Like Tigerhawk (hat tip - Instapundit) and many other observers, I theorized that the illegal leak of the National Intelligence Estimate summary findings last month came from former or current CIA bureaucrats with an anti-Bush axe to grind. That assumption fit a well-worn pattern.

Now comes word that a Democratic staffer has been suspended over concerns he may have leaked a high-level intelligence assessment to The New York Times last month (hat tip - Allah):

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.

Look who’s not talking now:

An aide to California Rep. Jane Harman, the committee’s top Democrat, did not have an immediate comment Thursday night.

The New York Times did not immediately answer a telephone message seeking comment.

The Dem staffer’s suspension doesn’t preclude the possibility that the Times received the NIE summary findings from more than one source or the possibility that CIA insiders constituted some of those sources. It simply underscores what many of us, including President Bush, assumed immediately (Bush remarks, Sept. 27, 2006, via WSJ:

Now, you know what’s interesting about the NIE — it was a intelligence report done last April. As I understand, the conclusions — the evidence on the conclusions reached was stopped being gathered on February — at the end of February. And here we are, coming down the stretch in an election campaign, and it’s on the front page of your newspapers. Isn’t that interesting? Somebody has taken it upon themselves to leak classified information for political purposes.

Who else is dripping, Democrats?

Will you report the news, New York Times?

Do tell.

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Ed Morrissey:

The NIE was the latest in a series of intelligence leaks that found their way onto the front pages of the NYT. It started last December with the revelation of the warrantless surveillance on international communications, and came up again in the spring with the Swift program exposure…

…If this turns out to be true, the staffer should face several years in prison. After all, the Congressional committees have to protect national-security information, and the American people have to trust them to do so. Politicians have often been careless with classified material, but this will be the first time in recent memory that anyone involved in the committees have been identified as a deliberate leaker. That cannot go without serious consequences, or else politicians and their staffers from both parties will manipulate exposure of secret information for political purposes at their whim…Hopefully, the DoJ will take over this probe immediately, and give us the answers to which we are all entitled as to how our secret efforts to defeat terrorism wound up on our newstands.

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9/25/06 About that National Intelligence Estimate
9/26/06 The NIE
9/27/07 Who is Paul Pillar?

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