Plame leaker finally revealed - Armitage

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by DanS
Armitage told the State attorney and Powell the story, then the State attorney asked Gonzalez what details the White House wanted. Gonzalez didn't ask for any details, so what's Armitage to do?

Obviously become a profile in courage and cover his own ass, let millions of taxpayer dollars be wasted investigating a nonexistent crime, White House officials be distracted from serving the country in order to participate in the investigation, and Libby loose his job and be indicted in an investigation that would never have occured if not for him.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Berzerker
I dont know why he wasn't charged, both of them should be charged if the prosecutor can make it stick.

The law only applies if the outer knows the agents was covert, which no one seems to have known, since she had stopped being a field agent as was working as a task force leader in the Iran anti-proliferation situation. Or something close to that. Regardless of whether or not there was ill intent or poltical motives behind her outing (and I believe each was the case depending on which group you're talkin about), neither side appears to have known she was covert.

I'm sure the WH wanted to create "plausible denial" so before anyone connected with Bush or Cheney outed her, they had someone else out her who could create this plausible denial.

You need to remember that in 2003, there was a lot of infighting going on in the administration. The CIA and State were both trying to hold the Administration back from an ill-conceived war, and both were on the outs with those around the President. Power and Armitage were both already in the dog-house because of this, and since Wilson was retired State, his article was seen as a low-blow from Powell's people. Armitage was trying to protect State and Powell, by saying "Hey, it wasn't us, it was CIA." They couldn't do it directly cuz they had little credibility.

They're scum Dino, their actions put people in danger. Cheney should be impeached over this, and if there is any evidence Bush helped, he should be impeached.

In order to impeach, you have to show a crime. It is extremely difficult to show that those in the WH or State knew that Plame was covert. Reasonable doubt is easy here. It doesn't meet the test of impeachiblity.

Bush, Gonzales, Rumsfeld, etc. certainly should be impeached, over torture, war crimes, violating FISA and the 4th, lying to Congress, etc. I think the only thing they could possibly get Cheney on is lying to Congress. Thats another argument for another thread.

[DanS]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Obviously become a profile in courage and cover his own ass, let millions of taxpayer dollars be wasted investigating a nonexistent crime, White House officials be distracted from serving the country in order to participate in the investigation, and Libby loose his job and be indicted in an investigation that would never have occured if not for him.

What's Armitage know? He only knows his piece of the story. He might be doing the WH a favor by sitting tight. On the other hand, the WH didn't want to know his information.

Rove subsequently isn't indicted, so it seems like all's safe for Armitage to tell his story.

[Berzerker]

and Libby loose his job and be indicted in an investigation that would never have occured if not for him.

Not true, Libby got in trouble because he did his own leaking

The law only applies if the outer knows the agents was covert, neither side appears to have known she was covert.

A very high standard, but they didn't care about her status. They could have easily looked into her status before outing her, maybe they did and thats why we have this web of deceit. If she wasn't covered and they knew it, why bother with the leaks? But if she was covered and still had to be outed, create plausible deniability with the first leak.

You need to remember that in 2003, there was a lot of infighting going on in the administration. The CIA and State were both trying to hold the Administration back from an ill-conceived war, and both were on the outs with those around the President. Power and Armitage were both already in the dog-house because of this, and since Wilson was retired State, his article was seen as a low-blow from Powell's people. Armitage was trying to protect State and Powell, by saying "Hey, it wasn't us, it was CIA." They couldn't do it directly cuz they had little credibility.

That all sounds reasonable, but we have Cheney's handwriting on the newspaper asking if she sent him on a junket. So its clear the VPs office already knew who was responsible for sending him. And Armitage's leak to Novak didn't go public until after Libby confirmed her to Novak. So if Cheney and Libby were already directing their attention to her before Armitage's leak went public, they must have found out from people they deemed credible. Armitage didn't need Novak to cover the state dept and I find it hard to believe the WH needed Novak's article to figure out what was going on. Hell, one phone call to the guy running the CIA was all they needed to find out who was involved in sending Wilson and they could have found out if she was protected at the same time.

In order to impeach, you have to show a crime. It is extremely difficult to show that those in the WH or State knew that Plame was covert. Reasonable doubt is easy here. It doesn't meet the test of impeachiblity.

The standard in the Constitution is slightly different, high crimes and misdemeaners. Outing agents, even if "legal" because of a statute of limitation, is despicable for anyone, even moreso for a vice president. I know it wont happen, but it should.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by DanS
On the other hand, the WH didn't want to know his information.

Damn the White House for playing by the book.

Edit: I would be willing to give the benefit of the doubt if you could give somesort of an honorable reason, even a sliver of one, regarding the reason why he let the WH twist in the wind and other people be indicted in investigations stemming from his actions. I can't come up with one myself.

[Sikander]

Berz.

Armitage = State Dept. not the White House

There is not a handy rolodex which describes the covert status of CIA personnel sitting on Cheney's desk. People knew about Plame because of her overt work for the CIA as a WMD expert, which is why her suggestion to send her husband was listened to. It's entirely not only plausible but likely that no one outside the CIA knew of her covert status. Which makes any conspiracy to "out" her impossible. Sure they wanted people to know that Wilson was sent not as a WMD or terrorism expert to Niger, but because his wife arranged for him to be sent. They most certainly wanted to undercut his scathing Op-Ed which rambled considerably further afield than his half-assed "investigation" of the Niger-Iraq story . This is not illegal, or even unethical if you stick to the facts.

What this whole thing seems to be is a turf battle between the CIA and the White House with the State Department playing a crucial role. The CIA made the trumped up charge that Plame was "outed" though she was known to people in the White House for her work in an overt postion. She was a technical manager, not someone who was slipping into disguise and developing foreign agents undercover. It seems most likely that Armatige (probably with Powell's connivance) purposefully leaked the fact that Wilson was chosen by his wife in the CIA in order to shift the blame for the incendiary Mr. Wilson from the State Dept. to CIA.

[SpencerH]

Plame was not covert. It is impossible to work overtly and covertly for the CIA at the same time and no one is gonna be covert after walking through the doorways at Langley everyday. There are some indications that she had been a NOC but that portion of her career was finished. She was an analyst.

[chequita guevara]

She was not covert at the time, but had been covert previously and the CIA wasn't in any hurry to publicize her status.

Sikander, Plame did not arrange for her husband to be sent. She suggested him as a possibility because of his familiarity with Niger and Africa, and then recused herself from the decision process.

If Hitchens is to be believed, the CIA (and Wilson) missed that an Iraqi nuclear expert went to Niger in '99. According to his articles in Slate, the Iraqi ambassador to the Vatican, the former head of the Iraqi nuclear agency, went to Niger on a "friendly" visit in '99. Someone claiming to be the ambassador has written back to Hitchens denying the intent, but none of the details, so if it really was the ambassador, the WH may have been correct that Iraq was seaking to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program. However, this wasn't secret knowledge and if the WH knew about this, they could easily have said so. Britain didn't say anything about it either, and that a journalist oncovered it seven years after the fact says nothing good about anybody. . . . if it's true.

[Berzerker]

Armitage = State Dept. not the White House

He was under Powell, and Powell was an officer in Bush's cabinet - that is the WH. These high profile people who are repeatedly given positions as dept heads are political appointees, not life time bureaucrats.

There is not a handy rolodex which describes the covert status of CIA personnel sitting on Cheney's desk.

Is there a rolodex on the desk of the head of the CIA? C'mon, all they had to do was make one phone call to find out how Wilson was sent and the status of his wife.

Sure they wanted people to know that Wilson was sent not as a WMD or terrorism expert to Niger, but because his wife arranged for him to be sent.

So they outed her

[chequita guevara]

Berz, these are the same people who have screwed up everything else they've touched. Do you think it's possible that it was both incompetence and malevolence on their part?

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
She was not covert at the time, but had been covert previously and the CIA wasn't in any hurry to publicize her status.

No Intel agency publicizes its employees or their status. Its part of the game.

She was not covert therefore she was not outed and not covered by the law. There was no crime therfore there can be no prosecution of a non-crime.

I said this many months ago. I also said that it stank (and it does) just not in the way the lib-dem-coms would like it.

[chequita guevara]

She was covert.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-corn/wsj-and-toensing-_b_29562.html

As is now known--thanks to Hubris, the new book by Michael Isikoff and me--Valerie Wilson had been chief of operations for the Joint Task Force on Iraq within the CIA's clandestine Directorate of Operations. She was working under nonofficial cover (a deep version of covert status), but she no longer needed this NOC status and was shifting to official cover (meaning she would pretend to be a government official--say, a State Department officer--but not a CIA employee). In short, she was indeed an "operative." She had traveled overseas in the previous two years to oversee and monitor operations aimed at gathering intelligence on Iraq's supposed WMD programs. Novak didn't have information on her specific job, but he came quite close with his generic description of her.

[Berzerker]

Do you think it's possible that it was both incompetence and malevolence on their part?

Its clear to me why they outed her, they wanted to smear Wilson as a liar and her role in this episode made her a weapon to be used againt him. Because Wilson didn't out her himself in his NYT article, that gave the WH an opening - twist Wilson's claim he was sent by the CIA because of an inquiry from Cheney's office into "Cheney sent me" and then out her and her role in sending him = Wilson lied.

The "innocent" version is that they didn't want Americans thinking Cheney had anything to do with sending Wilson, but the GOP talking point was not to correct that potential mis-conception, it was "Wilson lied" because Cheney didn't send Wilson. I'd call that malevolent, this was an attack on Wilson's credibility, not a desire to present Americans with facts.