The trip wasn't classified, so he's free to talk about it. Joe Wilson is publicly known as a member of the State Department, so him doing this job for the US isn't surprising. Because Valerie is known as a Brewster Energy employee, he can talk about whatever he does. That's the thing people keep getting confused about - no one knows she's with the CIA. Her family is on record as saying even they had no idea, and I can tell you from abundant personal experience that the families of NOCs not knowing is the rule, not the exception. Even when you're no longer classified as covert, you never reveal what you used to do.
As for Novak, I suspect he's not in jail because Fitzgerald is far more interested in who gave him the info - that's the person who revealed classified info. I'm not a lawyer so I have no way of knowing if what he did was even illegal.
I'm not terribly worried about anyone having violated that 1982 law Toensing is always going on about. I haven't seen anything to suggest anyone broke the law. But somebody, somewhere at somepoint revealed classified info to Novak and that's the question on the table - who did that?
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no one knows she's with the CIA.
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I highly doubt that.
Even a cursory reading of the Weekly Standard, the Washington Times and the Wall Street Journal tells us that her neighbors and friends who know her socially KNOW that she was working with the CIA and going to work everyday at LANGLEY.
WHAT THE NATURE OF HER WORK WAS MIGHT BE CLASSIFIED, but the fact of her being a CIA employee was KNOWN.
I don't think her working with the CIA is a secret, or even revealing this fact is a criminal offense.
And anyone else on this thread should be able to clarify this for us.
The problem with Independent Councels is they tend to MORPH from their original mission into something different and people are indicted not for breaking the actual law in question, but for something else --- perjury, obstruction of justice, lying under oath.
Take Martha Stewart for instance, her crime was NOT that she did Insider Trading ( this was never proven and she was not jailed for this ). Her crime was for the offence of obstruction of justice, which the prosecutor pursued to get at a high profile celebrity.
Hence, this case could well be the same --- a missed statement here, a non-corroborative statement there, something you said that did not jibe with evidence, heck -- even a misplaced memory or a slip of the tongue and VOILA !! you're indicted.
And because of the indictment --- the stigma that goes with it and the fact that you have to leave office because of it becomes a prosecutional victory.