

LARRY JOHNSON
…
Mr. Johnson is living proof that brains doesn’t always equal judgement. Here’s what he wrote in July, 2001:

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.

None of these beliefs are based in fact.…

RAY MCGOVERN
…
McGovern is also a founder of the radical group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIP) whose Op-Ed’s, articles, and interviews have been featured in every far left magazine imaginable and who demanded in a “Memorandum to the President” that Bush fire VP Cheney.

Rick has more, so please go read the whole thing. There is more here as well.

You can tell right away that these sources are not fact finding by the media, but political propoganda. The far, far left, their cousins in the MSM and their allies in the CIA where the only ones who have consistently proposed trusting Saddam to behave in light of 9-11. That is and has been their position and now they are attempting political retribution Bush since they have (a) not been listened to -ignored – and (b) proven wr0ng.

The second piece that came to my attention, that clarifies that the leaking by Plame and the CIA of national security information is the focus of the grand jury, is that this piece on Larry Johnson and the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (sounds like a moonbat group). This article completes, from March 2003, provides the motivation for the leaks, and an admission this was intentional.

Ex-CIA Accuse Bush of Manipulating Iraq Evidence

Monday, March 17, 2003

WASHINGTON — Invoking

the name of a Pentagon whistle-blower, a small group of retired, anti-war CIA officers are accusing the Bush administration of manipulating evidence against Iraq in order to push war while burying evidence that could show Iraq’s compliance with U.N demands for disarmament.

The 25-member group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, composed mostly of former CIA analysts along with a few operational agents, is urging employees inside the intelligence agency to break the law and leak any information they have that could show the Bush administration is engineering the release of evidence to match its penchant for war.

Emphasis mine and theirs. I have verified the memorandum was in the news at the time.

So what we have is the intentional, and announced, effort by some radically leftwing CIA employess to politicize a war and intelligence, enabled by their media cohorts.

And the information they leaked was critical. Saddam Hussein is not known for his brilliant decisions (Iran, Kuwait, etc). And that was why he not to be trusted unless he too extreme steps to show he could be trusted. But what would have happened if Saddam was in power and these false reports about his intentions led him to believe America was too stupid and blind to know what he was up to? What would Saddam think about a CIA openly leaking information to keep him in power? Would the fact he thought we couldn’t possibly find out about anything like attempted acquisition of yellow cake lead him to decide he could easily communicate with Al Qaeda? Could the CIA in opern revolt indicate to him the USA was in such disarray that another Al Qaeda attack, with more deadly consequences, would finally remove the international sanctions on his country?

The fact is these rogue agents put this country in serious danger in their self centered, myopic drive for political gain. As with Durbin and others on the left, their obsessions to bring down Bush have had terrible repercussions in the world and emboldened our enemies to redouble their efforts.

This is much more important than how many people knew Plame worked at the CIA.

UPDATE:

Captain Ed has a post on the latest Pincus Propoganda which also includes testimonial evidence, under oath, that shows Wilson leaked classified information to the press. From an excerpt of the Senate Report

The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article (“CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid,” June 12, 2003) which said, “among the Envoy’s conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because `the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.”

This is of course, classified information. The method of determining the forgery is classified informaion. The nuclear intentions of Saddam Hussein as determined by a CIA study is classified. And the methods/sources of collecting classified information, is classified. But what sets this apart is this

Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the “dates were wrong and the names were wrong” when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have “misspoken” to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were “forged.”

Oh yes, he mispoke because the forged documents came much later, after his trip and he should not have seen them to know the names and dates were wrong. He got that information, which he passed onto the press, from Plame or her cohorts.

Read Morrissey’s post, because it hits at the lack of truthfulness and honesty in the MSM in reporting on this story – a story where their sources leaked classified information to them and now are in hot water. Morrissey points out the ludicrous claim by Pincus that a 2002 memo from Plame promoting Wilson to go to Niger to investigate a recent question about Saddam Hussein’s attempts to buy yellowcake actually applied to a 1999 trip…

Yep. Our gal Plame made the suggestion in 2002 for her husband to make a trip in 1999. At least that is Pincus’ story and he’s sticking to it!

Tom Maguire has another bit of evidence. If this investigation is about the WH leaking Plame’s employment at the CIA, and the leak supposedly started with a memo to Powell on a trip to Africa, why is the prosecutor ignoring this nugget?

The Times also delivers a mini-bombshell, buried near the end:

Few if any reporters who traveled with Mr. Fleischer, Mr. Bartlett and the White House entourage that week have been called to testify before the grand jury. A background briefing during the trip in which Mr. Bartlett spoke with reporters and urged them to look into the C.I.A.’s role in sending Mr. Wilson to Niger has not drawn substantial interest from prosecutors recently.

Why? This is not about Plame’s CIA employment. It is about something else.

The Times also delivers a mini-bombshell, buried near the end:

Few if any reporters who traveled with Mr. Fleischer, Mr. Bartlett and the White House entourage that week have been called to testify before the grand jury. A background briefing during the trip in which Mr. Bartlett spoke with reporters and urged them to look into the C.I.A.’s role in sending Mr. Wilson to Niger has not drawn substantial interest from prosecutors recently.

Even Tom Maguire assumes this is about Plame’s employment. There is no evidence it is and there is no legal justification that it is. More facts supporting my thesis (as well as Tom’s)

Wilson had a secret friend who talked to Novak on July 8, and Novak told him about Wilson’s wife being with the CIA? Wilson put it in his book, and Fitzgerald has interviewed the person, so I guess we believe it.
…
Wilson had a secret friend who talked to Novak on July 8, and Novak told him about Wilson’s wife being with the CIA? Wilson put it in his book, and Fitzgerald has interviewed the person, so I guess we believe it. ….The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post, asked Novak about the “yellow cake” uranium matter and then about Wilson, Wilson said. …he said that he tried to reach Novak on July 8, and that they finally connected on July 10. In that conversation, Wilson said that he did not confirm his wife worked for the CIA but that Novak told him he had obtained the information from a “CIA source.”

Query: was there more information passed and confirmed by the CIA than simply Plame’s employer?

Update II:

More at Macsmind. I get the feeling this is unraveling on Wilson, et al. They and their media buddies just can’t see it coming because they have bought into Wilson’s game for too long.