When an agency of the US government is acting to undermine the elected representatives of the American people, it is time for Congress to investigate, and perhaps abolish, that agency.

Especially when those within the agency -- which is charged with protecting national security and aiding the war effort -- are leaking national security information in a desperate attempt to undermine the war effort.

The Dec. 1 edition of The New York Times carried a story about the damage done to U.S. interests by the revelation that the CIA maintains a number of secret interrogation prisons for terrorists in Europe and elsewhere. ("Reports of Secret U.S. Prisons in Europe Draw Ire and Otherwise Red Faces.") Governments throughout the continent are now demanding explanations from the U.S. Department of State and otherwise strutting their outrage that the U.S. might be kidnapping suspected terrorists from European soil and transferring them to other nations.

How did this bit of classified information become public? It was a leak from within the CIA (to The Washington Post in that case) -- and a breathtaking one at that. Though the agency has been steadily leaking damaging stories about the Bush administration since 9/11, it has now crossed a new threshold with a leak that severely damages CIA activities and arguably harms national security -- all for the sake of crippling George W. Bush.

If the leaking of the name of a stateside non-covert CIA employee’s name merited investigation, how much more does this violation of national security coming from within the CIA itself?