* in the comments:
update: ew in the comments:
" 3 data points, though I'll have to come back tomorrow to say more.
First, May also wrote a story the week of the leak. Though he didn't get the leak.
Second, May is supposed to have been interviewed by the FBI (no doubt for his September claims), but Fitz didn't include him in the list of the 5 journalists who had received a leak. So either May was lying in his September column (my guess) or he was lying in his testimony.
Third, Waas has done a lot of reporting on the way that Republican operatives were involved in the leak in Fall 2003. I've always taken that to include May."
When is somebody going to tackle the question of Cliff May and figure out what his real role has been in all of this? I've been noodling at it on and off ever since his name first came to my attention (as the result, oddly enough, of trying to find out whatever had become of the World Anti-Communist League since the fall of the Soviet Union), but I can't say I've ever gotten a clear picture.
His Foundation for the Defense of Democracies seems to be mainly involved in the Iran regime change movement -- but somehow he keeps popping up in the Plame affair, from his September 29, 2003 NRO column, which as far as I know started the claim that Valerie Wilson's identity was commen knowledge, to picking up this new Joe-Wilson-caused-the-Katrina-failures meme.
He may be just a happy little troublemaker -- or somebody with a column he's got to fill any way he can -- but I strongly suspect a closer look would come up with something more concerted. He was, after all, director of communications for the Republican National Committee during the crucial period of 1997-2001, before that was vice-chair of the Republican Jewish Coalition, and seems to be tight with Michael Ledeen.
And no, I'm not volunteering to do it myself, at least not this morning, but I do want to raise awareness of his more-than-casual involvement in the GOP propaganda chain.