July 12, 2005

Mr. FRANK of Massachusetts. Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago, the right wing hit man, who is now the deputy chief of staff in the White House made an outrageously, consciously dishonest set of attacks on Members of this body by arguing that liberals had ignored the terrible events of September 11, despite the fact that we virtually unanimously voted to go to war in Afghanistan, and voted for a homeland security department, in fact advocated it over the administration's objections.

We now have learned that the response of this hit man was to leak the name of a CIA agent, probably in violation of the law, certainly in violation of the rules that ought to be in place. And now we have this defense, the lawyer having previously denied that he did it, now says, well, it was not really a problem because he only said it was Joe Wilson's wife, he did not mention her name.

Now, perhaps the President's hit man maybe got him confused with one of his Saudi prince friends that thought that Mr. Wilson was a polygamist and had several wives and therefore identifying his wife would have thrown people off the track.

But I do not think that is really acceptable in a court of law. And as to the argument that by not naming her no one knew who he meant, does anyone doubt that the right wing hit man I am talking about, whose name I have not previously mentioned, is Karl Rove.