Plame
I'm still trying to get a handle on the full implications of what's going on with the investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame (Ambassador Wilson's wife) as a CIA agent.
What's clear to me is that someone in the White House used their access to classified information, namely Plame's status as a covert agent, in a political strike against the ambassador (this was in retribution for Wilson criticizing the Bush administration for ignoring his report that it was unlikely that Iraq had purchased uranium). Via Hunter at Kos, a Washington Post reporter's story about the attack:
On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's CIA-sponsored February 2002 trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction.
I didn't write about that information at that time because I did not believe it true that she had arranged his Niger trip. But I did disclose it in an October 12, 2003 story [here] in The Washington Post. By that time there was a Justice Department criminal investigation into a leak to columnist Robert Novak who published it on July 14, 2003 and identified Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative. Under certain circumstances a government official's disclosure of her name could be a violation of federal law. The call with me had taken place two days before Novak's column [here] appeared.
I wrote my October story because I did not think the person who spoke to me was committing a criminal act, but only practicing damage control by trying to get me to stop writing about Wilson. Because of that article, The Washington Post and I received subpoenas last summer from Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor looking into the Plame leak. Fitzgerald wanted to find out the identity of my source.
Now, it seems clear to me that there is no defense, as Pincus tries to provide, in the source "practicing damage control." The minute PR maneuvering becomes a legal defense to treason, I'll eat this blog. It doesn't matter why anyone who knew Plame was CIA revealed that information, it was illegal.
This whole thing smacks of the irresponsible vindictiveness that has pervaded the Bush administration in its defense of its Iraq war. And if revealing national secrets for political purposes doesn't count as Hating America, I don't know what does.
What's clear to me is that someone in the White House used their access to classified information, namely Plame's status as a covert agent, in a political strike against the ambassador (this was in retribution for Wilson criticizing the Bush administration for ignoring his report that it was unlikely that Iraq had purchased uranium). Via Hunter at Kos, a Washington Post reporter's story about the attack:
On July 12, 2003, an administration official, who was talking to me confidentially about a matter involving alleged Iraqi nuclear activities, veered off the precise matter we were discussing and told me that the White House had not paid attention to former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's CIA-sponsored February 2002 trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction.
I didn't write about that information at that time because I did not believe it true that she had arranged his Niger trip. But I did disclose it in an October 12, 2003 story [here] in The Washington Post. By that time there was a Justice Department criminal investigation into a leak to columnist Robert Novak who published it on July 14, 2003 and identified Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative. Under certain circumstances a government official's disclosure of her name could be a violation of federal law. The call with me had taken place two days before Novak's column [here] appeared.
I wrote my October story because I did not think the person who spoke to me was committing a criminal act, but only practicing damage control by trying to get me to stop writing about Wilson. Because of that article, The Washington Post and I received subpoenas last summer from Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor looking into the Plame leak. Fitzgerald wanted to find out the identity of my source.
Now, it seems clear to me that there is no defense, as Pincus tries to provide, in the source "practicing damage control." The minute PR maneuvering becomes a legal defense to treason, I'll eat this blog. It doesn't matter why anyone who knew Plame was CIA revealed that information, it was illegal.
This whole thing smacks of the irresponsible vindictiveness that has pervaded the Bush administration in its defense of its Iraq war. And if revealing national secrets for political purposes doesn't count as Hating America, I don't know what does.
posted by onlooker at 11:55 AM
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