Posted on 07/10/2005 9:12:14 PM PDT by bitt
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Top White House advisor Karl Rove was one of the secret sources that spoke to reporters about a covert CIA operative whose identity was leaked to the media, Newsweek magazine reported in its latest edition.
The magazine said Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that Rove talked to Time magazine about former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame.
Luskin said Rove recently gave Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper permission to testify about the conversation to a grand jury investigating the leak in 2003, according to Newsweek.
A U.S. federal judge ordered Cooper, along with New York Times reporter Judith Miller, to testify and reveal their confidential sources.
Last week Cooper avoided a jail sentence for contempt of court by agreeing to testify in the case. Miller refused to testify and was jailed.
The case has become an important test involving freedom of the press and has pitting the media's traditional use of anonymous sources against the efforts of a federal government prosecutor to investigate a possible crime.
It is illegal to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA agent.
Although Rove has made statements about the Plame leak, he has never publicly acknowledged talking to any reporter about the CIA agent.
Rove has carefully chosen his words when questioned about the leak. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name," he told CNN last year when asked if he had had anything to do with it.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
You are making me tired. I'm leaving now.
If you can see that, you have xray vision.
Oh the humanity! When will these days of hell cease? This is hugh!
"CIA employee" is not a forbidden topic. At least know what the hell you are talking about before you embarass yourself especially when taking the RATmedia line.
Well, you haven't established Rove's guilt of anything but it's pretty clear what the Plame agenda was all along, and that was to undermine our country.
You don't establish some one's guilt by pointing at him yelling hysterically like a DU'er.
Obviously, Rove did nothing wrong because if he had, you DUmmies would have used it against Dubya in the last election cycle.
Not that it would have harmed the President, considering who you guys ran. You would have had better luck running an actual draft dodger who fled to Canada.
Time and Newsweak were reporting (in July, 2003) that CIA Director George Tenent had authorized and sent Joe Wilson to Africa to "investigate" whether or not Iraq tried to buy uranium yellow cake.
However, it turns out that Valerie Plame (Wilson's wife) was the person who authorized the "investigation."
Considering the fact that the US Senate has since issued a report categorically stating that Wilson's subsequent report was wrong, and considering the fact that Wilson and his wife have since been shown to be anti-Bush anti-Republican anti-Iraq war protestors, it is extremely possible that both Wilson and his wife will be brought up on disiplinary charges.
At the very least, they played personal gotcha and political gotcha against President Bush, and it is also unethical and possibly illegal to send one's own wife or husband or relative to do such a high priority job such as investigate yellow cake.
Besides, it has not been shown that Rove "outed" the wife as a CIA "agent", and it is far from clear on what her job is anyway.
Rove, by my take, simply said it was Wilson's CIA-employed wife who sent her husband, and the reporters subsequently dug up information claiming she was an "agent" or an "operative."
I am not sure it is illegal for Rove to have said that Plame worked as an administrator in the CIA.
To out an agent, yes that is supposedly illegal. But if it was illegal to say someone works in the CIA as an analyst or a bookkeeper, then thousands of reporters have already broken the law, by my estimation.
Please publish a list of frobidden topics. I have said it was wrong to do and may have been illegal. Do you understand the use of the word, wrong. Do you know the difference between legal and ethical. Do you know how much time and energy was wasted on this topic, while Rove did not own up to what he did?
There is nothing wrong with identifying someone as a CIA employee. The CIA has many thousands of employees whose identities are not kept secret. It is illegal to identify a covert agent of the CIA, of which there are only a relative handful.
It is quite possible that whoever identified Wilson's wife as a CIA employee, simply thought that she was another paper pusher in Langley, and had no idea that at sometime in the past she had been a "covert" agent.
To me, the question is was she still listed as covert, or was she done with that phase of her career.
Whatever the Wilsons/Palme did that was illegal or against CIA regs they can fry for all I care. Rove was wrong in what he did and how he handled it afterwards.
I agree, that is the legal question. It is not the same question to place an ethical or moral judgement on Rove's actions. I know we don't want to impose that standard on the issue, just on the democrats.
trolls in the morning...
Ditto, take the last shot. I'm out.
And me, too - I used to catch a ride into Rosslyn with a couple of girls who were very open about working there, in fact they tried to recruit me for their IS department. Plame wasn't a covert agent, therefore there is/was no problem.
Anyone who wonders why the CIA is so f#cked up may want to consider that it is probably filled with (thanks to Clinton) incompetent twits like Valerie who likely would be way over her head as an administrative assistent. Little wonder the Agency was an embarassment during the ninties and couldn't find its ass with both hands.
It is not illegal to say someone's wife is a CIA employee. It is not illegal to give her name either. The question that has never been answered is whether "CIA agent Valerie Plame" was actually a CIA Agent. What is clear is that Rove didn't think so since he stated in his interviews with the reporters that she was an analyst working WMD issues. That is not the same as being a "CIA Agent". The CIA, AFAIK, has never commented on this key issue one way or another so we are still in the dark as to her real job at the Agency.
If you show up at the Langley parking lot every day, chances are you are a CIA employee. This can hardly be a secret.
That someone who is openly a CIA employee is ALSO an undercover agent is just weird. There doesn't seem to be any law or reason to prevent disclosure of employees. Why should there be?
I live in Florida, can i have the machine next week to make storms go away?LOL!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.