Saturday, February 04, 2006

Reckless Rockefeller?

Hugh Hewitt is one of those sites I'm unlikely to link, as while he's sometimes interesting, the information content is low — I can usually predict what he will say about any topic.

This, however, is interesting: "The American Spectator's Jed Babbin was on John Batchelor's radio show yesterday, and stated that the intelligence community believes West Virignia Senator Jay Rockefeller is the leaker who illegally supplied the New York Times with the details of the NSA program."

It fits several ways: we know Rockfeller knew about the program, he's shown himself willing to be quite ruthless about using the Intelligence Committee for political purposes, ... and he seemed quite upset about the implication that the leak had caused major damage and ought to be investigated. (In fact, he came up with the interesting tu quoque that the Administration was talking about it too, conveniently ignoring the fact that the Administration only talked after the program had already been blown.)

Now, the First Law of Intelligence Leaks comes in here too: this revelation is most likely from people who don't actually know anything, and it's most probably motivated by a desire to damage Rockefeller. At best it's an interesting hypothesis. But it seems to me to have enough support to be worth watching.

3 comments:

MeaninglessHotAir said...

Another good candidate for term limits. Yet Another Rich Guy who's doing it or the little people.

Since Senators can get away with murder, why shouldn't they be able to get away with treason?

Unknown said...

It would be a huge risk for a sitting Senator. But then again people were saying they thought McCain might have been the leak on the socalled secret prisons which no one can seem to find any evidence of.

Charlie Martin said...

David, it wouldn't have to be Babbin who's motive it is to harm Jay Rockefeller.

(This leads to the interesting question: who slimed JR? Catchy phrased.)