Leaks a way of life in the capital

WASHINGTON -- What would this city be without leaks? What would life be like inside the Beltway without the drama, intrigue and mystery generated by over-the-transom documents, whispers and the casual but calculated unauthorized release of information, even disinformation?
It would be pretty darn dull, that's for certain.
Leaks are the life's blood of this community. They always have been. And despite every effort to control them, even with the threat of indictment and prosecution, they always will be. The current leak scandal around the disclosure of a CIA operative's identity is just another of those periodic occurrences when the drip of information becomes a gusher through attempted cover-ups, resulting in the kind of ancillary indictments handed down against "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief aide.
If the charges are proven, Libby would be convicted of obstructing an inquiry.
The origin of Watergate began with efforts to discover a leak, and the uncovering and ultimate conclusion of that constitutional crisis was brought about by leaks.
'Plumbers'
The infamous "plumbers" were formed in the earliest days of the Nixon White House to plug a leak to one of the town's most consistent recipients of such information, columnist Jack Anderson, who along with his senior partner, Drew Pearson, had built a huge following over a great many years by sharing "tightly held" material with the public, no matter how sensitive.
In the case that began the process of bringing down a presidency, Anderson had revealed policy to which only Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, and perhaps one or two others were privy. That disclosure sent huge tremors through a White House already beginning to show signs of rampant paranoia. The group formed to investigate the leak was to discover a web of intrigue involving the Pentagon and its agents serving on the National Security Council that was frightening in its implications.
The plumbers never really disbanded, and several members initiated an operation involving the leak of the Pentagon Papers and later helped conduct the Watergate break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters. In the end it was leaks from official sources in the FBI and the CIA that broke the cover-up and forced Nixon's resignation.
With both the Pentagon Papers and Watergate cases, those providing the leaks were hailed as national heroes albeit anonymous ones. Could they have been severely disciplined, perhaps even prosecuted, for keeping the press supplied with inside information? Probably. But no one was in the mood for that. Besides, in those days reporters assiduously protected their sources without much fear of overt prosecutorial persuasion, like jail, which was used in the current case.
The arcane law to protect covert CIA operatives was adopted after a series of revelations by a former agent, and has been prosecuted only once. It now looks as though it will not be prosecuted this time. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald seemed to establish that quickly and expanded his inquiry to cover the charges he ultimately brought that Libby lied about from where he first heard the information he leaked.
Political action s
It was amusing to hear Fitzgerald naively disavow any political consideration in this affair. To every action there is a reaction, and nowhere in the world is that truer than in this city where every action is political. Ambassador Joseph Wilson's reporting that there was nothing to administration claims that Iraq was in the nuclear-weapons business was political in its implications and was bound to provoke a White House backlash. That is not terribly surprising when the stakes were so high. The Iraq invasion, after all, was based on that allegation.
Wilson was vulnerable. He is a bit of a loose cannon and self-promoter who also has been more than a little disingenuous at times. But it was imprudently flirting with illegality to disclose his wife's position even if Libby and his boss were convinced the CIA was trying to get itself off the hook for supplying the White House with bad information.
X Dan K. Thomasson is former editor of the Scripps Howard News Service.