Ever hear of a SF 312? Probably not, its the government form that personnel sign when they are granted security clearances. You can look at it here.She knew what she was doing was wrong and will pay the price regardless of her political affiliation.

Also just in case you didn't know, the president is also the Commander in Chief, and has the authority to declassify secrets.

I was waiting for one of these. So let me see. You see absolutely nothing wrong with a President declassifying information as a political weapon, let me guess, you thought Nixon was a "swell guy." And I am not saying that intelligence operatives should be sharing classified information, but I do believe that when EVIL is being done in the name of the American people, that such people are not traitors but true patriots. I mean does it make you proud that America condemned secret police tactics and Gulags for years, and yet now we justify them? And dont tell me that they did not exist, if they didn't, then this person did not reveal anything because it was all a fantasy.

Well stated David, and let me add how stupid a move this was by the Bush administration.

The Right is gonna try to drown the debate by sticking to the contrite 'rule of law' talking point. But in the wake of the Plame case, the American people are gonna want to know what egregious level of leaking actually had consequences?

Many of those same Americans also had no clue about the secret camps - till now.

If it was necessary to leak classified documents the White House knew were bogus just to discredit a critic of the invasion, why is it necessary to fire this woman over revelations the White House has not denied?

You are right Bert, but I have a feeling this one will be a little harder to spin out of.

I wasn't speaking for the reasoning of declassifying the information, but the fact that the president can declassify information at his discretion.

As for the information that Mary McCarthy (the fired CIA officer), the information she released was without permission. Whether she gave the information to WaPo or Al-Quaeda, that doesn't matter. She overstepped her bounds, and now she will pay the consequences of her actions. It doesn't matter if she did it to a Republican or Democratic administration.

Using your reasoning, Jonathan Pollard (convicted spy who shared information with Israel) shouldn't be punished either, because what he was doing was because he thought it was the "right" thing to do like Mary McCarthy?

Actually, David, the latest theory is that the whole European prison story was a plant, a false story to smoke out leakers. After all, the news of her firing came out the same day that the European officials announced that they found no evidence that any such prisons exist.

It's a classic intelligence ploy, if you suspect someone is leaking: make up a story so lurid and tempting that no leaker could resist it, then use that leak to identify the leakers. In the most classic form, several variants of the story are distributed, and the details that make it out identify which suspected leaker gave out the information.

As I said, it's only a theory being bandied about... but it satisfies Occam's Razor, in that it is the simplest solution that answers all the questions.

J.

Read this.

HYPOCRISY

As for the doubts about the secret camps... I have none. Did you catch the AP Piece yesterday about 30% of the Gitmo prisoners being cleared for release, but the Pentagon not being able to handle the logistics of releasing them... 30% of these people possibly innocent and having been pent up in Gitmo for years... Please, dont tell me we have not become what we hated the most.

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