Kick over the wet rock

Thomas Lifson has an excellent essay up on The American Thinker. Here is an excerpt:

The firing of Mary O. McCarthy has unleashed a torrent of data-gathering and speculation, some of it highly informed, on the existence and extent of ties among enemies of the President. The torrent of speculation exactly
corresponds to the torrent of leaks which have bedeviled Bush presidency. Nothing is yet proven, but McCarthy served in the Clinton White House and then took a curious job in the Bush administration, in the Inspector General’s Office of the CIA.

Such a move is not explicable by careerism. This is an Internal Affairs dead-end sort of job, one that wins enemies not friends. But it is a job in which complaints about irregularities (justified or not) come across the desk with regularity.

Career suicide, but perfect for a would-be leaker intent on undermining a presidency and getting the opposition party candidate elected president. If there was planning to this, who was involved?

Many observers noticed at the time President Bush took office that a coterie of Clinton appointees remained in the bureaucracy. An unusually large number converted from political appointee status to bureaucratic status. Mary O. McCarthy was one of them.

Is there a ring of leakers infesting the national security apparatus? Hard evidence is lacking right now. As far as the public knows. We have been told that many other investigations within the CIA are underway. There are serious criminal penalties associated with leaking classified data, so once caught, there are incentives for leakers to implicate others who might be known by them to be engaging in violations of national security regulations.

We still don’t know if others will be charged, but meanwhile there is one aspect of McCarthy’s previous responsibilities well worth noting. Working in the CIA’s Inspector General’s office, she must have been involved in the bizarre referral of the Valerie Plame case to the Department of Justice for criminal investigation. Clarice Feldman has demonstrated that leaking of Plame’s name could not have been a criminal act.

Yet the CIA made the referral, after which there was no option but to proceed. To do otherwise would have caused howls of protest over a cover-up. Did McCarthy set-up the whole unnecessary investigation, resulting in the indictment of Scooter Libby?

I have been saying for some time now that there has been a covert war being waged by elements in the CIA, the State Department and the Defense Department against the administration.

I believe that the entire Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson affair was engineered by this cabal to discredit the President and possibly even lead to his impeachment.

Look at what happened. A Democratic activist who had some Foreign Service experience in Africa was assigned by the CIA, where his wife was an analyst - who had at one time been a covert employee in an overseas assignment. Mr. Wilson goes to Niger asks some questions and comes home. He presents a verbal report to the CIA (who did not require a written report, something that is almost unheard) which supports the contention of British intelligence that Saddam has been attempting to purchase uranium from that African nation.

This makes it into a Presidential Daily Briefing; a CIA investigation tends to support the British position on Saddam’s attempt to obtain uranium. The President mentions this, as only one point out of many, which supports his proposed action against the Hussein regime.

After this Joe Wilson writes a newspaper op-ed piece claiming the exact opposite of what he told the CIA. At least we think it is the opposite of what he told the CIA, notes taken during the meeting suggest that it is opposite of what he told the CIA, but we’ll never know because the CIA violated an almost ironclad rule and did not require a written report.

Wilson’s accusation ignites the entire “Bush Lied People Died” avenue of attack for the Left and their Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment. This gives every Democrat who voted in favor of the war an out with the Moonbat contingent of their party. It allows them to go on the Sunday shows and condemn the war without (at least in their minds) being guilty of hypocrisy.

Think about it. It is an almost perfect set-up. Can I prove it? No, I just note that it fits the facts, is not impossible and that there is no evidence to contradict it.

Draw your own conclusion.