More Hypocrisy From The Left

What a timely revelation considering the joint Schumer/Wilson news conference scheduled for later today.

What a comedown. Back when Robert Novak's column naming Bush Administration critic Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA officer became the scandal flavor of the day, the air was thick with charges of "crime" and "felony." But today even Mr. Wilson's attorney has backed off those claims. In his letter to the editor, the best Christopher Wolf can do is assert that naming Valerie Plame was "probably illegal."

What a comedown. Back when Robert Novak's column naming Bush Administration critic Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA officer became the scandal flavor of the day, the air was thick with charges of "crime" and "felony." But today even Mr. Wilson's attorney has backed off those claims. In his letter to the editor, the best Christopher Wolf can do is assert that naming Valerie Plame was "probably illegal."

The easiest conclusion from reading this law is that Mr. Novak didn't violate it. In the only section (Title 50, Section 421 of the U.S. Code) that deals with non-officials, the act limits prosecution to those who expose agents "in the course of a pattern of activities" they had reason to believe would undermine U.S. foreign intelligence activities. That's because this was a law written with such anti-intelligence publications as CounterSpy and the Covert Action Information Bulletin in mind. [snip]

All of which puts an interesting tint on the selective outrage we've been hearing. New York Senator Chuck Schumer was one of the first to claim shock over the Novak column, indignantly thundering how the leak "was tantamount to putting a gun to that agent's head." That's interesting, because as Congressman Schumer he was one of only 56 to vote against the law whose sacral character he now invokes.

In other words, when the object of this law was CIA turncoat Philip Agee, Mr. Schumer deemed the law more dangerous than the exposure. But now that we have a bona fide newsman (and the lefts most despised Republican) at the center of this storm he wants someone to hang.

This is certainly no surprise considering Schumer has proven himself to be a liar and unabashed hypocrit time and again.