Surprise! Government documents released by Fitzgerald’s invstigation reveal that Valerie Plame was a covert agent at the time that the White House gleefully blew her cover.
Poppy Bush, 4/26/1999:
“I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors.”
***
On the subject of circle jerks, I could entertain myself for hours looking up the hair-singingly civil manner that countless conservative blogs attacked the idea that Valerie Plame was a covert agent. If one in twenty corrects their error you can color me shocked.
Zifnab
Do they have to release the CIA-agent roster to the press before everyone is completely convinced? Does she need to show her sweet CIA tats? Can we maybe torture Tenet for a while until he cracks and admits it?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past two years, how is this even news?
Sirkowski
Firing squad, right?
Pretty please?
Davebo
Bad day for Tom McGuire…
Then again, it seems every day should be a bad day for that dude.
Bubblegum Tate
But…but…the wingnutosphere says it’s a Known Truth(tm) that Plame was just some loser desk jockey–definitely not covert–who teamed with her lying liar of a lying husband to lie about Saddam and uranium in an attempt to hand Murrica over to gay terrorist immigrants. Did you hear me, Tim? KNOWN TRUTH(TM) Surely, your facts cannot compete with that.
IanY77
So does Vicky Toensing care to revise her testimony?
ThymeZone
Where the FUCK was the news media on this from day one?
This question, and the answer, are not exactly rocket science. The answer was obvious from the beginning.
Dave
You can’t trust Fitzgerald, he’s obviously a liberal who is trying to bring down Bush before he can win the War On Terror. Fitzgerald so obviously hates America and wants to see America loose that he might as well get some real estate in Iraq. I’m sure he has a book to sell too.
Jake
I’m setting my bar even lower. If any of the “Valerie Plame was a Desk Jockey” brigade even acknowledges this report, you can colour me shocked and knock me over with a feather.
But daaaaad, 9/11 Changed Everything!
And of course, Poppy actually lead the CIA and Sonny boy has established that the CIA sucks so bad he could nuke Langley and everyone would cheer.
Rome Again
It wasn’t just blogs, there was some blonde rightwinger biatch on Hardball just last week stating Plame was not Covert. Chris Matthews laughed in her face. What was her name, Melody something? I don’t normally pay attention to right wing biatches, but this one took the cake.
Joey
From the story:
“No one was ever charged with the leak of Plame’s name itself, which would have been a crime only if someone knowingly gave our information about someone covered by a specific law protecting the identities of covert agents.”
Damn hard to prove that. Just sayin’…
IanY77
Non-story. Criminalization of treason.
Rome Again
Well, to us, yes; but who knows what craziness those unhinged conservatives are capable of. Truth doesn’t seem to be so cut and dried anymore.
I want my country back, dammit!
Bubblegum Tate
I didn’t see it, but it sounds like Melanie Morgan. She so cray-cray.
ThymeZone
Well, I think the White House knew they’d screwed the pooch from the get-go, and went into full Seeno-Hearno-Speakno Evil Mode right away. Bunch of lying cocksuckers.
pharniel
That’s some mighty fine spoofing lou.
Tulkinghorn
I thought this was as good as proven, because any definitive evidence that she was not an agent would have been declassified long ago.
Then again, logic will only get you so far with the subspecies medias cravens suckupus.
demimondian
It’s worth pointing out that, no, it wasn’t clear from the beginning. It was eventually clear, but there were problems with the law and the evidence.
For instance, I remember JCole being unsure of the legalities of the situation.
Rome Again
Yeah, that was her name, thanks BT. I appreciate it.
ThymeZone
That’s pure bullshit. It was crystal clear to the people who know the facts, and knew the case, from the beginning.
Are you telling me that the CIA doesn’t know from day to day what the legalities are of its covert operations and people? WTF? Do you read your stuff before you post it?
The “problems” were that the people who knew said nothing, and the people whose job it is to get the facts, the journalists, did nothing and wrote nothing, and just reported the “controversy” as if there were a fucking controversy. There was no fucking controversy in the real world of the people affected.
To believe otherwise, you would have to believe that the government is sitting there unaware of its own laws and made aware only when something goes wrong and proscutors show up and start asking questions. Uh, no, I don’t believe that. What is obvious is that they knew it, and put up that whole NYT-Novak smokescreen of moving shells and a disappearing pea to bamboozle a lazy press.
demimondian
Hmm. Hey, TZ? The law just isn’t as clear as you think. For instance, if the Prez had ordered her identity declassified for instance, then it would have been. We didn’t know that then, so, no the law wasn’t clear.
ThymeZone
If the moon were made of green cheese, we could polish it off with some crackers and a bottle of chianti.
The president didn’t declassify her, which is why she wasn’t declassified. Even for you, this crap you are posting today hardly even qualifies as second rate spoof.
The fact is, the principals in this case all knew exactly what was going on and what the legal realities were at ever step of the way and said nothing. Worse, your press never asked the relevant questions and never properly exposed the issue. They were as feckless as you are being right now. Well, maybe not that feckless, but pretty fucking feckless.
demimondian
So very true. But did you, or anybody else who’s currently trumpeting the obviousness of this, know that?
No. No, you didn’t. I didn’t. None of us did. (How do I know you didn’t know? You wouldn’t be here posting if you did know. Those who talk don’t know, and those who know don’t talk.)
And until we did, we didn’t know if there had been a “release of classified data”.
Rome Again
Oh? Really! And if your country were taken over by a bunch of madmen and you knew, are you telling me you wouldn’t say a damned thing about it? How awfully kind of you to allow your nation to go to hell in a handbasket because “those who know don’t talk”.
A covert agent was outed, if I was in a position to have done something, you can be damned sure I would have. I’d surely have said something.
ThymeZone
It’s you who are trumpeting this asinine jackalope, butthead.
What I said is, the realities and legalities were known to the principals, and the press did not investigate and report the facts in an effective and timely matter.
What I said is correct, but you just go on doing your post-while-drunk bad spoof imitation, please, it’s so entertaining.
RSA
Not at all. The real issue is whether Plame suggested Wilson could assist with the Niger issue:
Because, obviously, . . . well, it’s hard to know what’s obvious about this, aside from the right wing being pretty much wrong about everything in this case.
Tulkinghorn
So the reason we are not impeaching Cheney is…
what?
Where does it say in the Constitution that you impeach Democrats for frivolities and Republicans never?
mitch
Plame outed herself in 1999 when she revealed in FEC documents that she worked for Brewster, Jennings, a know CIA front company
Tulkinghorn
Hah! So ‘misleading’ testimony is the issue, not a conspiracy to violate an important security asset for petty political motives? Especially when it has not been proven that the testimony was misleading, but we have the VP dead to rights on a conspiracy to commit treason?
WTF is wrong with you people? Do you have any sense left at all? Have you no shame? No self-respect?
Bubblegum Tate
And that’s the deflection you could see coming 20 miles away. (Also, Joseph Wilson, like, totally lied about what happened in Niger. Because, you know, he hates Bush and Murrica and freedom and whatnot.)
Mitch
Clinton was impeached for lying to a Federal judge. It’s called “perjury” – a felony
Pooh
Cheese and Rice, TZ, put a fucking sock in it.
“Evidence” and “legalities” as a jackalope? Thank you Mr. Yoo, you’re table is ready.
Bubblegum Tate
Sort of like outing an undercover agent?
Mitch
She outed herself – is that a felony?
Tulkinghorn
Then compare and contrast that with what Cheney did. What was worse, both as a matter of law and as a matter of the nation’s interests.
Bubblegum Tate
Known Fact!(tm)
Please step up your troll game.
Tulkinghorn
And Bush has admitted to violating the law in the NSA wiretapping case. There are cogent arguments (I don’t agree with these arguments, but they make sense in and of themselves) that the thousands of felonies committed in the course of that program should not be impeachable offenses. But since Bush admitted to the felonies, and your standard is apparently that impeachment is justified for just one felony, you ought to work some sort of rationale for that, too.
Andrew
Similarly, if Plame were actually one of the remaining Cylons, then I’m not sure how the laws would apply. I doubt that toasters can be named as secret agents under the peculiarities of the identity protection act. Also, there should be many copies, so we should all look around our houses for extra Valerie Plames. Just in case.
RSA
To be serious for a moment, I think it’s perfectly reasonable for Plame to have said that someone else suggested Wilson for the job. The rightwing noise machine seems to be treating this memo from Plame as a smoking gun:
Maybe I’m just sympathetic for someone who’s been screwed over, but there are two places in the memo that speak against Plame having suggested Wilson. First, it could reasonably be said that someone in the CP first suggested Wilson. Second, when someone says, “I’m reluctant to suggest something, but here’s a possibility; what are your thoughts?” I don’t call this an unambiguous suggestion.
ThymeZone
Ignorance of the law is no defense.
About as ancient and basic a principle as you can imagine.
Either the potatoheads in the Whitewash House knew the law and deliberately broke it, or else they didn’t, and are guilty of negligence of the law, AND broke it.
Meanwhile, your flaccid and useless press treated this as a “controversy” when there never was one.
There ain’t another way to slice it.
RSA
. . .which might be significant had Clinton actually been convicted, unlike a former high-ranking Republcan currently in the news. I wonder how long Libby will serve?
Paul L.
Victoria Toensing’s testimony was whether Valerie Plame was covert under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
Tim F. and left keep forgetting this distinction.
BTW, being “covert” should have kept her from lobbying for her husband in the Niger trip which she lied about in her testimony.
So does
Vicky ToensingValerie Plame care to revise her testimony?Pooh
Just stop.
ThymeZone
Uh, no. Tim F and the rest of us understand that 20+ years after this law is put in place, we are asked to believe that neither the CIA nor the White House could correctly figure out how that law applied to this situation before arranging an attack on this covert agent’s husband for political purposes.
This is the government that asks us to be patient while it figures out how to unravel six years of lying about its “war on terror” and being wrong about Iraq every time it speaks.
Nope. No sale. If these guys can’t do better than that, then they are all guilty of criminal incompetance on a grand scale.
As if we didn’t already know that they are, anyway.
ThymeZone
A little early for Happy Hour down at the Fukutup Lounge there in Nome, isn’t it?
Otto Man
Fixed.
Pooh
yawn
IanY77
Interesting point Paul. If that’s the case, why the discrepancy? Why is the CIA saying she was covert if the IIPA lays it out so clearly?
Can you at least understand why we would trust the CIA over a hyper-partisan like Vicky?
IanY77
Oh, and are you the same Paul L I’m having the same discussion with over at Crooks and Liars? If so, I suppose it’s be easier to just argue this on one blog. I mean, if you want to simulpost there, that’s your right. But I’ll just stay here.
ThymeZone
Sounded more like “burp.”
Steve J.
Clinton was impeached for lying to a Federal judge. It’s called “perjury” – a felony
It was a misdemeanor because there was no underlying case:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/pjones/pjones.htm
U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright ultimately sided with the Clinton’s team motion for a “summary judgement” throwing out the case before it could come to trial.
Even if Clinton did make a crude proposition, Wright wrote that it would not constitute sexual assault and that there was no proof Jones was emotionally afflicted or punished in the workplace for rebuffing him.
“There are no genuine issues for trial in this case,” she wrote.
Zombie Santa Claus
Valerie Plame outed herself. The real issue here is whom else she outed indirectly by her shameless exhibitionism. How many agents has she endangered? And why was Scooter Libby indicted, when the real criminals were Plame and her playboy husband, Joe Wilson?
Did you guys hear that Lindsay Lohan slept in a car this weekend? Or that Britney Spears concedes she hit rock bottom? Why can’t we talk about that stuff? Those are sexy, sexy jackalopes (well, Lohan is, anyway)- far more interesting than this non-story about Plame committing treason or whatever the fuck we were talking about.
Ho ho ho, bitches!
Zombie Santa Claus
If we aren’t patient, the terrorists win.
Tulkinghorn
And of course the congressional staffer who drafted the bill 30 years ago gives the definitive testimony of what the law means, as opposed to the courts or the agency affected and protected by the bill? Especially when the staffer does not know the actual facts (the communications within the CIA) which remain classified today?
Toensing is a hack, and revealed herself to be one. Her testimony was legally and factually irrelevant, and IIRC, she admitted as much.
RSA
I want to know why the hack-in-chief is not held responsible for his statements:
Okay, facts have been obvious for a while now. Karl Rove and Dick Cheney still have offices.
demimondian
I really think that you ought to go off an do some research on that, you know — perhaps you can find the relevant citations and case law on this. I’m sure you’ll find it right next to the missing bodies from Qana.
CaseyL
The RW claim that Plame wasn’t covert was false on its very face. It was the CIA that asked for the investigation, and the CIA would not have asked for the investigation if Plame had not been covert. Period, end of story.
In order to obscure that very simple and straightforward fact, the Right concocted one idiocy after another – culminating with recasting the entire CIA as a hotbed of liberal leftists bent on destroying George Bush.
That was a masterstroke. It not only excused the Bush Administration’s committing a serious criminal act. It not only excused the Bush Administration’s blowing an important intelligence network. No, it also laid the groundwork for the Right to ignore anything else the CIA said about anything at all – in favor of Cheney’s insane ravings and Bush’s ignorant vaporings.
Wingnuts are exemplars of useful idiocy.
Paul L.
Did the CIA say she was covert under the IIPA? The CIA say it was “researching” this but I never heard anything about it.
Is this the response to Hoekstra?
Paul L.
I did not mean legally prevented her. Being “covert” she should have been trained/had enough sense to avoid drawing attention to herself as lobbying for her husband’s trip did.
Tulkinghorn
Lobbying for her husband? Her husband was a well known diplomat, with excellent contacts in the area. Hell, he was famous. She is accused of ‘lobbying’ to whom? Congress? No, to people more senior than her at the CIA. So what the hell is your point? How does any of this relate to Cheney and his conspiracy, and the reckless, treasonous motives for his conspiracy?
If I stipulate to your claims, you still lose this argument!
Zifnab
Haha. Mitch, wait, let me get this straight. Plame outed herself when she said she was a member of a CIA front company? So who outed the Brewster Jennings? And why hasn’t any of this come up in the Congressional testimony? Why wasn’t Plame censored or otherwise punished for outing herself?
And Paul leaps to the rescue with “I haven’t read about it so it didn’t happen!” defense. The link’s at the top of the page, Paul. Just click and learn.
Ah wingers. Epic.
demimondian
You must read Slashdot, since you certainly didn’t RTFA. In graf five, we find the following text…
That’s the CIA, Paul, saying that she met the 1982 definition. Period.
So, yes, the CIA did indeed, respond. It just took a subpoena from a special prosecutor to get them to cough up.
And as to “should have had enough sense to avoid drawing attention to herself” — the evidence that she lobbied for her husband to get that job? I’d really like to see it. You know where it is, right? (And don’t cite Bond to me. He was trying to jackalope the release of the actual report from the Senate Intelligence Committee — the one he helped sit on for several years.)
Tulkinghorn
And Paul, you just posted the exact same talking points at CrooksandLiars.com. Are you being paid by the word?
Tsulagi
Daddy Bush also got to know Joe Wilson…
So this “true American hero” who told Saddam to his face to piss off was sent on a mission to Niger. Wilson’s report has since been proven accurate, but he failed his mission.
His mission was the same as that of Feith’s OSP: Create fluffer intelligence to justify Commander Guy’s upcoming most excellent adventure. Wilson failed in that mission, plus called bullshit on Bush’s “just 16 words” in his SOTU. Evildoer! So the administration in their typical man-up fashion went after his wife.
But none of that matters of course. The Hannity and Malkin warriors will tell you that the entire issue, the only one of any importance, the great injustice that no one recognizes as profoundly as these deep thinkers do, is that SHE WASN’T COVERT.
Yep, the CIA’s Legal Dept., which made the referral to DOJ, didn’t understand the IIPA statue to the depth of their keen insight. Obviously, nor would the CIA be in a position to accurately ascertain her status as covert or not nearly as well as the Jesus channeling Freepers who are beamed the truth. To make matters worse, the DOJ, then under that wild-eyed liberal Ashcroft, colluded to incorrectly interpret the statue and cavalierly reviewed her CIA employment records before assigning the case to that other known evildoer in the travesty, Fitzgerald.
All this is known truth. The baby Jesus blinked twice to confirm.
jake
Actually, PaulEll just likes to release jackalopes. The sight of them running wild and free brings a tear to his eye.
What he gets out of releasing them on the I-95 corridor through New Jersey is something I’d rather not think about.
Tom Maguire
Are you telling me that the CIA doesn’t know from day to day what the legalities are of its covert operations and people? WTF? Do you read your stuff before you post it?
Yup, that’s what I’d be telling you. The CIA considers its officers to be “classified” or “overt”, but does not make a specific attempt to relate their in-house classification to the definition of “covert” stated in the Intelligence Identities Protections Act.
That is why at the Waxman hearing Ms. Plame testified that she did not actually know, and had never been formally told, whether she was “covert” as per the IIPA. It is also why skeptics (OK, like me) wondered why Waxman did not simply present a letter from the CIA Counsel expressing their opinion that, having reviewed her classified file and the relevant law, she was “covert”. Didn’t happen – why not?
Bob Novak, also a skeptic, wrote this a few weeks later:
On March 21, Hoekstra again requested the CIA to define Mrs. Wilson’s status. A written reply April 5 from Christopher J. Walker, the CIA’s director of congressional affairs, said only that “it is taking longer than expected” to reply because of “the considerable legal complexity required for this tasking.”
So as of April 2007, the CIA still wasn’t sure.
Just so you know, Fitzgerald is expressing *his opinion* about Ms. Plame’s status – he has not attempted to address the issue raised by Victoria Toensing about overseas “service” requiring an overseas “posting”. Nor did he attempt to present his opinion in pre-trial maneuverings where the defense could rebut and a judge would rule.
But for folks who think the opinion of a prosecutor as set forth in a sentencing memorandum is definitive, the question is answered.
Mitch
That may be, but the whole legal system is dependent upon people telling the truth. When the resident lies under oath, that’s a very bad thing, regardless of which party (s)he belongs to
Very true, Mr. Sarcasm
That BJ is a CIA front has been known by those in the intelligence biz, and Congress for many years. Why she wasn’t punished, I can’t answer. She did use her married name in the FEC filings, but as Mr. Sarcasm has opned, it was a KnownFact(tm) that Velerie Plam was Mrs. Joseph Wilson.
Tulkinghorn
Bullshit. You are arguing that the CIA does not know whether any of their agents are covert under the meaning of the law? Can the law be that vague?
And isn’t this just so much formalistic garbage – whether or not the law is clear, you don’t argue that Cheney et al did not engage in a conspiracy to release her identity in order to get back at Wilson?
If the law does not cover Plame it probably does not cover anyone, which does not surprise me given that a shameless hack like Toensing wrote it. Still this is just a smokescreen, as the intent and actions of Cheney and his circle are indefensible and without precedent in their malevolence and anti-American character. Your not defending Cheney on this, are you?
Tim F.
Judging by your grammar I think you really believe that you just made a point. I’ll tell you what, before I conclude that you make Paul L look smart you can give a single reason to think that Brewster Jennings’s CIA connection was common knowledge before Bob Novak outed it in connection with Valerie Plame. I have seen precisely nothing to suggest that so I promsise it will be new information to me.
Thanks in advance.
Mitch
Grammatically, everything in my sentence was just fine. I may have spelled “known” incorrectly, but that’s not grammar. Perhaps you should take a refresher course n English grammar.
A spokeswoman for Dun & Bradstreet, a New Jersey operator of commercial databases, said Brewster Jennings was first entered into its records on May 22, 1994,
Brewster Jennings & Associates is a front company set up in the mid-1990s by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a “cover” for its agents, including Valerie Plame, a “covert employee of the CIA” whose employment status was “classified” and whose classified covert identity was published in a syndicated newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003.[1][2] Novak’s initial primary source of that information was later said, by Novak, to be then United States Deputy Secretary of State (2001–2005) Richard Armitage although the later disagreed with Novak as to the extent of his role [3]; others implicated in the leak include Vice President of the United States Dick Cheney, his then Chief of Staff Lewis Libby, Deputy Chief of Staff to President George W. Bush Karl Rove, and possibly others.
js
Dear god almighty, Tom Maguire is a hack. Can’t members of his family get him to stop humiliating himself in public like this?
demimondian
It’s good to know that Tom Maguire reads Slashdot, too. Like Paul L., he certainly didn’t read the article.
Just so the rest of you know what I’m talking about, Tom makes this brilliant assertion:
is moronic. The quotations in the various blogs are from the CIA’s own summary of Plame’s career. Fitzgerald had no reason to refute Toensig’s claims, as they are utterly unsupported in the text of the law or in the Congressional debate on the subject.
Mitch
Oops – I spelled “in” “in”correctly
Another grammar error?
My bad
Tulkinghorn
How about answering the questions and challenges posed to you, rather than pissing around with spelling?
If such is your answer, you have conceded the argument.
Tim F.
Mitch, you just reaffirmed my point by reading back exactly what I told you. I guess with you Paul L is too high a bar. I’ll give you another chance to answer the question before we wander into Birdzilla territory.
Where is your evidence that the CIA background of Brewster Jennings was “common knowledge” before Bob Novak outed them? A newspaper clipping, a recorded public statement, whatever. I’m willing to start with practically anything. Don’t leave me hanging, Mitchzilla.
demimondian
Nah. BIRDZILLA is almost poetic. I’m laughing about “leftwing watermelons,” for instance. (I don’t know — is a leftwing watermelon seeded, or seedless? Is a rightwing blogger watermelon yellow on the inside, instead of being filled with real red meat? We distort, you deride.)
The Other Steve
The behavior of Tom Maguire in the face of insurmountable evidence against his position is perhaps the saddest thing I’ve ever seen.
Vladi G
Good lord, you’re stupid, Mitch. You make Darrell look like a freaking genius.
Brewster’s Jennings’ existence was not a secret. The fact that it was a CIA front was. You have yet to show, despite your assertion, that it was a “know” CIA front company.
You must be a regular reader of Maguire, a dipshit who posts an email in which Wilson says her husband was approached by someone else to use his contacts, and then was told that they basically wanted to go ahead with the mission, and somehow that’s proof that she suggested him. Tell us, Tom, did she sneak into the redacted individuals bedroom and whisper her husband’s name into this person’s ear while he/she slept?
Tom, do you know what it means to “suggest” something? I’m not convinced you do. I am, however, convinced that you’re a fucking moron.
The Other Steve
Wow, reading some of the other comments. Wow, they’re off into Haldol and Theralen territory.
CaseyL
Yeah; Maguire’s regulars are a special sort. He might actually be doing a public service, giving them a place to bay at the moon without having to go outside, where they’d get picked up and carried off by men in white coats. The one who’s really a treat is Clarice Feldman, an attorney in RL with a practice in the DC area. God knows what her field is; I wouldn’t trust her to represent me in a traffic court.
demimondian
And we *aren’t*? I mean, Casey, how many “normal” people make a habit of impersonating…I don’t know…the heads of undead men, imprisoned inside bell jars, and typing by telekinesis? Or practice “self-misrepresentation as performance art” — and expect to get taken seriously for it?
Maguire may be doing a public service…but so are John and Tim, I think. Or, at least, fear.
MJ
I find it amusing that with 79 comments only one of you mentioned Richard Armitage and none of you have called for him to be accountable in any way.
Jon H
demimondian writes: “Hmm. Hey, TZ? The law just isn’t as clear as you think. For instance, if the Prez had ordered her identity declassified for instance, then it would have been. We didn’t know that then, so, no the law wasn’t clear.”
If Bush had done so, there need not ever have been an investigation. The White House could have faxed over the documentation to CIA and DOJ, and it would have ended in 2003, long before Fitz came onto the case. The CIA probably wouldn’t have even bothered to refer the issue to DOJ.
If someone is going to serious posit that Bush might have declassified the information for release, they’re going to have to explain why they wouldn’t have made sure the CIA and DOJ knew this weeks before Novak’s column appeared.
demimondian
Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it — although there is no reason that the EOP would have told the CIA, which wasn’t in the best odor there back then. The claim that was being bandied about, though, was that “we’d all known since the very beginning”. I don’t believe that.
(And, no, TZ, I’m not spoofing.)
Jon H
“Just so you know, Fitzgerald is expressing his opinion about Ms. Plame’s status – he has not attempted to address the issue raised by Victoria Toensing about overseas “service” requiring an overseas “posting”. ”
Fitzgerald? Competent, skilled, high integrity.
Victoria Toensing? Incompentent lying whore of no integrity.
I’ve read the law, Tom. You probably have too, but your reading comprehension is abysmal, so you’re not a credible interpreter. The law says nothing about a posting.
Nothing. It’s not there. Nor would it make any sense.
That’s just something Toensing pulled out of her ass to please her pimps, and for you to lap up.
Jon H
demimondia wrote:”Oh, absolutely. No doubt about it—although there is no reason that the EOP would have told the CIA, which wasn’t in the best odor there back then. ”
But that only makes it even more likely. Cheney would have wet himself for the opportunity to tell the CIA “We’re gonna out your agent, and there’s nothing you can do about it, so go fuck yourselves. Eat this Presidential declassification, beeyotch.”
Jon H
Some random hack said: “I find it amusing that with 79 comments only one of you mentioned Richard Armitage and none of you have called for him to be accountable in any way.”
It was accidental, and he volunteered the information immediately. The accidental nature of his revelation prevented him from being prosecuted under the Intelligence Identities act.
Perhaps he could have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act, but that option was evidently dismissed because you probably don’t want to come down on people who come forward quickly and voluntarily and even without a lawyer. Doing so would only discourage other people from cooperating in similar circumstances – in the case of accidental disclosure of classified material, it’s arguably more important to encourage people to come forward quickly in order to facilitate damage assessment and control, than to lock them up.
ie, if the info was leaked accidentally by a ‘friendly’, then you know it wasn’t leaked maliciously by a mole or a spy, or by some psycho employee lashing out at a colleague over a romantic rejection. This is very important information, when you need to determine the risk to national security.
Jon H
Whoops, I seem to have given Demimondian a gender change up there. Sorry!
Andrew
Shorter MJ: I’ll excuse anything as long as I get my partisan fluffing.
The Other Steve
Good point.
He does represent the 28% club, and clearly having his own little cheering echo chamber has encouraged him to continue this line of argumentation despite all evidence to the contrary.
After all, the rest of us 72% who don’t believe in bullshit are just flaming moonbats who have BDS.
Pb
Heh, I wonder why…
scarshapedstar
Here’s a fun game. Type “plame” into your search tab and see if you get anything to come up on Instapud, Riehlly Stupid, or Special Ed… hey, wait, Ed actually made a post!
Oh, wait…
…never mind.
jake
It is the difference between an actor playing the character of a man who talks to an invisible chicken and the guy on the back of the bus who really believes his best friend is an invisible chicken. And becomes quite upset if you express doubt as to the existence of the chicken.
One is art, the other is just sad.
Take for example The B & J “proof.” Someone who believes that argument has any merit will need a lot of care before he’s ready for basic logic.
LITBMueller
Tom, I’m a prosecutor myself, so believe me when I tell you, when I present information at trial or at sentencing, they are FACTS, not opinions.
And, if the judge chooses to accept the facts as presented by Fitzgerald when he hands down his sentence for Libby’s crimes, then they are… yep! KNOWN FACTS(tm)!!! They become the facts used to reach a conclusion of law. They become incontrovertible, unless overturned on appeal.
I wonder if you’ll write, “The opinion has been handed down and, well,…..I was wrong…”
Doubt it.
chopper
i love how a nice chunk of this has turned into an assertion that clinton is a felon.
people don’t even realize that perjury lying in court during a line of questioning that is material, and in clinton’s case the judge deemed the line of questioning immaterial. not all lying is perjury and clinton’s didn’t fall into the definition of ‘perjury’.
of course, us non-spoofers already knew that (from the beginning, demi).
Punchy
Color me surprised. I remember him being unsure of how to spell “legalities”.
Lee
Another thing the wingnuts seem to misunderstandimate is the fact that even if a person is covert, they are not invisible. It is their relationship with the CIA that is covert.
They can do all the normal things a person can do (e.g. give to political parties). They can even drive into Langely. What is important is that they are not identified as as a agent of the United States.
John Cole
I resemble that remark.
Zifnab
Bullshit. The CIA is composed almost entirely of faux british socialites with eye-patches and facial scars. The occational bad-ass street thug extreme sports enthusiast is thrown in to handle all the missions that involve super hot chicks, fast cars, and nuclear weapons.
demimondian
None of which has jack to do with the original debate.
I’m thinking that I’m being teased here — you guys really are smarter than that. The question of whether or not the fact that Plame was covert was classified really does hang on a legal issue, which is whether the Prez or his delegate had declassified it. It’s not a pedantic objection to suggest that Cheney could have held that kind of fact in his breast pocket, waiting for the best time to use it — he’s a brilliant political infighter, and, frequently, timing is everything.
From the beginning, it was clear that if no such declassification order had been offered, then the law had been broken. To say that you knew that no such order had been issued, however, is to lie.
Faux News
Other Steve: the right wing trolls on this thread are beyond hope. At this point it’s time to call their Social Workers and get their meds readjusted.
Zombie Santa Claus
Hey!
Who said I was impersonating, you presumptuous fucker?
demimondian
Who said I was talking about you, you self-absorbed zombie?
Andrew
I don’t know why you’re veering into the wingnut zone here, but if the President declassified a secret agent’s identity and blew the front company and cover for dozens of sources for expressly political reasons, we’re way past the “high crimes and misdemeanors” level.
So, yeah, he broke the law, or there is a slight chance that he committed treason.
Not the argument that the Bushies particularly want to support.
demimondian
Horrible as it seems, actually, no.
I feel about the National Security Act of 1955 the way most Libertarians feel about the “war on drugs”. It’s a horrible perversion of everything this nation stands for, granting effectively unlimited power to avoid publication at all levels to one person, the President of the United States. If that bothers you…it should. This kind of abuse is routine within that law, and there is *no* way to avoid it.
I’m radical about very few things, but this is one of them: that law should be repealed. It’s one of the core powers that protects the imperial presidency from the people’s review. It’s just the 24 argument drawn large, and should simply go.
Pb
Ok, so say that he had. Then, in the course of the declassification process, did he just forget to tell the CIA (and the DoJ, and the FBI, etc., etc….)?
Punchy
Fixed.
demimondian
I’ve been through that, Pb. The only one that matters here is the CIA, because one assumes that the CIA would have known to tell Plame that her contacts were burned. If one assumes, though, that the EOP would have told the CIA, in order to protect Plame’s contacts, then one would assume that the EOP would have done the same thing in the case of a directed release, anyway.
Now, we all know that they didn’t do that — so why would you assume that they’d have done the same thing in any other case?
Pb
Right–that’s the whole “declassification process” thing I was talking about.
Jon H
Demimondian writes:”It’s not a pedantic objection to suggest that Cheney could have held that kind of fact in his breast pocket, waiting for the best time to use it—he’s a brilliant political infighter, and, frequently, timing is everything.”
The best time to use it would clearly be at the start, to prevent any legal or political blowback at all, not three years later, allowing potential political damage to multiple elections.
If you think Cheney kept it close to his vest to spring later, you probably also believed that Cheney had better intelligence on Iraq’s WMDs back in 2003. He didn’t, and he didn’t.
Dreggas
Seedless, after all we’re the ones who believe in science and through the process of interbreeding and genetics have managed to produce the abomination that is a seedless (read sterile) watermelon. Soon we will start our work on operation EUNUCH.
The Other Steve
That BitsBlog is clearly a spoofer site.
Zombie Santa Claus
Touche.