The firm acted as a cover for the CIA, allowing undercover agents to use Robert R. Mullen business cards as they conducted their covert activities abroad and have their names on the Robert R. Mullen payroll, from which they were cut checks. The CIA would then reimburse the firm for those expenses.

Bennett had no idea what the agents were doing. There was no relationship between the company and the agents, other than the use of the company's name.

One of the agents who used the cover was Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt, and that is a reason that many people over the years wrongly suspected Bennett of being Deep Throat.

But Bennett's role in collaborating to that extent with the CIA and, therefore, helping his country is significant. He has first-hand experience in the CIA game as members of Congress, pundits and partisan foes take sides in the Karl Rove/Joseph Wilson/Valerie Plame drama.

For the record, Bennett is on the same side as most of his Republican colleagues in giving Rove the benefit of the doubt in the outing of Plame, a CIA operative whose cover was exposed by conservative columnist Robert Novak.

The basic Democratic line is that Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, played a role in exposing Plame's CIA position to get back at her husband, Wilson, the former diplomat who criticized the Bush administration's claim that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy yellowcake from Niger to use in the development of nuclear weapons.

The basic Republican line is that Rove was simply warning reporters working on the story that Wilson was not to be trusted and that his information was bad and, in the midst of the conversation, Rove responded that he had heard Wilson's wife was with the CIA, but in no way broke that news or attempted to have her exposed. Her CIA job was relevant in the context of the discussion because it was alleged that agency, not fully on board with the administration's Iraq aims, sent Wilson on a information-gathering mission to Niger.

While Plame, at the time she was outed, was no longer acting as a covert operative for the CIA, the danger in naming her was that she had acted undercover previously. According to a Time magazine piece last week, the naming of Plame put in jeopardy her CIA undercover colleagues because now enemies of the United States can track her past activities and see who she worked with.

Plame operated under a program different from the one Bennett was involved with more than 30 years ago. While his company was a "cover," she operated within a "front" organization. A cover is a real business that allows its name to be used by agents. A front is a fabricated business that does nothing other than spy activities, but does them under the guise of an independent business.

Bennett, while taking the Republican position, does not seem as hyper as some of the other partisans on either side: Democrats calling for Rove's dismissal and the pulling of his security clearance; Republicans painting Rove as the angelic victim of froth-mouthed liberal witch hunters. His more thoughtful approach might be because he has been in that briar patch.

Meanwhile, dueling media organizations crossing swords in this debate serve as a reminder that the press itself is dividing more and more into partisan camps.

While Time paints a troubling picture of how leaks from the administration could have endangered untold U.S. spies and operations that were touched by Plame's previous activities, the Wall Street Journal describes Wilson as a reckless guy who was disseminating inaccurate information and who even the John Kerry campaign backed away from after initially embracing his commentary to back their claim that Bush used faulty intelligence to justify going to war with Iraq.

Just the fact that Novak is the one who broke the story about Plame is enough to raise suspicions of partisan tricks. Novak is an unabashed apologist for the Bush administration and is one of the leading voices for the conservative team on cable TV free-for-alls.

The trouble is that the media has gotten caught up in the black-and-white, good vs. evil hyperbole that has come to dominate American politics. We've almost harkened back to 19th century journalism, when newspapers gleefully took sides and readers were trained to buy the publication that would tell them what they wanted to hear.

My favorite example was the election of 1884, when Democratic presidential candidate Grover Cleveland was found to have fathered an illegitimate child and Republican newspapers ran a political cartoon of Cleveland running away from a toddler who was screaming, "Ma, Ma, Where's My Pa." After Cleveland won the election, Democratic newspapers chortled, "Gone to the White House, Ha, Ha, Ha."