I have to confess that I never thought it would happen, but it appears that the Justice Department, at the request of the CIA, is launching an investigation of the White House regarding the issue of Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame. As I mentioned in a previous entry, Ms. Plame was a covert CIA operative whose identity was revealed to reporter Robert Novak by two unnamed senior White House officials, a move considered to be revenge for Joseph Wilson's whistle-blowing. Novak included this sensitive information (why?) in a column written in mid-July, effectively ending her career and putting her (and her many overseas contacts) in harm's way. Aside from being extraordinarily illegal, this incident has nauseating implications, as Williams Rivers "Voice of the People" Pitt points out:

Valerie Plame was not simply an analyst or a data cruncher. She was an operative running a network dedicated to tracking any person or nation that might try to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. That sentence deserves to be written twice. She was an operative running a network dedicated to tracking any person or nation that might try to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

The Bush administration pushed very hard the idea that America is in danger from WMDs being placed into the hands of terrorists. This was one of the central arguments behind the war in Iraq. Yet in order to protect Bush's political standing, a couple of "administration officials" blew Valerie Plame, and by proxy her network, completely out of the water in an attempt to shut her husband up. In short, in order to protect Bush from the ramifications of using fake evidence to support his war, this White House destroyed an intelligence network that was protecting us from the threat posed by chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

We are less safe now that Valerie Plame is no longer performing this vital task, and the members of her network are in mortal danger of being revealed and destroyed. Beyond that, we are facing a level of hypocrisy that shatters any and all previously known boundaries. This administration ginned up a war in Iraq based upon manufactured evidence and wildly overstated threats, all of which was painted over with rhetoric about defending the country from terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. The fate of Valerie Plame, and her network, shows without doubt that the moral standing of this administration is as empty as Saddam Hussein's WMD cache.

It certainly appears that the Bush administration has finally crossed the line. Of course, what remains to be seen is whether or not the fantasy that they will impartially investigate themselves can be dispelled, compelling congress to form a desperately needed independent investigative council.