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The New York Times reports that two Democratic congresswomen, including the high-powered Rep. Maxine Waters (pictured) are under investigation for potential ethics violations. What they don’t mention until a little further down is that civilians are getting a peak behind the signs of the ethics committee deliberations thanks to a less-than-competent staffer:

A committee statement about the security breach said a junior staff member, working from home, improperly placed a document listing all the continuing inquiries into a file-sharing software system to which people outside the committee had access. The staff member, whose name was not released, has been fired, and committee officials said Thursday that they did not know who had gained improper access to the document.

So who else is on the list? There’s another nascent investigation going on focusing on 5 other Democrats and 2 Republicans. On the Democratic side, you might recognize the names John Murtha and Marcy Kaptur (both of whom are in positions of influence on the appropriations committee and relevant subcommittees).

Keep in mind that since Waters and Richardson are the only two people that the ethics committee announced they would be investigating, the other 7 aren’t necessarily in hot water just yet. A separate Times article details the what’s going on with that particular inquiry:

Perhaps the most serious case involves a defunct lobbying firm, PMA Group, and contributions it gave to House appropriators, who then pushed for earmarks in the military budget that benefited the firm’s clients. The list included seven members of the military appropriations subcommittee. Spokesmen for those members said they had all been contacted by the ethics committee about their earmarks for PMA clients.

The seven members, including Representative John P. Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, received a total of more than $6.2 million in contributions from PMA and its clients since 1998, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. And in the last two years they inserted more than $200 million in military earmarks to PMA’s clients, according to a tally by Taxpayers for Common Sense, which tracks such items.

Meanwhile, the article says, some of the other names that you might see in the future could be false positives:

Representative Connie Mack, Republican of Florida, for example, said he was on the committee list, even though he was not a target himself but had just been questioned about the activities of another House member.

It will be interesting to see what else comes up.