Now that the realization is finally sinking in that the technicalities of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act probably won't keep the members of the White House Iraq group who "outed" Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA officer from going to prison under the Espionage Act, the next round of questions can begin.
Mickey Kaus and Jack Shafer at Slate are concerned that if the Espionage Act were enforced as written it could make it harder to reveal wrongdoing or bad policy. That's a valid concern. We don't need an Official Secrets Act. Most classified information wouldn't do any damage to the national interest if it were published on the front page of the Washington Post, and the classification system allows for almost unlimited amounts of self-protection by the administration in power and the staffs of the agencies that handle secrets.
But that's actually one more reason to enforce the Espionage Act to the letter against Libby, Rove, and their co-conspirators. The best way to get rid of a bad law is to enforce it to the hilt against people with powerful friends. And even the most narrowly-drafted bill against giving away real state secrets, whose revelation would do real damage to the national security, would cover the conduct in this case. They did the crime; now let them do the time.
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