Wednesday, October 26, 2005

While we're waiting
Here's some context. From Gary Hart (via AmericaBlog)
The federal statute making it a criminal penalty to knowingly divulge the identity of anyone working undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency was not enacted in a vacuum. In the early 1970s, in part as a result of the radicalization of individuals and groups over the Vietnam War, a former CIA employee named Philip Agee wrote a book revealing the identities of several dozen CIA employees, many under deep cover and some including agency station chiefs in foreign capitals....

Richard Welch, a brilliant Harvard-educated classicist, had been stationed in Greece as CIA station chief only a few months before he was murdered, by a radical Greek terrorist organization called the 17th of November, in the doorway of his house in Athens on Dec. 23, 1975. Had Agee not divulged his name, there is every reason to believe that Welch would be alive today after decades of loyal service to his country....
And investigating serious crimes like that one will lose all hope of effectiveness if we ever decide to take lightly the crime of perjury or obstruction of justice in their pursuit. That Republicans are now attempting to deflect with the excuse that those are secondary/unimportant crimes places in jeopardy all future criminal investigations of such magnitude.

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