Nathan Newman hits the nail on the head in his analysis of the Valerie Plame case and its coverage by many progressive bloggers:
But the sudden progressive concern for preserving the anonymity of CIA agents leaves me cold. Not that agent names should be revealed casually, but the idea that an agency — involved in illegal assassinations and anti-democratic coups for the last half-century — has suddenly become a sacred cow is ridiculous.
If someone discovers that a CIA agent has been involved in bad actions, I am all for them revealing their identity and undermining their ability to continue to do so.
The basic line by the Bushies is that folks like Plame at the CIA have gone rogue and have been leaking to the press in order to undermine the democratically elected President’s policy. If the shoe was on the other foot and CIA agents were involved in trying to undermine a progressive President, I’d want names.
Not that I buy the Bush story, but that’s a political evaluation and belongs in the political realm of discussion. Allowing the government to maintain secrecy through criminalizing debate on the actions of government employees is the enemy of democracy. Without debate, that means that the CIA will be able to engage in all manner of evil actions with no one able to blow the whistle on its actions– and that is not a hypothetical but a well documented history that needed more, not less exposure to the American public.
One caveat: when Robert Novak revealed Plame as a CIA agent, it was to imply that Joe Wilson (her husband) got his assignment only because of nepotism. The story the “senior White House Offical” tried to get across was that he wasn’t send to Niger because he was the best man to judge whether or not Iraq was buying uranium there, but because his wife was a CIA agent. It had nothing to do with CIA agents “going rogue”.