I wish everyone had a subscription to the Online Wall Street Journal so you could read this piece above which is only a snippet and Victoria Toensing's great piece on the CIA needing to be investigated for its role in the Plame outting from yesterday's edition.
This great piece above puts the lie to Joe Wilson's smarmy claim on 60 Liberal Minutes on Sunday that Plame's career had suffered irrevocable damage. She wasn't a covert agent Joe! Can you EVER stop lying? Loser...
Have you seen the recent stories about Presidential directives that might be active in the case even if the law wasn't broken? I wonder if there is any truth to them. Supposedly Clinton's executive order doesn't require intent, only disclosure and thus the article claimed it might effect Rove.
Well, i'm not a subscriber, so the online WSJ can go take a crap.
Good article. I just wish there was talk like this while the investigation was going on a year ago. If this was so "readily obtainable", why didn't the WSJ (or anyone else for that matter) talk about this then?
Or talk about the fact that she was already "outed" before all this?
It's times like this where I have to think two things: Either I'm incredibly dense, and missing something basic, or the entire world is just stupid.
I have a minor disagreement with this line of argument. The CIA asserted that classified information was leaked. They didn't specifically assert a claim under this one statute.
Fitzgerald determined pretty quickly that Plame's name WAS in fact classified, by the CIA. He then had to determine if anybody who provided her name was guilty of an illegal disclosure of classified information.
He has concluded they weren't. But, in order to know that, he had to determine every person who disclosed her name, and why and how they did it. That meant he had to talk to administration officials.
When Libby supposedly told him that he hadn't given her name, but instead had heard her name from the reporters, that would mean Libby didn't violate the law by disclosling classified information.
However, Fitzgerald then received information from others in the administration that suggested Libby was not telling the truth when he said he first heard her name from reporters. So he got the reporters to testify under oath to find out what was really said.
That took a year to get through, because of legal fights.
While I disagree with Fitzgerald's final actions, it is hard to see why or how he could have stopped the investigation while this issue was under investigation.
I think this is what Fitzgerald meant when he said he wished this could have ended a year ago, and his stupid Baseball analogy. What he was saying that if Libby had said he heard the name in meetings, rather than not, then Libby's statements would have not raised a flag, Fitz wouldn't have had any reason to disbelieve Libby's claims from the media, probably wouldn't have had to get the media side, and this all could have been over last year without "anybody going to jail".
I don't know why Libby seemed to claim he hadn't learned her name in meetings, it could have been simple forgetfulness, but that forgetfulness could very well have cost us a year of investigation.
The problem here is that you are trying to rebut Dhimmicrats using facts, logic and law.
They don't believe in any of those three unless they can twist it to their advantage.
The only way to stop this mess is to find an intelligent, Republican prosecutor who will bring charges against some of these people.
Its time to do a Martha on Wilson -- some where at some time he lied to some govt person.
Ditto for whoever at the CIA did the referal. They knew the law (and if not it is no excuse) and knew that Plame was not covert. Whoever sent a memo to the Justice Dept lied to a govt official.
There's an FR thread posted today in which Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely indicates that Joe Wilson exposed Val's CIA employment to him in 2002 when they were both appearing on the same TV program.
Don't worry, Chris Matthews will set the record straight on Hardball tonite.
Should have been shut down early on because she was not a covert operative as defined by the statute.
How in hell did we get to a place like this in our country? It would be SAD if it weren't so very, VERY dangerous!!
Unlike Messrs. Rivkin and Casey , I'm not a lawyer.I'm an electrician. But after a couple of hours researching this topic, I could have told you the same thing about the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Patrick Fits Gerald and the MSM share a common self-imposed ignorance when it comes to investigating.
Irrevocable damage my off-side horse's patoot! I probably represent a very small percentage of the country who had ever heard of Joe Wilson before the infamous "16 words" in the State of the Union. This unknown (Ambassador to Gabon, for Pete's sake. What percent of the world's population not born there could find Gabon on an unmarked map?) has probably been cadging free drinks and "A" list invites ever since the story broke. This is the best thing that ever happened to this on the downslope power couple. Check local listings for a book signing near you.
By the way, you wouldn't know it, and this is partly Bush's fault for not barking back at them, but Jack Straw, the lowly foreign minister of the UK still stands by his assessment that the attempted "yellowcake" deal was real. The Nobel Peace Prize winning IAEA reported in its journal that Saddam had tried, but not succeded, to make such a deal in, I believe '94.
Joe Wilson took our money for a report we still have not seen verbatim, but if it said close to what his interview with the press said, he lied about nearly everything except the fact he does speak passable French.
bump
Yeah, we'll get another Move On dot Orgy Judge.
bttt