Fitzgerald Investigation of Leak of Identity of CIA Agent

I agree there may be alot going on, at least probably some going on. I am just saying that appearances do not necessarily prove a crime has been committed, but I think such has been going on for a very long time with politicians in both parties, and not just Abramoff. Why single out Abramoff, when it should be obvious there are plenty others? How come there are no investigations in the dozens of other lobbyists, and lets not forget the big ones, the labor unions, the teachers unions, AARP, the list goes on?

Advocate, I am disappointed in DeLay. I may have mis-estimated the guy, and honestly I never knew him personally, so unless you know some of these people personally, it is difficult to judge their character and difficult to judge so-called news reports about campaign contributions and accusations of quid pro quo until something concrete is proven.

DeLay lost it for me the day he stood up at a prayer breakfast for Tsunami victims and stated that those who don't pray to JC will have their houses washed away. F*cking scumbag, that guy.



Because, he was absolutely the kingpin of illegal lobbying and shady deals. He helped DeLay build the K-street project, he had his fingers in pretty much every pie in Washington D.C.

He's actually not in jail right now b/c they keep getting more, and more, and more out of the guy. He visited the WH hundreds of times, had relations with pretty much every GOP Congressman. Did illegal deals for casino boats as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Abramoff

Cycloptichorn

If that is correct, I agree with you, without the unnecessary language, cyclops.



You're telling me AARP does not have their finger in everything in Washington?

The real question is:

How come as soon as Richard Armitage was known very early on as the first person to reveal the identity of Valerie Plame, how come he was not charged? If it is because it was not a crime, which it obviously is not, then how come the investigation continued into something that is not a crime? Is Fitzgerald a nut? I am going a step further than calling this a waste of time. I think Fitzgerald is incompetent.

How come Armitage did not admit all of this publicly and how come Colin Powell did not come forward, but instead allow Libby, Rove, and others twist in the wind over not being able to remember exact words of conversations held years before? How many of you here remember exactly what you said 20 minutes ago in a conversation with someone?

This case is totally an embarrassment.

And this case is a showcase for liberal hypocrisy and how they operate in the press. Unfortunately, only a small portion of the public will ever know the truth, but instead they will be left believing the liberal Democratic propaganda piled deeper than you know what ever since this case started.

Starting in 1994, payments from lobbyists to Republicans soared like never before, and continued until recently. Payments to Democrats were a pittance in comparison.

The excuse given about Armitrage is that he didn't know, and didn't say, exactly what she did. Personally, I think he should be indicted. Letting all these people off is setting a bad precedent; i. e., it is okay to commit treason by exposing undercover CIA agents.

Advocate, you obviously do not understand the law under which Armitage would be indicted for treason.

Do you have statistics to prove this?
Just a little googling finds in this following site that a couple of the largest contributing industries are labor unions, 59.5 million of which 89% went to Democrats, and 166.9 million from lawyers / law firms, of which 74% went to Democrats.
http://www.capitaleye.org/inside.asp?ID=154

Also, for starters, you might read the following to try to absorb a bit different take on things than you might have swallowed from your previous indoctrination.

http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=472

People keep diverting from the title of this thread. Whats the matter, some of you libs prefer to forget about the Fitzgerald investigation?

Here is a definitive piece regarding the effect of the Armitrage information. It was Rove who confirmed to Novak the information from Armitrage. This should make Rove equally guilty of exposing an undercover CIA agent.

Treason includes aiding and abetting our country's enemies. Outing Plame certainly accomplished this.

Were there to have been a relevant finding of criminal culpability in the matter, your assertion in such regard would attain some substance and merit consideration. As things stand, however, pending any such finding - a circumstance of apparent inreasing unlikelihood - your assertion amounts only to just one more whisp of smoke from the gun with which the Bushophobes have once again shot themselves in the foot. One might think the clowns would have learned something from the Dan Rather Debacle - just might think, mind you, as opposed to would think; there's little indication Bushophobes as a class are capable of learning.

Timberlandko- This excellent Editorial puts the last nail in the coffin of those left wingers who tried to smear the President with the phony case concerning the "outing" of Valerie Plame.




REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Fess Up, Mr. Armitage
Time to put the Plame conspiracy to its final rest.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDT

From its very start, the ballyhooed case of who leaked the name of CIA analyst Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak has been drenched in partisan politics and media hypocrisy. The more we learn, however, the more it also reveals about the internal dysfunction of the Bush Administration and the lack of loyalty among some of its most senior officials.

The latest news is that the Bush official who first disclosed Ms. Plame's identity was none other than former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. According to a new book by liberal journalists David Corn and Michael Isikoff, Mr. Armitage was Mr. Novak's primary source for his now famous column of July 14, 2003, that first publicly revealed Ms. Plame's CIA pedigree.

In other words, the leaker wasn't Karl Rove or Scooter Libby or anyone else in the White House who has been accused of running a conspiracy against Ms. Plame as revenge for her husband Joe Wilson's false accusations against the White House's case for war with Iraq. So what have the last three years been all about anyway? Political opportunism and internal score-settling, among other things.





Mr. Armitage, recall, was part of Colin Powell's team at State and well known as an internal Administration opponent of the "neo-cons" who supported the ouster of Saddam Hussein. The book alleges that Mr. Armitage knew as early as October 2003 that he was Mr. Novak's prime source, yet he kept quiet about it even as his colleagues in the Administration were dragged through years of criminal investigation and media accusations as the possible leaker. Even now Mr. Armitage hasn't admitted to being the leaker, though doing so would help to clarify several things about the case.
For starters, fessing up would put to rest the conspiracy theories once and for all. Bush opponents have continued to promote this myth, with Mr. Wilson writing in June 2004 that "the conspiracy to destroy us was most likely conceived--and carried out--within the office of the vice president of the United States." Not a word of that was true.

Mr. Novak hasn't himself confirmed that Mr. Armitage was his primary source, since Mr. Armitage hasn't yet given him leave to do so. But Mr. Novak has written that his source was not a "partisan gunslinger," and the columnist has also said that he himself put in the call to Mr. Rove to confirm what he'd first heard from his main source (presumably Mr. Armitage). The White House, in short, was not engaged in any campaign to "out" Ms. Plame.

All of this matters because it also casts doubt on the thoroughness and fairness of special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's probe that began in December 2003. The prosecutor never did indict anyone for leaking Ms. Plame's name, though this was supposedly the act of "treason" that triggered the political clamor for a probe. Instead, he has indicted Mr. Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Mr. Fitzgerald has nonetheless also tried to spin an aura that Mr. Libby was responsible for outing Ms. Plame. In his press conference on October 28, 2005, the prosecutor asserted that "In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to [former New York Times reporter] Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson." But we have since learned that Mr. Armitage also told Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward about Ms. Plame--a fact that Mr. Fitzgerald never uncovered until Mr. Woodward came forward after he heard Mr. Fitzgerald make that false public assertion.

Strangely, Mr. Armitage never seems to have told Mr. Fitzgerald that he'd talked to Mr. Woodward. And Mr. Fitzgerald never seems to have asked to see Mr. Armitage's appointment calendar, which would have showed his meeting with Mr. Novak. It's all enough to make us wonder if Mr. Fitzgerald didn't buy into the liberal "conspiracy" theory of this case from the start and target the White House while giving Mr. Armitage a pass.

Meanwhile, according to the Corn-Isikoff book, Mr. Armitage never did tell the White House or his boss, the President, that he was the leaker. Instead, in October 2003 he told Mr. Powell, who told the State Department general counsel, who in turn told the Justice Department but gave the White House Counsel only the sketchiest overview of what he'd learned and didn't mention Mr. Armitage's name. So while Mr. Fitzgerald presumably knew when he began his probe two months later that Mr. Armitage was Mr. Novak's source, the President himself was apparently kept in the dark, even as he was pledging publicly to find out who the leaker was.

At a minimum, there appears to be a serious question of disloyalty here. By keeping silent, Messrs. Powell and Armitage let the President take political heat for the case, while also letting Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby and other White House officials twist in the wind for more than two years. We also know that it was the folks in Mr. Powell's shop--including his former chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson and intelligence officer Carl Ford Jr.--who did so much to trash John Bolton's nomination to be Ambassador to the U.N. in 2005. The State Department clique that Mr. Bush tolerated for so long did tremendous damage to his Administration.

As for Justice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case in an act of political abdication. That left then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey in charge, and he also presumably knew about Mr. Armitage's role as the leaker who started it all. Yet if the book's account is correct, he too misled the White House with his silence. Mr. Comey is also the official who let Mr. Fitzgerald alter his mandate from its initial find-the-leaker charge to the obstruction and perjury raps against Mr. Libby that are all this case has come down to. Remind us never to get in a foxhole with either Mr. Comey or the Powell crowd.





There is more to be said at a future date about the specific case against Mr. Libby. But for now the Armitage news should concern one man in particular, and that's the President of the United States. How much differently would he have behaved had he known about Mr. Armitage's role in 2003? Would he have kept echoing the media-liberal spin that there was some nefarious White House leaker to discover, and continue to let the aides who most believed in his policies--Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove--be hounded by a special counsel? And why has he tolerated so much insubordination to his policies?
Someday we hope Mr. Bush will tell us. Meantime, as he absorbs the partisan and ultimately trivial truth of this case, why shouldn't he pardon Mr. Libby and put the entire sorry saga to rest?


end of quote


The left wing keeps throwing mud at President Bush and the only effect is that they discover that they are the ones who are dirty!!!

Do Republicans really believe their own spin? No, it is just that they are quite willing to spout any nonsense to protect their own.

Huffington Post
The Casual Mr. Armitage
READ MORE: Indictments, CIA, Valerie Plame, Investigations, George W. Bush
Thank goodness this Valerie Plame stuff is behind us, no? It was all a big dust-up over nothing, it turns out. Instead of a felony, the only thing that was committed was a casual conversation in which a little too much was said. Oops! Richard Armitage, the silly fellow who let the name and information slip out, has been described as "beside himself," "uncomfortable with public acknowledgment of his role" as the source of the leak during a "casual" conversation.


"I'm afraid I may be the cause of all this rhubarb," he was said to have fretted.

What could be more clear? No felony was committed because it was casual! If it was a felony, would Armitage be merely uncomfortable and beside himself in embarrassment, rather than actively concealing his role to avoid prosecution?

Remember when it was all okay because the President okayed it, making it legal under the something something bullshit act? Remember when it was okay because Novak said his source had no axe to grind? And now it's okay because it was casual. Armitage casually leaked classified information in a casual conversation with the Prince of Darkness.

That was the real problem with Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. They were too formal about passing atomic secrets to the USSR. Stiff. Ill at ease. Let's face it, they were graceless immigrants, not the type you'd want at your tea party. Imagine them fumbling with the cucumber sandwiches! Well, I never!

And that Benedict Arnold, what a loser. Did you ever watch him try to pick up chicks? Painful, a train wreck. And Aaron Burr, there was an awkward chap. What could be more boorish than accumulating a private army to overthrow the government - and then getting caught! And shooting Alexander Hamilton? Talk about a faux pas! He was the joke of the social season.

But of course what Burr did was much more serious, and affected more than just his own social standing. It put Cliff Robertson in quite a predicament in "Man Without A Country." If Robertson had had his pinky extended when he said, "Damn the United States! I wish to never hear the name of the United States of America again," the judge might have thought, This fellow's so calm and collected, what a tasteful way to express antagonism. Instead, Robertson was apoplectic, shaking with rage, so spastic that I think we can all agree with the judge's creative sentencing, exiling Robertson to a ship on the ocean where no news of the USA would ever be allowed to reach him, and Stockholm Syndrome would eventually show him the error of his ways.

The story of "Man Without A Country" is fiction, of course, and highly implausible any way you slice it. But its having been shown to several generations of school children in Social Studies classes across the nation speaks to the great civic understanding we as a polity possess. It explains why we're all so casual about the current administration's continual violations of the Constitution - torture, unreasonable search and seizure, cruel and unusual punishment, denial of due process - making a stink about such peccadilloes would be the height of rudeness, especially when they're accomplished with such panache!

Exposing the identity of an undercover CIA agent isn't a big deal, anyway, when you get down to it. If it were, how could it periodically seem so harmless and innocent, depending on how it was authorized? And it's not like Armitage, a former State Department deputy, could have known that exposing a covert agent might have serious consequences for that agent's career, let alone for the safety of other agents or the effectiveness of ongoing operations. What understanding could a high figure in the Bush State Department have about affairs of state? I mean, be reasonable.

And then who wouldn't be embarrassed? Just because you're casual doesn't mean you have no pride. Certainly allowing a federal investigation to go on for years, grand jury testimony and indictments to pile up, and a scandal to implicate administration officials all the way up to the chief executive is the only proper thing to do under such circumstances. Like not sneaking up on a head of state and giving her an unexpected massage, it's right out of Emily Post.

What's important is that the whole thing was done casually and off-the-cuff. Intent does matter, after all. If I casually run over someone with my car, I'm a lot more likely to get off on manslaughter than if I am so uncouth as to express malice aforethought.

Like a fine pizza, it's all in the delivery.

Its so much fun to see the Bushophobes twitching and drooling with impotent rage, looking blame anything anything and everything but their own flaws, but to their owned flawed agenda for as yet one more of their "This Is IT" great hopes goes up in smoke - yup; incapable of learning.

Question for experts on Wilson and Plame. How come they aren't bringing suit against Richard Armitage? Hmmmm........ Libs can you answer this one?

The answer is obvious of course and always has been, but just wondering if you libs have figured out the basics of this case yet?

We only JUST found out that Armitage was the first to leak the name.

Gee. Why didn't theWilson's file suit against an unknown official prior to finding out his name?

Oh, wait ... they DID..

Valerie Plame Wilson, Joseph Wilson, IV v. I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby,
Karl C. Rove, Richard Cheney, and John Does 1-10.

http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/iraq/wilsonlibby71306cmp.html

The answer is pretty obvious okie. I don't understand why you asked the question and then got the answer wrong. "Obvious" must mean something completely different to you.

Okie, you haven't heard? A lawsuit against Armitage may be in the works.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060822/D8JLOJ402.html

Timber, you are such a joker! You mention that the Democrats' failed agenda (whatever that is). What has been the Republican agenda that has not been a total disaster? Was it that great war in Iraq? Those wonderful tax cuts for the super rich, which will somehow balance the budget? Was it the wonderful performance in Katrina? Etc.

They knew Armitage's name just as much as they did Cheney, Rove, and Libby's. Fitzgerald has established no crime relative to the original charge of leaking the identity of Plame by Cheney, Rove, or Libby, so I see no particular reason for them to file suit against them as compared to Armitage. Libby is charged with a procedural crime associated with the original crime, but not the original crime, which has never been established as a crime by the way, which is bizarre to say the least.

Hey, I am willing to stand corrected if they press their charges at least as aggressively or it should be more aggressively now toward Armitage than anyone else. Now that the information is out, they should drop the cases against Rove, Libby, and Cheney, and refile a case against Armitage, as it appears he is the real culprit here. I don't think they will.

Great! And they will drop the charges against Rove, Cheney, and Libby I presume now that the real leaker is now revealed?

Rove was complicit in the crime. He confirmed what Novak learned from Armitage.

Okie, don't be dense. Fitz has focused on those who lied in their interviews. It gives him reason to suspect conspiracy, or else why would they lie?

There also could have been more than one leak besides the original...

Cycloptichorn

What crime?