This is far more serious than some are intimating. In America you do not sic the CIa on your political opponents. And worse, the CIA should know not to agree to do it. While thhe NYT report says CIA officials caught a document that targeted the blogger, and deleted the reference, the damage and crime was done: the White House had already asked CIA to spy on an American, and CIA did it. It's not enough to delete tbe offending information. This is a crime. And a rather serious one. The President needs to launch a formal investigation now, into what happened here, and whether any other Americans were illegally targeted. I know President Obama isn't a huge fan of accountability. But this goes to the core of who we are. It's beyond wrong.
UPDATE: Juan Cole is calling for a congressional investigation.
I hope that the Senate and House Intelligence Committees will immediately launch an investigation of this clear violation of the law by the Bush White House and by the CIA officials concerned.It's interesting that the CIA is claiming they "search their records" and can't find anything on this. Well duh. Do you really think they were stupid enough to make a record of an obviously illegal request from the White House? And, as noted, the illegal memo on Cole was redacted. Doesn't the CIA have backup servers? This merits an investigation, from Congress and from the Obama White House. This is an incredibly serious allegation.
