Democrat Staffer Suspended in Investigation of NIE Leak

Don't count on this being big news in the mainstream media, but the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee has suspended a Democratic staffer to the Committee due to the "coincidence" of this staffer having requested information that was later leaked to the New York Times.

That information, one sentence from the National Intelligence Estimate, was the basis for this political attack story (now safely hidden behind the Times Select wall) against the Bush administration. Here are a few things that were left out of the leak, making it clear that the leak was a partisan attack.

From the Los Angeles Times:

WASHINGTON -- House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra has suspended a Democratic staff member because of concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press Thursday night, Rep. Ray LaHood, R-Ill., a committee member, said that an unidentified staffer requested the document from National Intelligence Director John Negroponte three days before the Sept. 23 story about its conclusions.

The staffer received the National Intelligence Estimate on global terror trends on Sept. 21.

"I have no credible information to say any classified information was leaked from the committee's minority staff, but the implications of such would be dramatic," LaHood wrote Hoekstra, R-Mich., late last month. "This may, in fact, be only coincidence, and simply 'look bad.' But coincidence, in this town, is rare."

Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, their staffers, and the New York Times aren't talking.