10 CIA veterans demand Congressional inquiry on Plame

Ten retired CIA officers, including two former station chiefs, have petitioned Congress to start its own investigation of the Valerie Plame affair, and Rep. Rush Holt of New Jersey has filed a resolution of inquiry, according to a story by Douglas Jehl in Thursday’s New York Times.

It’s hard to tell from the outside whether this is good news or bad news. Do the ex-CIA folks know something you and I don’t about how the DoJ investigation is now going? If so, that sounds bad. But if all it means is that they’re angry, and think that their anger is sufficiently widely shared among their fellow CIA alumni to make speaking out in this way appropriate, that improves the chances that our President will achieve his stated objective of “getting to the bottom of this.”

I wonder what the people who have been describing the scandal as “bogus” and as a partisan stunt by Democrats think now?

Thanks to a reader for spotting this story the minute it hit the web.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com