It's been said in some of the media that the act itself wasn't deliberate. How can anyone pretend that the disclosure of a CIA employee's identity to a reporter could be done by accident?

The fact is that the release of this information by a senior official was deliberate and done for a purpose. It is equally clear that the purpose of the senior official was certainly not to advance the national security interests of the United States. Reasonable minds cannot differ as to the deliberate nature of this action by the senior official.

Anyone who would care to portray this action as mere negligent, as opposed to deliberate, should also be prepared to explain how anyone so completely inept as to divulge the information by accident ever became a senior official in any organization, let alone an organization who has charge of running the United States.

It must be assumed that a senior official would have at least a rudimentary working knowledge of the media, an understanding of what is on or off the record, what information is on background and so forth. The fact that such basic ground rules, if you will, were not used to protect the identity of Ambassador Wilson's wife exceeds any reasonable definition of gross negligence.

Disclosure was not an accident. It was a cynical effort to advance an interest deemed so important by this senior official as to potentially place lives at risk. The interest being advanced by this disclosure was certainly not national security.

Update: Crooks and Liars has a roundup of blog reaction to the McClellan news conference and the video. Wapo has the transcript here.