There is a ton of classified information that is leaked. Hinging this on classification, while spotlighting the current Administration's record or near-record level of classifying documents, indirectly names the leaker of the Pentagon Papers in the same breath as Rove and could also have a chilling effect on people like this who say they are doing a public service by bringing unnecessary classification by the fore.

between outing an agent and revealing information to the public.

How would you like to be the one sent to spy on a foreign country where the penalty for doing so is death, and then learn that your own government gave you up?

IF from the prosecutor's side of the table.

Witnesses are allowed to talk about what they said and what they saw.

(Matthew Cooper will probably be publishing something in Time soon.)

What that means is that they do not need the cloak of anonymity, they do not need "to leak."

Since no defense lawyers are even let in the door, all they know is what their client reports, and gossip, of course.

The secrecy of the Grand Jury system is for a reason: because it's not a trial, and simply to get an indictment, it's totally contrary to our advocacy system of justice. There is no balance, the jury is presented with only one side of the story.  The prosecutor side is all powerful, and is not reigned in by the advocacy system.

http://www.truthinjustice.org/grandjury.htm

People play games with this; it went on with the Clinton grand juries for months and months.

The witnesses and the targets and their friends/associates are allowed to talk, but they can "leak" anonymously instead, in order to affect public opinion before an indictment comes down--can be a counter-op to make it look like the leak is coming from the prosecutor's side.

I myself hate the Grand Jury system, I think it's dangerous in any case that has lots of media attention and interest. I don't think it belongs in our system for that reason.

If it's a case with no media attention, it simply works like a prosecutor bringing out an indictment himself without one; there's less danger there, but it's still often a silly exercise. It's just there to give the prosecutor an additional credibility to an indictment. Most lawyers of all kinds will tell you that that's a bogus credibility, that grand juries don't ask questions in a Socratic way, acting as a challenge or break to the prosecutor, that they just listen, and if the guy makes a halfways decent case, they vote for indictment, because they figure that the indicted will get a chance at a trial.

With media attention, what you get is this:

the prosecutor gets to say his side in the jury room.

the defense gets to say his/their side in a public media circus.

the prosecutor works against time to try to get an indictment before the public is too affected by the media circus.

What that means here with this case, mho: all the leaker stories and speculation and gossip create buzz main mostly hurt whatever it is that the prosecutor is trying to do, what he wants to happen after the indictment comes down.

The whole system sucks. It's set up to give the prosecutor special power and, by secrecy, to protect the unindicted and untried from being unnecessarily smeared by that. (As the classic movie line "where do I go to get my reputation back?) BUT it doesn't work that way with our media and now, our blogosphere, because the public always wants to know, now, and can't wait.

I won't believe any anonymous sources to be what they seem on this story until the Grand Jury is over. Betcha anything there'll be cries soon that someone should be prosecuted because they leaked from the prosecutor's side of the Grand Jury. And they may be a bogus counter-op. You just can't tell.

I'm just saying that the way Sean-Paul framed his post says the same thing about all leaks of classified information.  They are not created equal IMHO.

Also, the second half of your argument is spread a bit thin. Granted, no undercover CIA agent should be outed.  There is a reason for the law.  But we have to understand that Plame was working at Langley everyday as an analyst, not as a mole with Kim Jong-Il's staff in Pyongyang.  She may have been overseas and in deeper cover in the past -- we don't know the details, if any -- but when she was outed she was HQ-based.

not all leaks are created equal, shall we say, and the point of my post was not to say which were right to leak or which were wrong to leak, I simply was conveying information from an intelligence professional that I know that it is prohibited and illegal for an intelligence professional or someone who has a clearance to confirm classified information regardless of where and how the questioner recieved that information.

For example: if I have a tid-bit of classified information that I managed to acquireor sniff out myself, if I were to ask my friend to confirm this information my friend could not do so becaus on my friends end the information is still classified and subject to classification rules.

ANd of course, in the post I was pointing out that what Rove did is quite possibly illegal from that point of view, as opposed to some of the other legal avenues Fitzy seems to be pursuing.