If, it turns out, due to the forced testimony of certain reporters and the notes the NY Times turned over, that it was Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove who leaked Valerie Plame's identity...should he be tried?

Yes.

Yes however... I'm betting if he were found guilty he'd get a presidential pardon.

Which would bring up the next major question, does anyone really think Rove would have released that information without Presidential knowledge?

Dunno, maybe the guy is a moron. Didn't he sign some sort of waiver that any reporter could cite him as a source for anything he says? That doesn't seem to me like someone who is trying to be an unnamed source.

Why was the spy's name revealed in the first place? Was she a democrat? :)

She's the wife of Joseph Wilson, the diplomat who published an article repudiating Bush's contention that Iraq was attempting to buy yellow-cake uranium from Nigeria. The supposition is that her cover was revealed in retaliation.

If I recall correctly.

The supposition is that her cover was revealed in retaliation.

If Rove is responsible he should be be strung up by his gonads.

If Bush was responsible, he should get the gonad treatment as well as a pineapple rectal lube.

What exactly your basis for accusing Rove of doing this - other than wishful thinking by those who dislike him?

Its been reported that the notes and e-mails recently released by the NY times to the federal grand jury investigating the matter strongly suggest or implicate Karl Rove as a source in Cooper's story.

At the very least the notes supposedly show that Rove perjured himself in his previous testimony before that grand jury when he said he didn't speak to reporters about the issue.

You'll note, through the haze of your rabid defense of all things GOP, that the first word of my initial post was "If". The matter isn't settled yet, by any means, but there are those who have for the past year and a half, been saying it has all the earmarks of Rove...

But, back to the initial question, Sunglo.

If it turns out Rove was, indeed, the source of the leak revealing Plame as a CIA agent...do you think he should be tried under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act?

Should he be tried, as some have suggested, for providing aid to terrorists or treason?

What do you think should happen if it does turn out Rove was responsible?

Should he be tried, as some have suggested, for providing aid to terrorists or treason?

That would be ironic since he accused democrats and liberals of treason not too long back for opposing the president and his policies and questioning the wisdom of the war.

This will be fun to watch, but then, I'm having a lot of fun watching Duke Cunningham (R, San Diego) getting hoisted right now too. He's another one that has gotten a little chummy with lobbyists and made quite a bit of profit from some very shady deals... and funny, the lobbyists have gotten some lovely no-bid contracts thrown their way.

I wonder... the democrats may take back the House simply by attrition from the corrupt entanglements the Republicans are getting caught in. Nah, they'll just put another republican in... probably ones more clever about getting caught.

. . . through the haze of your rabid defense of all things GOP . . .

Sorry, but I am too busy foaming at the mouth to respond.


Actually IF Rove is guilty of commtting a crime, of course he should be prosecuted. Lets just make sure the "crime" is not being good at winning elections.

Then again I expected Clinton to be prosecuted for perjury.

*hands Sunglo a napkin*

Here's some infos I got off the Economist:
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=4151515

The scandal is now several years old. In 2002 the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, a former diplomat, to Africa to check on a disputed claim that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Niger. Mr Wilson found the claim bogus. Yet the Niger-uranium story nonetheless made it into George Bush’s state-of-the-union speech in the run-up to the Iraq war. A mistake, say the Bush people; a lie and a cover-up, Mr Wilson wrote in a 2003 article.

Soon after Mr Wilson’s article appeared, Bob Novak, a conservative journalist, revealed in a column about Mr Wilson’s trip that his wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA officer working on weapons of mass destruction. Ms Plame was almost certainly outed by Bush administration officials, perhaps in revenge for Mr Wilson’s crusading article. Her clandestine career was ruined and her intelligence contacts potentially endangered. Whoever revealed her identity to several journalists, Messrs Cooper and Novak and Ms Miller among them, might have committed a felony—though this requires that the leaker be someone with authorised access to secret information and behave in a way intended to harm national security. Thus it may not have been a crime, but merely a reprehensible act that should embarrass the administration.

My question is... why hasn't Bob Novak been bullied into revealing his source? I'm guessing... friends in high places. Crap, GMTA! I'm still reading the Economist article:

But will anyone pay for it? Mr Novak certainly won’t go to jail—he did not have direct access to classified information. But why is he not facing a stretch inside for refusing to reveal his sources to the leak investigators, as Ms Miller is? No one is exactly sure. Mr Novak may have co-operated with the investigation led by Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor looking into the leak, though he will not admit doing so.

*Hands Pana some glasses*

Where exactly is Rove's name mentioned in that biased article?

I realize there aren't a lot of pictures but the words are usually important too. I'll highlight them for you... just pulling out one paragraph because the article is rather long.

Other speculation has centred on Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s closest and most formidable political adviser. Rumours had long swirled that Mr Rove was the Plame leaker. Those whisperings grew louder last week when Time, saying it was not above the law as an institution, revealed Mr Cooper’s notes for a follow-up story he did on the leak. The notes revealed that he had talked to Mr Rove, whose lawyer then hurried in to insist that his client was not the leaker. Mr Rove has already testified to the investigation, and Mr Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, has told Mr Rove’s lawyer that he is not a “target” of the probe. Anti-Rove Democrats—of whom there are many, thanks to the Bush man’s talent for outfoxing them—are still hoping that he may yet come under close scrutiny. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Dick Cheney, the vice-president, has also been rumoured to be the leaker, but his staff insists he has done nothing wrong.

/sigh.

Here sunglo Rove's name is mentioned here ;) (http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000972839)

Did you think I was pulling this out of my rear? This is but one of a few articles on it. in the news since the Supreme Court recessed and the Times turned over its notes. If I recall, the news broke with a Newsweek article by Michael Isikoff.

What do you think should happen if it does turn out Rove was responsible?
I thought Fyyr had some good ideas.

If it does turn out to be Rove then they need to nail him for lying to a grand jury as well. We'll see what happens but my money is on Rove being the source of the leak. It's exactly the sort of underhanded **** he'd pull. He certainly appeared to be motivated towards making things difficult for the Wilsons given his comments to Chris Matthews (who claimed in an interview with Wilson that "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game.")

In my estimation, from my many years of pulling things out of my ass, it's always the guy with the nickname in quotes that is the perpetrator. So I'm betting it is Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

But if it is Rove... well, I'll be dancing around the pyre singing gleefully.

Someone else read this and tell me... doesn't this sound like Rove is the source?

blah, blah, blah...
The plot took another dramatic twist yesterday when Time magazine's Matthew Cooper avoided jail, saying his source had freed him from his confidentiality pledge hours before the court hearing.

blah, blah, blah...

The stakes are equally high for the White House and Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove. President Bush, who was deposed in the case, has said he wants to find the leakers, but lawyers and spokesmen in the case have parsed their language carefully.

Rove, who has testified before a grand jury, denied again through his lawyer last week that he had leaked Plame's identity after Newsweek reported that Cooper's e-mails identify Rove as one of his sources.

Entire article (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/06/AR2005070602063.html)

Did you think I was pulling this out of my rear? This is but one of a few articles on it.


Bah....don't you know you can't expect Republicans to read articles and whatnot...it might broaden their minds, and we all know minds are a terrible thing, and must be stopped....:)

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000002LJ0.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Ah...one of my favorite albums...though not as good as A Land of Rape and Honey

Great band. Gnarly cover art. :)

Evidence is starting to pile up that Karl Rove was indeed at least one of the sources of the leak:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/07/AR2005070702215.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

After Time turned over its documents late last week, Newsweek reported that e-mail records showed that Rove was one of Cooper's sources on Plame and Wilson. That article led Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, to say in an interview last weekend that his client had spoken to Cooper around the time Novak's column appeared in July 2003. But he added that Rove had testified fully in the case and had been assured by Fitzgerald that he is not a target in the investigation.

More evidence points to Rove as the source Cooper was seeking to protect -- although what information was provided is not clear. Rove and Cooper spoke once before the Novak column was available, but the interview did not involve the Iraq controversy, according to a person close to the investigation who declined to be identified to be able to share more details about the case.

But I find this interesting...

But he added that Rove had testified fully in the case and had been assured by Fitzgerald that he is not a target in the investigation.

If everything is pointing to Rove, why is the special prosecutor not targetting Rove?

The admission that Rove had spoken to Cooper appeared at odds with previous White House statements. In retrospect, however, these statements -- which some interpreted as emphatic denials -- were in fact carefully worded.

On Oct. 10, 2003, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was asked whether Rove; Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; or National Security Council official Elliott Abrams had told any reporter that Plame was a covert CIA agent.

"I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this," McClellan said. "And that's where it stands." Reporters pressed McClellan to clarify that statement but he held to the words in his first answer until one reporter asked, "They were not involved in what?" To which he replied, "The leaking of classified information."

That left open the other question that comes into play in this episode, which is the degree to which White House officials were engaged two summers ago in a vigorous effort to discredit Wilson's accusations by discrediting Wilson himself. That in itself may not be a crime, nor would such tactics be unique to the Bush White House, given the accepted rules of political combat employed by participants in both major political parties.

Rove told MSNBC's Chris Matthews that Wilson's wife was "fair game," according to an October 2003 report in Newsweek. At a minimum Fitzgerald could turn up embarrassing information that may yet become public about how the Bush White House operates.

And finally... a pithy observation:

White House officials make no secret that they think Democrats went beyond the boundaries to discredit the reputations of some of their nominees to the appellate courts. Now into that maelstrom could come discomforting revelations about what top White House officials may have done to discredit Wilson by questioning his motives, his wife's role in the trip to Niger and his veracity.

Panamah !!!

(drive-by derail)

*hugs*

*giggle*

Wow! Flash from the way back past. How're you Stormlin?

I'm good, how are you these days? Still playing in the garden? O.o

Back on topic... looks like we have a winner here.
Liar, liar pants on fire... (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-07-11-white-house-rove_x.htm) (Good thing I don't write the headlines)
White House won't comment on Rove, leak inquiry
WASHINGTON (AP) — For two years, the White House has insisted that presidential adviser Karl Rove had nothing to do with the leak of a CIA officer's identity. And President Bush said the leaker would be fired.

But Bush's spokesman wouldn't repeat any of those assertions Monday in the face of Rove's own lawyer saying his client spoke with at least one reporter about Valerie Plame's role at the CIA before she was identified in a newspaper column. uh-huh!

Rove described the woman to a reporter as someone who "apparently works" at the CIA, according to an e-mail obtained by Newsweek magazine.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/07/11/BL2005071100701.html
Plame, By Any Other Name

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Monday, July 11, 2005; 1:21 PM

There is no longer any question that top presidential adviser Karl Rove is a key player in the Valerie Plame case.

In fact, what Rove told Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about Plame is apparently one of the last things special prosecutor Patrick J.Fitzgerald is trying to determine before he wraps up his investigation into whether Plame was illegally outed as a CIA agent.

Oddly the white house is vewy, vewy quiet (http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050712/ZNYT02/507120340/1002/BUSINESS) about the leak issue now...

WASHINGTON, July 11 - Nearly two years after stating that any administration official found to have been involved in leaking the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer would be fired, and assuring that Karl Rove and other senior aides to President Bush had nothing to do with the disclosure, the White House refused on Monday to answer any questions about new evidence of Mr. Rove's role in the matter.

With the White House silent, Democrats rushed in, demanding that the administration provide a full account of any involvement by Mr. Rove, one of the president's closest advisers, turning up the political heat in the case and leaving some Republicans worried about the possible effects on Mr. Bush's second-term agenda.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic leader, cited Mr. Bush's statements about firing anyone involved in the leak and said, "I trust they will follow through on this pledge."

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, said Mr. Rove, given his stature and the principles involved in the case, could not hide behind legal advice not to comment.

"The lesson of history for George Bush and Karl Rove is that the best way to help themselves is to bring out all the facts, on their own, quickly," Mr. Schumer said, citing the second-term scandals that have beset previous administrations.

In two contentious news briefings, the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, would not directly address any of a barrage of questions about Mr. Rove's involvement, a day after new evidence suggested that Mr. Rove had discussed the C.I.A. officer with a Time magazine reporter in July 2003 without identifying her by name.

Under often hostile questioning, Mr. McClellan repeatedly declined to say whether he stood behind his previous statements that Mr. Rove had played no role in the matter, saying he could not comment while a criminal investigation was under way. He brushed aside questions about whether the president would follow through on his pledge, repeated just over a year ago, to fire anyone in his administration found to have played a role in disclosing the officer's identity. And he declined to say when Mr. Bush learned that Mr. Rove had mentioned the C.I.A. officer in his conversation with the Time reporter.

When one reporter, David Gregory of NBC News, said that it was "ridiculous" for the White House to dodge all questions about the issue and pointed out that Mr. McClellan had addressed the same issues in detail in the past, Mr. McClellan replied, "I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said, and I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time."

A moment later, Terry Moran of ABC News prefaced his question by saying Mr. McClellan was "in a bad spot here" because he had spoken from the same podium on Oct. 10, 2003, after the Justice Department began its formal investigation into the leak, and specifically said that neither Mr. Rove nor two other officials - Elliot Abrams, a national security aide, and I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff - were involved.

Mr. McClellan disputed the characterization of the question but did not directly address why the White House had appeared now to have adopted a new policy of not commenting on the matter.

Mr. Rove made no public comment. A senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the White House now says its official position is not to comment on the case while it is under investigation by a federal special prosecutor, said Mr. Rove had gone about his business as usual on Monday. The official said Mr. Rove had held his regular meetings with Mr. Bush and other top White House aides, and was deeply involved in preparations for the Supreme Court nomination and efforts to push several major pieces of legislation through Congress this month.

The officer was first publicly identified under her maiden name as Valerie Plame, "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction," on July 14, 2003, by the syndicated columnist Robert Novak. He wrote that Ms. Plame was the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV, who had recently written an Op-Ed article for The New York Times disputing an administration claim about Saddam Hussein's nuclear program. Mr. Novak cited "two senior administration officials" as the source of his information.

The criminal investigation into how the C.I.A. officer's name came to appear in a syndicated newspaper column two years ago continued largely out of public view. But the recent disclosure of evidence that Mr. Rove had, without naming Ms. Plame, told a Time reporter about the same time that Mr. Wilson's wife "works at the agency," thrust the case squarely back into the political arena. That reflected Mr. Rove's standing as among the most powerful men in Washington and his place in the innermost councils of the White House.

Because of the powerful role Mr. Rove plays in shaping policy and deploying Mr. Bush's political support and machinery throughout the party, few Republicans were willing to discuss his situation on the record. Asked for comment, several Republican senators said on Monday that they did not know enough or did not want to venture an opinion.

But in private, several prominent Republicans said they were concerned about the possible effects on Mr. Bush and his agenda, in part because Mr. Rove's stature makes him such a tempting target for Democrats.

"Knowing Rove, he's still having eight different policy meetings and sticking to his game plan," said one veteran Republican strategist in Washington who often works with the White House. "But this issue now is looming, and as they peel away another layer of the onion, there's a lot of consternation. Rove needs to be on his A game now, not huddled with lawyers and press people."

A senior Congressional Republican aide said most members of Congress were still waiting to learn more about Mr. Rove's involvement and to assess whether more disclosures about his role were likely.

"The only fear here is where does this go," the aide said. "We can't know."

Mr. Rove, Mr. Bush's senior adviser, deputy chief of staff and political strategist, was plunged back into the center of the matter on Sunday, when Newsweek reported that an e-mail message written by a Time reporter had recounted a conversation with Mr. Rove in July 2003 in which Mr. Rove discussed the C.I.A. operative at the heart of the case without naming her.

Mr. Rove's lawyer, Robert D. Luskin, has said the e-mail message showed that Mr. Rove was not taking part in any organized effort to disclose Ms. Plame's identity. Mr. Wilson is a former diplomat who traveled to Africa on behalf of the C.I.A. before the Iraq war to investigate reports concerning Saddam Hussein's efforts to acquire nuclear material.

Mr. Wilson has suggested that the White House sought retribution by publicly identifying his wife, effectively ending her career as a covert operative.

Mr. Wilson has at times voiced suspicions that Mr. Rove played a role in identifying his wife to reporters, saying in August 2003 that he was interested in finding out "whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."

In September 2003, Mr. McClellan said flatly that Mr. Rove had not been involved in disclosing Ms. Plame's name. Asked about the issue on Sept. 29, 2003, Mr. McClellan said he had "spoken with Karl Rove," and that it was "simply not true" that Mr. Rove had a role in the disclosure of her identity. Two weeks earlier, he had called suggestions that Mr. Rove had been involved "totally ridiculous." On Oct. 10, 2003, after the Justice Department opened its investigation, Mr. McClellan told reporters that Mr. Rove, Mr. Abrams and Mr. Libby had nothing to do with the leak.

Mr. McClellan and Mr. Bush have both made clear that leaking Ms. Plame's identity would be considered a firing offense by the White House. Mr. Bush was asked about that position most recently a little over a year ago, when he was asked whether he stood by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked the officer's name. "Yes," he replied, on June 10, 2004.

Under some circumstances, it can be against the law to disclose the identity of a covert C.I.A. operative. Mr. Luskin has said he has been told by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, that Mr. Rove is not a target of the investigation.

Democrats, as the minority party in both the House and the Senate, have no ability to push forward with a formal Congressional investigation. But Mr. Rove is such a high-profile political target that his role is sure to draw intense scrutiny from both Democrats in Congress and liberal interest groups.

Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform committee, called for hearings on what he termed "this disgraceful incident," saying that if it had happened in the Clinton administration the Republican-controlled House would certainly have summoned the deputy White House chief of staff to testify.

Mr. Rove has been caught up in the inquiry almost from the start. He was first interviewed by F.B.I. agents in 2003 during the preliminary investigation. Later, he was interviewed by prosecutors and testified three times to the grand jury.

The prosecutor is believed to have questioned Mr. Rove at the grand jury about his conversations with the Time reporter, Matthew Cooper, whose call to Mr. Rove on July 11, 2003, was noted in a White House log that was turned over to the prosecutor. Time turned Mr. Cooper's notes and e-mail over to the prosecutor last month under court order.

The 1982 law that makes it a crime to disclose the identities of covert operatives is not easy to break. It has apparently been the basis of a single prosecution, against Sharon M. Scranage, a C.I.A. clerk in Ghana who pleaded guilty in 1985 to identifying two C.I.A. agents to a boyfriend.

A prosecutor seeking to establish a violation of the law has to establish an intentional disclosure by someone with authorized access to classified information. That person must know that the disclosure identifies a covert agent "and that the United States was taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States." A covert agent is defined as someone whose identity is classified and who has served outside the United States within the last five years.

"We made it exceedingly difficult to violate," Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee when the law was enacted, said of the law.

The e-mail message from Mr. Cooper to his bureau chief describing a brief conversation with Mr. Rove, first reported in Newsweek, does not by itself establish that Mr. Rove knew Ms. Wilson's covert status or that the government was taking measures to protect her.

Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove's disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times. Ms. Miller has gone to jail rather than disclose her source.

"It is clear that Karl Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category" of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. "That's not 'knowing.' It doesn't even come close."

There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was.

"She had a desk job in Langley," said Ms. Toensing, who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. "When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley."

Yeah, I guess when you say you're gonna fire the person who did it, then you don't fire the person who did it, you don't really want to drag out a Wile E Coyote sign pointing at the White House saying "We Lied", so probably just being quiet and hoping it goes away is the best tact.

But I'm a little jaded and believe that the average American's attention span is so short that in the time it takes to say "Britney Spears is pregnant" 98% of the nation will have forgotten about the whole ordeal.

They seem to have long memories when it comes to former presidents bending the truth about their sexual activities. Maybe if Karl Rove had been naked at the time people would pay attention.

I wonder how long Bush has known it was Rove.

A different point of view on Rove from the media


Karl Rove, Whistleblower
He told the truth about Joe Wilson.

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

Democrats and most of the Beltway press corps are baying for Karl Rove's head over his role in exposing a case of CIA nepotism involving Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame. On the contrary, we'd say the White House political guru deserves a prize--perhaps the next iteration of the "Truth-Telling" award that The Nation magazine bestowed upon Mr. Wilson before the Senate Intelligence Committee exposed him as a fraud.

For Mr. Rove is turning out to be the real "whistleblower" in this whole sorry pseudo-scandal. He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign. Thank you, Mr. Rove.

Media chants aside, there's no evidence that Mr. Rove broke any laws in telling reporters that Ms. Plame may have played a role in her husband's selection for a 2002 mission to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking uranium ore in Niger. To be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, Mr. Rove would had to have deliberately and maliciously exposed Ms. Plame knowing that she was an undercover agent and using information he'd obtained in an official capacity. But it appears Mr. Rove didn't even know Ms. Plame's name and had only heard about her work at Langley from other journalists.

On the "no underlying crime" point, moreover, no less than the New York Times and Washington Post now agree. So do the 36 major news organizations that filed a legal brief in March aimed at keeping Mr. Cooper and the New York Times's Judith Miller out of jail.

"While an investigation of the leak was justified, it is far from clear--at least on the public record--that a crime took place," the Post noted the other day. Granted the media have come a bit late to this understanding, and then only to protect their own, but the logic of their argument is that Mr. Rove did nothing wrong either.

http://opinionjournal.com/images/storyend_dingbat.gif

The same can't be said for Mr. Wilson, who first "outed" himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous "16 words" on the subject in that year's State of the Union address.

Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair.

But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission. "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip," said the report.

The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger.

About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."

In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission. The media and the Kerry campaign promptly abandoned him, though the former never did give as much prominence to his debunking as they did to his original accusations. But if anyone can remember another public figure so entirely and thoroughly discredited, let us know.

http://opinionjournal.com/images/storyend_dingbat.gif

If there's any scandal at all here, it is that this entire episode has been allowed to waste so much government time and media attention, not to mention inspire a "special counsel" probe. The Bush Administration is also guilty on this count, since it went along with the appointment of prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in an election year in order to punt the issue down the road. But now Mr. Fitzgerald has become an unguided missile, holding reporters in contempt for not disclosing their sources even as it becomes clearer all the time that no underlying crime was at issue. As for the press corps, rather than calling for Mr. Rove to be fired, they ought to be grateful to him for telling the truth. <?XML:NAMESPACE PREFIX = SECTION /><SECTION:CONTENT_FOOTER>

</SECTION:CONTENT_FOOTER>

I don't care if Mr. Wilson had lied through his teeth and danced naked before the First Lady.

Suggesting that Rove didn't break the law because he referred to Plame as Wilson's wife who is a CIA CPD agent, instead of quoting her name is ridiculous and completely circumvents the purpose of the law. It identified her uniquely, unless Mr. Wilson has a harem of wives in the CIA who are CPD agents.

She was undercover...and Rove revealed it and then lied about it before the grand jury. He did so to revenge the Administration on Wilson.

unless Mr. Wilson has a harem of wives in the CIA who are CPD agents

I'm sure the administration didn't want this to become public and that's why they've kept Rove all hushed up about this entire incident. It wouldn't look very good if one of your ambassadors turns out to have, not one, but an entire herd of wives as spooks, now, would it?

/sarcasm off (in case anyone missed that it was on)

She was undercover...

Your proof on that statement?

End of the article that Panamah posted btw . . .

The 1982 law that makes it a crime to disclose the identities of covert operatives is not easy to break. It has apparently been the basis of a single prosecution, against Sharon M. Scranage, a C.I.A. clerk in Ghana who pleaded guilty in 1985 to identifying two C.I.A. agents to a boyfriend.

A prosecutor seeking to establish a violation of the law has to establish an intentional disclosure by someone with authorized access to classified information. That person must know that the disclosure identifies a covert agent "and that the United States was taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States." A covert agent is defined as someone whose identity is classified and who has served outside the United States within the last five years.

"We made it exceedingly difficult to violate," Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee when the law was enacted, said of the law.

The e-mail message from Mr. Cooper to his bureau chief describing a brief conversation with Mr. Rove, first reported in Newsweek, does not by itself establish that Mr. Rove knew Ms. Wilson's covert status or that the government was taking measures to protect her.

Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove's disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times. Ms. Miller has gone to jail rather than disclose her source.

"It is clear that Karl Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category" of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. "That's not 'knowing.' It doesn't even come close."

There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was.

"She had a desk job in Langley," said Ms. Toensing, who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. "When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley."

I'd suggest that it may well be up to the CIA and the Court (which will almost certainly use whatever Guidelines the CIA has had over the past however many years) to decide if she qualifies as a secret agent.

Rove has two serious problems.

(1) Did he lie to the President's press office? If yes then Republicans should want him out. If no then Republicans should want the press office sorting out. They shouldn't tolerate their politicians shooting themselves in the foot this way (even if the Democrats do).

(2) By denying the truth for such an extended period he has shown that there's something to hide and that he was willing to hide it. He did wrong, he knows he did wrong, he wants to get away with doing wrong.

The whole event has nothing to do with genuine government and everything to do with news management, which is bad enough in itself.

Outing a covert agent is something that could get that agent executed. It is a crime. Doing so to simply be malicious because someone said something you didn't like (aka the truth about WMD's in Iraq, which the Bush administration didn't want to hear) certainly adds another layer of slime to it.

Go, go, Wikipedia!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame#Known_background

Known background

Plame's life history has been documented in the January 2003 Vanity Fair article *"Double Exposure." But little is known of Plame's professional career. She has described herself as an energy analyst for the private company Brewster Jennings & Associates, which was subsequently acknowledged by the CIA as a front. It has been reported that this cover was not executed very convincingly.

Plame is the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Wilson is her second husband. Plame met him at a Washington party in early 1997. She was able to reveal her CIA role to him while they were dating because he held a high-level security clearance. At the time Wilson was married to, but separated from, his second wife Jacqueline, a former French diplomat. Wilson and Plame are the parents of five-year old twins.

Excellent picture http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Front_Page/images/bush-brain.gif

Last night's Daily Show John Stewart speculated that Karl Rove was in for an impressive award since John Tenet, who bungled the intelligence on Iraq got one, Condi Rice who missed the significance of the report on "Terrorists plot to fly planes into US buildings" before 9/11, earned a promotion. So outing a CIA agent during a war time should put Rove in line for an impressive reward!

Don't forget also, Sir John Scarlett who produced the awful MI5 dossiers on Iraq was promoted to be head of MI6.

Hah! Bush is now back peddling on his "I'll fire anyone behind the leak" to "I'll fire anyone convicted of a crime in relation to this leak" knowing full well it'll be very difficult to get anyone convicted.

Life as a Bush croonie must be pretty nice.

I'm not particularly sure how Karl Rove would continue to work for the White House if he was in jail anyway. It would certainly make it hard for him to attend meetings.

Maybe they could put more of his co-workers in jail? I'm just trying to be helpful here. :)

It seems pretty clear to me that there is not a huge security breach here. From what I understand, even if Plamme is considered an undercover agent, I haven't seen anything that suggested she was in any sort of danger. This seems to be a case that will be largely tried in the court of public opinion where facts are irrelevant and the winner is usually the one who shouts the loudest. What I find interesting is that it seems that Rove has used the court of public opinion to advance his career. Perhaps he will see the other side of that.

I think it's important to remember that there is at least one person, Judith Miller, who is in jail from this because she refused to reveal a source for an article she didn't write. I am still unclear on how one can lose the right to remain silent before a grand jury, however, the press' ability to protect anonymous sources has suffered collateral damage from this.

Bush July 2005

If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration

Bush September 2003

If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of

Yeah. :) Daily Show has been having lots of fun wtih this one.

t seems pretty clear to me that there is not a huge security breach here
Hard to say. She was a NOC, she had a ficticious business as her cover. Probably the first thing other governments do for something like:

1) Who did Valerie Plame talk to when she was here?
Anyone she met with, that was an informant would also have their cover blown.
Anyone she met with that was a spy would have their cover blown.
2) Who did those people work for?
3) Who did those people in #1 meet with?

It could, according to one CIA guy I heard discussing it, uncover a lot of informants and spies.

However, the Republican machinery is trying to spin it as "not really a security breach".