CIA Officer’s Identity Leaked to Columnist

Re “Bush Says Leak Probe Is Job for Justice Dept.,” Oct. 1:

It looks like the cover-ups and lies will continue, as long as President Bush and his cronies dodge an independent counsel investigation regarding the leak of the CIA officer’s identity.

I figure if an independent counsel was good enough to entrap President Clinton, then it is good enough to catch the real crooks and liars in the present administration. Allowing them to handle their own investigations is beyond absurd and, once again, they will find a scapegoat to shift the blame off Dubya, Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and the other unethical, pertinent players in this administration.

Jeanne Stacks

Mission Viejo

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After two months of simmering scandal, columnist Robert Novak now claims that he wasn’t “cold-called” by senior administration officials on the relationship of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s wife to the CIA after Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times questioning Bush’s claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa.

A conservative columnist with decades of experience, Novak also wants us to believe that he never knew Wilson’s wife was a covert operative, in spite of CIA requests to not disclose her identity. But the two administration sources had to have known; withholding this information from Novak (if it was withheld) only confirms the deliberate nature of the leak. Novak’s disingenuous attempt to fall on his own sword to protect the Bush administration is pathetic.

Jerry Weil

Seal Beach