committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline ... CC'd to Cheney

Sunday, October 28, 2007 | Did GOP Operatives Expose Whistleblowers?

...This summer the House Judiciary Committee launched an effort to collect tips from would-be whistleblowers in the Justice Department. The U.S. attorney firings scandal had shown that much was amiss in the Department, and with the danger of retaliation very real, the committee had set up a form on the committee's website for people to blow the whistle privately about abuses there. Although the panel said it would not accept anonymous tips, it assured those who came forward that their identity would be held in the "strictest confidence."

But in an email sent out today, the committee inadvertently sent the email addresses of all the would-be whistleblowers to everyone who had written in to the tipline. The committee email was sent to tipsters who had used the website form, including presumably whistleblowers themselves, and all of the recipients of the email were accidentally included in the "to:" field -- instead of concealing those addresses with a so-called blind carbon copy or "bcc:".
...
Why would a professional in the Judiciary Committee staff not use Bcc: as automatically as I do? And why would they Cc: Cheney? I don't think so. I think this is a deliberate attempt by a Republican on the Judiciary committee to derail the DOJ investigation by leaking the identities of whistleblowers to Cheney to expose them to intimidation and revenge.

Here is the list of suspects:

Sensenbrenner Jr. (R) Wisconsin, 5th
Coble (R) North Carolina, 6th
Gallegly (R) California, 24th
Goodlatte (R) Virginia, 6th ...