Much has been said since the indictment came down about a matter that, for everyone involved with the investigation, had been settled for a long time already. The right-wing spin machine has presented the following arguments in recent days: Plame’s identity was not compromised by the Bush administration as much as the she and the CIA compromised it on their own, the charges against Libby rely solely on a disagreement in how he and Tim Russert recall a conversation from 2003, and the Bush administration was victimized by a coordinated effort by Wilson and his wife to lie about the administration’s Niger claims.
The need to over-simplify the matter in some areas and create false complexities in other areas has driven partisan commentators to promote many ideas that are neither based in fact nor consistent with the official documentation currently available to the public. None of this is unexpected, but for some conservatives who have actually READ the indictment, the truth is too overwhelming. William F. Buckley, an icon of the conservative movement, has this to say:
The importance of the law against revealing the true professional identity of an agent is advertised by the draconian punishment, under the federal code, for violating it. In the swirl of the Libby affair, one loses sight of the real offense, and it becomes almost inapprehensible what it is that Cheney/Libby/Rove got themselves into. But the sacredness of the law against betraying a clandestine soldier of the republic cannot be slighted.
How sure can Buckley be that Valerie Wilson was in fact considered clandestine? That’s the question the blogsphere has leveraged for countless lines of analysis, but from the start of this investigation has been settled. Literally thousands of articles/posts have been written in an effort to put forth the idea that Wilson’s status was not or shouldn’t have been deemed classified. I feel sorry for these people, as they’re continuing to tear apart and examine a matter that’s been settled since day one. Honestly, how any intelligent person could continue along this fruitless path of oblivion is beyond me.
FACT: THERE WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN AN INVESTIGATION AT ALL IF HER STATUS WASN’T CLASSIFIED!
In case that’s not sufficient, here’s what Fitzgerald wrote in the indictment:
Page 3 – f. Joseph Wilson was married to Valerie Plame Wilson (“Valerie Wilson”). At all relevant times from January 1, 2002 through July 2003, Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA, and her employment status was classified. Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community.
Prior to the indictment even, we had the judicial opinion regarding Matt Cooper and Judith Miller in their appeal to deny the grand jury of their sources on First Amendment grounds. I’ve had this link posted for months now, and several times within the 83 page opinion, the status of Valerie Wilson is considered classified. One of my favorite portions reads as follows:
Page 81-82: …Indeed, Cooper’s own Time.com article illustrates this point. True, his story revealed a suspicious confluence of leaks, contributing to the outcry that led to this investigation. Yet the article had that effect precisely because the leaked information – Plame’s covert status – lacked significant news value. In essence, seeking protection for sources whose nefariousness he himself exposed, Cooper asks us to protect criminal leaks so that he can write about the crime. The greater public interest lies in preventing the leak to begin with.
So what you have is the courts on one side and the pundits and blogers on the other. On the one hand there’s a growing amount of evidence that further solidifies the fact that Valerie Wilson’s status was considered classified, and on the other hand you have a great deal of conjecture over her status that completely ignores what’s available to everyone in black and white. Frodo has done well to present sources for his opinion that her status remains up in the air. Here are some excerpts from a Wall Street Journal editorial that attempt to contradict the judicial record:
When the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was being negotiated, Senate Select Committee Chairman Barry Goldwater was adamant: If the CIA desired a law making it illegal to expose one of its deep cover employees, then the agency must do a much better job of protecting their cover. That is why a criterion for any prosecution under the act is that the government was taking “affirmative measures” to conceal the protected person’s relationship to the intelligence agency. Two decades later, the CIA, either purposely or with gross negligence, made a series of decisions that led to Ms. Plame becoming a household name:
In short, the writer is out to show that the identity of Valerie Plame becoming public knowledge was not the result of administration officials speaking with reporters, but that the CIA is responsible for what happened. Goldwater’s statement in the above paragraph appears to bear relevance to the leak case, but when you consider the activity of spies during this period of history it’s a stretch. Should a CIA agent have gone “off the reservation” or decided on their own to do something their bosses weren’t aware of, Congress shouldn’t be expected to enforce the law due to a situation that came about because of an internal failure of CIA leadership. This is why covert agents are trained for several years before embarking on a mission, and why after several years of retirement, former agents aren’t being charged left and right with crimes for leaking classified secrets.
The use of Goldwater’s speech is apt in terms of an agent who is operating on their own without authorization. Valerie Wilson never fell into this category, as her superiors were aware at every step of what she and her husband were doing. The CIA has never indicated otherwise.
• The CIA sent her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger on a sensitive mission regarding WMD. He was to determine whether Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake, an essential ingredient for unconventional weapons. However, it was Ms. Plame, not Mr. Wilson, who was the WMD expert. Moreover, Mr. Wilson had no intelligence background, was never a senior person in Niger when he was in the State Department, and was opposed to the administration’s Iraq policy. The assignment was given, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, at Ms. Plame’s suggestion.
The assumption is that Wilson was never adequately equipped to carry out this task is made in broad strokes, yet never qualified with an explanation of what about the task specifically was out of his grasp. The writer considers his former rank in the State Department and that he was not a ‘WMD expert’ as sufficient evidence that the CIA sent an unqualified person to Niger. The assumption is that the CIA set out to investigate this matter, and found it prudent to assign the task to someone who was incapable of carrying it out.
So you have a request from the Vice President’s office to investigate the Niger-yellowcake-Iraq link, and the CIA assigning it to a former ambassador who had spent almost 3 years in Niger working for the State Department. If yellowcake uranium had been sold to a foreign nation, documentation of that transaction would be on file. If Iraq had made an inquiry regarding a potential purchase of uranium, documentation of that request would have been on file as well. Wilson’s mission was to research and inquire whether any such documentation existed.
Are there past performance evaluations within the State Department that might indicate Wilson would be incapable of carrying out this task? Was Joe Wilson ever fired in all of this years working for the government? Let’s get real here, the CIA wasn’t sending Wilson to Niger for him to assassinate the prime minister or capture a terror suspect. He was there to ask questions.
• Mr. Wilson was not required to sign a confidentiality agreement, a mandatory act for the rest of us who either carry out any similar CIA assignment or represent CIA clients.
• When he returned from Niger, Mr. Wilson was not required to write a report, but rather merely to provide an oral briefing. That information was not sent to the White House. If this mission to Niger were so important, wouldn’t a competent intelligence agency want a thoughtful written assessment from the “missionary,” if for no other reason than to establish a record to refute any subsequent misrepresentation of that assessment? Because it was the vice president who initially inquired about Niger and the yellowcake (although he had nothing to do with Mr. Wilson being sent), it is curious that neither his office nor the president’s were privy to the fruits of Mr. Wilson’s oral report.
Wilson was not required to provide a written report concerning the questions he asked and the answers he received. What this proves is that the nature of his assignment was rather elementary. Either there was proof that Iraq had purchased or sought to purchase uranium or there wasn’t.
If the CIA had any reason to anticipate that depending on what they uncovered, the White House might politicize the results, then I’m sure they would have done a few more things to better position themselves. They were asked to investigate a lead and they did just that. The results of Wilson’s trip were communicated and sent up the chain. Whether they reached the Vice President or not is a high-level matter, and one that George Tenet would have to speak towards. Did the Vice President’s staff follow up on their inquiry? Did Tenet communicate the information, find out it wasn’t what Cheney wanted to hear and then let the matter die?
• Although Mr. Wilson did not have to write even one word for the agency that sent him on the mission at taxpayer’s expense, over a year later he was permitted to tell all about this sensitive assignment in the New York Times. For the rest of us, writing about such an assignment would mean we’d have to bring our proposed op-ed before the CIA’s Prepublication Review Board and spend countless hours arguing over every word to be published. Congressional oversight committees should want to know who at the CIA permitted the publication of the article, which, it has been reported, did not jibe with the thrust of Mr. Wilson’s oral briefing. For starters, if the piece had been properly vetted at the CIA, someone should have known that the agency never briefed the vice president on the trip, as claimed by Mr. Wilson in his op-ed.
Again, did the Vice President’s office follow up on their original inquiry? Since there is no documentation of a briefing that I know of, it seems to me that the ball was dropped. Why would you ask for an investigation, then never follow up on what the result was? If the writer is correct in stating that the Vice President’s office was never briefed on Wilson’s findings, then wouldn’t the VP’s office be guilty of negligence? I think so. In fact, it seems to me that the more likely scenario was that the results were communicated, but since it wasn’t what they wanted to hear, the matter was dropped.
• More important than the inaccuracies is that, if the CIA truly, truly, truly had wanted Ms. Plame’s identity to be secret, it never would have permitted her spouse to write the op-ed. Did no one at Langley think that her identity could be compromised if her spouse wrote a piece discussing a foreign mission about a volatile political issue that focused on her expertise? The obvious question a sophisticated journalist such as Mr. Novak asked after “Why did the CIA send Wilson?” was “Who is Wilson?” After being told by a still-unnamed administration source that Mr. Wilson’s “wife” suggested him for the assignment, Mr. Novak went to Who’s Who, which reveals “Valerie Plame” as Mr. Wilson’s spouse.
This paragraph has me thinking the writer is short in the ‘imagination’ category. Isn’t it obvious what happened? The CIA officials who carried out the Niger assignment and reported their findings saw the Bush administration stating as fact something that they knew to be false. Wilson no doubt contacted the CIA and asked, “didn’t they get the results of our investigation?” When he and the CIA officials failed to get satisfaction on this matter, he went public. Does Tenet’s resignation have anything to do with the fact that the Niger story blew up? Wilson’s findings were buried at some level, and to assume that the Vice President’s office had nothing to do with it is extremely naive considering Libby is already under indictment.
• CIA incompetence did not end there. When Mr. Novak called the agency to verify Ms. Plame’s employment, it not only did so, but failed to go beyond the perfunctory request not to publish. Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.
She knows this how? If the answer to the question is, “because Novak said so”, then she should have left this paragraph out. Either the policy on disclosing information to reporters changed, Novak got lucky or he lied. The CIA would have this call saved if it took place.
• Although high-ranking Justice Department officials are prohibited from political activity, the CIA had no problem permitting its deep cover or classified employee from making political contributions under the name “Wilson, Valerie E.,” information publicly available at the Federal Elections Commission.
Qualifying this last bullet point as relevant would require Valerie Wilson to be a high-ranking (whatever that means) official in the CIA. Also, it would be nice to know whether the Justice Department’s standard is universal within the Federal Government or if the writer was simply running short on ideas at this point.
The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft. It is up to Congress to decide which.
At this point, such a conclusion is far from logical. The important thing to remember though, is that think tanks are burning the midnight oil. What they’re up against are the facts. Based on the number of assumptions I’ve just sorted through, this editorial is proof.
On to the talking point concerning the Libby indictment, many are now saying that it all boils down to a discrepancy between what he and Tim Russert recall from a conversation that took place in 2003. This one is tailor made for the large number of Republican voters who will never read the indictment on their own. It’s a flat out lie, as the following portions of the indictment will prove:
Page 12: b. LIBBY advised Matthew Cooper of Time magazine on or about July 12, 2003 that he had heard that other reporters were saying that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA, and further advised him that LIBBY did not know whether this assertion was true; and
c. LIBBY advised Judith Miller of the New York Times on or about July 12, 2003 that he had heard that other reporters were saying that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA but LIBBY did not know whether that assertion was true.33. It was further part of the corrupt endeavor that the time defendant LIBBY made each of the above described materially false and intentionally misleading statements and representations to the grand jury, LIBBY was aware that they were false, in that:
…In or about early June 2003, LIBBY learned from the Vice President that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA in the Counterproliferation Division;
On or about June 11, 2003, LIBBY was informed by a senior CIA officer that Wilson’s wife was employed by the CIA and that the idea of sending him to Niger originated with her;
On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was informed by the Under Secretary of State that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA;
Libby spoke with Tim Russert on July 10, 2003. By that time he had already heard about Wilson’s wife working for the CIA from the Vice President, a senior CIA officer and the Under Secretary of State. His idea was to attribute his knowledge of all this to Tim Russert, and then play dumb regarding her covert status when leaking the information to Matt Cooper and Judith Miller.
To say that the entire case boils down to a disagreement between Russert and Libby is purposely misleading. Yet that’s where we’re at politically. The facts are out there.
What bothers me about the past week of commentary is there are many people out there cashing in on the market of voters who simply want to hear that their side did nothing wrong. To squeeze as much money out of this story as possible, the commentary must be misleading. Along the way, whoever needs to be ruined by assumptions will be sacrificed, and the bottom line will continue to supersede truth. This isn’t a First Amendment issue, as Americans can write and say whatever they want, but the corporations making money off of this blatant dishonesty are ethically culpable.
Posted by Al Swearengen in Words