There is no doubt (to use the immoral words of the Big Dick himself) that Lott has created an hilarious spectacle by claiming that a GOP Senator or staffer leaked the "black sites" story to the Post. And I do hope that Lott is correct. But I'm getting a distinctly fishy whiff from Lott's statements.
Explanation comes after the flip. (Cross-posted on http://thegingerman.blogspot.com)
First of all, taking Lott's statements at face value (perilous, I know), he is basing his belief in the GOP origin of the leak on the coincidence of the article's coming out the day after the black sites were discussed at a GOP-Senator-and-Cheney luncheon putsch as well as the similarities between what was related in the meeting and what Dana Priest reported in the Post. The timing is, to be sure, a might big co-ink-ee-dink. But I have a number of problems with the Lott scenario all the same:
The Post article simply does not look like something that was dashed off in less than one day on the basis of a leak from a Senator or hill staffer. To the contrary, looking first just at the substance of the thing, it appears to be a throughly researched piece, with a great deal of background and context woven into it, not simply a wad of Capitol Hill dish. Moreover, even allowing for some of the, shall we say, vagaries of how reporters describe anonymous sources, the piece is sourced variously to: "U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement"; "current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents"; "officials familiar with the program"; "current and former and U.S. and foreign government and intelligence officials"; "four current and former officials"; and, more specifically, in some instances to "a former senior intelligence officer who worked in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center"; "another former senior CIA official"; and "a senior CIA officer." If we were dealing with Judith Miller rather than Dana Priest, I might be less credulous, but I'd say it is very safe to say that Priest has at least four sources, probably more -- at a minimum, two distinct former CIA officials (part of the Goss purge, no doubt), one current CIA official (that's one brave hombre), one or more current or former State officials. I would like to think that there's somebody at Justice with a conscience and a set of cojones as well.
I listened to Dana Priest's interview on the Diane Rehm show last week, and in it Priest convincingly and credibly painted a picture of a story that has been long in the making and that is based on disclosures from a variety of long-cultivated sources. She was rather cagey when asked why those sources suddenly decided to talk about the black sites; her response was that it was due to the dogged pursuit of the information (or words to that effect), which is certainly tantalizing. But I was convinced -- especially having read the article -- of her veracity on the matter of the article's development.
None of this, of course, excludes the possibility that one of Priest's sources was a GOP Senator or Hill staffer. Indeed, some of the information reported smells like it might have come from the Hill (e.g., "[t]he CIA and the White House . . . have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions [about the treatment of CIA-held prisoners] in open testimony" or "[m]ost of the facilities were built and are maintained with congressionally appropriated funds, but the White House has refused to allow the CIA to brief anyone except the House and Senate intelligence committees' chairmen and vice chairmen on the program's generalities"). But what I have briefly cataloged above certainly leads me to doubt that a Hill souce -- if one does exist -- was anything like the prime source for the piece.
It also is possible that Lott knows more than he is letting on and that he actually does have some inside info on a GOP leak. But color me very, very suspicious. Let's hope Lott's not handing the Democrats a boomerang.
*UPDATE*: There is now a great deal of contradictory fog in Left Blogistan on this odd little meta-story -- i.e., the "what Republican Senator or staffer leaked the black sites story to the Post" story.
We currently have TNR's the Plank saying it that McCain did the deed (which would make McCain a big fat liar on CNN, but Atrios has jumped the gun a bit by endorsing this still-unproved theory), and we have the often-correct Laura Rozen saying that she has sources placing it with one of the nine pro-torture Senators.
This fog rather renew my concern about what is really going on here, as I believe for the reasons set out above that Lott's premise is shaky in the extreme.
In light of all this, and in light of the many perceptive comments below, I'll clarify and expand on my cryptic "boomerang" reference. I'm not sure what Lott's motives are here -- whether he's seeking revenge against Rove, derivative revenge against Frist, a recapture of the majority leader spot and/or shot as a presidential candidate in '08, or whether it was just an enormous brain-fart. It could be one, several or all of these. I certainly dont' know and the diary is mainly about stimulating reasoned thought about this very subject. But what is more important is to think about longer-term consequences, irrespective of Lott's motives here. If we end up with a bicameral investigation (a big, big deal) -- and if I'm right that the story did *not* come from a GOP Senator or staffer but indeed, as the story itself suggests, came from a host of whistleblowers in different agencies -- then life might well get very uncomfortable to say the least for those whistleblowers. These folks are of course the Daniel Ellsberg types we want to encourage. So by all means let us enjoy the spectacle of finger-pointing among Republicans right now, but don't lose sight of the idea that there may well be some brave souls who may well pay dearly for their disclosures.