Tuesday’s New York Times provided two more entries to the paper’s already-bulging “Name that Party” file, wherein the paper leaves off the party affiliation of Democrats who find themselves in legal or ethical trouble, yet readily names controversial Republicans.
First, a front-page story from legal reporter Charlie Savage on the twisty case of former CIA officer John Kiriakou, “Ex-CIA Officer Charged in Information Leak.”
Kiriakou is accused, among other things, of leaking information to intelligence reporter Scott Shane who in 2008 wrote a controversial story in which he identified by name a CIA agent who helped interrogate Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah.
As NBC’s Michael Isikoff reported, “John Kiriakou, who between 2009 and last year worked as an investigator for Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was charged by a federal grand jury with one count of violating the Intelligence Agencies Protection Act, two counts of violating the Espionage Act and one count of lying to the CIA about his actions in an effort to convince the agency to let him publish a book, ‘The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror.’”
But Savage left out the Kerry connection entirely.
Also on Tuesday, Dan Frosch reported from Albuquerque on new allegations swirling around Bill Richardson, former Democratic governor of New Mexico: “Insiders Led New Mexico Investments, Suit Claims.” Not a single mention in the 600-word story of the party affiliation of the scandal’s focus, although Richardson is not only a Democrat but a prominent one, who ran for president in 2008. Obama picked him to serve as Commerce Secretary before he was undone by swirling ethical controversies. The latest allegations involve the state’s finances:
A former financial adviser for the State of New Mexico told his partners at a secretly taped meeting that close associates to Bill Richardson, then the governor, controlled where they would invest the state’s money, according to a lawsuit.
Portions of the 2006 meeting of Aldus Equity, which helped guide hundreds of millions of New Mexico investment dollars during Mr. Richardson’s tenure, were played Monday at a news conference here by the lawyer for a former state investment officer turned whistleblower.
