As the Valerie Plame case heats up once again, it is probably useful to review the relevant events that led to a Federal prosecutor investigating the case for a possible violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.
In July 2003, former Ambassador Joesph Wilson wrote a New York Times op-ed entitled "What I Didn't Find In Africa, which detailed a fact-finding trip that Wilson undertook at the behest of the CIA in order to investigate claims by the Italian government that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger. Despite the confidential nature of the report he prepared based on his trip, Wilson liberally divulged its contents and confidently suggested that Vice President Richard Cheney authorized his trip.
Columnist Robert Novak then wrote this article in response to Wilson's claims, which included the following paragraph:
Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.
Novak's article set off a firestorm of criticism, but in order to fully understand "who knew what," you should read this piece written by The Nation's David Corn, which was published immediately after Robert Novak's piece. Corn sites Joseph Wilson himself as the main source for his article, which divulges far more information about Plame than the Novak article. That being the case, it is doubtful that Robert Novak disclosed anything in his article that wasn't already public knowledge. In fact, the "case" against Novak seems to solely hinge on his use of the word "operative" to describe Valerie Plame.
It is also worth noting that Novak never implied that Valerie Plame was working "under cover" at the CIA. That piece of the puzzle was provided by Joseph Wilson himself, both to David Corn and in his public response to the Novak article.
What we do know about Valerie Plame Wilson is that at the time of the Novak article she was working for the CIA as an analyst, poring over intelligence data for clues about weapons of mass destruction programs. She was working under the name "Valerie Plame," hardly a secret identity, and she commuted to work at CIA headquarters in Langley, VA along with thousands of other CIA employees. There is no evidence that the CIA worked diligently to conceal either her name or the fact that she worked for them. Valerie Plame had been stationed oversees during the 1990's, but had been back in the United States for at least five years prior to the Novak article, which seems to diminish accusations that she was involved in covert intelligence work overseas, and that publishing her name would endanger those still involved in the same operations that included Plame a half-decade earlier.
In order for someone to be prosecuted under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the government must prove that the victim's secret identity was willfully and knowingly compromised in an effort to endanger US intelligence operations. The fact that Plame's full name, her marriage to Joseph Wilson, and her employment by the CIA were not secret would seem to make the prosecution of anyone under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act who was involved in this case an extremely difficult task. And that is the point of the specific wording within the act -- it sought only to punish those who deliberately sought to damage intelligence efforts, not to stifle public discussions about US intelligence operations and policies.
The latest reports about the scandal involve conversations between White House operative (there's that darn word again) Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief-of-staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and various members of the press. We learned this week that the President was unhappy with the "ham-handed" way that Rove and Libby attempted to discredit Joseph Wilson's story by repeatedly mentioning that Joseph Wilson's wife, who worked for the CIA, was responsible for getting him selected to travel to Niger and investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to buy uranium ore. My first impression after reading that story was that Bush's unhappiness stemmed from his "new tone" policy. Bush doesn't believe in personal attacks, as is evidenced by his cordial treatment of Bill Clinton, even in the face of Clinton's energetic attacks on Bush.
But Joseph Wilson's own tall tale brought about the actions of Rove and Libby. Valerie Plame Wilson was indeed instrumental in getting Wilson nominated and vetted for the job, despite the fact that Wilson had never performed any sort of "investigation" before. Yet Wilson publicly asserted that it was Vice President Dick Cheney himself who chose Wilson, and then he implied that Cheney led a conspiracy to "cover up" Wilson's findings. Had Wilson told the truth initially, none of this would have happened.
It's probably not too surprising that reporters and White House officials have had a difficult time remembering the details of their conversations, since it seems that no one knew that they were discussing "secret" information. All of us engage in conversation on a daily basis; few of us remember any of it unless it includes something remarkable. The conversations about Joseph Wilson, and the attempts to discredit his Cheney conspiracy charges, probably seemed like nothing more than regular White House damage control.
I believe that the heart of this issue is yet another grandiose conspiracy theory hatched by Democrats, which continues the line of charges implying that Vice President Cheney is really "running things" behind the scenes at the White House. These same people view Karl Rove as a master political puppeteer as well, and so for them this is "proof" of an elaborate evil political machine running the Bush White House, with President Bush simply a naive pawn.
If you believe that Joseph Wilson was an honest, sincere American who was "taken out" by Rove, Libby, and Robert Novak for daring to expose the truth about the Rove-Cheney White House uber-conspiracy, then this story is a gold mine. It's pretty easy to make the various pieces of the Plame incident fit such a conspiracy, and the "outing Valerie Plame" element adds just the right touch of villainy.
I have no predictions about the outcome of this case. If there are indictments, there will be a trial. Each man will have his day in court. But the tide could turn against journalists in this case; plenty of them have been involved in the investigation and one or more of them could be indicted. It will be interesting to see if the Bush-haters push for their conviction with as much fervor as they would have shown (or will show) for the conviction of White House staffers.
Here is a post that I wrote in July, including a comprehensive timeline of events. And please check the comments on that post for more information on Joseph Wilson.
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JayTea at WizBang posted an imaginary, fictional conversation between Rove and Novak that does a pretty good job of skewering the conspiracy angle.
Carl Limbacher at NewsMax.com reads between the lines of this New York Times article (registration required) and concludes that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has no grounds for an identity leak charge, and (if he indicts at all) would most likely consider a series of Martha-Stewart-type "failing to cooperate" charges.
Of course, all good Democrats know deep in their hearts that perjury, obstruction of justice, and false statement aren't really crimes ... er, right?
UPDATE 10-22-05: I love when I'm right about these things. The NYT is now saying that their reporter babe, Judith "Looks Good In An Orange Jumpsuit" Miller, possibly misled the newspaper by withholding a crucial email. She 'fessed up only after being shown White House records that indicated that the email existed.
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