Sagepaper

The short answer is I think he is lying now. I think he did intend to leak the identity to the press, regardless of who actually called a reporter first. Often, intent defines a crime, and I think he had criminal intent as well as criminal action.

If he had already heard that Valerie Plame had been outed by the media, why didn't he refer to her by name? If it were--in his mind--no secret, why be round-about with it? Why talk about "Wilson's wife?"

There is, perhaps, a legitimate answer to that question, but it would raise another just as serious. People who deal with sensitive material are discouraged from discussing even public-domain knowledge. Not everyone is Tom Clancey. Most people don't know how to obtain sensitive information, so a comment at a party about something you know is not classified could still be of use to a spy or enemy.

Even the lowliest enlisted man with no special clearance knows, "Loose lips sink ships."

To protect our open society, our people who are cleared to work with classified information are taught to keep their mouths shut, even if they think what they would say would be harmless. Besides, it would be too easy for someone to play a game with you to see which questions you would answer, and which questions you would be coy about. That alone is information.

Perhaps he thought he should be oblique, just out of a habit of protecting information. But if he felt uneasy about speaking on the topic, he should have stonewalled and terminated the conversation. If he has been trained in the handling of sensitive material (and I can't imagine he has not been, at his level) he must surely have known he was in dangerous waters, approaching the falls of a criminal disclosure.

If the information were already in the media, let the people read it for themselves. They do not need his input. Simply offering a verification of classified material is an unauthorized release of information. (Well, let's hope it was unauthorized.)

I do not believe that any portion of his conversations with the press were accidental slips. I think he knew what he was doing, or was criminally negligent for not knowing. He decided to disclose material, and did not appear to have believed it was already in the media. If he did believe it was in the media, his conscience was sending him a clear signal that he was straying considerably from the straight-and-narrow.