Josh Marshall puts another log on the circumstantial fire:

I’ve told you many times how Sen. Pat Roberts (R) of Kansas, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is a shame to the office, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the White House political operation if there ever was one.

…

Note that there are no congressional investigations into the origin of the Niger forgeries, the outing of Valerie Plame, and countless other scandals and mysteries large and small. (Remember, after the 2004 election, Roberts announced that there’s now not enough time for the investigation into possible political manipulation of Iraqi WMD intel, which he promised prior to the election.)

But now there will be congressional hearings into whether the CIA does a good enough job at protecting the ‘cover’ of its agents in its Directorate of Operations.

This is pretty odd. It’s interesting that we’re having Congressional hearings about the question of what “having cover” means, especially since the CIA itself was the one that asked the Justice Department to investigate this. Clearly, they think that something was amiss here. From the Times article linked above:

But agency officials apparently believe that the law does apply to Ms. Wilson, possibly because she took overseas business trips in the five years before 2003. The C.I.A. sought an investigation, and the Justice Department and Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, concurred in choosing to pursue the case.

A number of Ms. Wilson’s former colleagues have spoken out in recent days, saying the exposure of her cover was a serious offense.

What makes me curious, though, is that we’re now going to have a congressional hearing into the CIA’s process of granting cover to their covert agents. I’ll be interested to see whether these hearings are open or closed to the press and public, as well as how much Valerie Plame/Wilson’s name comes up. I would think that the CIA’s practices regarding cover aren’t something we want to make too public. Granted, sophisticated foreign intelligence agencies probably know all this stuff… but do small terrorist groups? I would rather not have to worry about recruiting more informants overseas because it’s easier to identify agents…

So, if the hearings end up on CNN live, well, I’ll be looking for other signs that it’s a show to deflect attention from the White House…