http://online.wsj.com/article/SB114601699476036065.html?mod=opinion_main_review_and_outlooks

Even as Patrick Fitzgerald questions Rove again on his role in Plame-gate, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial today throws all the “leaks” involving the CIA into the same barrel.

The discovery, both, of the NSA spying program, most assuredly unconstitutional, and the secret US torture prisons are very, very different than the outing of a undercover CIA operative.

The US government’s participation in domestic, warrantless spying, and in the rendition of prisoners to “black sites” for interrogation, is as anti-American as it gets. The “leaking” of these programs is akin to a whistleblower who has seen wrongdoing occurring and acted to make sure Americans were made aware that these programs existed so that they could be examined.

Purposefully identifying a covert CIA agent’s identity, under any circumstances, is an act of treason and needs to be punished as such. To out a spy in order to perpetuate a lie used to justify America’s illegal war in Iraq, makes it that much more despicable.

The reasons for the three disclosures do make a difference and they are why the Washington Post and New York Times’ writers were awarded Pulitzer Prizes and Robert Novak was not.