Did Rove Blow a Spook's Cover? The White House Won't Say (article from 2003)

A minor flap has been brewing since syndicated columnist Robert Novak, citing "two senior administration officials," reported in July that Joseph C. Wilson IV was married to a Central Intelligence Agency specialist on "weapons of mass destruction" named Valerie Plame.

Wilson is the former diplomat sent by the CIA last year to check out allegations that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. He caused the Bush administration no small embarrassment by stating, in a July 6 op-ed, that he'd reported "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." Novak hasn't particularly supported the Iraq war, and his column essentially took Wilson's side. But the fact that Novak blew Plame's cover (in the course of relating that Wilson was sent at Plame's suggestion) gave The Nation's David Corn the opportunity to accuse the Bush administration of compromising national security, in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

I'm posting this old article because Drudge has put up the following headline;

"Lawrence O'Donnel on McLaughlin Group: 'I'm probably gonna get pulled into the grand jury for saying this, but it will be revealed in Cooper's notes that it is Karl Rove who leaked Plame's identity'... Developing..."

(McLaughlin is such a blowhard! He would have his viewers believe he's the first one to name Rove.)

This old Slate column (conveniently) fails to chide David Corn, or even mention, prosecuting someone for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, requires proving intent. Neither Novak nor Rove had intent. In one of Novak's columns published shortly after his column naming Plame, he wrote, this administration source, (presumably Rove), asked him not to use Plame's name.

Unless O'Donnell is just committing suicide or was smoking too much weed, this is a strange and awfully explosive accusation to make. I guess we'll find out.

www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000972839
Editor and Publisher magazine: MSNBC Analyst Says Cooper Documents Reveal Karl Rove as Source in Plame Case
Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, presumably revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source, and what might happen to him or her. Tonight, on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show, Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, claimed to know that name--and it is, according to him, top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

Here is the transcript of O'Donnell's remarks:

"What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury, the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

"And I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

Other panelists then joined in discussing whether, if true, this would suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak to Cooper

Thank you for leading me to the following:

"MSNBC Analyst Says Cooper Documents Reveal Karl Rove as Source in Plame Case

By E&P Staff

Published: July 01, 2005 11:30 PM ET

NEW YORK Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, presumably revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source, and what might happen to him or her. Tonight, on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show, Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, claimed to know that name--and it is, according to him, top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

Here is the transcript of O'Donnell's remarks:

"What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury, the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

"And I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

Other panelists then joined in discussing whether, if true, this would suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak to Cooper."

http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000972839

((note the date on this Novak column. Written before he clammed up, and most likely reflects what he told Fitzgerald and the grand jury, certainly what they knew even before Fitzgerald gets Cooper's notes.)

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/09/29/novak.cia/

Novak: 'No great crime' with leak
Wednesday, October 1, 2003 Posted: 5:38 PM EDT (2138 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Newspaper columnist and CNN co-host Robert Novak said Monday that while he learned the identity of a CIA operative from administration officials, there was "no great crime" and that he was not the recipient of a planned leak.

Novak, a nationally syndicated columnist who writes for the Chicago Sun-Times and co-host of CNN's "Crossfire," said he learned of Valerie Plame's identity as he was preparing a column to be published July 14.

That column looked at the role of Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, in investigating claims about Iraq's nuclear ambitions -- specifically reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium ore in Niger and elsewhere in Africa.

President Bush made the assertion in his 2003 State of the Union address as part of the rationale for going to war, attributing the report to British intelligence. The information was later discredited as being based at least in part on forged documents, and the White House has since backed off the statement.

Wilson, who was acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq just before the Persian Gulf War of 1991, alleges White House officials revealed his wife's identity to Novak in retaliation for his exposing flaws in prewar intelligence on Iraq.

"Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this," Novak said on "Crossfire." "There is no great crime here."

Novak said Monday that he was working on the column when a senior administration official told him the CIA asked Wilson to go to Niger in early 2002 at the suggestion of his wife, whom the source described as "a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction."

Another senior administration official gave him the same information, Novak said, and the CIA confirmed her involvement in her husband's mission.

In his column, Novak attributed the information about Plame's involvement in Wilson's trip to Africa to two unnamed senior administration officials.

"They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative and not in charge of undercover operators," Novak said.

The Washington Post quoted a "senior administration official" in a story Sunday as saying that two top White House officials disclosed the identity of Wilson's wife in calls to at least six Washington journalists. Novak was the only recipient of the information who published it, the Post reported.

Wilson at one point suggested that senior Bush adviser Karl Rove could have been behind the leak, which the White House denied. He backed off that assertion somewhat Monday, accusing Rove of at least condoning it.

Wilson described the leak as a punitive move, noting that Novak's column appeared one week after he had written an op-ed article in The New York Times that was critical of the administration's handling of intelligence on Iraq.

"I think it comes out of the White House political office," Wilson said.

Novak said Monday that he will not reveal the names of his sources.

Novak also contacted Wilson for the column and was told, "I will not answer any question about my wife," according to a quotation Novak used in the column.

Wilson disputed that in an interview Monday night on CNN's "Paula Zahn Now."

"Bob Novak called me before he went to print with the report and he said a CIA source had told him that my wife was an operative," Wilson said. "He was trying to get a second source. He couldn't get a second source. Could I confirm that? And I said no."

Wilson said he called Novak after the article appeared citing sources in the Bush administration.

"What was it, CIA or senior administration?" Wilson said he asked Novak. "He said to me, 'I misspoke the first time I spoke to you.' "

The Justice Department, at the CIA's request, is investigating whether anyone in the administration broke the law by leaking Plame's name. The White House has said it will cooperate with the investigation.

Such a leak could constitute a felony. According to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, a federal employee with access to classified information who is convicted of making an unauthorized disclosure about a covert agent faces up to 10 years in prison and as much as $50,000 in fines.

CNN's David Ensor contributed to this report.

EX=PROSECUTOR: PLAME LEAK NOT ILLEGAL
NEWSMAX ^ | 2/22/05

Posted on 02/22/2005 1:14:45 PM EST by areafiftyone

The former prosecutor who helped draft the law that Democrats say was violated when someone in the Bush administration leaked a CIA worker's name to columnist Robert Novak now says that no laws were broken in the case.

Writing with First Amendment lawyer Bruce Sanford in the Washington Post recently, former Assistant Deputy Attorney General Victoria Toensing explained that she helped draft the law in question, the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

Says Toensing, "The Novak column and the surrounding facts do not support evidence of criminal conduct."

For Plame's outing to have been illegal, the one-time deputy AG says, "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."

Since in neither case does Plame qualify, Toensing says: "There is a serious legal question as to whether she qualifies as 'covert.'"

The law also requires that the celebrated non-spy's outing take place by someone who knew the government had taken "affirmative measures to conceal [the agent's] relationship" to the U.S., a prospect Toensing says is unlikely.

Other signs that no laws were broken include the fact that after Plame was outted, the CIA's general counsel took no steps to prosecute Novak, as has been done to other reporters under similar circumstances.

Neither did then-CIA Director George Tenet or his deputy pick up the phone to tell Novak that the publication of her name would threaten national security and her safety, as is also routinely done when the CIA is serious about prohibiting publication.

In fact, the myth that laws were violated in the Plame case began to unravel in October 2003, in a column by New York Times scribe Nicholas Kristof, who explained that Valerie Plame had abandoned her covert role a full nine years before.

"The C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given [Plame's] name [along with those of other spies] to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons."

Kristof also noted that Plame had begun making the transition to CIA "management" even before she was outted, explaining that "she was moving away from 'noc' – which means non-official cover ... to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having 'C.I.A.' stamped on her forehead."

Noted the Timesman: "All in all, I think the Democrats are engaging in hyperbole when they describe the White House as having put [Plame's] life in danger and destroyed her career; her days skulking along the back alleys of cities like Beirut and Algiers were already mostly over."

So why – with a special prosecutor now threatening to toss Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and New York Times reporter Judith Miller in jail if they don't give up their sources in the Plame case – aren't their lawyers invoking the "no laws were broken" defense?

Explains the National Review's Rich Lowry: The Miller-Cooper defense hasn't made this argument because it would be too embarrassing to admit that the Bush administration's "crime of the century" wasn't really a crime at all, especially after a year and a half of media chest-beating to the contrary.

"It was just a Washington flap played for all it was worth by the same news organizations now about to watch their employees go to prison over it," says Lowry.

"That's the truth that the media will go to any length to avoid."

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