Greg Sheffield highlights an exchange between Brit Hume and Juan Williams from yesterday’s Fox News Sunday that really cuts to the most relevant aspect of the McCarthy story:

BRIT HUME: That is not an exercise simply of First Amendment rights. This was a violation of her oath and her responsibility.
CHRIS WALLACE: All right. I’m going to…
JUAN WILLIAMS: Let me — no, let me…
CHRIS WALLACE: No, no, no. No.
WILLIAMS: Let me just quickly respond.
Brit, she took a risk. She was very aware of what she had signed. She is now bearing the cost of having broken that pledge.
WALLACE: So this is an act of conscience?
WILLIAMS: And so in that sense, yes, I do believe it’s an act of honor.
WALLACE: And if it’s an act of conscience, then why did she do it surreptitiously?
WILLIAMS: What?
WALLACE: Why did she do it surreptitiously?
WILLIAMS: She did it because she wanted to get the word out.
HUME: Why didn’t she just walk out, stand on the street corner, and pass it out?
WILLIAMS: She could have, but she had a reporter…
HUME: But she didn’t.
WILLIAMS: … that she had a relationship with.
HUME: I know why she didn’t. She didn’t because that way she would have become known. She wanted to do it and not get caught. That’s why.

McCarthy didn’t want the information attributed to her, not only because of the obvious legal jeopardy, but because her political leanings would have changed our interpretation of the information. Some may have found her sizable contributions to Democrats irrelevant. For others, her political activity might have confirmed their suspicions that this story was one more in a series of CIA leaks designed to damage the Bush administration.

But Dana Priest withheld that information from her readers and didn’t let us incorporate it into our evaluation of the story. I don’t think she should be prosecuted, but I do think this creates a credibility problem. In the future when she cites anonymous government officials without disclosing anything about their motives, I’ll be wondering: What else isn’t she telling us?

UPDATE: McCarthy’s lawyer now denies she was Priest’s souce.