White House Outs CIA Spy - Washington Post Blames Bush . . .

. . . for outing Valerie Plame

White House mistakenly identifies CIA chief in Afghanistan

The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.

So in a moment of typical carelessness, someone in Jay Carney's office put the CIA Pakistan Station Chief's name on a public document. Or was it "carelessness"? Could it have been a deliberate outing to allow the administration to replace the chief with someone more compliant?

Anyway the Post goes out of the way to point the finger at the Bush administration for outing Valerie Plame:

The disclosure marked a rare instance in which a CIA officer working overseas had his cover — the secrecy meant to protect his actual identity — pierced by his own government. The only other recent case came under significantly different circumstances, when former CIA operative Valerie Plame was exposed as officials of the George W. Bush administration sought to discredit her husband, a former ambassador and fierce critic of the decision to invade Iraq.

As you may or may not recall, the "outing" of Valerie Plame, an ex-CIA operative (she had CIA parking tags on the car she drove around the DC area) prompted a two year witch hunt resulting in the conviction of Scooter Libby, one of Vice President Dick Chaney's advisors, of lying to the Special Prosecutor's investigators after many interviews.

Of course, it turned out, the actual leaker was Richard Armitage, an aide to State Dept. Secretary Colin Powell, both opponents of the President's war policies.  Richard Armitage was not charged with anything, since he apparently admitted to the charge early in the investigation, which kept going nonetheless. "Outing" Valerie Plame was not, apparently, actually an indictable offense after all.

I'm awaiting the leftest outrage over this outing, and the appointment of a Special Prosecutor to investigate whether this incident was, as is being reported, a dirty deed or a mere case of incompetence.