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The Associated Press is reporting that Joe Wilson himself, in an interview on CNN, confirms that Valery Plame was not a covert agent at the time of Robert Novak's article mentioning her name.
AP
Wilson acknowledged his wife was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak's column first identified her. "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," he said.
Plame was not covert. She worked at CIA headquarters and had not been stationed abroad within five years of the date of Novak's column.
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When the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was being negotiated, Senate Select Committee Chairman Barry Goldwater was adamant: If the CIA desired a law making it illegal to expose one of its deep cover employees, then the agency must do a much better job of protecting their cover. That is why a criterion for any prosecution under the act is that the government was taking "affirmative measures" to conceal the protected person's relationship to the intelligence agency. Two decades later, the CIA, either purposely or with gross negligence, made a series of decisions that led to Ms. Plame becoming a household name:
• The CIA sent her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger on a sensitive mission regarding WMD. He was to determine whether Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake, an essential ingredient for unconventional weapons. However, it was Ms. Plame, not Mr. Wilson, who was the WMD expert. Moreover, Mr. Wilson had no intelligence background, was never a senior person in Niger when he was in the State Department, and was opposed to the administration's Iraq policy. The assignment was given, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, at Ms. Plame's suggestion.
• Mr. Wilson was not required to sign a confidentiality agreement, a mandatory act for the rest of us who either carry out any similar CIA assignment or represent CIA clients.
• When he returned from Niger, Mr. Wilson was not required to write a report, but rather merely to provide an oral briefing. That information was not sent to the White House. If this mission to Niger were so important, wouldn't a competent intelligence agency want a thoughtful written assessment from the "missionary," if for no other reason than to establish a record to refute any subsequent misrepresentation of that assessment? Because it was the vice president who initially inquired about Niger and the yellowcake (although he had nothing to do with Mr. Wilson being sent), it is curious that neither his office nor the president's were privy to the fruits of Mr. Wilson's oral report.
• Although Mr. Wilson did not have to write even one word for the agency that sent him on the mission at taxpayer's expense, over a year later he was permitted to tell all about this sensitive assignment in the New York Times. For the rest of us, writing about such an assignment would mean we'd have to bring our proposed op-ed before the CIA's Prepublication Review Board and spend countless hours arguing over every word to be published. Congressional oversight committees should want to know who at the CIA permitted the publication of the article, which, it has been reported, did not jibe with the thrust of Mr. Wilson's oral briefing. For starters, if the piece had been properly vetted at the CIA, someone should have known that the agency never briefed the vice president on the trip, as claimed by Mr. Wilson in his op-ed.
* More important than the inaccuracies is that, if the CIA truly, truly, truly had wanted Ms. Plame's identity to be secret, it never would have permitted her spouse to write the op-ed. Did no one at Langley think that her identity could be compromised if her spouse wrote a piece discussing a foreign mission about a volatile political issue that focused on her expertise? The obvious question a sophisticated journalist such as Mr. Novak asked after "Why did the CIA send Wilson?" was "Who is Wilson?" After being told by a still-unnamed administration source that Mr. Wilson's "wife" suggested him for the assignment, Mr. Novak went to Who's Who, which reveals "Valerie Plame" as Mr. Wilson's spouse.
• CIA incompetence did not end there. When Mr. Novak called the agency to verify Ms. Plame's employment, it not only did so, but failed to go beyond the perfunctory request not to publish. Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.
• Although high-ranking Justice Department officials are prohibited from political activity, the CIA had no problem permitting its deep cover or classified employee from making political contributions under the name "Wilson, Valerie E.," information publicly available at the Federal Elections Commission.
1982 Identities Protection Act legislation
"This requirement does not mean jetting to Berlin or Taipei for a week's work. It means permanent assignment in a foreign country. Since Plame had been living in Washington for some time when the July 2003 column was published and was working at a desk job in Langley (a no-no for a person with a need for cover), there is a no question about it...she was NOT COVERT as 'covert.'"
Game over
Sorry, it was no game and it is far from over...
You failed to provide links and dates,
"My wife was a covert officer at the time that these people were leaking her name."
Undercover travel The unclassified summary of Plame's employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, "Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States."
Undercover travel The unclassified summary of Plame's employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, "Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States."
I believe I heard some news report yesterday that the statute of limitations has run out for prosecution of dick, which means he'll probably never ever be charged at all.
I also think the the attorney general must be or had been dragging his feet, and not filing charges for possibly a good reason. If he did file charges, that would leave others of the executive branch in the future wide open to prosecutions, and investigations. As we all know, it's very difficult to impeach. Maybe the attorney general doesn't have enough evidence to move foreward. As we all also know, the evidence must be more than circumstancial, it must be hard and concrete to charge anyone with a crime. Many common court cases are thrown out of court for lack of evidence.
I believe I heard some news report yesterday that the statute of limitations has run out for prosecution of dick, which means he'll probably never ever be charged at all.
I also think the the attorney general must be or had been dragging his feet, and not filing charges for possibly a good reason. If he did file charges, that would leave others of the executive branch in the future wide open to prosecutions, and investigations. As we all know, it's very difficult to impeach. Maybe the attorney general doesn't have enough evidence to move foreward. As we all also know, the evidence must be more than circumstancial, it must be hard and concrete to charge anyone with a crime. Many common court cases are thrown out of court for lack of evidence.
The Plame case was just a spit in the bucket on the list of Cheney's crimes. He is nothing less than a traitor!
The Plame case was just a spit in the bucket on the list of Cheney's crimes. He is nothing less than a traitor!
Oh, yes I know. He was so corrupt, I don't think anyone (VP) in history can measure up to him. I think he has committed some of what might be treasonous offeses, but the definition of treason is very, very broad and not really concisely defined.
You should really give it up - old news, boring news and NOTHING will ever happen, mainly because he didn't do anything wrong and if you had an objective bone in your body, you would know this.
FYI. You have it backwards. Treason is very concisely defined, which is why it has rarely been prosecuted.
Let me rephrase then.
Treasonous offenses are a gray area, although, if a certain political party tried to kill off another person from another political party, that would be treason.
I searched for treasonous offenses, and really could not find concise definitions. If you know of a link, I'd love to check it out, because I've always wondered what a prez or a vp would have to do to become indicted.
Testimony at the Libby trial showed a Vice President obsessed with retaliating against former ambassador Joseph Wilson for writing, in the New York Times op-ed section on July 6, 2003, that intelligence had been "twisted" to justify attacking Iraq. How to explain why the normally stoic, phlegmatic Cheney went off the deep end?
There was plenty else to enrage Dick Cheney. It is a safe bet that he went bananas when he learned that Joe Wilson's wife was a CIA officer - and working on the issue of highest priority, how to prevent countries like Iraq and Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction.
Cheney smelled a rat. It was easy to jump to the conclusion that Valerie Plame and her knowledgeable colleagues would have seen right through the Iraq-Niger report. The embassy in Niger had poured cold water on it, and four-star Marine General Carlton Fulford, who visited Niger and spoke with Niger's president and foreign minister on Feb. 24, 2002, came to the same conclusion.
So here was Plame, and by extension her CIA colleagues, preparing to administer the coup de grace. The CIA would send a person with deep substantive expertise on the subject and also very good contacts in Niger (from previous service in Niger and other African countries, not to mention Baghdad).
Already, there was no love lost between Cheney and the CIA. And vice versa, Cheney having destroyed the agency's reputation for objective analysis by insisting on the creation of a fraudulent NIE to get Congress to approve an unnecessary war.
Yikes more Cheney derangement syndrome. Take a deep breath and repeat after me. Bush is out of office, Bush is out of office, Bush........
You latched onto a ridiculous phrase as usually only parrots tend to do. The only thing deranged concerning Cheney, is Cheney. The OP was a current article concerning new information that Cheney did not want released. We no longer have to wonder why. What does the previous administration being out of office have to do with Cheney's guilt? I did not realize that leaving office exempts a criminal from being brought to justice. Can you site that particular Judicial code? Thank you.
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