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Last edited by Nbadan; 03-19-2007 at 02:24 AM.
Andrew C. McCarthy of the National Review explains who really blew Plames cover and why Fitzgerald figured that Plames covert status was no longer a secret and no law was broken. (It wasn't the Pres., V.P. or Armitage).The big thing to understand is that the leak itself was probably not illegal since the president and vice-president and their respective staffs can do pretty much whatever they want with classified information. Armitage seemed to make his leak independent of the others (though there is no accounting from where his memo mentioning Plaime originally came), but he had no knowledge of her covert status, so he was off the hook.
Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09Washington PostFormer ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to recons ute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.
The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.
Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.
"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."
The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.
Looks like Plame and Wilson are a smokescreen to the bigger espionage story going on here. The exposure of Plames former CIA covert agency Brewster-Jennings.
The link to the media brief conveniently doesn't work. That explains virtually nothing though. It's not like everyone knew her name and job at those times.
I don't know, those articles really seem to bring into question Val's credibility about whether or not she recommended her hubby for the gig, and if she's not credible there, then the rest of her story just falls apart. Also, If her iden y had already been compromised to the Russians and Cubans, then her covert status really comes into question...
I'll wait for the perjury charges then.
Don't hold your breath.
Why not? It's not like the DoJ is controlled by Democrats. If she lied to Congress so egregiously, it'll be a slam dunk.
I haven't even seen a column use the P-word, though I admit I haven't read too many.
A Judge ruled in 2005 that Plame was qualified as a 'covert agent', so I doubt we'll see any suit...
"My name and iden y were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior officials in the White House and State Department," Valerie Plame said.
.WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Valerie Plame told Congress Friday the leak of her iden y as a CIA covert operative "has jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents."
For the first time since the 2003 leak, the central figure of the resulting scandal revealed her side of events that led to the conviction this month of a former vice presidential aide....
Novak's column destroyed her position and classified status, she told the committee.
The disclosure also damaged U.S. intelligence efforts, she said. "If our government cannot even protect my iden y, future foreign agents who might consider working with the Central Intelligence Agency in providing needed intelligence would think twice."
Plame testified her work involved gathering intelligence on weapons of mass destruction....
CNN
Oh, such an impartial witness. Yeah, right!
New York Post
HILLARY'S REUNION WITH VICIOUS SID
By ROBERT D. NOVAK
March 17, 2007 -- SEN. Hillary Rodham Clinton raised eyebrows among Democratic insiders when The Washington Post's Al Kamen reported that she dined last week at the 701 restaurant in downtown Washington with former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, his wife, Valerie Plame, and left-wing journalist Sidney Blumenthal.
Leading Democrats have stayed away from Wilson since a Senate Intelligence Committee report in 2004 discredited him. Blumenthal was known as a vicious attack man when he worked as an aide to President Bill Clinton late in his administration.
Clinton's choice of dining companions casts doubt on her attempted image modification into a centrist Democrat who wants to avoid the politics of personal destruction.
*
And then you have:
March 19, 2007, 0:00 a.m.
Senate Intel Committee: What Valerie Plame Didn’t Tell Us
The differences between her House testimony and the Senate’s findings.
By Byron York
During her testimony Friday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, former CIA employee Valerie Plame told how her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, came to travel to Niger to investigate claims Iraq had tried to buy uranium there.
It started in February 2002, Mrs. Wilson testified. “A young junior officer who worked for me came to me very concerned, very upset. She had just received a telephone call on her desk from someone, I don’t know who, in the Office of the Vice President, asking about this report of this alleged sale of yellowcake uranium from Niger to Iraq.”
It was not clear from Mrs. Wilson’s testimony why the junior officer was upset. But as the young officer told her story, Mrs. Wilson continued, an element of chance intruded. “As she was telling me what had just happened, someone passed by, another officer heard this. He knew that Joe had already — my husband — had already gone on some CIA missions previously to deal with other nuclear matters. And he suggested, ‘Well, why don’t we send Joe?’” That, Mrs. Wilson testified, was the beginning of her husband’s mission to Africa.
As Mrs. Wilson told her story, some members and staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee watched with great interest. As part of its probe into pre-war intelligence, the committee interviewed Valerie Plame Wilson for the portions of the committee’s report dealing with the Niger uranium matter. At that time, as now, the question of how the CIA chose Joseph Wilson for the Niger trip was a subject of great interest. But Missouri Republican Sen. Christopher Bond, vice chairman of the committee, says Mrs. Wilson did not tell the committee about the young junior officer, the call from the vice president’s office, or the passing CIA official who suggested Joseph Wilson’s name.
“Friday was the first time we have ever heard that story,” Sen. Bond said in a statement to National Review Sunday evening. “Obviously if we had, we would have included it in the report. If Ms. Wilson’s memory of events has improved and she would now like to change her testimony, I’m sure the committee staff would be happy to re-interview her.”
For those who followed the Senate investigation, the young-junior-officer story was not the only surprise in Mrs. Wilson’s House testimony. In addition to saying that her office received a call from the vice president’s office, Mrs. Wilson flatly denied playing a role in choosing her husband for the trip to Niger. “I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him,” she testified. The Senate Intelligence Committee report, which concluded that she had indeed suggested her husband for the trip, was simply wrong, Mrs. Wilson testified. In particular, what she called a “quick e-mail” describing her husband’s qualifications for the trip was “taken out of context” by the committee to “make it seem as though I had suggested or recommended him.”
In response to an inquiry from National Review Online Friday, Sen. Bond disputed Mrs. Wilson’s memory. “We have…checked the memorandum written by Ms. Wilson suggesting her husband to look into the Niger reporting,” Bond said in a statement. “I…stand by the Committee’s finding that this memorandum indicates Ms. Wilson did suggest her husband for a Niger inquiry. Because the quote [the portion of the memo quoted in the Senate report] obviously does not represent the entirety of the memorandum, I suggest that the House Government Reform Committee request and examine this memorandum themselves. I am confident that they will come to the same conclusion as our bipartisan membership did.”
In addition, Mrs. Wilson testified that a CIA reports officer, who the Senate committee says told investigators that Mrs. Wilson had “offered up” her husband’s name for the trip, later told her, Mrs. Wilson, that the committee had got it all wrong. “He came to me almost with tears in his eyes,” she testified. “He said his words have been twisted and distorted.” She testified that the reports officer wrote a memo to correct the record — it is not clear to whom the memo was given — but that the CIA would not let him speak to committee investigators a second time.
Bond responded to that description of events, too. “We have checked the transcript of the comments made to the committee by the former reports officer and I stand by the committee’s description of his comments,” the senator said. “If the reports officer would like to clarify or change his remarks, I’m certain that the committee would welcome his testimony.”
Finally, Bond said flatly, “I stand by the findings of the committee’s report on the Niger-Iraq uranium information, including the information regarding Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.”
On other issues relating to the CIA-leak affair, in her House testimony Mrs. Wilson provided sketchy information, but the fault lay not so much with her as with listless questioning by the two Republicans who showed up for the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing. For example, she was asked briefly about her presence, before her CIA iden y was revealed publicly, at a May 2003 conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. “I attended that conference simply as a spouse of my husband who was invited to speak,” Mrs. Wilson testified. “I had no discussions other than purely social in nature.”
Mrs. Wilson was not asked anything else about the conference. Who did she meet? What did she say? What did they say? What did her husband say? No Republican — and needless to say, no Democrat — asked.
She was questioned a bit more extensively about a breakfast she and her husband shared with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. She had been at the breakfast “briefly,” Wilson testified. “I had nothing — I was not speaking to Mr. Kristof.” She said she “can’t imagine” that she could have been a source for Kristof on the Niger uranium matter because “I did not speak to him about it.” No one on the House committee asked what, if anything, she did say to Kristof, or what her husband said during the breakfast.
Finally on Friday, Mrs. Wilson, as well as California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, the committee chairman, addressed the issue of her status within the CIA. “I’ve served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency,” Mrs. Wilson testified. “In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified.”
At the hearing, Waxman said that he had spoken with CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, who approved a statement Waxman read to the committee. “During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was undercover,” Waxman said. “Her employment status with the CIA was classified information…At the time of the publication of Robert Novak’s column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information.” A CIA spokesman later told National Review Online that Waxman’s characterization of the matter was “entirely correct.”
On a personal note, there have been accusations from supporters of the Wilsons that I have, at various times during the CIA-leak affair, declared that Mrs. Wilson was not a covert agent. I did report extensively on CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s avoidance of the word “covert,” his refusal to say what Mrs. Wilson’s status was (beyond “classified”), the Libby trial judge’s declaration that he did not know if Mrs. Wilson was covert, classified, or other, and the testimony at the Libby trial from top officials in the CIA and State Department that they did not tell anyone in the vice president’s office that Mrs. Wilson was covert, classified, or anything else. I also reported, as the pre-trial phase of the Libby case got underway, that Libby defense lawyer Ted Wells asked, “Was she just classified because some bureaucracy didn’t declassify her five years ago when they should have?” On February 27 2006, I wrote:
Wells’s speculation about Wilson’s status matches up with descriptions of Wilson’s employment offered by some knowledgeable sources. There appears to be no doubt that Wilson was a covert CIA agent at the beginning and during much of her career; people who trained with her and who served with her attest to that. But there are questions about whether Wilson was in any practical way operating undercover in the years leading up to her exposure in the Novak column. The Libby team seemed to be suggesting that Wilson’s classified status, if that is what she had, was vestigial — that her undercover days were over and she only retained that status on paper.
One knowledgeable source suggests that might be the case, but maintains that being technically undercover was still being undercover. “She was definitely undercover by agency standards at the time in question,” the source says. “That was a classified bit of information, and is sufficient as far as the agency is concerned to bring it to the attention of the Justice Department. You can argue whether she should have been, but as far as the agency was concerned it was classified.”
There have been reports that Valerie Plame Wilson was changing jobs — and job status — at the CIA when the leak of her iden y occurred. In their book Hubris, David Corn — a reporter for The Nation who has worked closely with Joseph Wilson — and Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff wrote that
Prior to the leak, [Valerie Plame Wilson] had started to change her status from nonofficial cover to official cover. She was in the process of leaving the Joint Task Force on Iraq to assume a personnel management position within the CIA. After sixteen years in operations, she wasn’t relishing the new job. But others at the agency had advised her to put in some time as an administrator to rise through the ranks. She wanted to maintain official cover so she could return to operations. But her need for deep-cover NOC [nonofficial cover] status had passed. The paperwork for this transition was in motion when Novak’s column hit.
That passage, if correct, suggests that Mrs. Wilson was not performing in any deep-cover capacity, and perhaps not in any classified capacity at all, when the Novak column was published. But she nevertheless maintained a classified status, with the possibility — perhaps made somewhat remote by her husband’s increasingly high-profile actions — of returning to covert work in the future. That, together with her own actions like attending the Senate Democratic Policy Committee or meeting with Nicholas Kristof, fueled confusion and enormous controversy about her status. I think that, given all of what we know today, my description of her status was accurate.
— Byron York, NR’s White House correspondent, is the author of the book The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President — and Why They’ll Try Even Harder Next Time.
National Review Online -
Unfortunately, for Ms. Plame, the facts just don't jibe with her version of events.
Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reported almost three years ago that Ms. Plame's "cover" had apparently been blown not once, but twice, and long before Bob Novak printed his column in 2003.
Who rememers this blast from the past:
And, on the matter of her involvement with the assignment of Joseph Wilson to the Niger junket?
In her testimony to the Recent Committee on Administrative Witch-Hunting:
Poor Val. Apparently, she's unfamiliar with the final report of the Senate Intelligence Committee on pre-war intelligence in Iraq. On page 50 of that do ent, the committee concludes that Ms. Plame led the efforts to dispatch Joe Wilson to Niger, based on the notes and memoranda of a State Department intelligence analyst who attended the meeting.
Oh goody we have Yoni telling someone what they actually said..even though they denied saying it..
Gee, GGA, got to say one thing. You folks never let truth stand
in the way of a chance to blame Bush.
Plame said under oath she had nothing to do with it... I say let's get Bush under oath?
Well, considering President Bush wasn't in the room, I'd settle for all the CIA pricks that were...first.
someone's lying....we have two conflicting stories as to who really recommended Wilson for the Niger trip. Really, I think the WH would like this whole Plame-matter to just go away and that's why they aren't persuing it more aggressively, most republicans haven't even bother to show for the hearings. They wouldn't want to let the Brewster-Jennings story, which I think was the bigger revelation, out of the bag and force the M$M to actually do their jobs, investigative reporting.
I'm sure one of those newly appointed US Attorneys -- maybe Rove's crony -- would be happy to indict Plame on the numberous counts of perjury Yoni accuses her of.
Why isn't anyone doing that, Yoni?
Before which committee are we speaking. She has two
stories, both under oath.
You mean like the followed-up on Burglar, the stocking
stuffer. He only stole classified do ents, more than
likely altered other do ents and only lost his
clearance for a few years. DOJ still want demand he
take a lie detector test. Maybe Bush bends over
backwards too much trying to "get along" with the
dimm-o-craps.
Drag'em all in, repubs and dems. Who gives a . Let the chips fall. Would you settle for that Ray?
Yeah, I go along with that, bringing both Plame and Burglar in
along with Wilson.
So that's a yes? Bring them all in, including cheney and rove, under oath?
^^I didn't say that. Rove and Cheney have done nothing wrong
that I am aware of, except being Republican and not taking any
crap from the dimm-o-craps. Of course that is a crime in your eyes
and the dimm-0-craps eyes. I told you the three folks I was
talking about.
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