Pin the tail on the donkey ... thank my brother, Richard from Connecticut, for this posting!

Who would have guessed ... it's the Pentagon Papers all over again. Another throwback to the War in Vietnam ... first TET and how, it's Daniel Ellsberg all over again ...


Daniel Ellsberg, leader of "The Truth-Telling Project" which encourages Government personnel to break their oaths and leak intelligence data to whomever ... but particularly, the New York Times! Daniel Ellsberg is no hero, no matter how awful the Vietnam War might have been!

When I first received the email from Richard suggesting that there might be a big story in the accusation(s) by Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich), relating to a Democratic staff member being the one who allegedly leaked the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) to the New York Times, I thought ... what's new here ....?

Well, I spent the better part of the afternoon researching the affair and wham, bang, bam! Richard was right again! The staff member's name appears to be Larry Hanauer who is/was a member of the staff of a Democrat on the Committee, Representative Jane Harmon (D-Calif). But, in getting to Hanauer's name, I found that he was only one of several persons who's jobs had been shuffled by the neocons (in particular, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, supernumerary neocons in the Pentagon at the time) early in GWB's presidency. In fact, it was another staffer so disposed, Karen Kwiathowski, who "dropped" his name into the whole sordid "NIE Leak Affair."

And what organization does Karen Kwiathowski belong to? You got it ... "The Truth-telling Project"!! Connection made! Daniel Ellsberg strikes again! Tail painfully pinned!

Whether Representative Jane Harmon (left) was part of the actual leaking of classified information is strictly speculative, but she is surely a likely candidate for the person to have asked Larry Hanauer to do something both illegal and potentially dangerous to the American cause (ill-defined though it might be!) in Iraq.

And just as the Pentagon Papers may very well have been one of the final nails in the coffin of what was called the "Vietnam War," the 16-agency NIE (portions of which have since been declassified by political necessity by President Bush), by stating that Bush's War in Iraq actually increased rather than decreased the worldwide terror threat, might be just such a "nail" today.

But leaking classified information is WRONG! And whether the final result was good, bad or something in-between, makes no difference ... the personnel who serve us take oaths ... serious oaths ... and these persons cannot be "Lone Rangers" without facing the consequences. On this matter, the Republicans have every reason to demand that we dig out the truth. Representative Hoekstra was originally quite correct in his concern about the leak, but has suddenly become somewhat muted on this matter, thanks to the sky-rocketing casualties and the insertion of the "Baker committee" formed (essentially) by Bush 41 to help Bush 43 oversee the whole Iraq mess. But he (Hoekstra) should conduct his investigation; it's a part of his job!

Ellsberg "beat the rap" thanks to Richard Nixon having burglarized Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office to get incriminating evidence against Ellsberg, and GWB has possibly allowed Larry Hanauer (if he's the leaker) to escape the noose (more or less) though the declassification of the NIE.

Funny how history repeats itself ... over and over again! US troops mistakenly engaged against a foreign enemy whom we do not understand, Vietnam had its Robert McNamara, Iraq has its Donald Rumsfeld, we experienced TET in Vietnam, we are experiencing the Ramadan offensive in Iraq, the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the New York Times in 1969, the NIE was leaked to the New York Times in 2006 (Ellsberg involved in both), we pondered "Deep Throat" in the early 1970s, we ponder State of Denial in 2006 (Bob Woodward involved in both), ... what next?

Thank you, Richard, for getting me to "git going" on this to connect the dots! They certainly appear to connect ... and this time, it looks like it was the Democrats who are to blame for what I call "dirty politics." Two "wrongs" do not make a "right"!! There simply had to have been a better way to bring the "truth" of the National Intelligence Estimate to the American people without leaking classified information to the New York Times.

I feel badly that the tail was pinned on the Democrat's mascot, but then, that's the name of the game, isn't it?