Geeze! That looks mind-numbingly boring, but it also looks like I could keep busy fishing. ;-) Don't seem to matter what time of year, or what year, perpetual New Jersey March. 
Posted on 09/30/2003 8:11:11 AM PDT by mattdono
I need to see more than what's out there to think this is anything like the big deal the press and the Democrats are making it out to be. I'm all in favor of having the Justice Department investigate. I'm all in favor of firing whoever did the leaking, if he or she did as the reports suggest. But it sounds like the leaker is dropping in rank and importance as is the transgression. Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already.
It seems to me that the energy driving this is A) Obvious Democratic opportunism and scandal-hunger B) Media opportunism as this is the first Bush "scandal" that isn't manufactured outside the White House (could someone explain what Bush did wrong on Enron again?) C) A burning desire to flesh out a fleshless storyline that the Bush White House clamps down on "dissenters" D) An even more burning desire to make Karl Rove into the Sid Blumenthal of this administration.
Which brings us to another issue: comparisons between this administration and the last. First of all, Rove is not Blumenthal for several reasons but the most important is that Rove's got real power. Blumenthal was a Tolkieneque Wormtongue at best and more likely a slipper-carrier. On the larger front, I will be able to take only so much sermonizing from liberals over this scandal considering the fact that the last White House knowingly filed false criminal charges against inconvenient employees (the Travel Office), invented new privileges and abused old ones to stonewall at ever turn (Bush is commanding full cooperating), and generally accused critics of every form of bad faith imaginable.
So yes, by all means investigate what I predict will be a very minor story. But let's not pretend the Republic is in danger.
You seem to be saying that if Plame or some other person whose cover is blown is in fact a covert agent, then the referral could not be made, because the CIA would not want to blow the agent's cover all the more. But that's a prudential matter to be borne in mind in deciding whether to make the referral. The implication of what you seem to be saying would appear to be that, wherever the CIA has reason to believe the statute has been violated, it cannot make the referral. I think that's absurd.
That applies to trivial matters that should never have been classified in the first place (as occurs all too often.) Surely it applies all the more to the confirmation of a secret that many people -- including all of us, I imagine -- were totally unaware of, and the revelation of which would endanger many lives.
In their zeal to make this a big negitive for the President they have given the President an open gate to FIRE that Clinton butt boy Tenant at CIA. I don't care if Tenant didn't know about any leaks, he was in charge and his head should be the one to roll. Now the leftie whiners have given the President an investigation and a reason to get rid of all the Clintonestas at CIA.
Can you see why the leftie bunch hate GW & Rove so much? This, as most leftie sh!t thrown against the wall, reminds me of that "Whack a Mole" game that the kids play at Chuck-E-Cheese (Oh, I made a link....Schumer). The commie media is going to get another smack on the backside with this one too, but then again, they deserve it.
Many, many bad things are going to be outed from the left in the next year. The vast majority of the American people are not going to like it. We, Freepers, and the unbathed leftie commie bastards that are political junkies already know all of this, but the average American, too busy going to work and taking care of his/her family doesn't have the time or the interest to keep up on this. Mark my words, they will and very soon, and they are not going to like the truth that comes out. These same Americans are connected to the internet and the are becoming more, and more enlightened. The RATS are in big trouble, and they can't even realize it. In 2K+4 the RATS may only take New York and California, and that would be fine with me.
That's all!
James Woolsey
Woolsey served from 1993 to 1995 as President Clinton's first CIA director (when the CIA was reporting leaks about once a week to the Justice Department)
And if she *isn't* actually an operative, then all the CIA has to do is say "She doesn't work for us at all", and the story dies. All Valerie Plame herself has to say is "I don't work for the CIA". Because if she's not an agent, no laws have been broken. And if she's not involved in WMD analysis, then who cares?
What difference does it make to the CIA that some columnist has screwed up and outed a non operative?
The only reason that the CIA would care, and therefore would request an investigation into the matter, is that she was indeed an operative. An operative whose cover had been effectively blown whether they admitted or not.
Because the democrats have made it a national security issue.
If the answer is 'nope', then the investigation stops dead, and the CIA looks stupid by asking for an investigation into a matter that it *knows* has no basis in fact.
The only reason for the CIA to request an investigation is if Valerie Plame actually was an operative.
You are using the referral as an indictment and that is where your logic is deeply flawed.
In this case, the only confusion seems to be whether or not Mrs. Wilson was or wasn't a covert agent at the time of the revelation, or whether she was or wasn't handling covert operations. Even though the CIA knows her status (and CIA officials told Novak she was an analyst), they are still likely to refer the matter to an independent third party for investigation. If they didn't refer it to a third party, two things will happen: they will be accused covering up or they will be accused of leaving one of their employees (analyst, agent, opertative, whatever...) "out in the cold".
No matter which way, they will be taking heat. So, referring it to the DOJ takes that contingency out of play.
In this particular case, the CIA should be extra motivated to get itself out of an investigation or being the investigative body, because (rightly or wrongly) someone in the agency confirmed that Mr. Wilson's wife work for the CIA. They even confirmed her name, but requested that Novak not include it. Journalistically, the woman's name was researchable, so the proverbial "cat was out of the bag".
Again, the CIA, as involved party to the story/situation, would (rightly) refer it to a third party, which in this case is the DOJ. The DOJ referred the case, as it often does, to the FBI and they will conduct the investigation.
You are simply incorrect on the basis for which an investigation is requested. There are many reasons why the CIA would refer a case to the DOJ, and the potential (read that again...potential, not actual) revelation about an agent's status is just one of the reasons.
I just explained in post #87 and Bubba_Leroy (in post #85) has a link to an interview with former CIA Director James Woolsey who say:
WOOLSEY: No. I think that's normally what they'd do in an investigation. CIA refers crimes report over about once a week to the Department of Justice whenever there's a leak or any other potential violation of law that they come across.Please review my comments and the link to Director Woolsey's interview and reply accordingly.
And it's relatively routine thing. These leaks get investigated all the time. Occasionally somebody gets caught, but it's pretty rare. It's a lot rarer any directors of Central Intelligence would wish.
I am noticing that more and more. And new FREEPERs wonder why those of us who have been around are skeptical of them!
I understand that Adak is very nice this time of year...
Geeze! That looks mind-numbingly boring, but it also looks like I could keep busy fishing. ;-) Don't seem to matter what time of year, or what year, perpetual New Jersey March.
Pretend you're the CIA. Suddenly, out of the blue, a newspaper columnist announces that the wife of a former US Ambassador is in fact a CIA operative.
There are two basic reactions that you, as the CIA, can have to this 'revelation'.
The first possible reaction is that you don't particularly care, because you know that this woman has nothing at all to do with the CIA. She doesn't work for you, and never has. Which means that no field agents can possibly be blown by the columnist's allegations, since by definition, no field agents can be traced back to the ambassador's wife.
You can even announce publically that she is not a CIA operative, and not care if no one believes you, simply because you know you're telling the truth.
So realistically, your decision is to do absolutely nothing. You don't call for an investigation of the 'leak', because you know there hasn't been a leak. Which means that asking the Department of Justice to investigate is not only a waste of time, but has the potential of making your agency look stupid, since the first question any competent investigator is going to ask will: was she or was she not a CIA operative?
When you respond "No", the second question is going to be "Then what exactly are we investigating? A reporting screw up?". The third will be "And why the hell are you wasting our time?"
Now, the second possible reaction is one of pure fury, since the ambassador's wife is indeed a CIA operative whose cover has been blown for no real reason. Under those circumstances, your own agents would be calling for your head on a platter if there *wasn't* an investigation into who exactly within the government leaked top secret, confidential information.
WOOLSEY: No. I think that's normally what they'd do in an investigation. CIA refers crimes report over about once a week to the Department of Justice whenever there's a leak or any other potential violation of law that they come across.
If Valerie Plame isn't a CIA operative, then there's no potential crime here at all . None. If the leak isn't true to begin with, it's not really much of a leak, is it?
In this case, there simply isn't any room for any potential violations of the law, from the CIA's point of view. Valerie Plame was either an agent, or she wasn't. If she wasn't, then there's no crime. And if she was, then an investigation needed to be called.
I heard it said (I believe by Andrew Napolitano on Fox) that disclosing the name of a CIA employee is a crime only if the person making the disclosure knows the employee is undercover.
But in any case, that was not my point. I was not making a statement about criminality or non-criminality. I am not a lawyer and don't know.
I was simply saying that, according to Novak's own account, this was NOT a "LEAK."
Continuing to parrot the Democrats and the leftist media by calling it a "LEAK" is playing the Dem's game.
The Washington Post has a useful backgrounder on the law in question, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, enacted in 1982 after former CIA agent Philip Agee (who now lives in communist Cuba) published a book and various articles revealing the names of undercover CIA agents in an effort to sabotage U.S. intelligence activities. Even if Plame does turn out to be a covert agent, revealing her identity wouldn't automatically be illegal:The law enacted to stop Agee and others imposes maximum penalties of 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines for the unauthorized disclosure of covert agents' identities by government employees who have access to classified information.
The statute includes three other elements necessary to obtain a conviction: that the disclosure was intentional, the accused knew the person being identified was a covert agent and the accused also knew that "the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States."
Taranto concludes: "In order to violate the law, in other words, one must disclose a genuine secret. Was Plame's association with the CIA a secret? As we said yesterday, the CIA's blasé attitude toward Novak's inquiries suggests not."
The fact is, this women's identity was going to be known at some point.
Actually, one could (rightly) argue that Mr. Wilson's op-ed in the NY Times was the first domino in the revelation to her identity. His very public claims were going to warrant a reaction from someone.
The demoCREEPs would have you believe that the publication of the name came directly from the very tip-top of Bush White House, specifically Karl Rove. This is, simply, not the case.
The fact is, a reporter (Mr. Novak) dug into the story about why in the hell this guy was sent to begin with (Novak: "I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment"). He found out why.
He talked to the administration. "He [the administration official] said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife." It wasn't anyone at the tip-top of the White House; rather, "It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger."
He talked to CIA. The CIA official said that would prefer the name not be used, but didn't request that it not be published. Mr. Novak, again, would have withheld the name if asked. By Mr. Wilson's own choice, his wife's name was already public. So, whether Mr. Novak was told Mrs. Wilson's name by an administration official, the CIA official, or a research assistant the Chicago Sun-Times, it is besides the point.
It's simple. Politics. Pure and unadulterated politics.
The people at the CIA who decided to send Mr. Wilson have an agenda. Whatever their agenda is, it isn't to help the Bush administration. They sent Mr. Wilson to Niger knowing that he wouldn't be the most motivated guy to find Iraqi connections to uranium, because he --publicly-- didn't support the war in Iraq. Before he was sent, this was a known fact. When he got there, he sat on his butt for 8 days, drinking mint tea, and dismissing a potential claim that Iraq had contact with someone in Niger about uranium only because it wasn't "significant quantities". (So there was evidence, just not enough of it in Mr. Wilson's mind. Yeah, ok. )
His involvement with EPIC, "a far-Left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions and the no-fly zones that protected Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam" (Source), was well-known. His involvement with the far-left moveon.org is more evidence of his opposition to President Bush and his policies.
The bottom line is this: this is about the referral, it is about making the Bush administration weaker and getting themselves back in power. Unfortunately, the demoCREEPs actions, as usual, is making our country weaker too, which they don't seem to have a problem with.
Do you?
So does Tony Blankley. Managing a scandal.
The fact that something is political does not mean that one's own side is incapable of committing mistakes and crimes that warrant cutting one's losses.
Excellent and apt description of that man, Jonah.
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.