Right Voices

For Congress: a Few Good Spook

The CIA’s class of ’85 must have been a doozy. Three alumni of that year’s fall career training class are much in the news these days. There’s Valerie Plame, the now retired spy whose outing is being investigated by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. Among Plame’s classmates was the outspoken Larry Johnson, a terrorism expert who has turned into a leading Bush critic, trashing the president through media appearances and his blog “No Quarter.” Now add to that list Jim Marcinkowski, who’s running for the House in Michigan’s Eighth District. First-time candidate Marcinkowski is unopposed in the Democratic primary and has Dems buzzing about his chances against the GOP’s Mike Rogers.

The three former spooks all know each other, and Marcinkowski even drew on Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to appear at his campaign kickoff. Marcinkowski is one of a dozen or so candidates boosters are calling “macho Democrats.” The list includes some eight military veterans from Iraq and at least one other former CIA officer, John Pavich of Illinois. But the GOP is responding in kind, with ex-CIA incumbents Rob Simmons of Connecticut and Joe Schwarz of Michigan and newcomer Jeff Beatty of Massachusetts. “It certainly shows that the talent goes in many different directions,” says an intelligence insider.