The CIA was reluctantly willing to take the fall for Rove's insistance on using known bad intel in the State of the Union address but the petty vengeance of outing Wilson's wife pissed off the wrong people. I'd bet there have been quite a few "suggestions" from spookdom to members of the Intelligence committee to not let this die. I also think Ashcroft has managed to piss off many of the career Justice department investigators. And finally, I think the decision to blow Plame's cover was discussed at the highest levels (Rove/Cheney) and some of those pissed off investigators already know that.

Running in the background during all of this was the tension (dare I say outrage? I dare) over the pipelining of raw, unevaluated field reports direct to the White House that were then cherry picked for release to the press in order to build the case for war against Iraq.

I can just imagine Tenet's reaction when he first read Novak's column- "Damn those ungrateful little pricks. Get me our contact at Justice and then let the Intel committee know we're formally requesting a criminal investigation."