The CIA officer whose identity was leaked to reporters sued Vice President Dick Cheney, his former top aide and presidential adviser Karl Rove on Thursday, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to destroy her career.

In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court, Valerie Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador, accused Cheney, Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby of participating in a “whispering campaign” to reveal Plame’s CIA identity and punish Wilson for criticizing the Bush administration’s motives in Iraq.

AP story

Former Intel Officials Send Demand Accountability by White House in CIA Leak Case

Letter Sent to Bush Today Requests ‘No Pardons’ Pledge, Suspension of Security Clearance for Officials Who Spoke to Reporters About Valerie Wilson’s Identity and Asks Bush to ‘Restore Honor’ to White House

A group of 16 former intelligence officials sent a letter to George W. Bush earlier today expressing their outrage over “the breach of trust between this Administration and members of the intelligence community that has resulted from the Valerie Plame case.”

The letter is described by former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson as having been signed by a “bipartisan” group “representing a variety of political views.”

“We are agreed on one thing,” said Johnson in an Email receved by The BRAD BLOG this evening, “we are Americans and believe this country is worth defending.”

The missive, sent late this afternoon from the variety of former and retired officials, calls on George W. Bush to keep his “promise to restore honor to the White House,” and demands accountability for any staff members “implicated in the leak of Valerie Wilson’s classified identity.” It goes on to decry the “bond of trust” that was “shattered with the exposure” of Wilson’s identity.

MORE DETAILS and FULL LETTER at Brad Friedman’s Blog

George W. Bush reacted to the indictment of Dick Cheney’s top aide, Lewis Libby, with a startling assertion about the U.S. legal system. “In our system,” the President declared, “each individual is presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial.”

While Bush’s statement was surely intended to remind the public that Libby has yet to be convicted of a crime, it was remarkable to hear Bush endorse the presumption of innocence and due process after all he has done to erode those principles, according to Nat Parry at ConsortiumNews.Com.

Full story

Also check out the Washington Post’s lead story today on the subject:
CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

After watching the press conference of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgeral on CNN, it is clear the obstruction of justice charge is meant to put a clearly guilty party in the spotlight of justice, Vice President Dick Cheney’s cheif of staff I. Scooter Libby, to get to the bottom of the malice behind the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame-Wilson’s name. The investigation is not over.

It is also clear that what this case is about highlights the level of viciousness in U.S. politics these days so drastically divided as it is along partisan lines.

This has been true of Democrats as well as Republicans, including the Friends of Bill Clinton (FOB), according to sources including Jennifer Flowers.

It is true of the Siegelman-Scrushy charges filed this week in Alabama. It is true of e-mail exchanges many of us have been in lately as well.

I’m not sure there’s any hope of this changing anytime soon, but it would be nice to imagine a better world. That, however, will take a different kind of leadership.

George W. Bush and Karl Rove first learned how to practice this form of personal attack politics in George Wallace’s Alabama, as I have reported in the past. None of the national media were interested in exploring this, but it is true.

Now these so-called neocons (meaning I suppose a new kind of conservative, maybe one that is not actually philosophically conservative) have turned the politics of vicious personal attacks into a Machiavellian art form.

The damaging consequences of this are not a partisan issue. This is bad for America, whether you are a liberal Democrat, a conservative Republican, or something in between, such as an independent liberaltarian.

For more information, visit Patrick J. Fitzgerald’s Special Counsel Web site.