His approval rating is slipping. His probable adversary has a long military service record (to contrast with his almost total lack of one). The last thing that George W. Bush needs now is a leaky administration.

Well, he’s got one now. (Or maybe he doesn’t. Damn this 24 hour news cycle!) In any case, it’s probable that as many as six journalists somehow, someway, became aware of the identity of a CIA agent, involved in sensitive undercover work.

Of course, revealing this information is against the law; if what Robert Novak says is true, if the information really did come from the White House, then someone is in deep trouble. Is someone in the White House a traitor?

Yes, yes, yes, it would be crass in the extreme to point this out, but facts are facts – if this information was leaked by someone in the White House, that person could wind up in jail. It’s horrible to think that some hostile terrorist element could find out the identity of one of our covert agents by reading Novak’s column (and if they’re regular readers, then we now know why they hate us).

It would also be terribly crass to point out that this could be political gold for Democrats. While this is getting uncomfortably close to Coulter’s territory, do yourself a favor and don’t shy away from this thought. No one is suggesting that Democrats want Americans to be killed (except for the aforementioned Ms. C), but it’s almost too perfect: a hawkish, Republican administration suddenly seems to have sold us out (even if it was only one operative).

Does this sound familiar? It should. Remember Iran-Contra?

And with that last sentence, the hopeful faces of thousands of Democratic partisans fade to disappointment. With good reason too; the Reagan administration was caught dirty-dealing and got away scot-free.

How did they do it? Was it because he was a popular president whose public wouldn’t tolerate it? No, that didn’t stop the Clinton impeachment. Actually, Reagan’s defense was an elegant one. He simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, I don’t really know what all these guys do. They don’t tell me anything.” In one fell swoop, he used his critic’s accusations of low intelligence against them by claiming that, golly gee – I’m just not smart enough for this stuff. Very shrewd.

Sure, some people got nicked, but either their sentences were commuted, or they were pardoned by Bush the Elder (but only after he knew he had already lost his bid for a second term).

This could still turn out to be nothing. Bob Novak swears that the information wasn’t “leaked”; which is to say, nobody from the White House called him up and told him this information out of the blue. He claims that two White House sources gave him the name of a CIA operative because – well, because he asked. Surely, this is a non-issue; if you can’t trust Bob Novak with classified information, well, who can you trust?

In spite of what the Bush administration might wish, “classified” doesn’t generally carry an exception for friendly newspaper columnists, no matter how much you really, really like them. Why? Because they go blabbing about whatever it was you told them in their newspaper columns.

Perhaps the right wing media is right: Perhaps there is a liberal bias in the media, and Novak is a Manchurian Candidate type plant.

I know, it sounds silly. But if this gets out of hand I guarantee that you’ll hear a similar line of reason from Rush. Remember though, you heard it hear first.

-B. C. Silvia