'Plame Platoon' is AWOL: Max Boot

In his weekly column in the LA Times, Max Boot raises the question of media inconsistency in reporting leaks of National Security information, like the identity of a CIA agent and the existence of secret intelligence programs to thwart terrorists.

although it's treasonous for pro-Bush partisans to spill secrets that might embarrass an administration critic, it's a public service for anti-Bush partisans to spill secrets that might embarrass the administration. The determination of which secrets are OK to reveal is, of course, to be made not by officials charged with protecting our nation but by journalists charged with selling newspapers.

Boot points out that the same law that stopped pre-9/11 FBI agents in obtaining a warrant to search Zacarias Moussaoui's laptop, one of the Al Qaeda plotters and a failure in intelligence gathering that the 9/11 Commission explicitly singled out, is the same "law that Bush is now accused of circumventing" when he authorized wiretaps without warrants on international communications.