It is now fashionable among columnists supporting the Bush administration,
New York Times journalist Judith Miller, Robert Novak and the increasing network
of senior administration officials implicated in the Valerie Plame Wilson outing
to say, "So what? Where's the crime?"

The federal statute making it a criminal penalty to knowingly divulge
the identity of anyone working undercover for the Central Intelligence Agency
was not enacted in a vacuum. In the early 1970s, in part as a result of the
radicalization of individuals and groups over the Vietnam War, a former CIA
employee named Philip Agee wrote a book revealing the identities of several
dozen CIA employees, many under deep cover and some including agency station
chiefs in foreign capitals.

Richard Welch, a brilliant Harvard-educated classicist, had been stationed
in Greece as CIA station chief only a few months before he was murdered, by a
radical Greek terrorist organization called the 17th of November, in the doorway
of his house in Athens on Dec. 23, 1975. Had Agee not divulged his name, there
is every reason to believe that Welch would be alive today after decades of
loyal service to his country.

Largely as a result of Agee's perfidy and Welch's unnecessary death, the
Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) of 1982 was enacted, making it a
felony to knowingly divulge the identity of a covert CIA operative. It carries
penalties of 10 years in prison and a $50,000 fine for each offense. There are
those who dismiss the crime by saying, "Oh, Wilson only had a desk job." That is
not a defense under this felony statute. It is for the CIA, not Karl Rove or
Robert Novak, to determine who requires identity protection and who does not.

I served on the first Senate Intelligence Oversight Committee in the late
1970s and have continued to be a strong believer in and supporter of the CIA. I
deplore those who want to diminish it, politicize it, or require it to produce
bogus intelligence it would not otherwise produce simply to fit some
preconceived political or ideological agenda. In almost every case where the CIA
has malfunctioned, it did so under pressure from one political administration or
another....

There is one final irony to this story. On Christmas Eve in 1975, I got a
call at my home from the director of the CIA, William Colby. He asked if I would
intervene with the White House to obtain presidential approval to have Welch
buried at Arlington National Cemetery, a hero fallen in service to his country.
I quickly called President Ford's chief of staff on Colby's behalf and made the
request. Within two hours, the president had agreed to sign the order permitting
Welch to be buried at Arlington.

The chief of staff's name was Richard Cheney.