Posted on 10/26/2005 6:02:43 AM PDT by Brilliant
WASHINGTON — Prosecutors investigating the leak of a CIA officer's identity returned their attention to White House advisor Karl Rove on Tuesday, questioning a former West Wing colleague about contacts Rove had with reporters in the days leading to the naming of the covert operative.
Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald also dispatched FBI agents this week to the CIA officer's neighborhood in Washington, asking neighbors whether they had been aware — before her name appeared in a syndicated column — that the operative, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA...
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I wonder if Fitzgerald actually set up somebody in his office. That would be sah-weet.
Well, she was the only one who knew where the extra non-dairy creamer was in Langley.
"I still cannot see how you can expose a covert operative if he or she is not covert. Be like me saying that so and so works down at Wal-Mart and being hung out to dry for it. Am I missing something here or not?"
I've avoided posting on this topic but I'm going to don my asbestos suit and weigh in.
#1 - There have been conflicting stories about her exact status at the time of the leak. We may not know the real answer right now, but you can be assured that Fitzgerald does. It disturbs me that people just state with certainty that 'she wasn't covert for 6 years'. It seems to me that the CIA was very angry that her name was made public (since they originally requested the DOJ investigation that started this) so my guess is that she might have been covert. I heard a credible report that she was home temporarily because she had recently given birth to twins. It's not unusual for covert agents to take a break for family reasons and then go back to overseas work after a year or two.
#2 - It also disturbs me greatly that some folks on this board seem to be willing to forget their principles in the rush to defend Libby & Rove.
I don't care what the technicality of the narrow 1982 law says. I don't care if they broke the law or not. What they did was unethical at best.
Valerie Plame was a covert agent at some point in her career and she worked on WMD issues. The CIA set up a front company overseas for her. Other CIA agents worked in that company as well. Plus the civilians in that country who did business with that front company...some unknowing and some that were giving us valuable information.
By outing her they compromised national security, they put at risk every civilian who had business ties to that company, they outed every other CIA agent who worked there, they undoubtedly made it more difficult for our agents to get cooperation from civilians in other countries because they might fear being carelessly exposed, and they gave a roadmap to how the CIA sets up operations in foreign countries.
No CIA or FBI agent should ever be outed...ever. Former or current...doesn't matter. Libby & Rove had top secret security clearance and with that comes a great deal of responsibility to be extremely careful when discussing ~anything~ to do with our intel agencies.
Period.
If this was happening during the Clinton years everyone on this board would be baying for blood. Everything I hear tells me that the folks who work in the CIA are extremely angry and feel betrayed. The Bush administration would do well to take a lesson from Nixon. Don't mess with your spies.
Yea .. I saw that posted on the D-kos last week
Didn't know that about CT. Good news. Is Rell a true RINO (like Bloomberg) or just a liberal/moderate Republican (like Ahnold)?
Good one. Does that creamer come from "extra non-cows"? She was covertly playing the role of a CIA employee. The real truth is she just stays in Holiday Inns.
I was covert at one time and I don't care who knows it. I just cannot tell them what I did.
Yes. The truth and Wilson's lies. Her official status changed about 6 years before her outing. She was useless as an undercover operative well before that because of Aldrich Ames.
It seems to me that the CIA was very angry that her name was made public (since they originally requested the DOJ investigation that started this)
Pro forma. A little digging shows that she blew her cover a few times, including using the name of the CIA front company she worked for to donate money to Gore (or was it Kerry?).
I don't care what the technicality of the narrow 1982 law says.
You sound like Ronnie Earle. The fact is, you can't prosecute someone because what you think they did is "wrong". Doesn't work that way.
If you think what they did was unethical, then you have to make the case in the marketplace if ideas, not by using the threat of jailtime.
Valerie Plame was a covert agent at some point in her career and she worked on WMD issues.
And she got her husband a plum overseas trip out of it. Talk about unethical. She shoulda been fired for that.
The CIA set up a front company overseas for her.
See above. She outed it.
By outing her they compromised national security,
Oh, yes, her information on the location of the Equal packets was second-to-none. Ames killed any hope she had as an undercover agent. Period.
No CIA or FBI agent should ever be outed...ever.
Well, tough, Mr. Earle, because I can hang around the Langley off-ramp and narrow down the number of CIA agents considerably. After assigning Plame's husband to this, the CIA should receive no quarter.
If this was happening during the Clinton years everyone on this board would be baying for blood.
Oh, here it comes, the hypocrisy angle. As you may have noticed, not everyone on this board thinks the same way. I'm sorry. Valerie Plame got a photo spread in Vanity Fair. She's still at her cushy job in the CIA, undoubtedly recommending relatives for high government office. Her husband gets his mug on TV all the time. It's not like she had the IRS after her.
Like has happened.
Frequently.
To critics of Clinton.
I can tell them, but then I'd have to kill them. And I have a whole list of people I want to talk to.
This is what you call a fishing expedition.
That's strange, because I've heard Russert specifically deny that he knew about her. The person on the Hume panel was, IIRC, Fred Barnes. He was not exactly unequivocal in his statement.
That's strange, because I've heard Russert specifically deny that he knew about her. The person on the Hume panel was, IIRC, Fred Barnes. He was not exactly unequivocal in his statement.
She has stood up to typical Demo/Commie pressures in some cases, but her rhetoric is indistinguishable from theirs in others, so it is a mixed bag...
That is strange...because Russert said that people around Washington knew it, and that he himself knew it...and it was reshown on Special Report.
Barnes was the one I was thinking of, but wasn't sure if it was Mort or Brit himself.
I'd like to see that. Because it is a direct contradiction of what I heard him say.
(I know you didn't originally post this) What is purported to have been done was not unethical. Joe Wilson came forth of his own accord and publically and specifically lied about who sent him and why. The idea that this or any of the other secrecy laws were made in order to protect people from being accountable for public attacks is ridiculous. The comments were not retribution. The comments were correcting just one of many Wilson lies - lies which of course, were unethical both because they were lies, and because they should have been subject to nondisclosure.
Further, once he made himself a public figure, his wife would attract sufficient attention to make any cover meaningless - obviously she would be a U.S. agent with ties to the U.S. government, CIA or not. This going above and beyond the problems with just having married an ambassador.
Without having video handy, think about it on its face: the whole point of the statement was to say that it was known. There would have been no news or point in saying he didn't know. He volunteered this himself in conversation - no one had asked him - in order to make a point.
I'll look for what I heard from his mouth, but the following is from the statement from NBC about Russert speaking to the OSC:
"During the interview, Mr. Russert was asked limited questions by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald about a telephone conversation initiated by Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, in early July of last year. Mr. Russert told the Special Prosecutor that, at the time of that conversation, he did not know Ms. Plame's name or that she was a CIA operative and that he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby. Mr. Russert said that he first learned Ms. Plame's name and her role at the CIA when he read a column written by Robert Novak later that month."
If what you describe from Special Report is accurate, somebody's lyin'...
Hmmm. This seems like more of the dance about whether Joe Wilson's Wife means Plame. I don't recall Russert saying Plame, just as Rove and Libby claim not to have said Plame.
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