Regarding “who leaked and why now”…
The current administration knew the investigation was ongoing and would have some level of detail – who, why, when at least. It is, after all, their job. JD is an executive department.
There are two possibilities regarding the Kerry team:
- they really were in the dark until recently (I don’t buy this since according to Clinton “everybody knew about this” and is backed up by the quick reaction of Clintonistas coming out of the woodwork to stand by their man Sandy. It just seems to me it would be the sort of thing that would have been the subject of whispering rumors among those “in the know”, it’s been going of for months, after all. Nothing like this remains a long term and complete secret. If, in fact, Kerry didn’t know then he really needs to be questioning how much support he has from the DNC and any Dem should be shaking their head and wondering what their party is doing here. So I tend toward believing
- the Kerry Camp knew the basic outlines of the thing and just recently realized the lid might blow off at any moment
- the Clintonistas claim they knew.
- any number of insiders for who knows what reason. Maybe a Little Dog unwilling to take the fall while a Big Dog sleeps soundly, maybe a perfectly honorable whistle-blower sort, maybe FBI trying to damage NSC, who the heck can say so that’s not much fun to play with.
That leaves us with Kerryites, Clintonistas, Bushies.
Bushies would want this card for as late in the campaign as possible. They’d want Kerry to go merrily along with Berger as an adviser – get more foot in the trap before springing it, so to speak. But if they had good reason to believe either the Kerryites or Clintonistas were going to poke a stike into the thing and trip it for the purpose of damage control, then springing it at least partially on their terms makes sense.
As someone above pointed out, any leak from Kerryites would have been for damage control purposes and they would preferred Friday for news cycle reasons unless, of course, they figured doing it that way would point to openly to themselves and damage their ability to claim, “we didn’t know” (man, it must really hurt to have that as one’s only response to this). But this seems too devious and risky by half, so it doesn’t seem likely.
If the Clintonistas are as diabolical as I give them credit for, springing this “not too soon but not too late” makes reasonable sense. Don’t want it lost ’cause then it might not damage Kerry enough but don’t want it too close to election ’cause then it might damage the whole party too much. So, let it rip, send out the usual suspects to stand up for Sandy to let him know “your family will be taken care of”, trust us, but it had to be this way and let it run for a week and then have something handy to pour on troubled waters at the convention or immediately after.
I’m writing off the Kerryites. Those dopes are giving knuckleheads a bad name. I put my wager on the Clintonistas even though its only a steenking $2 bet and there’s no way to figure out if I win or lose or get paid off anyway.
