White House informant? Defense lawyers say an insider has been helping in CIA leak investigation

MSNBC ^ | October 11, 2005 | David Shuster

[BIRDS]

For starters, it's a "S" for "secret" classification, and while important, it still is not clear that she was "covert" status as an operative given different types of identification. THAT SHE WAS EMPLOYED BY THE CIA was NOT a secret and that she was identified by whomever as being employed there is not a violation of anything by anyone (Rove is said to have said about her, that she was, as wife to Wilson, "with the Agency" and that's not an outrageous unknown, given that he was stating about her what was by that time public knowledge about Plame).

I understand a lot. If the issue was so clearly understandable as to your view and the WAPO's, there'd be no investigation at all, 'cause Wilson would have had Rove already "frog marched out of the White House," right after he paraded his CIA-employed wife all over the front page of an international magazine and discussed her with just about anyone and everyone he could muster to listen.

I'm just saying that there is a very restrictive law about what is punishable by that law and what is not as to revealing the covert status of a certain type of covert employee of the CIA AND the laws only provide recourse if a employee of that status has been active status as such within a certain length of time prior to the revelation (I can't quote the time frame here, but it's, for instance, five years, maybe eight/ten, but not longer...the person of issue has to have been of a certain classification within that time frame inorder to be covered by the law, for there to be a crime involved if position is revealed by someone else).

I've read the story from start to go and I still think that Joe Wilson is far more problematic than nearly all on the left is willing to admit and I am wondering if but Plame's now "not remembering who" told her Plame's name is because she can't expose them. Not remembering seems preposterous given her willingness to cover for whoever it was she can't now remember's name.

Wilson worked for Kerry on his campaign and given Kerry's gruesome dedication to ruining what is honorable and sincere, I think that Wilson worked very, very hard to create a situation and impale specific targets by way of his work, which to my view, is espionage.

[Steve_Seattle]

"I think the way the whole thing was set up allowed for him to talk about it. He wasn't paid, he didn't write a report."

And these facts are all very peculiar. What we are seeing is either CIA incompetence or a political setup intended to either harm the Bush administration or provide CYA for earlier CIA blunders on Iraq WMD issues. In any event, the MSM - fixated on the hope of another Watergate - have utterly failed to pursue any of these angles, a dereliction of duty of the first magnitude. Why, indeed, did Joseph Wilson not have to sign a confidentiality agreement, and why did he not write a report? The MSM apparently do not care to know. Unbelievable.

[Tunehead54]

Reminder bump to check on actual GJ decision. ;-)

[BIRDS]

AND, that cut'n'paste that you include as WAPO published, does not specifically name Plame as a covert agent.

AND, Karl Rove is quoted as having said, and only as having said, that "(Plame) was, you know, with the Agency..."

It's Joe Wilson who has made the allegations afterward that all that "MEANS" (1.) his wife was a secret agent with the CIA and no one knew she worked there otherwise and that (2.) Karl Rove revealed her identity as a secret agent with the CIA.

None of that is proven, and if it was, the investigation would have been long over by now.

The article you quote just states policy level, administrative level information. It does not specify whether Plame was "a secret agent" or if she was, at what time in her work history (dates) she was or was not, nor what was revealed about her by whom. It just states that she was included in a document with information labelled "S" and that because of that, she'd have had secret/covert agent status OR HAD ACCESS TO THAT DOCUMENT. Since she was known to have an administrative position there, it could just be possible that she had access.

Another thing and that is that even Rove has stated that he thought she was "with the Agency" as in, an employee there, in an administrative capacity. That's all. Novak was the guy who wrote her up later as being of secret agent classification.

[Howlin]

Who exactly are the "defense lawyers" in this little charade?

I mean, has anybody been charged?

[Steve_Seattle]

To finish my thought: Another peculiarity is the flippant manner in which Wilson himself described the Niger trip, i.e., sipping mint tea on the veranda and chatting with a few miscellaneous government flunkies. It was clearly NOT a serious investigation, nor was Wilson a serious professional investigator or WMD expert. Yet, again, the MSM have utterly ignored all these intriguing questions in their zeal to fabricate another Watergate.

[Bogeygolfer]

I've agreed with you for the most part over the last few days but I think you're missing this one. Fitz is struggling because he wants to indict and knows his case will not stand up. An informant doesn't change that. Your reasoning implies that if he had an informant he'd have what he needs to indict and would no longer be struggling with the decision. That presupposes a clear crime was committed. My concern is that there is a lot of gray area (I refuse to believe our guys could be stupid enough to anything overt) and that Fitz is motivated and predisposed to indict. Lastly there is no good upside to this and the downside is considerable. I'm not happy and was hoping to get this over with today.......

[Steve_Seattle]

"Who exactly are the "defense lawyers" in this little charade?"

"Defense lawyers" does seem to be a misnomer at this point, but I assume that most of the yacking is being done by the attorneys for Miller and Cooper.

[Wendy44]

I personally don't believe the trip was a set-up from the beginning meant to have these consequences. It could be, but I don't think it is.

For one thing, Wilson's initial report supported the idea that Iraq sought yellowcake from Niger. Wilson is on record after that time stating he had no doubt Saddam had WMD. I don't think at that time the plan had begun. That came later through their association with the VIPS people. I speculate Wilson brought up his trip and they hatched a plan for how they could use it after the fact.

I don't think the way the trip was done is all that unusual, if Wilson was considered a source, not a contractor or employee. I speculated when this first came out that the reports officer probably deemed the info of little value and that's why it wasn't circulated widely and didn't come to the attention of the VP's office.

I think it came out in the Senate investigation that this is pretty much what happened. The reports officer met with Wilson after the trip, interviewed him as a source, and wrote a report. The report was "graded" based on the value and distributed, probably only to the usual analysts, since the info wasn't that spectacular.

It probably went down pretty much standard operating procedure, nothing to do with nepotism, no revelations of classified info afterward. But, again, Wilson can't really defend himself by pointing that out because it would reveal that the VP didn't send him, as he originally charged to prove that Cheney had to have known about his trip and what he supposedly found.

[Dark Knight]

Did you notice that if someone outed Valerie, they put everyone she contacted at risk. But cricket type silence about how Joe Wilson put everyone he contacted for the CIA at risk?

Valerie lost all ability to be covert when she married Joe. Duh.

She may have been outed to other spy agencies by Aldrich Ames in the mid ninties, but they would not let that info out either.


DK

[areafiftyone]

YOU JUST BLEW YOUR COVER DUER!!

Freaky Fun with Freepers: read my post at the Freak show!

Edited on Wed Oct-19-05 10:53 AM by npincus http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1505104/posts?q=... before they take it down and boot me out! This thread had all the freaks howling about how Plame's CIA status was not covert. Let's see the Freeps hop all over my ass! tee hee. To: BIRDS What about the following regarding Plame's status as "secret" (CIA's classifiation for covert operatives) DON'T you understand?: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20... A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials. Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post. The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials. Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information, though that designation was not specifically attached to Plame's name and did not describe her status as covert, the sources said. It is a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a federal official to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert CIA official if the person knows the government is trying to keep it secret. 58 posted on 10/19/2005 7:39:15 AM PDT by W4ever (Long live Bush and Cheney!) < Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies | Report Abuse >

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[McGavin999]

More than likely it's the media lawyers.

[Steve_Seattle]

I'm not going to hammer too hard on the pre-planned conspiracy angle - as you say, that could have been an opportunistic afterthought - but I am still intrigued by Wilson's lack of credentials for this assignment and the flippant attitude he expressed, even publicly, about how he went about his business. Maybe the answer is that the trip wasn't taken particularly seriously in its inception, and only loomed large in retrospect because of how it came to be used politically.

[dogbyte12]

My theory on what Fitzgerald will prosecute on with the outing, if he does will not be Valerie Plame, but "Brewster-Jennings".

When Plame was taken out of covert ops, they kept the CIA front company going. Even though it's the CIA's fault that they didn't close down that shop, Fitzgerald will argue that "indirect" damage was done due to Valerie Plame being linked to Brewster-Jennings, and the potential damage done there.

I think he has got nothing. But, I am grasping at straws here.

[Steve_Seattle]

A few months ago, the NYT "outed" an entire covert CIA operation to ferry captured terrorists to various countries for interrogation. As I recall, the NYT blew the cover off at least one air carrier that was central to the operation. Now, explain why this was ok, not a crime, but the "outing" of Plame is so serious that it has been investigated by a GJ for two years? Here's my answer: the Plame thing is being treated as a crime in order to hurt Bush; the NYT story is NOT being treated as a crime because it also hurts Bush. So an action is treated as a crime not because it is actually a crime, but only if it can be used to hurt Bush; the negative impact on Bush is the SOLE determinant of whether there will be prosecution for a crime. That seems to be how the press works these days. And now, the press has the GJ doing its bidding.

[Wendy44]

Exactly. I consider that to be among the more aggravating aspects of this. The notion that this put our agents and sources and operations in danger. Because that really would be reprehensible--if it were true. But it's not.

Once compromised by Ames, she would not have been sent overseas again. But she could, and most likely did, continue to work here covertly, using aliases and pseudonyms. There's no reason why she couldn't, even when working with foreign sources. But, as long as she did her job properly, no one should be able to connect her to any of those aliases or pseudonyms. So, no danger to any agents, sources or operations.

I agree that Wilson put operations and possibly sources at much more risk by revealing that he was there fact-finding for the CIA.

[dogbyte12]

Let's not also forget that this grand jury is sitting in Washington D.C.

In 2004, Washington D.C. was the most strongly Kerry locality in the nation. Kerry got 90% of their vote, Bush got 9%.

Does anybody think that this grand jury is filled with the less than 10% of district residents who voted for the President?

[Steve_Seattle]

I thought this GJ was operating out of Chicago.

[Wendy44]

I think it's exactly right that the trip wasn't taken too seriously, but became very politically useful later.

There were two problems that emerged with the plan, though: the substance of the report didn't jive with what Wilson was saying in 2003 and Wilson's own ego and inability to keep his mouth shut.

I don't know if he told his co-conspirators what his report actually said or if he told them, just shooting off at the mouth, that he'd "investigated" this himself and found it not to be true, and they jumped on that.

Remember that he bragged about being the one to debunk the Niger forgeries, when, in fact, he'd not even seen them.

It's hard to say if his VIPS friends knew the real deal and couldn't control his ego, or if they themselves were surprised when the facts came out and Wilson hadn't been upfront with them.

[Wendy44]

Legally, it all hinges on how they got the information. If they don't have clearances and don't have access to classified information, it's a different ballgame.

In the arena of public opinion--there I totally agree.