Posted on 07/13/2005 10:33:50 PM PDT by Crackingham
"The fact is, Karl Rove did not leak classified information." So said Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican Party.
"I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name." So said Karl Rove of Valerie Wilson/Plame last year on CNN.
"He did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." So said Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, after Newsweek reported Rove had been a source for Time magazine's Matt Cooper but before Newsweek revealed a Cooper email that said Rove had told Cooper that "wilson's wife...apparently works at the agency on wmd issues."
The White House may be stonewalling on the Rove scandal, but the Rove camp--aided by its echo-ists in the conservative media--has been busy establishing the twin-foundation for his defense: he did not mention Valerie Wilson/Plame by name; he did not disclose classified information. The first of these two assertions is misleading and irrelevant; the second is wrong.
According to Cooper's email, Rove told Cooper that "Wilson's wife"--not "Valerie Plame," or "Valerie Wilson"--worked at the CIA. But this distinction has absolutely no legal relevance. Under the relevant law--the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982--a crime is committed when a government official (not a journalist) "intentionally discloses any information identifying" an undercover intelligence officer. The act does not say a name must be disclosed. By telling a reporter that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA officer, Rove was clearly disclosing "identifying" information. There was only one Mrs. Joseph Wilson. With such information in hand, Cooper or anyone else could easily have ascertained the name of this officer. (A Google search at the time would have yielded the name--and maiden name--of Wilson's wife.) Revealing the name is not the crime; it's disclosing information that IDs the officer. Imagine if a government official told a reporter, "At 3:15, a fellow in a green hat, carrying a red umbrella and holding a six-pack of Mountain Dew, will be tap-dancing in front of the Starbucks at Connecticut Avenue and R Street--he's the CIA's best undercover officer working North Korea." That official could not defend himself, under this law, by claiming that he had not revealed the name of this officer. The issue is identifying, not naming. Rove and his allies cannot hide behind his no-name claim.
A reading of this law also indicates that if Cooper's email is accurate then Rove did pass classified information to Cooper. It's possible that Rove did so unwittingly. That is, he did not know Valerie Wilson's employment status at the CIA was classified information. But he and his posse cannot say the information he slipped to Cooper was not classified.
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act makes it a crime to identify "a covert agent" of the United States. The law defines "covert agent," in part, as "a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information." (My emphasis.)
This definition clearly recognizes that the identity of an undercover intelligence officer is "classified information." The law also notes that a "covert agent" has a "classified relationship to the United States." Since the CIA asked the Justice Department to investigate the Plame/CIA leak and the Justice Department affirmed the need for an investigation and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, once handed the case, pursued the matter vigorously, it is reasonable to assume that Valerie Wilson fits the definition of a "covert agent." That means she has a "classified relationship" with the government.
By disclosing Valerie Wilson's relationship to the CIA, Rove was passing classified information to a reporter.
Oh, you simply MUST tell us David. Stop leading us on and tempting us you wicked, wicked man! /faux elite sophisticate
A great "Joe Sixpack" analogy. And it fits perfectly.
"Is there anything better than watching frustrated leftists pull the cord on a mower that won't start, only to have another step in saying "here, let me try?""
LOL Good one. No, there is nothing better.
A vanity Fair article in 2004 that identifies Plame as an operative in 2004? LOL! Is this for real?
Now that Corn has convinced us of his deeply-held feelings about protecting 'classified' information and the CIA- can we now expect him, as a reasoning, consistent and honorable man, to go after Vanity Fair with the same enthusiasm?
/multiple sarcasms
Gah. Five yard penalty for redundancy. That's what happens when you're holding an eye open with one hand, swilling coffee with the other, and typing with your nose.
They forgot the "intentionally" part.
Honest mistake, I'm sure.
Just like nobody on the left and the dumb a**'s at du, seem to notice that old Val who has been flying a desk for the last ten years was outed by Aldrich Ames during the slick willie administration.
You couldn't get the fact that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA from a Google search.
Thus, if someone told you that Joe Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, it is then easy to determine that Valerie Plame worked at the CIA, and that her fake employer, Brewster Jennings, was a CIA 'front', and thus that anyone else who worked at Brewster Jennings was with the Agency.
So maybe you are missing something.
Good question - if it was 'pretty much known among the Washington press corp," why didn't Novak know it? Or Cooper? Or Miller? Or Rove, for that matter?
The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a news column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation, U.S. officials say.She would have had to have been covert in the last five years for Rove to have broken the law, per former Assistant Deputy Attorney General Victoria Toensing, who helped draft the 1982 law in question.Mrs. Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a Moscow spy, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.
The documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them, the officials said.
For Plame's outing to have been illegal, the one-time deputy AG explained, "her status as undercover must be classified." Also, Plame "must have been assigned to duty outside the United States currently or in the past five years."
Fits right in with this speculation...
Something doesn't add up about why Judith Miller went to jail. The New York Times reporter didn't write a story about the Valerie Plame case and had a waiver from her source in order to talk about it to the grand jury. But she insisted on going to jail anyway. Speculation is mounting that Miller is protecting herself, that Miller was herself a source of information about Plame that made it to several Bush administration officials and was then recycled to columnist Robert Novak. He, then, disclosed Plame's employment by the CIA and her role in arranging for her husband Joe Wilson's mission to Africa to investigate the Iraq-uranium link.This would help explain why Miller didn't write a story about the case. It would be difficult for Miller to write a story when she was so deeply involved in how it developed. Disclosure of her role then or now would be extremely embarrassing.
She could be the key to exonerating Bush administration officials of possible violations of the law against knowingly disclosing the identities of covert intelligence agents. If they were simply passing along information from Miller or some other journalist about Joseph Wilson's wife, then they can't be accused of deliberately disclosing classified information about Plame's identity.
The more likely explanation is that Miller is protecting private discussions with administration officials, and that during those discussions she provided or confirmed information about Plame's identity. This would make sense. Both Miller and Plame covered the subject of weapons of mass destruction and it was likely that they knew one another, or at least were aware of each other's work in this field.
But don't ya know...NASA is part of the Illuminati! < /DU Mode>
A must read on this topic is Ann Coulters column (at her web site) this week.
See #93...it is highly probable that it was Miller, that is why she is still in jail, she is protecting HERSELF from prosecution.
Do you have a link for this info? I'd like to add it to my file.
The Nation needs to re-read the law. Mrs. Wislon was not undercover.
Typical of "The Nation."
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