Larry, as best you can tell, where is the opposition to the the Wilsons and CIA originating? ... from the White House? ... from the VPs office? ... from the State Department? ... from the Pentagon? ... or somewhere else? It seems we have several of our top government entities in a turf war, and, if so, that's scary.

"At Least I Wasn't Indicted."

That goes well with the Republican's "We're Not As Bad As Hitler" defense of torture.

The mischaracterizations are in full bloom.  Larry you have been doing yeoman's work getting the truth told.  I know that there is career imperilment involved, but I just wish more people from the Agency would weigh in on this.  I agree that most of the MSM outlets are just taking the outrageous smears at face value.  Best case scenario is they are ignorant and allowing themselves to be the liars soapboxes and some are complicit with the people who are doing the smearing...it is infuriating.

Thanks, Mr. Johnson. I especially like the reference to the Chambers-Hiss spy case. My suspicion is that Judith Miller will prove to be the Alger Hiss of the 21st century. (Mind you, this is pure speculation.) Though a propagandist rather than a government official, she has proven to be an extremely powerful, ideologically motivated, under-the-radar operative. She may never have to testify, and if she does she'll lie to her grave just like Hiss did. Meanwhile, just as Hiss was able to pose as a proto-martyr to McCarthyism, and a victim of Orwellian persecution, so Miller, Sulzberger, and the New York Times will forever portray themselves as victims and defenders of the first amendment. In the post-Watergate age, we are not all that surprised when politicians behave like criminals, but it would be a bit of a shocker if a journalist of the highest rank turns out to be not only a propagandist but a smear-agent who deliberately sought to patch up the WMD fraud.

Mr. Johnson,
I am feeling very honored to be able to read your thoughts on this matter first hand. I really appreciate your taking the time and effort to post here, and I thank Josh Marshall for inviting you. You have elevated this blog magazine beyond anything I have read anywhere on the internet. Thank you.

Steve,
They don't need to resort to those sorts of tactics.  Several Blogs have noted the real purpose behind Sen. Roberts comittee is likely to grant immunity ala Ollie North.
All they need to do is have everyone who is indictable testify in exchange for immunity and pull the rug out from under Fitzgerald.

You wrote ... "All they need to do is have everyone who is indictable testify in exchange for immunity and pull the rug out from under Fitzgerald."

In this case, Joe and Valerie Wilson can still go to court in civil proceedings, right?

Does anyone on the right think critically about what they're writing , or is their self-editing always limited to insuring that the facts are supported by their conclusions?

Podhoretz uses the bogus premise that all leaking of classified material rises to the same level of infamy, not because he supposes it to be true, but because by doing so he can equate, and so diminish, the betrayal of the Brewster-Jennings operation and Ms. Wilson's cover to the kind of leaking that finds its way into the media in the course of election campaigns, or inter-agency policy disputes. Like, for example, the (ultimately bogus) classified intelligence supplied by Chalabi's defectors, stovepiped to policy makers, and leaked to the media for public consumption throughout the run-up to the war, while the Agency analysis debunking it remained classified and out of the discussion.

Funny how a pattern emerges.

Larry,

I just saw over on DCMediagirl that the Freeper loons are now threatening your life. Lovely. Thanks for standing up to these very ugly people.

Of course it wouldn't, because it can't make an energy analyst a partner, and a good energy analyst could get paid more working for an energy consulting firm.

I think the formula the right's propagandists follow is simply to play the odds that if you repeat a lie often enough, even though many will see it as a lie, many others will eventually accept it as truth. No matter how outrageous their lies are, they always get more people to believe them, and that's all they care about.

The fact that law firms are generally organized as partnerships and that lawyers can't form partnerships with non-lawyers makes it very uncommon for law firms to hire other professionals.

You've just proved that you're spinning.  A law firm is a business.  A business can hire any kind of employee it wants.  Do you think those lawyers do their own typing?  Or did I miss the development where all the secretaries became partners? 

If you want a specific example of an energy analyst on a law firm payroll, there's Google.   If I did it for you, you'd just make some other objection.  But it took me two seconds to find this profile of an energy analyst having worked for a LLP, which is exactly what most law firms are:

Dr. Lynne Kiesling, Senior Fellow
Reason Public Policy Institute
lkiesling@reason.org
Dr. Lynne Kiesling is a Senior Fellow at Reason Public Policy Institute. Dr. Kiesling's research focuses on regulation and technological change, and other issues in regulation and privatization.
In particular, Dr. Kiesling is increasingly called upon to offer commentary and analysis of the ongoing electricity crisis in the Western United States and gas price fluctuations in the Midwest and nationwide. She has also worked as an international economic consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.