quote:

Plame was ‘covert’ agent at time of name leak Newly released unclassified document details CIA employment By Joel Seidman Producer NBC News Updated: 4:24 p.m. ET May 29, 2007 WASHINGTON - An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003. The summary is part of an attachment to Fitzgerald's memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation. The nature of Plame's CIA employment never came up in Libby's perjury and obstruction of justice trial. 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." Plame worked as an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame, "engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business." The report says, "she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times." When overseas Plame traveled undercover, "sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias -- but always using cover -- whether official or non-official (NOC) -- with no ostensible relationship to the CIA." Criminal prosecution beat national security After the Novak column was published and Plame's identity was widely reported in the media, and according to the document, "the CIA lifted Ms Wilson's cover" and then "rolled back her cover" effective to the date of the leak. The CIA determined, "that the public interest in allowing the criminal prosecution to proceed outweighed the damage to national security that might reasonably be expected from the official disclosure of Ms. Wilson's employment and cover status." The CIA has not divulged any other details of the nature of Plame's cover or the methods employed by the CIA to protect her cover nor the details of her classified intelligence activities. Plame resigned from the CIA in December 2005. Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson have filed a lawsuit against four current or former top Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to destroy her career at the CIA. 'I felt like I had been hit in the gut' In March at a House of Representatives hearing, Plame testified saying, "My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White house and the State Department" She described how it felt to see her true identity exposed in the morning paper, her career destroyed she said. "I felt like I had been hit in the gut, it was over in an instant, I immediately thought of my family's safety." Plame's identity was leaked to reporters in 2003, after her husband began criticizing the Bush administration. She claims her constitutional rights were violated by the administration and is demanding compensation. No leak charges Several administration officials, including Libby, former State Department official Richard Armitage and Bush advisor Karl Rove, disclosed Plame's identity to reporters. 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. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924679/

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Ritchard Armitage better get a lawyer...wait?

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo Ritchard Armitage better get a lawyer...wait?

Yea. Everyone involved better get a lawyer, not just Armitage. Let's start with Cheney.

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Last edited by occrider on May-30-2007 at 04:07

the fact her status, covert or not, was never intended to be an issue in Libby's trial, therefore my point being that Fitzgerald is pulling out all stops he deems necessary as a prosecutor in an effort to get the maximum in the penalty phase of the trial.

as far as this entire special prosecution is concerned her alleged "outing" has been a done deal for years now.

IOW you should expect nothing from this.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo the fact her status, covert or not, was never intended to be an issue in Libby's trial, therefore my point being that Fitzgerald is pulling out all stops he deems necessary as a prosecutor in an effort to get the maximum in the penalty phase of the trial. as far as this entire special prosecution is concerned her alleged "outing" has been a done deal for years now. IOW you should expect nothing from this.

Indeed nothing probably will happen out of this. Precisely because Libby has been so successful in his lies and his obstruction of justice that the guilty party (Cheney) will never be brought to justice. This latest disclosure simply validates the point that all parties who contributed to this leak broke the law and damaged national security. One can dance around the letter of the law as to what can be proved in a court but to do so is no more duplicitous than to debate what the definition of "is" is. The stink emanating ffom the Vice Presidant's role in the entire affair is obvious to everyone except Freepers.

quote:

Fitzgerald Again Points to Cheney By Dan Froomkin Special to washingtonpost.com Tuesday, May 29, 2007; 1:22 PM Special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has made it clearer than ever that he was hot on the trail of a coordinated campaign to out CIA agent Valerie Plame until that line of investigation was cut off by the repeated lies from Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Libby was convicted in February of perjury and obstruction of justice. Fitzgerald filed a memo on Friday asking U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who will sentence Libby next week, to put him in prison for at least two and a half years. Despite all the public interest in the case, Fitzgerald has repeatedly asserted that grand-jury secrecy rules prohibit him from being more forthcoming about either the course of his investigation or any findings beyond those he disclosed to make the case against Libby. But when his motives have been attacked during court proceedings, Fitzgerald has occasionally shown flashes of anger -- and has hinted that he and his investigative team suspected more malfeasance at higher levels of government than they were able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. In Friday's eminently readable court filing, Fitzgerald quotes the Libby defense calling his prosecution "unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics." In responding to that charge, the special counsel evidently felt obliged to put Libby's crime in context. And that context is Dick Cheney. Libby's lies, Fitzgerald wrote, "made impossible an accurate evaluation of the role that Mr. Libby and those with whom he worked played in the disclosure of information regarding Ms. Wilson's CIA employment and about the motivations for their actions." It was established at trial that it was Cheney himself who first told Libby about Plame's identity as a CIA agent, in the course of complaining about criticisms of the administration's run-up to war leveled by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. And, as Fitzgerald notes: "The evidence at trial further established that when the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment." The investigation, Fitzgerald writes, "was necessary to determine whether there was concerted action by any combination of the officials known to have disclosed the information about Ms. Plame to the media as anonymous sources, and also whether any of those who were involved acted at the direction of others. This was particularly important in light of Mr. Libby's statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Ms. Wilson's employment with reporters at the specific direction of the Vice President." (My italics.) Not clear on the concept yet? Fitzgerald adds: "To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President." (My italics.) Up until now, Fitzgerald's most singeing attack on Cheney came during closing arguments at the Libby trial in February. Libby's lawyers had complained that Fitzgerald was trying to put a "cloud" over Cheney without evidence to back it up -- and that set Fitzgerald off. As I wrote in my Feb. 21 column, the special counsel responded with fire: "There is a cloud over what the Vice President did that week. . . . He had those meetings. He sent Libby off to [meet then-New York Times reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting, the two-hour meeting, the defendant talked about the wife. We didn't put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant has obstructed justice and lied about what happened. . . . "That's not something that we put there. That cloud is something that we just can't pretend isn't there." To those of us watching the investigation and trial unfold, Cheney's presence behind the scenes has emerged in glimpses and hints. (The defense's decision not to call Cheney to the stand remains a massive bummer.) But I suspect that people looking back on this story will see it with greater clarity: As a blatant -- and thus far successful -- cover-up for the vice president. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...ml?hpid=topnews

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quote:

Originally posted by occrider Precisely because Libby has been so successful in his lies and his obstruction of justice that the guilty party (Cheney) will never be brought to justice.

you know theres actually a legal difference between wanting someone to get prosecuted for this and actual circumstances warranting as much.

Fitz obviously saw a difference. you'll have to ask him the $64,000 question as to why he didn't feel it necessary to prosecute Armitage.

as much as people like you love to read into the motives of this special prosecutor during the final phases of this ridiculous charade, the fact remains that Fitzgerald will no longer seek further years of investigation once the penalty phase is complete.

why? because there is nothing left to investigate.

quote:

This latest disclosure simply validates the point that all parties who contributed to this leak broke the law and damaged national security. One can dance around the letter of the law as to what can be proved in a court but to do so is no more duplicitous than to debate what the definition of "is" is. The stink emanating ffom the Vice Presidant's role in the entire affair is obvious to everyone except Freepers.

this latest disclosure is fitz making a very common legal distiction that "It’s more serious to obstruct a murder investigation than a shoplifting investigation." he's a prosecuter, a very thorough one. and that "the problem for Fitzgerald is that he never proved that a crime as defined by either the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, actually occurred."

theres really not much more to it unless you want to start reading tea leaves, and that leaves you at the mercy of your own wishfull thinking pretty much. hardly a sound legal judgement considering the seriousness of the allegations you are throwing around.

no, you're just wrong here.

quote:

Originally posted by Q5echo you know theres actually a legal difference between wanting someone to get prosecuted for this and actual circumstances warranting as much. Fitz obviously saw a difference. you'll have to ask him the $64,000 question as to why he didn't feel it necessary to prosecute Armitage.

It's a good question to ask, one that I've often wondered. According to Fitz, he didn't have enough evidence to determine that Armitage had knowledge or intent to expose a covert officer:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek/

Which as you allude to cannot be sufficient to prosecute under the IIPA. One might think that disclosing a CLASSIFIED document to the press might be enough to prosecute on its own, and I cannot say why Fitz decided not to go on that route.

quote:

as much as people like you love to read into the motives of this special prosecutor during the final phases of this ridiculous charade, the fact remains that Fitzgerald will no longer seek further years of investigation once the penalty phase is complete. why? because there is nothing left to investigate.

Incorrect. The reason why Fitz cannot prosecute further is because Libby created a dead-end for him, NOT because there's nothing left as you imply. From the article on Fitz by Occ:

quote:

Libby's lies, Fitzgerald wrote, "made impossible an accurate evaluation of the role that Mr. Libby and those with whom he worked played in the disclosure of information regarding Ms. Wilson's CIA employment and about the motivations for their actions." It was established at trial that it was Cheney himself who first told Libby about Plame's identity as a CIA agent, in the course of complaining about criticisms of the administration's run-up to war leveled by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. And, as Fitzgerald notes: "The evidence at trial further established that when the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment." The investigation, Fitzgerald writes, "was necessary to determine whether there was concerted action by any combination of the officials known to have disclosed the information about Ms. Plame to the media as anonymous sources, and also whether any of those who were involved acted at the direction of others. This was particularly important in light of Mr. Libby's statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Ms. Wilson's employment with reporters at the specific direction of the Vice President." Not clear on the concept yet? Fitzgerald adds: "To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, [/b]and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President." [/b]

No, that doesn't sound like Fitz hinting at a larger picture involving Dick at all. Absolutely not. How silly of us to grab some delusional implication out of that.......

quote:

this latest disclosure is fitz making a very common legal distiction that "It’s more serious to obstruct a murder investigation than a shoplifting investigation." he's a prosecuter, a very thorough one. and that "the problem for Fitzgerald is that he never proved that a crime as defined by either the Intelligence Identities Protection Act or the Espionage Act, actually occurred." theres really not much more to it unless you want to start reading tea leaves, and that leaves you at the mercy of your own wishfull thinking pretty much. hardly a sound legal judgement considering the seriousness of the allegations you are throwing around. no, you're just wrong here.

You don't have to read anything beyond Fitz' own statements to see that he implies a larger context to Libby's obstruction, as I highlighted above. Clearly Fitz believes there's more to the story, but he is a good prosecutor and he will not under any circumstances file charges without substantial evidence for successful prosecution and conviction, which Libby is clearly blocking (and Fitz states as such).

Regardless, that's all fun talk, but what I really enjoy is seeing all the Freeper heads explode on the fact that the status of Plame has now been confirmed. Of course there will be no apologies on your side for stating deliberate lies and obfuscations about her status. It has been confirmed not just by Tenet and the CIA, not just by Bush's new CIA appointee Michael Hayden, not just by Fitz himself when he originally filed charges against Libby, but now we have full proof of that status with the unclassified documents.

Let's take a trip down memory lane and examine the idiots in Freeperland who claimed otherwise:

Tony Snow on O'Reilly last February:

quote:

Very quickly -- very quickly, you got this Valerie Plame case. Now, it turns out that [special counsel] Peter (sic: Patrick) Fitzgerald doesn't -- can't even identify any harm. She wasn't a covert agent. She wasn't compromised. . . She wasn't covert anymore. http://mediamatters.org/items/200602060009

Shame, shame, Faux News Press Secretary.

Laura Ingraham on Hannity and Colmes last March:

quote:

This is bizarre that this case would have gone this far when they knew who leaked this information, and they knew that this was not a situation where Valerie Plame, at this point in time, at least, was a covert agent. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,257487,00.html

Faux News Mort Kondracke on Brit's show last September:

quote:

I don't think we know that Karl Rove knew and I assume that Scooter Libby may have known but he may have -- you know, she was not a covert officer, she was not a covert agent, and she was not covered by the intelligence agent's identities act. So, all of that is beside the point.

Count Novakula September 2003 on CNN's Crossfire:

quote:

According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives. So what is the fuss about? Pure Bush-bashing.

Barb Lerner on National Review last March:

quote:

The charge was false, and the CIA knew it was false from the get-go. Valerie Plame was their employee; they knew she was not a classified agent because she was not covert and had not worked abroad for more than five years http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NGVjNTM0Y2Y2MzM5OTI5M2RkMzk0Y2Q3OTBmYzY5YzQ=

Hinderaker on his Powerline blog November 2005:

quote:

When CIA leaks hurt the administration, these papers have gleefully passed them on. It was only when Scooter Libby mentioned the name of a non-covert CIA employee, Valerie Plame, that the Post, the Times, and other MSM outlets suddenly developed a faux concern about lapses in security. http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/012157.php

Glenn Reynolds on his Instapundit blog:

quote:

Since it seems as clear as anything in this affair that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent the day before Novak's column either, I think we can chalk this up to Joe Wilson's habitual disingenuousness. . . Nobody ever said that she wasn't working for the CIA -- the question is whether she was a covert spy or a paperpusher, and the answer seems pretty clearly to be the latter. http://instapundit.com/archives/024275.php

WaTimes editorial July 2005:

quote:

What is known thus far suggests that . . . In July 2003, when columnist Robert Novak first mentioned in passing that Mrs. Plame worked for the CIA, she was not functioning as a covert agent and her work for the CIA was common knowledge. http://www.washingtontimes.com/op-ed/20050718-092253-3802r.htm

Mark Levin National Review July 2005:

quote:

Despite all the hype, it appears that Plame works a desk job at the CIA. That's an admirable and important line of work. But it doesn't make her a covert operative, and it didn't make her a covert operative when Bob Novak mentioned her in his July 14, 2003, column, or the five years preceding the column's publication, during which time she hadn't served overseas as a spy, either. http://www.nationalreview.com/levin/levin200507181123.asp

And of course, DeGenova, Perino, and Toensing, who pimped out their bullshit lines both to the Press and Congress whenever they could:

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uspard0618,0,467087.story?coll=ny-leadnationalnews-headlines

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2305-2005Jan11.html

We all wait with baited breath for their apologies........

___________________
Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...

Last edited by MisterOpus1 on May-30-2007 at 18:01

___________________
"The Greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." -Stephen Hawking
"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a socialist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out— because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me— and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Martin Niemöller

Ahh yes the whole this is a non-issue because either no laws were actually violated from a pure legality standpoint, or because the prosecutor is not seeking indictments. The bare fact of the case is that classified information was disseminated resulting in the outing of an undercover CIA damaging national security. Regardless of what that actual statute on treason is, I view that as treasonous behavior. Regardless of whether Fitzgerald can actually nail Cheney to a tree on what he can prove in court, what this administration did damaged national security, and while that may be ok to you because they have the “R” next to their names, I find their actions indefensible.

Your attempts to create noise with the Armitage comment failed because I don’t give a shit about political leanings. If I could prosecute Armitage I would despite him not knowing that she had undercover status. The fact of the matter remains that if elected or appointed officials are too incompetent to hold their positions and shut up about the classified information that they come across than they should be held liable for when they fuck up and damage national security. And while Armitage might be entitled to some leniency because his intent wasn’t malicious that’s more than I can say for Cheney, Libby, et al.

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quote:

Originally posted by occrider this is a non-issue because either no laws were actually violated from a pure legality standpoint, or because the prosecutor is not seeking indictments.

those are the facts. i didn't make them up. it's just something you are gonna have to f**king deal with. sorry.

quote:

The bare fact of the case is that classified information was disseminated resulting in the outing of an undercover CIA damaging national security. Regardless of what that actual statute on treason is, I view that as treasonous behavior. Regardless of whether Fitzgerald can actually nail Cheney to a tree on what he can prove in court, what this administration did damaged national security, and while that may be ok to you because they have the “R” next to their names, I find their actions indefensible.

ahh yes the whole if there was an investigation then Cheney, et al must be guilty of something...barf. you'd make a horrible lawyer...wait let me take that back, you'd be a horrible juror

to end, Libby's defence brief submitted to Judge Walton contesting Fitzgerald's assertion about someone LIBBY WAS NEVER ACCUSED OF OUTING

quote:

First, the government claims that its “investigators were given access to Ms. Wilson’s classified file.” This is tantamount to asking the Court and Mr. Libby to take the government’s word on Ms. Wilson’s status, based on secret evidence, without affording Mr. Libby an opportunity to rebut it. Such a request offends traditional notions of fairness and due process. Second, the government relies on a terse two-and-a-half page summary of Valerie Wilson’s employment history that was generated by the CIA, which purports to establish that “Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.” We have never been granted an opportunity to challenge this conclusory assertions or any of the other unsubstantiated claims in this document, nor permitted to investigate how it was created. If nothing else, the fact that the CIA’s spokesperson confirmed Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment to Mr. Novak calls into question whether the government was taking affirmative measures to conceal her identity. The summary described above was provided to the defense along with a companion summary that defined a “covert” CIA employee as a “CIA employee whose employment is not publicly acknowledged by the CIA or the employee.”4 It is important to bear in mind that the IIPA defines “covert agent” differently. It states: “The term ‘covert agent’ means— (A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency . . . (i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and (ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States.” The CIA summary of Ms. Wilson’s employment history claims that she “engaged in temporary duty (TDY) travel overseas on official business,” though it does not say whether such travel in fact occurred within the last five years. Further, it is not clear that engaging in temporary duty travel overseas would make a CIA employee who is based in Washington eligible for protection under the IIPA. In fact, it seems more likely that the CIA employee would have to have been stationed outside the United States to trigger the protection of the statute. To our knowledge, the meaning of the phrase “served outside the United States” in the IIPA has never been litigated. Thus, whether Ms. Wilson was covered by the IIPA remains very much in doubt, especially given the sparse nature of the record.

i love this part: If nothing else, the fact that the CIA’s spokesperson confirmed Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment to Mr. Novak calls into question whether the government was taking affirmative measures to conceal her identity.

Last edited by Q5echo on Jun-01-2007 at 08:30

quote:

Originally posted by MisterOpus1 Incorrect. The reason why Fitz cannot prosecute further is because Libby created a dead-end for him, NOT because there's nothing left as you imply.

there is no "dead end" in Federal investigations involving the highest ranks of the Executive branch and treason. now you are just making shit up.

quote:

You don't have to read anything beyond Fitz' own statements to see that he implies a larger context to Libby's obstruction, as I highlighted above. Clearly Fitz believes there's more to the story, but he is a good prosecutor and he will not under any circumstances file charges without substantial evidence for successful prosecution and conviction, which Libby is clearly blocking (and Fitz states as such).

again you are just making shit up to support your own speculations.

in addition, the highlighted stuff in Occrider's WaPo article by Dan Froomkin is misleading (dishonest IMO). it is Fitzgerald's response to the Judge to questions regarding "arguments either that the entire investigation should have been quickly terminated or that it was innappropriate that at the end of the investigation only Mr. Libby was charged".

you and Froomkin are being dishonest, frankly, when you assert that "Clearly Fitz believes there is more to the story". from Fitz's brief it clearly does not reflect that. in fact, it clearly rebukes your baseless assertion.

read it, don't make assumptions to pedal your BDS and expect us to believe that after three years Fitz decided to throw in the towel.

besides, how good would an excuse like your's and Froomkin's look to the Judge in a Federal investigation after 3 years "well, i think something happened but i can't prove it because Libby "dead-ended me". f**king absurd, dude. thats not what a good prosecuter would do.

quote:

Let's take a trip down memory lane and examine the idiots in Freeperland who claimed otherwise: Tony Snow on O'Reilly last February: Shame, shame, Faux News Press Secretary. Laura Ingraham on Hannity and Colmes last March: Faux News Mort Kondracke on Brit's show last September: Count Novakula September 2003 on CNN's Crossfire: Barb Lerner on National Review last March: Hinderaker on his Powerline blog November 2005: Glenn Reynolds on his Instapundit blog: WaTimes editorial July 2005: Mark Levin National Review July 2005: And of course, DeGenova, Perino, and Toensing, who pimped out their bullshit lines both to the Press and Congress whenever they could: http://www.newsday.com/news/nationw...lnews-headlines http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...-2005Jan11.html

i don't care what the press or the freepers or the moonbats have speculated for the last three years up to this point. it's irrelavent.

i'm going to say this to you for the last time. the only reason Fitz has submitted this brief confirming Plame's status is because he's trying to affect the Judge's sentence. this is a very common tactic. it's not exactly equitable given her status was immaterial to the case, but he'd be remiss as a prosecutor if he didn't at least try.

Last edited by Q5echo on Jun-01-2007 at 08:40