Bob Woodward and the Plame Investigation

Just a quick post. Jason Leopold has an artice in Truthout concerning Woodward's role in the outing of Valerie Plame:

He is referred to as "official one" and he is the mysterious senior Bush administration official who unmasked the identity of an undercover CIA operative to Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003 and conservative columnist Robert Novak a month later.

The identity of this official is shrouded in secrecy. In fact, his name, government status, and the substance of his conversation with Woodward about the undercover officer are under a protective seal in US District Court for the District of Columbia.

But Woodward tape-recorded the interview he had with "official one." Woodward gave a copy of the tape and a transcript to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

It's important for commentators not to lose sight of the almost certainty that the Bush Administration did a great deal of stonewalling and manipulating to avoid cooperating with an investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame. That in itself is against the law; Bush and his advisers seem to believe that they are accountable to no one. We are witnessing not only an historically reckless and incompetent administration that resists accountability but also a Congress that has failed to exercise its obligation to deal responsibly and seriously with a failed presidency.

One of the strategies of the Bush Admistration when it comes to avoiding accountability is to keep changing the subject. It's important for people in Congress and some of the more thoughtful bloggers and journalists to focus on three or four of the most serious failings of the Bush Administration and to stay not only focused on those issues but on what those issue are about at their core; I appreciate, for example, what Feingold is doing, but the issue is not his censure proposal but the abuse of the Constitution by the Bush Administration and the continued failure of Congress to fully investigate what happened and what is probably continuing to happen.

Note: I've been gone for ten days. The two stories I would like to know more about are 1) the outing of Valerie Plame and 2) the NSA spying scandal. If anyone knows of some good articles along these lines, please feel free to let me know.