aaron walled a link to this article on The Costs of Dissent. It appears that “un-named” White House staffers have been dealing out their own form of retribution on people who criticize the President:
A week after the July 6 publication of a New York Times commentary in which former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson 4th questioned the administration’s dubious intelligence on Iraq, conservative columnist Robert Novak wrote a piece naming Wilson’s wife and identifying her as a CIA operative. He said “two senior administration officials” volunteered the information, which cast aspersions on Wilson’s competence and expertise and may have put his wife’s contacts in jeopardy.
As aaron said, something like that smacks of TREASON
Excellent quote at the end:
In the spring of 1918, with American troops overseas fighting in World War I, former President Theodore Roosevelt penned a commentary for the Kansas City Star about President Woodrow Wilson’s attempts to stifle dissent.
“The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants,” Roosevelt wrote. “It is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts. . . . To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
It not only smacks of treason but it’s a felony offense (treason is much harder to prove) as it’s illegal to name any undercover agent who works for US agencies.
According to this guy, “Revealing the identity of a covert CIA officer appears to be in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, codified as 50 U.S.C., Section 421 (*)”. And you can read about the legalese here.