Outing Plame may not have been illegal. What is the prosecutor hunting? (the bigger picture!)

POST GAZETTE.COM ^ | JULY 17, 2005 | JACK KELLY

[CHARLITE]

Why is special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald pursuing so zealously the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, since it is all but impossible to prove that the leaker or leakers committed a crime?

So why is Fitzgerald acting like Inspector Javert in "Les Miserables"? The answer may lie in a sentence Walter Pincus of The Washington Post wrote on June 12, 2003.

President Bush mentioned the British findings in his State of the Union address in January 2003. In his leaks to Pincus, and earlier to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Wilson claimed Bush knew this was false. The key sentence in Pincus' story is this:

"Among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong,' the former U.S. government official said."

Wilson outed himself in an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," which described his CIA-sponsored trip to Niger in 2002. On July 14, 2003, columnist Robert Novak wondered why Wilson, who had no intelligence background and strong anti-Bush views, had been selected for the Niger mission. "Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report," he wrote. That set off the Plame name game.

Maybe Fitzgerald is investigating a different crime.

What if someone in the CIA was leaking classified information to influence the 2004 election? Uncovering a crime like that would be worthy of Inspector Javert's doggedness.

I suspect the biggest shoe in this case has yet to drop, and liberal journalists won't be happy when it does.

[bmwcyle]

We had a government with well placed Clintonites. Bush's biggest mistake was not to clean house.

[mewzilla]

Ummm, take a look at a snippet from this link, which mentions the congressional fellowship and something else from the Vanity Fair article. From this link:

Also in Burundi, Wilson met his second wife, then the cultural counselor at the French Embassy there. They spent a year back in Washington on a congressional fellowship, during which time he worked for Al Gore, then a senator from Tennessee, and Tom Foley, then House majority whip. "It was," Wilson says, "happenstance" that he worked for two Democrats. Then he returned to Africa as deputy chief of mission in the Congo Republic, where he helped Assistant Secretary of State Chester Crocker set up the process that led to negotiations for the withdrawal of the Cuban and South African troops from the Angolan Civil War.

Second wife, who worked at the French Embassy. Who was that?

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

Thanks for the info.

[Timeout]

Second wife, who worked at the French Embassy. Who was that?

From the link you provided:

Plame also told Wilson that she'd be moving with him into the new house only as his wife. Records show that Wilson and his second wife, Jacqueline, to whom he was married for 12 years, were divorced in 1998. By the mid-90s, Wilson says, that relationship had pretty much disintegrated. "Separate bedrooms-and I was playing a lot of golf," he says.

So: her name is Jacqueline, she worked at the French embassy in Burundi, and we can deduce that they were married in 1986 and divorced "after 12 years" in 1998. (Wilson started dating Plame in February, 1997).

[varon]

But even more importantly, who were-are they taking their orders from? It can't be just the 2 of them

Well, let's see who are the real heavyweights in the Democrat/Socialist party....................the Clintons!

[Ben Hecks]

Thanks for posting!

[aculeus]

did she have anything to do with producing his report, did she use him to further any sort of position she was taking within the CIA vis-a-vis WMDs???

Don't forget another suspicious fact often ignored: Wilson's "report" was given orally.

[Rocko]

Bump.

[bitt]

mark.

[Timeout]

I'm skeptical of a "conspiracy" involving the Rats (other than their continuing to prop up Wilson's credibility and their refusal to sign off on the well-documented findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee that Wilson was lying.)

Keep in mind the timeframe here. February, 2002. Only a few months after the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. was wrapping up in Afghanistan and the wheels were unmistakably turning toward Iraq. Bush had just given his "axis of evil" speech.

I think CIA was being roiled by these fast moving events. First 9/11, then Afghanistan, now Iraq...all with the knowledge that they were going to look pretty miserable when the inevitable 9/11 investigations were completed. It's been widely recognized in Washington that there was a behind the scenes struggle (war?) going on between the Bush administration and State/CIA. Old hands at both agencies were alarmed that Bush appeared ready to dispense with the go-along-to-get-along foreign policy they had so carefully nurtured...foreign policy was THEIR baby and they fought Bush at every turn. Leaks from "unnamed intelligence sources" became commonplace.

Enter Valerie Plame. I imagine she was vigorously opposed to Bush's "simple good vs. evil" approach...how naive! she would say. She told Wilson the trip to Niger involved "this crazy report" about Saddam and yellowcake...she had pre-judged the results of the trip.

So here's my theory: Plame and Wilson were vigorously opposed to Bush's policy and were convinced they were "doing good" by undermining it in any way possible. With the Niger report, Plame sees a way to do just that without leaving any fingerprints. I can just hear the two of them rolling on the floor laughing, her saying "What are they going to do? Blow my cover?! LOL!". All their pillow talk led to his "mis-statements" about the forged documents...the "tangled web" kicked in.

It remains to be seen whether Wilson's former wife was a French spy and whether she played any role in this. France has more involvement in Niger than any other country. The forged documents also involved French intelligence.

Maybe it's all a coincidence. But I don't think so. And I think it's likely this scenario is precisely what Fitzgerald is investigating.

[Note: the only thing that REALLY bothers me is the description Matt Cooper gave of the grand jury: mostly African American, mostly female. Being in D.C., that could mean a grand jury comprised of a constituency inclined to believe conspiracy reports of the "Bush is Hitler" variety.]

[CGVet58]

good article, charlite. ?... just recently found out that M.Cooper's wife is herThighness' longtime Chief'o'Staff - have wondered if perhaps she - and knowing hitlery is on the Senate committee for intel & armed services, as well as her fbi-filegate penchant - might not be the leak here as well?

Juicy morsels all the way around... exposing a potential cia-insider trying to bring down the government: think Agee back in the '70's... or bringing down a ruthless leftist currently being propped up as the saviour of the left... now that's what I call a target-rich environment!

[krazyrep]

Wilson's official role ended when he returned from Niger in March. The CIA didn't get the Italian forgeries until October. Wilson had no access to them. He either was making up what he told Kristof and Pincus, or he had received an unauthorized leak of classified information.

Or, Knowing that the Bush administration was onto them, the Nigerien officials - along with the French-controlled mining consortium that oversees ALL uranium in Niger - and Wilson cooked up a plan to create forged documents and "leak" them to the CIA via an Italian journalist in the pay of the French.

Aside from the obvious fact that Joseph Wilson couldn't know signatures, times and dates were incorrect on forged documents he never saw, why would Nigerien officials be so stupid as to put an ILLEGAL uranium transaction on paper? That's like saying the CIA intended Joseph Wilson to prove Niger was selling uranium to Iraq merely by asking them.

I'm thinking we'll find that a small number of Clinton holdovers manipulated intelligence in order to embarrass the President and Valerie Plame will be among them.

[FReethesheeples]

I e-mailed my story to Jack Kelly about Vitor Davis Hanson's encounter with Joe Wilson in the Freen Room in which Joe, among other things, reportedly revealed (bragged about) his wife's being a CIA "agent." Jack Kelly, the author of the article featured on this Post, sent me a very thoughtful, gracious, and informative reply. He's a great guy.

It will be interesting to see who the ultimate target of Fitzgerald's investigation is. (Could it be Plame herself?)

[Timeout]

Does anyone know whether Wilson had to get CIA approval BEFORE he penned his NY Times Op ed?

[McGavin999]

Wilson's official role ended when he returned from Niger in March. The CIA didn't get the Italian forgeries until October. Wilson had no access to them. He either was making up what he told Kristof and Pincus, or he had received an unauthorized leak of classified information.

WAHOOOO! A real journalist, I didn't know we had any of them left. This guy has actually done some research and is actually trying to connect the dots. Maybe journalism isn't dead after all.

[boris]

My understanding is that the "anti-outing" law applies to covert agents--and Plame was not a covert agent at the time of the outing. If true, the Prosecutor must be aware of this; ergo he is chasing somebody else...

[Wolfstar]

Thanks so very much for the links, marron. Very valuable, especially since this story will continue to bubble along at least until October. I have zero confidence that Fitzgerald will end his investigation when the GJ expires. He might ask for an extension, and his own job as special prosecutor is open-ended. There is no date set for this investigation to end.

[liberallarry]

It turns out I was wrong. There are TWO Italian reports - one on the forgeries and the other on the supposed attempted purchase of yellowcake in 1999. See

THE STOVEPIPE

There's still a question in my mind about the exact nature of the "memorandum of agreement" which Wilson was sent to investigate. That sounds more like the forgery and less like a report of a meeting between the Iraqi representative to the Vatican and the President of Niger.

What Hersh's report confirms however is the incredible, self-righteous arrogance of this Administration. This is what gcochran complained about...and I discounted. I was wrong about that too. But, since I still believe that war with Iraq was the right course of action, maybe that kind of mindset is what's necessary for such a bold departure from our previous path.

[small voice in the wilderness]

Bump for fascinating insights and angles

[Cboldt]

Does anyone know whether Wilson had to get CIA approval BEFORE he penned his NY Times Op ed?

From the media brief requesting an en banc hearing at the Federal Circuit Court (DC), "According to Congress's Iraq investigation, CIA officials said that while the CIA promised to keep Wilson's relationship with the CIA confidential, Wilson was not asked to sign a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement.

http://intelligence.senate.gov/iraqreport2.pdf <- Senate report (25 Mb) - P41

The below links relate to a brief filed on behalf of 36 news organizations. One of the authors of the brief is Victoria Toensing, who has posed the same points in editorial columns expressing the function of the statute that forbids disclosure of covert operatives.

The brief itself is a 1.5 Mb PDF file - fair warning.

March 23, 2005 brief filed by 36 News organizations <- Arguing "no crime committed"
http://beldar.blogs.com/beldarblog/2005/03/journalists_ami.html <- Commentary