At long last the Democrats and their media allies have what they have long wanted: a scandal in the Bush White House to which they can, with some degree of credibility, add the suffix ‘gate.’ The scandal revolves around Joseph Wilson, a former acting Ambassador to Iraq, and his wife, Valerie Plame, who has been described as a ‘covert CIA operative specializing in weapons of mass destruction’. In a July, legendary columnist Robert Novak revealed Plame’s identity as a CIA agent, citing two ‘senior administration officials’ as the source for the information. The supposed ‘scandal’ here is that disclosing the identity of a covert government operative in such a fashion may possibly be in violation of two Federal laws. Worse still, it has been strongly suggested that one of Novak’s sources was Karl Rove, the President’s closest political advisor. With the CIA now making a formal request that the Justice Department investigate this matter, I fully expect ‘Rovegate’ or whatever else the media dubs the scandal to become a big deal in the coming weeks.

All of the enemies of America will pounce upon this scandal in an effort to attack the good of this country’s cause. Wilson and Plame will become leftist folk heroes, extolled in the international media as the latest victims of the Zionist and/or Neoconservative conspiracy. Inevitable comparisons will be made between Bush and Nixon. ‘What did the President know and when did he know it?’ will be asked once more. We will be warned that having Administration officials reveal the identity of a CIA operative (if indeed that is what happened) endangered US intelligence operations. We will be subjected to endless and turgid Congressional hearings on the matter, with the limp-wristed faction of the Republican Party allowing the Democrats to use them for the purpose of indulging in their favorite past-time, which was illegal in a number of states until the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.

Before we go on, I think it’s worth clarifying: it’s pretty clear that this woman wasn’t exactly an agent in the field running James Bond-type operations. Most likely she was someone operating under diplomatic cover, supposedly working for some branch of the State Department but really working as someone investigating WMD programs. Her life was never in danger. At worst, she will never be able to work in the field again and to that I have this to say: good. Laws designed to protect the identity of covert agents are designed to protect those serving their country, not those acting to protect their party. If someone did disclose her identity, it was a great act of patriotism.

The real scandal here isn’t that someone disclosed the identity of this woman: it’s that this woman was working for the CIA at all. Her husband is clearly a partisan and stridently leftist Democrat. He’s written articles for The Nation which, in the 1960’s, was described as a ‘scurrilous magazine which has supported many communist causes’ and about which little has changed since. Why was a man such as this selected to investigate reports of Iraqi uranium purchases in Niger? There is no evidence that the man had any particular expertise in the field of weapons of mass destruction and, by many reports, the investigation he launched in Niger was spotty and incomplete. All of this practically screams two words: ‘whitewash’ and ‘sabotage’. The latter is particularly significant in that it raises real questions not only about the loyalty and reliability of Valerie Plame, but that of the CIA as a whole.

Largely undiscussed, but of the utmost significance, is the politicization of the CIA. There are many operatives playing politics from within the Agency and, contrary to Hollywood stereotypes, few of them hail from the Republican side of the aisle. The CIA has never recovered from the incompetence of William Colby and the treasonable conduct of Stanfield Turner both of who, as Director, gutted the service. In more recent years the CIA has been infiltrated by an increasingly large number of liberal academics whose ideological blinders and cowardice have done untold damage to the US intelligence community.

The CIA (and, indeed, the entire US Intelligence community) needs the services of a man like the late James Jesus Angleton, who was the long-serving Director of counter-intelligence. The disloyal must be rooted out and removed from the service of the government. We cannot be fighting a war where some of our front-line soldiers feel that they own a higher loyalty to the Democratic Party than to the Republic.

Whoever revealed the identity of this woman did a great service to the country by (hopefully) ending her career. The security of the nation is far too important a matter to be trusted to Democrats in any way, shape, or form. It is the leftists within the CIA which ought to be being investigated here, not the White House.

The President must deal with this head-on. If someone in the White House did leak this information and it turns out that such a leak was in violation of the law, the President should pardon that individual without delay. The President ought to clean house at the CIA. He should go before the nation and explain how he has learned that political partisans within the CIA have harmed American interests by putting sectarian interests before the good of the country as a whole.

Own up to it, but do not admit to doing anything wrong. Forthrightly defend what was done and attack your attackers for siding with those seeking to undermine America. By acting decisively the President can seize the initiative and launch a devastating political counter-attack which will savage the traitors who are howling at the gates.