The CIA leak (Latest From Novak)

townhall.com ^ | 10/01/03 | Robert Novak

[Lady Heron]

Bingo

[auboy]

Kiran Chetry is my favorite. I vote yes on the E.D. "recall" and yes for Kiran.

[Sci Fi Guy]

I'm hoping this is accurate. Is Novak indicting himself?

Indicting himself for what? Exercising his 1st amendment rights? The law against leaking classified info can only apply to Gov't employees, just like the UCMJ only applies to the military.

[YaYa123]

Works for Vice President Cheney.

His name is always mentioned as some kind of culprit when democrats want to blame something on Cheney. He's Chris Mathews personal punching bag.

[SubMareener]

If you are the spouse of a CIA officer operating under official cover, you keep a low profile. Wilson did not. He opened his mouth in public, and that is what lead to this incident. Then he compounded the original mistake by dredging this all up several months after it first bubbled up.

If Novak's account of his conversation with his CIA contact is correct, then the CIA contact erred by not emphasizing that the reason Wilson was picked had to be suppressed to protect people's lives. Since Valerie is listed as Wilson's wife on the web, there was no greater harm done in including her name in the article. Simply saying the Wilson's wife, who worked for the CIA, recommended him for the job would have been enough.

The most despicable people in this whole affair are the press and Democrats who are causing such a public fuss about something that should have been handled quietly and discretely.

[FollowingTheGrace]

bump for later

[Mo1]

"In her business, people get very good about sticking to their story," said Mr. Wilson, who has told friends that when they were dating Ms. Plame told him about her true vocation only because he, too, had a high-level secrecy clearance, as a political adviser to the American general who was commanding United States forces in Europe.

She told him while they were dating????

[Mo1]

She broke the CIA rules

[Shermy]

Was that Wesley Clark?

[anglian]

Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times today. She quotes Ambassador Wilson as saying that he met Valerie Plame at a cocktail party and that "at first she said she was an energy analyst, but confided sometime around the first kiss that she was in the C.I.A.. I had security clearance."

You do realize that Ambassador Wilson's "security clearance" was no justification for Ms. Plame to blow her cover to him while out on a date? He had no "need to know." Did Ms. Plame obtain CIA permission to reveal her occupation to Ambassador Wilson?

Okay, so we've established that she told one person she was a spy. If, as you note, others are reporting that she "was always very vague" with them about her occupation, that suggests that quite a few people may have concluded that she worked for the Company.

If that's what happened--people who thought (correctly) that Ms. Plame worked for the CIA repeated that belief to others--then we're not talking about the commission of a crime anymore.

According to Section 421 of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 no crime has been committed unless the disclosure was "made by a government employee with access to classified information," who knew that "the person identified was a covert agent," and unless Ms. Plame and the CIA were "taking affirmative measures to conceal" her "intelligence relationship to the United States."