Fitzgerald Investigation of Leak of Identity of CIA Agent

In what respect other than presenting opinion agreeable to you? What factual refutation was offered to anything I posted?


Nonsense. Sadaam's Iraq had been found numerous times across more than a decade to be in material breach of his obligations.

The UN inspectors were not there to discover or dismantle Sadaam's WMDs and related programs, their mandate was to oversee and verify Sadaam's compliance with requirements he freely, openly, adequately, conclusively demonstrate compliance with Safwan Ceasefire obligations and subsequent proscriptions pertaining to WMDs and related programs.

The notion of "[blue] ... Bush's preemptive attack based on Saddam's WMDs ... [/color]" is an absurdity - the issue never was the WMD's themselves, it was Sadaam's persistent defiance of his obligations pertaining thereunto and his persistent defiance of other obligations incumbent upon him consequent to his acceptance of the Safwan Accords.

Never was Sadaam's Iraq claimed to present a "clear and present danger", action was taken in interest of preventing Sadaam's not only announced but plainly evident intent to become such.

This is from the 2002 UN resolution


No "material breach" was found once the inspectors went back in. Your argument is based on old actions not current ones in 2002 or 2003.

Timber

Bush was found numerous times to have been driving drunk. That doesn't mean Bush has been drinking in the last year.

We didn't invade Iraq because they violated the agreement in 1993. We invaded them because they were supposedly violating it in 2002 after inspectors were let back in.

timber, All them previous UN resolutions were superceded when Saddam finally let the UN inspectors into his country for the inspections. Bush is the one that chased them out, not Saddam.

Wilson should get the Medal of Honor for blowing the whistle on our corrupt president who lied us into a war. He is a true hero for taking on this large and powerful administration that is one of the most corrupt in history.

The MOH can only be awarded for valor in combat.
Since when does being a diplomat qualify for that?

UNSCR 1441 afforded Iraq a "final opportunity" to comply with obligations pertaining to and descendent from the Safwan Accords. The resolution called upon Iraq to submit a report constituting full and verifiable disclosure of compliance. Iraq in December of '02 submitted a 10,000-plus-page report, which the Feb 28, 2003 Blix Report (UN: Full text, Twelfth quarterly report of the Executive Chairman of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission in accordance with paragraph 12 of Security Council resolution 1284 (1999) {note: 13 page .pdf download}), despite lotsa wafflewording, found to be inadequate to the stipulated requirement. In brief, Blix reported that while Iraq's cooperation in some respects had improved, the document Iraq provided not only did not resolve the issues it was to address, it raised new questions, while the renewed inspection process raised even more troubling issues. "Final Opportunity" means nothing if it does not mean final opportunity, and Iraq clearly squandered the Final Opportunity afforded by UNSCR 1441. That notwithstanding, Saddam was granted yet one more final opportunity to avoid war; step down and leave Iraq. That opportunity Saddam squandered as well. The "Blame" for what did happen falls squarely and soley on Saddam; his was the sequence of actions which proximately led to the destruction of his regime, his own eventual capture, and all the rest. For reasons varying from honest abhorrence of war to simple pecuniary interest, some member states of the UN refused to put their actions in line with their words. No less than Saddam, the UN was given a Final Opportunity, an opportunity to demonstrate relevance and resolve. That opportunity also was squandered. The UN is worse than a feckless, useless fiction, it is a clear and present danger to global peace and prosperity.

The truth is Wilson may have information pertinent to the case and should be asked questions under oath. He should love to do it. It would be helpful. The man could finally do something worthwhile.

But before we even do that, let us ask Mr. Fitzgerald if Valerie Plame was a covert agent, and if so, if someone actually knowingly released her name to anyone knowing she was covert. If the answer is no, then we should send Mr. Fitzgerald somewhere else to do something else worthwhile instead of wasting more time and money on this and save him from further embarrassment.

If you bothered to follow the case at all, it has been stipulated in court documents that Plame's employment by the CIA was a secret. Repeated calls for proof after the court has accepted the evidence is nothing but whistling past the graveyard on your part.

Meanwhile George Bush has proven to be an even bigger threat to global peace than the UN ever was. He has squandered whatever good will the US had after 9/11. He continues to create more threats around the globe through his incompetence than almost any other leader ever has.

If you had been paying attention, you would know that it has never been demonstrated that Plame was a covert agent, as that term is defined in the IIPA.

parados, you might wanna look into reading Burdick & Lederer's 1958 classic (1½ years on the NYT Best Seller list, over 6 million copies sold to date), THE UGLY AMERICAN, or, for that matter, Fanny Trollope's hillarious 1832 Look Down The Nose titled DOMESTIC MANNERS OF THE AMERICANS ... then there's the fact anti-American demonstrations have about a century-plus history throughout Europe, Latin America, the Middle East, and Asia - international goodwill toward America just ain't never been much in evidence unless America happened at the moment actively to be bailing somebody else out of a jam ... and even then opinions have been mixed.

Good point. Not only has there been no finding of fact pertaining to Ms Plame's status in such regard, there has been no finding of fact that any conspiracy or other directed effort to besmirch, intimidate, or otherwise inconvenience either Wison or Plame existed, and finally, there has been no finding of fact that anyone at any level leaked anything, classified or otherwise.

Parados, thanks for your usual superb posts.

Tico, you are setting up, and knocking down, a straw man. One can be a covert agent outside the definition of the criminal IIPA statute. As you well know, Fitz is not looking at violations of the IIPA.

I wonder whether the impending virgin birth of a child by Cheney's daughter will inspire Cheney to tell the truth in Libby's trial. In the face of this miracle birth, how could Cheney do otherwise?

Sycophant.



Parados made the point that Plame's employment with the CIA was a "secret." That point is not relevant to the discussion, unless it is against the law to to disclose the secret. That's the relevance of the IIPA.



Yes, I know. As I said earlier, I myself am a "covert agent" here on A2K. I have been covert ever since I joined A2K. Of course disclosing my identity to the world would not amount to a hill of beans, and is certainly not against the law.

So what's your point?



I think you are correct, because I suspect he's concluded there are none. I think he reached that conclusion upon discovering that Plame was not a "covert agent" as that term is defined in the IIPA.

From Wikipedia.

It doesn't matter what you personally think; the issue is simple; Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA Operative should not have been publicized for all the reasons explained here. For those of you who seeks to justify her revelation doesn't understand what secrecy means, and how it impacts our intelligence efforts.

Legal issues relating to the Plame affair
There are some major legal issues surrounding the allegations of illegality by administration officials in the Plame affair, including the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the Espionage Act, Title 18 Section 641, conspiracy to impede or injure officers, the Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, other laws and precedents, perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and compelling the media to testify.

Main article: Plame affair legal questions
See also: Valerie Plame#The_Wilsons'_Civil_Suit

[edit] Possible consequences of the public disclosure of Plame's CIA identity
There has been debate over what, if any, damage has resulted from the public disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative in Novak's column and its fallout, how far and into what areas of national security and foreign intelligence that damage might extend, particularly vis-à-vis Plame's work with her cover company, Brewster Jennings & Associates.

On October 3, 2004 The Washington Post quotes a former diplomat predicting immmediate damage:

. . . [E]very foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities. . . . That's why the agency is so sensitive about just publishing her name.[58]

In contrast, in an October 27, 2005 appearance on Larry King Live, Bob Woodward commented:

They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that [former ambassador] Joe Wilson's wife [Plame] was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone, and there was just some embarrassment.[59]

In an appearance the next night, October 28, 2005, on Hardball, Andrea Mitchell was quoted as saying:

I happen to have been told that the actual damage assessment as to whether people were put in jeopardy on this case did not indicate that there was real damage in this specific instance.[60]

Following Mitchell's appearance on Hardball, on October 29, 2006, The Washington Post's Dafna Linzer reported that no formal damage assessment had yet been conducted by the CIA "as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted." Linzer writes:

There is no indication, according to current and former intelligence officials, that the most dire of consequences -- the risk of anyone's life -- resulted from her outing. But after Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's column, the CIA informed the Justice Department in a simple questionnaire that the damage was serious enough to warrant an investigation, officials said.[61]

Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March 2005 reportedly told Linzer:

You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources.

Another intelligence official who spoke anonymously to Linzer cited the CIA's interest in protecting the agency and its work:

You'll never get a straight answer [from the Agency] about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were.[61]

Nevertheless, in a November 3, 2005 online live discussion, in response to a question about the Fitzgerald investigation, The Washington Post's Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist specializing in matters of national security, opined:

I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position."[62]

In a January 9, 2006 letter addressed to "Scooter" Libby's defense team, Patrick Fitzgerald responded to a discovery request by Libby's lawyers for both classified and unclassified documents. In the letter, Fitzgerald writes:

A formal assessment has not been done of the damage caused by the disclosure of Valerie Wilson's status as a CIA employee, and thus we possess no such document. (Italics added).

He continues:

In any event, we would not view an assessment of the damage caused by the disclosure as relevant to the issue of whether or not Mr. Libby intentionally lied when he made the statements and gave the grand jury testimony which the grand jury alleged was false.[63]

Larisa Alexandrovna of The Raw Story reports that three intelligence officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told her that

While Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss has not submitted a formal damage assessment to Congressional oversight committees, the CIA's Directorate of Operations did conduct a serious and aggressive investigation.

According to her sources, the damage assessment . . . called a "counter intelligence assessment to agency operations" was conducted on the orders of the CIA's then-Deputy Director of the Directorate of Operations, James Pavitt. . . . [and showed] "significant damage to operational equities."

Alexandrovna also reports that while Plame was undercover she was involved in an operation identifying and tracking weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran, suggesting that her outing "significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation." Her sources also stated that the outing of Plame also compromised the identity of other covert operatives who had been working, like Plame, under non-official cover status. These anonymous officials said that in their judgement, the CIA's work on WMDs has been set back "ten years" as a result of the compromise.[64]

MSNBC correspondent David Shuster reported on Hardball later, on May 1, 2006, that MSNBC had learned "new information" about the potential consequences of the leaks:

Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the Administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well. The White House considers Iran to be one of America's biggest threats.[65]

Tico, what leads you to believe that Plame did not meet the definition in the IIPA? I think that a solid argument could be made that she met the definition.

Also, it is a crime to divulge classified information. Her employment was classified. Thus, we have your straw man that she didn't meet the definition.

Oh, well, if Larisa Alexandrovna of The Raw Story and the Huffington Post says it, it must be true.


Why didn't you say so earlier?

Okay, what leads YOU to believe that she meets the definition of "covert agent" in the IIPA? Do you know what the definition is? Have you read it? Have you read any of the dozen or so posts I've written outlining my argument in this regard ... most of them in this thread?



My identity is also classified information. FYI.