Oops! White House outs CIA operative by giving name to media

The last famous outing of a CIA operative was spun into a scandal by the media, until we found out it was really Richard Armitage who outed Valerie Plame, and it had nothing to do with any of the nefarious motives the media and the Democrats tried to ascribe to the Bush Administration.

In fact, it turned out that investigators knew years before they let on that Armitage was responsible, but kept up the facade of a serious investigation for reasons I guess only they can explain. At any rate, that one was a supposed scandal of political retribution that turned out to be much ado about nothing. This time, we know exactly why the CIA's Kabul station chief got outed: Because President Obama decided to make a political appearance there and his team of complete incompetents didn't know enough to leave to spy's name out of the propaganda they gave to the media out of the propaganda they gave to the media:

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The name of the spy agency’s station chief in Kabul was included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in Mr. Obama’s visit with U.S. troops. The White House provided the list that was sent out in a “pool report” by a reporter traveling with the president to thousands of journalists, including foreign media, who receive the reports. The White House reportedly recognized the mistake and issued a second, revised list that omitted the official’s name and title. The Washington Times is withholding the name of the CIA officer; it’s not clear whether the exposure will require the person to leave his post.

We've been pretty heavy lately on the theme of the Obama Administration's basic incompetence in the realm of governance, and Obama's utter ineptness as a manager. This is clearly part of that trend, but in this case I think it points us to an important subset of the larger problem. Obama's team is well-schooled in the staging of political events, and clearly that's what it is when Obama shows up for a surprise appearance in Kabul on Memorial Day. When you do one of these things, certain things are part of the template, and one of those is to list dignitaries and others of significance in attendance or otherwise connected to the event. For a seasoned military or intelligence person, it would be fairly obvious that you don't list the name of the CIA section chief. For a political person, especially one of the left-wing variety, it may not be. And as for the White House press people who approve the release of such information, they either don't know enough to let something like this true, or they're so sloppy in their jobs that they can't be bothered to catch it, or they just don't care. Is this a "scandal" in the traditional Washington sense, which is that someone lied, stole or used a word that offended an Officially Aggrieved Group? No. It's not. But you might argue that the day-to-day incompetence of the Obama Administration, as exemplified by this incident, deserves to be treated as every bit as big a news story as those are. It's certainly a problem the nation is paying a much bigger price for than whatever they're usually prattling on about.