This is his test

Larry Johnson and three other former colleagues of Joe Wilson's wife say it all in their Congressional testimony.

There's a reason it's against the law to disclose covert identities, and his name is Richard Welch. And Welch's murder is the reason President George H.W. Bush was one of the architects of the law protecting his former CIA colleagues. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass writes

In the early 1970s, ex-CIA officer Philip Agee wrote a book and worked with newsletters to expose the identities of CIA officers overseas. Bush hated Agee because, he said, one of the hardest things he had to do as CIA director was meet with Tim Welch and tell him that his father had been murdered.

Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, was slain on Dec. 23, 1975, by a leader of the Greek terrorist group November 17. Welch was driving down a street in Athens near his home, on the way back from a Christmas party, when he was blown away by a man with a .45.

"What was I to say to this young man?" the former president said. "Why had his father died? So that a reckless ideologue could sell more books?" While the 1st Amendment, political hypocrisy and irony grab our attention, let's not forget where this started. In 1982, in response to Agee and others, Vice President George H.W. Bush helped push through a law making it illegal to knowingly divulge the identity of covert CIA personnel. President George W. Bush can still talk to his father about the deadly politics of leaks.

The leak of an intelligence agent's identity is the equivalent of deliberate "friendly" fire, and the consequences must be similar.

I wanted to believe George W. Bush when he said he wanted to restore honor and integrity to the White House.

This is his test.