This story is going strong I see. The blogs are all over it. The news is all over it - it was on CNN, CNNHN, Fox all at the same time tonight. The NY Times and Washington Post are featuring it, finally - the Post seems to be leading the charge (as yesterday) - it's interesting.

The white House is stonewalling, or boy it sure looks like it. Scott McClellan's "I mean, let me make clear, if anyone has information about this leak of classified information, they need to report it to the Department of Justice -- anyone." sounds a lot like an effort to keep it away from them. To start up a circle, chase tails, keep it simmering without boiling over until people forget it... Meanwhile, in the White House, they all deny it, or claim to know nothing, or say they had nothing to do with it - the liars and the idiots contending...

They might get away with it - a bit of it - though I doubt it. There are, apparently, two high administration officials who shopped this story around - then someone at the CIA, according to Novak (on Crossfire today - Drudge has text up) confirmed it, asking him not to use her name - there may be 6 or so more journalists, and their editors who know - and of course the Senior Administration Official who ratted them out this week - which most speculation thinks is Tenet, whose CIA has been pushing the DOJ to investigate...

I mean - lots of people know - and the Bush administration is, at least appears to be, from the left hand side of the aisle, a nest of vipers - who will descend on one another like feral dogs should this start to get too close to them. (How many animals can I copare them to in one sentence? Oy, but hey! A blog must be entertaining also no?) So - whispering campaigns and ass coverings and broad hints and if anyone gets jettisoned - they have all this as vengeance. I think the carefully worded non-denials are going to start to accumulate, and the circle is going to get narrower and narrower and finally, someone will be flushed into the light, blinking and cursing and pulling their suit coat over their head...

Anyway. Over all - what possessed these poor bastards to do a thing like this? Obviously, to warn Bush's enemies - to intimidate anyone who would offer facts against the Bush war campaign... it's odd - it does harm Plame, thus Wilson, but more, it harms the CIA and national security - while (as a couple commentators and bloggers have noted) if you actually think about it, doesn't it suggest that Wilson was very well prepared to investigate the Yellowcake story? His wife, surely, must know something about it, right? If she was involved - how could that be bad?

Whatever. I am no expert. But this looks ugly - the naked lunch moment, or it should be, for those who deny what it is we have at the end of the fork. We have a government that gives up CIA agents to intimidate dissenters. We have a government that will compromise national security for its own political ends. And it looks like we have a government that will defy the law, the CIA, whatever it has to defy to get away with what it does. Not pretty.