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While the mainstream media continue to be indignant about Bush official Karl Rove's alleged role in revealing the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame, it is worthwhile to put this in political perspective. The Center for Individual Freedom has provided an excellent list of cases involving Democratic officials possibly violating national security or using classified information that have been ignored or glossed over by the major media. It's hard not to conclude that the media are targeting Rove because he is a conservative Republican.

Despite the feeding frenzy and scores of questions asked by the media at White House briefings, it remains to be seen that what Rove did was actually wrong. Possible violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act have been the apparent reason why the New York Times and others pushed so vigorously for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the case of who provided Plame's name to the press. Yet according to her husband Joe Wilson's book, "The Politics of Truth," she had not served in a foreign country since 1997 and wasn't therefore covered by the law.

One of the many relevant aspects of the law is that for it to be applicable, the named agent must be serving now, or sometime in the past five years, in a foreign country. Also, the agent must be someone whose identity the CIA is taking active steps to keep hidden. But Plame gave money to Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000 using her married name and identified her employer as a CIA-front company. She worked at the CIA headquarters in Virginia and was listed in her husband's biography.

There is, of course, the possibility that the special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is looking at other possible violations of the law. For example, reports of conflicting statements could mean perjury or obstruction of justice or just bad memories of the same events. But for the media the blood is in the water. The critics are saying at the very least, President Bush promised to fire anyone involved, even though a reconstruction of the comments and the timeline of his remarks on the matter clearly indicate that Bush was saying that if anyone had committed an illegal act, they would be fired. Was Rove involved? He was certainly involved in the sense that he talked to reporters about her. But there's no evidence at this point that his involvement rises to the level of anything illegal or unethical.

The Center for Individual Freedom has assembled some other more clear-cut examples of the misuse or outright abuse of classified material, some by harsh critics of Rove and the Bush administration for their handling of this matter. They include:

- Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) went on the floor of the Senate and said there was a "problem" revealed in a private FBI file on a judicial nominee, Judge Henry Saad. Senate rules require Senators "to keep FBI information strictly confidential."

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