Back in 2014, with the rabid support of the Tea Party and far-right talkshow hosts like Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, and Ann Coulter, Dave Brat, an econ professor at Randolph–Macon College with an Ayn Rand fetish and a talent for riling up crowds of angry voters, somehow managed to win the Republican primary for Virginia’s 7th congressional district, beating out the incumbent, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, which, for those of you who may not recall, was one of the most stunning congressional upsets in United States history… Prior to Brat’s victory over Cantor in the Republican primary, a sitting House Majority Leader had never been unseated, which really demonstrates just how powerful the Tea Party’s anti-establishment message (funded by anti-government billionaires like the Koch brothers) had become by 2014. [The position of House Majority Leader was created in 1899, so Brat was the first person in 115 years to do what he had done.]

So, with all of that said, it’s kind of interesting that, just four years later, this historically solid Republican seat now seems to be in play, with the nonpartisan Cook Political Report just recently calling the race between Brat and his 2016 Democratic challenger a “toss-up.” [A Democrat hasn’t held the seat in 47 years.]

And, as you might expect, the Republicans are pulling out all the stops in order to defeat Brat’s Democratic challenger, Abigail Spanberger, a mother, Girl Scout leader, and former CIA officer. In fact, it seems as though, in hopes of hurting Spanberger’s chances, someone at a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan may have just committed a federal crime by sharing the candidate’s federal security clearance application with the press… The following comes by way of the New York Times.

…Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic candidate challenging Representative Dave Brat of Virginia, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Corry Bliss, the executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, which has raised more than $100 million to help Republicans in the midterm elections. She demanded that the super PAC destroy all copies of the form and agree to not use the information in any fashion.

“I write as a former civil servant and as an American, in shock and anger, that you have tried to exploit my service to our country by exposing my most personal information in the name of politics,” she wrote.

The super PAC released a statement on Tuesday strongly denying Ms. Spanberger’s charge, saying that the document was obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed with the United States Postal Service by America Rising, a separate Republican-aligned research firm.

…Ms. Spanberger, 39, said in the letter that she had “clear evidence” that the Congressional Leadership Fund had provided a copy of her security clearance application to “at least one news outlet,” adding, “I am not aware of any legal way that C.L.F. could have this document.” In an interview, she said that she suspected that the group was trying to exploit a brief time when she taught at a private Islamic school funded by Saudi Arabia.

The super PAC validated that suspicion in its response, going on at some length to try to link the school — called “Terror High” in an earlier news article — to terrorist activity.

The application was one of two that she completed for government positions, for a law enforcement job at the Postal Service and for her position with the Central Intelligence Agency.

At a political event this month, Ms. Spanberger said she was approached by a reporter for The Associated Press, who showed her a copy of the security form and said the leadership fund had provided the document on a background basis, meaning that the source would typically not be named. The reporter pulled up a copy of the form on his email, and Ms. Spanberger said she was “100 percent” certain it was hers.

The forms ask for detailed personal information about work and health and also include vital data like a Social Security number.

“I am proud of my background and my service, and not ashamed of the information I submitted,” she said. “I have nothing to hide in my background. But, as any American in a similar situation would be, I am concerned about my privacy and security.”..

OK… a few things… First, how shitty was the “Terror High” administrator who chose to hire someone who had already been offered a job by the CIA? [As I read her timeline, Spanberger, a whiz at foreign languages since childhood, was offered a job with the CIA in 2002, but didn’t actually join until 2006, having spent some of the time in between teaching at the private, Suadi-funded Muslim school noted above.] Second, do conservatives really have a problem with white, non-Muslims teaching at Muslim schools? [It seems to me that they’d be all for it, but I guess they believe that only the strictest of Muslims from Saudi Arabia should be allowed on the grounds of American Muslim schools.] And, third, if someone did really release her security clearance application in order to get it to the press that she once worked at the Islamic Saudi Academy, then that’s a big fucking deal, and someone should be going to jail.

[note: As a former CIA officer, Spanberger can’t talk about the work that she did for the intelligence agency, so I imagine we may never know the answer, but one imagines it’s possible that her stint at the Islamic Saudi Academy may have actually been connected to her work for the spy agency. At least, it seems possible to me, given what I’ve read about our efforts in the wake of 9/11 to keep tabs on Saudis within the United States.]

By way of background, you should know that, when people start working within the intelligence community, it’s required that they disclose anything and everything about their personal life that could one day be used against them by a foreign government looking for leverage over them. And it’s expected that you will come clean about everything — affairs, debt, bad habits, you name it — with the understanding being that this disclosure is not only necessary to our national security, but private and secure. And, if Spanberger is telling the truth about having been handed a copy of her highly sensitive security clearance application by an Associated Press reporter, then there’s been a serious breach… and one that could significantly impact the effectiveness of the agency and its ability to recruit qualified agents. [Have other security clearance applications been stolen from U.S. intelligence agencies?]

Here, with more on this, is a clip from the Twitter account of former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst John Schindler, who has been rallying the intelligence community to address this apparent breach.

[note: HoIS is “Hostile Intelligence Service.]

For what it’s worth, the folks at the Congressional Leadership Fund are attributing all of this to Spanberger, an experienced CIA agent, not knowing the difference between a security clearance application and something that might be FIOA-able, like a job application.

As for what’s really happening here, I have no way of knowing. I do think, however, given how desperately the Republicans want to hold on to the House, and the fact that we’ve seen them target female intelligence officers in similar ways in the past, that it’s very possible that someone made the decision to politicize domestic intelligence with the intention of firing up the racist base of the Republican Party against her. And that’s pretty fucking disgusting, no matter how you look at it.