it's one thing to be loyal to your employer,

say he/she was the vice president of the united states of america. it's a whole other thing to be treasonous and let's say let leak the name of a covert cia operative who was married to the author of a news story or two critical of your boss and their political party.


'LA Times': Libby Monitored Newspapers For Info On Wilson
By E&P Staff Published: October 21, 2005 5:55 PM ET
NEW YORK
While President Bush is famous for not reading newspapers, a story in Friday's Los Angeles Times reveals that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, keeps a close eye on all forms of media.The revelations, coming in a story written by staff writers Peter Wallsten and Tom Hamburger, show that Libby went to great lengths to monitor news accounts of Joseph Wilson, one of the Bush administration's fiercest critics.Libby, along with White House special advisor Karl Rove, is currently at the center of a federal investigation into whether Bush administration officials illegally leaked the name of Wilson's wife, a covert CIA operative, to newspaper columnist Bob Novak.Wallsten and Hamburger write, "new interviews and documents obtained by The Times provide a more detailed view of the depth and duration of Libby's interest in Wilson. They also show that the vice president's office closely monitored news coverage."On one occasion, the office prohibited a reporter from traveling with Cheney aboard Air Force Two, because the vice president's daughter said Cheney was unhappy with that newspaper's coverage."Libby 'would see something had appeared in the newspaper or on television and wanted to use the White House operation to counter it,' one former official said."Wallsten and Hamburger write that Libby became consumed with what he felt were Wilson's distortions and unfair attacks on Cheney.After Wilson published a book critical of the administration and its case for war in Iraq, Libby put together a packet of press clips and television transcripts of Wilson's statements.The reporters say that "when it came to monitoring media coverage of Wilson and other issues affecting the vice president's reputation, Libby was meticulous. Staffers were instructed to use Nexis and Google to watch even the most obscure publications."They note that one of the paper's cited in Libby's notes is the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa student newspaper, which quoted Wilson as calling Cheney "a lying son of a bitch."The report in the Los Angeles Times concludes with an exchange between Liz Cheney, the vice president's daughter and an advisor to the Bush/Cheney reelection campaign, and a reporter from The New York Times...........