senior members of the White House communications and political operations discussed how the administration should respond, administration sources tell CNN.I couldn't help but note the repeated insistence on the word "sanctioned." There was no "sanctioned" effort. Not that there was no effort, but no "sanctioned" effort.
But these sources have characterized the conversations as routine - comparable to daily discussions about how to respond to administration critics in Congress or the political arena, and they have insisted there was no White House-sanctioned plan to leak the identity of Wilson's wife as retaliation for his criticism.
The White House has denied any sanctioned effort to reveal that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative, and also has said that Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby and top Bush political operative Karl Rove have individually told senior White House officials they had no role in the leak.
I suspect that the White House is laying the groundwork for throwing some perhaps yet to be determined low-level staffers to the wolves, some "rogue elements" or "bad apples" who are to blame. No, wait, that's not right, these are still White House staffers, they'd think, not grunts in Iraq, and that would hit a little too close to home. "Misguided individuals" with "understandable but misguided zeal" to "protect the president" from "partisan attacks." That's more like it.
Meanwhile, Shrub and the Shrubberies can posture grandly about how they would never "sanction" such a thing.
Something else I couldn't help but do was picture Marlon Brando as Don Corleone, stroking his chin after being told at a meeting of his capos that "this Wilson guy" had become a "problem," and saying that he couldn't "sanction" a hit on Wilson's family.
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