Larry Johnson smacks down porter goss

Larry Johnson smacks down porter goss:

"Well Porter, what are you going to do now? Is our illustrious CIA Director serious about protecting intelligence information or is he just talking political smack?

[snip]

In other words, he would act if he saw evidence that someone in the Bush White House had blown their load in public. Well, in the words of Herman Melville, “Thar she blows”. A recent flood of evidence in the Scooter Libby obstruction and perjury case erases all doubt. According to recently released documents in the case, the leaking of Valerie Plame’s name was neither accidental nor inadvertent. It was deliberate.

[snip]

In Friday’s op-ed complaining about “loose lips” and “leaks”, Porter Goss sets out a new standard that does not require a semen stained blue dress.

[snip]

If Porter Goss is serious about going after unauthorized disclosures then he should start with Dick Cheney. The Vice President’s access to classified material should be suspended. That’s what should happen if Goss were serious about this issue.

But it looks like Goss is more concerned about political cover for Bush than national security. The selective nature of the outrage sure suggests that what we are witnessing is political theatre designed to intimidate and silence political opponents. They don’t want to staunch all leaks; just the ones that make them look bad. The Bush Administration and its political allies want to be free to leak information when it suits their purpose.

Leaks are okay if you are going after a distinguished U.S. Ambassador who helped blow the whistle that the President did not tell the truth to the American people about Iraq’s supposed efforts to acquire uranium in Niger.

Leaks are okay if, on the eve of the 2004 Republican Convention, you release classified info to reporters about an Al Qaeda mole in order to burnish your candidate’s image.
Leaks are okay if you are trying to circumvent the intelligence community’s insistence that there is no operational link between Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. You give the stuff to conservative reporter Stephen Hayes and then have Vice President Cheney point to that information to justify his views, which the CIA have said repeatedly are wrong.

Remember--leaks are bad if they show the Bush Administration is violating the law, ignoring Bin Laden, or not paying attention to flood waters filling New Orleans. Folks who tell the truth must be punished. Those who lie must be protected. And to think I once thought of George Orwell as a writer of far-fetched fiction."