one wonders what woul dhave become of him and his case if daniel ellsberg were leaking classified info today. http://www.slate.com/id/2128301/ -- Illiberal Prosecution Why Democrats should take no comfort in the Plame case. By Jacob Weisberg Posted Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2005, at 11:39 AM PT As Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald mulls possible charges in the Valerie Plame investigation, the gloating in liberal enclaves like Manhattan, Oberlin, and Arianna's dining room has swelled to a roar. Opponents of the Bush administration are anticipating vindication on various fronts—justice for their nemesis Karl Rove, repudiation of George W. Bush's dishonest case for the Iraq war, a comeuppance for Chalabi-loving reporter Judith Miller of the New York Times, and even some payback for the excesses of independent counsels during the Clinton years. Hold the schadenfreude, blue-staters. Rooting for Rove's indictment in this case isn't just unseemly, it's unthinking and ultimately self-destructive. Anyone who cares about civil liberties, freedom of information, or even just fair play should have been skeptical about Fitzgerald's investigation from the start. Claiming a few conservative scalps might be satisfying, but they'll come at a cost to principles liberals hold dear: the press's right to find out, the government's ability to disclose, and the public's right to know. At the heart of this misbegotten investigation is a flawed piece of legislation called the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. As Jack Shafer has written, this 1982 law is almost impossible to break because it requires that a government official unmask covert agents knowingly and with the intent of causing harm. The law was written narrowly to avoid infringing free speech or becoming an equivalent of Britain's Official Secrets Act. Under the First Amendment, we have a right to debate what is done in our name, even by secret agents. It may be impossible to criminalize malicious disclosure without hampering essential public debate. No one disputes that Bush officials negligently and stupidly revealed Valerie Plame's undercover status. But after two years of digging, no evidence has emerged that anyone who worked for Bush and talked to reporters about Plame—namely Rove or Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff—knew she was undercover. And as nasty as they might be, it's not really thinkable that they would have known. You need a pretty low opinion of people in the White House to imagine they would knowingly foster the possible assassination of CIA assets in other countries for the sake of retaliation against someone who wrote an op-ed they didn't like in the New York Times. But in the hands of a relentless and ambitious prosecutor like Fitzgerald, the absence of evidence that you've broken a law just becomes an invitation to develop a case based on other possible crimes, especially those committed in the course of defending yourself, like obstruction of justice and making false statements. Call witnesses back enough times and you can usually come up with something. Special prosecutors never give up, because saying no crime was committed, after investing years and tens of millions of public dollars, counts as abject failure. And if gleanings from the grand jury room are to be believed, Fitzgerald may go beyond the Ken Starr-style foolishness to bring more creative crap charges of his own devising. Fitzgerald's questions to Judith Miller suggest the possibility of indictments under the much broader and seldom used espionage law or Section 641 of the U.S. Code, which deals with the theft of government property. The Justice Department has used 641 in at least one case, to prosecute a Drug Enforcement Agency analyst who leaked a name from an agency file to the British press. Already, Fitzgerald's investigation has proved a disaster for freedom of the press and freedom of information. Reporters, editors, and publishers have been put on notice about the legal risk of using blind sources, which most consider an essential tool of news-gathering. Any ambiguity about a press privilege under federal law has been resolved, not in favor of the media. According to some anecdotal accounts, journalists' failure to fully protect their sources in the Plame case has already chilled official leaks to reporters. Should Fitzgerald win convictions under the espionage law or Section 641, any conversations between officials and journalists touching on classified information could come become prosecutable offenses. That would turn the current chill into permafrost. The publisher of the New York Times and its editorial page deserve more blame than they've gotten for demanding that former Attorney General John Ashcroft name a special prosecutor in the Plame case. In leading that charge, they failed to think through the logical consequence of the policy they were advocating, namely subpoenaing reporters who were the recipients and only witnesses to leaks from the White House. The New York Times won the great modern battle for freedom of information in the Pentagon Papers case. With the Plame case, it has provoked a no-win showdown that is likely to constrain public disclosure for years to come. Why did the Times make this mistake, especially after criticizing the out-of-control independent counsels who went after Henry Cisneros, Bruce Babbitt, and Bill Clinton? I think that, like a lot of liberals, the Times editors imagined the Bush team to be so ruthless as to be capable of anything—even taking down a critic by wrecking his wife's career and endangering the lives of American spies abroad. Losing a sense of proportion, and of reality, is an occupational hazard when arguing about politics. But Joseph Wilson's accusation that administration officials outed his wife to punish him for speaking up was never really credible. And by now, a small mountain of evidence points toward a more plausible, nondiabolical motivation for the accidental blowing of Plame's cover. In her first-person account in the Times, Judith Miller indicates that Libby's motive in talking to her about Wilson and his wife was the fight between the White House and CIA over whose fault it was that Bush had included faulty intelligence about Saddam's pursuit of African uranium in his 2003 State of the Union address. That blame game was morphing into a larger public dispute about the administration's claims that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. Bush officials were in the middle of an argument in which they were largely wrong, and which they lost, but in which they thought they were right and were trying to win. In that context, Libby's comments don't look anything like retaliation against Joe Wilson—especially now that we know that Libby first mentioned Wilson and his wife to Judith Miller three weeks before Wilson went public with his op-ed piece. As for Rove, so far as we know, he spoke to only a single journalist—Matthew Cooper of Time. According to Cooper, Rove didn't even know Plame's name. If that's a White House smear campaign, Rove's skills are getting pretty rusty.
The article has a flawed premise. THe author is saying that it is wrong for people to be celebrating the indictment of people because for all we know Rove only spoke to one person, Libby spoke to Miller before Wilson published his report, etc. That's all the evidence we have. And we are supposedly judging before all the evidence is in. He also is only judging on the evidence that is known. Admittedly there is a lot that we don't know. Unlike the Ken Star investigation when STar's office was leaking every detail and damaging piece they kid about Clinton, Fitzgerald is doing this the right way. There aren't leaks coming out in droves, and nobody knows for sure what the investigation will yield, including WEisberg, so it is early for him to be saying that the investigation. Furthermore as far as whether a crime was committed it doesn't matter if Rove only told one person. That could still be a crime. IT doesn't matter if Libby told Miller Plame's identity before or after the report was published. IT could still be a crime. Committing a crime once with one reporter doesn't make it legal. Committing a crime before or after a report comes out doesn't change it to legal. Then he starts bemoaning the possibility that only crimes committed while defending themselves like perjury or obstruction of justice may be filed. It is still a crime, just like it was when it happened to Clinton. He claims there is no evidence that the people knew Plame's status yet we do know there was a memo from the state department which was clearly marked. That much we do know. The reporter seems to be missing some facts. I do agree with the author about the freedom of the press issue, but little else.
I agree with the general premise of the piece that its not exactly a good thing that journalists have been forced by the judiciary to give up their confidential sources. I think it was wrong for Rove et al to leak Valerie Plame's name but this is one of those two wrongs don't make a right. If we want an aggressive and free press they're going to have to use confidential informants and prosecution like this just makes it less likely that potential whistle blowers will be willing to talk to journalists on controversial subjects. Unfortunately these days it seems like both modern liberals and modern conservatives are less willing to stand on principles over shortterm political gain.
Two things: 1. Why does this article presume no one did anything illegal? ("But after two years of digging, no evidence has emerged that anyone who worked for Bush and talked to reporters about Plame") I thought Grand Jury evidence was secret? How does he know if any evidence has emerged? 2. This case has very little to do with protecting freedom of speech. If anything, it has to do with protecting illegal freedom of speech. You are not allowed to share the kind of information that was alledgedly shared. Why are we trying to protect this? If you couldn't investigate this, it would mean the end to all national secrets. Want to divulge classified information? Just give it to a reporter - they won't reveal who you are, and no one can make them. The reporters are allegedly an accessory to a crime (knowingly or not). As such, their "right to not divulge sources" should not be protected. This case has nothing to do with a person telling a reporter something he or she is legally allowed to share.
Wierd. The author tells people to stop speculating, then spews an entire essay built on speculation. Nobody really knows what Fitzgerald is going to do. There's speculation that there will be indictments, but for all we know it may be for perjury.
Reporters who get confidential information from secret sources though aren't usually under classified clearances themselves or under confidentiality agreements. I agree the people who reveal such information should be prosecuted but not the reporter. The job of a reporter is to report and anyone who tells a reporter a secret would be a fool to not believe the reporter wouldn't report it. The difference is whether the reporter should be obligated to then become a tool of keeping such info a secret reveal such information. I'm not up on journalistic laws but my understanding is that if someone tells a reporter they are going to commit a crime then the reporter is obligated to tell law enforcement. If on the otherhand if someone reveals classified information it seems to me that the legal penalty is on the one who revealed it to the reporter. I agree its a sticky situation but as in the whether Neo-Nazis should be allowed to march I would err on the side of a more robust interpretation of the First Ammendment.
I don't understand why this isn't obstruction of justice on the part of the journalist. If you have knowledge of a crime that has been committed, and the police ask, you are not allowed to withhold it. If Karl Rove had told me or you the name of an undercover agent, and the police interviewed one of us about it, it would be obstruction of justice to refuse to answer. Why should it be different in this case?
I don't get it. How can you out an undercover agent if you don't even know their name? Did Rove reveal a discription to Cooper? A picture?
more cautionary wisdom from the sun. http://www.nysun.com/article/21795?access=225346 -- Beware Your Wish By ELI LAKE October 20, 2005 The big irony to savor at the center of the Valerie Plame case is that everything everyone thinks they know about Patrick Fitzgerald's leak investigation has been leaked. Mr. Fitzgerald has not held a press conference explaining what criminal counts, if any, he will bring. Nor has the grand jury listening to all the secret evidence issued an indictment against any of the White House officials appearing before them. But if you were to believe the newspapers and the Web logs, you'd think that Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby are about to be hauled off in handcuffs. This prosecution has the potential to criminalize the very kind of journalism that for the past four years has served so well the very journalists who are egging on Mr. Fitzgerald. It now appears likely that the special prosecutor will argue that Messrs. Libby and Rove mishandled classified information by discussing Ms. Plame's identity with reporters. That is the same kind of charge that, under the espionage statute, a U.S. attorney, Paul McNulty, has brought against former American Israel Public Affairs Committee aides, Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman. Mr. McNulty charges that the lobbyists broke the law when they passed them on to reporters and Israeli diplomats details of Iran policy developments they'd heard from a Pentagon analyst, Larry Franklin. These developments ought to frighten the left. Where would the president's critics be without anonymous and classified disclosures from CIA analysts, diplomats, and military officers unhappy with the president's policy? Without these intelligence leaks the public would never have learned that, say, Ahmad Chalabi allegedly fooled the entire American intelligence community into believing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. Valerie Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, was a leaker when he, acting anonymously, shared his story of a secret trip to Niger with the New Republic. A whole literature devoted to demonizing the neoconservatives is at risk. On one level the matter would be quite funny. Here you have a White House that values loyalty and secrecy above all else being charged with compromising the alias of one of our spies. There you have the war critics who have written their talking points from classified leaks themselves demanding maximum punishment for leakers. Joshua Micah Marshall and David Corn, call your office, if not your lawyers. But it is turning into a tragedy. In the last five days critics of the press, bloggers, and journalists have pounced on the one person, Judith Miller, who held out the longest to defend the right of the press to keep its sources confidential. Everyone now seems to have an opinion about whether Ms. Miller should have been assigned to any story at all regarding Iraq, dredging up the silly claim that she committed journalistic crimes when she wrote about weapons of mass destruction, as if she were the only person in the press or government who believed Saddam Hussein was compiling such an arsenal. The editor of the trade publication, Editor & Publisher, Greg Mitchell, called for the New York Times to fire Ms. Miller, complaining that he found it hard to believe Ms. Miller could not remember who told her the name "Valerie Flame," as she wrote in her notebook. Let's get this straight. The editor of a publication devoted to covering newspapers is angry that a reporter didn't disclose enough of her confidential sources to a grand jury in a criminal prosecution. Mr. Wilson and his defenders claim that the outing of his wife's true identity to Robert Novak was part of a plan to smear him, that the leak caused great harm to national security. Mr. Wilson claims that Karl Rove told reporters in the summer of 2003, "Wilson's wife is fair game." In this respect, Mr. Wilson's defenders argue that the White House leak is different than the ones they gobble up to smear the neocons. It turns out, however, that Mr. Wilson also said that Mr. Cheney authorized his trip to Niger and therefore the vice president knew that it was false to claim Iraq had sought uranium from Africa. Based on the accounts of reporters Ms. Miller and Matthew Cooper, it appears that if there was a mention of Mr. Wilson's wife by Messrs. Rove or Libby, it was an effort not to burn an official at the Central Intelligence Agency but to correct Mr. Wilson's own misstatement about Mr. Cheney's knowledge of his secret mission. This version of events is supported by Mr. Novak himself. In October 2003, the columnist wrote that the CIA confirmed that Ms. Plame worked for the agency, but asked him not to write her name because it could cause her difficulties were she ever assigned to a foreign country, which the columnist said his CIA source said was doubtful. And if Ms. Plame's true identity was such a secret, then why did Mr. Wilson learn it, according to his book, on his second date with her? We'll have to wait for Mr. Fitzgerald to actually release his report to get a definitive answer on this. But for the time being, it's a time for those praying for indictments to take care about what they wish for, because they just might get it.
That was my thought. How many times have we seen articles, from both sides, declaring how bad speculation was, when the entire piece was built on the author's own speculation? That's what we see here. And I will add that hell will freeze over before I stop speculating! They are going down. (oh, that felt good!) Keep D&D Civil.
So I guess this investigation and the war and Katrina and the Miers meltdown are all just background noise right? We need to get on whit the bidness of America...
You can out that person by saying the wife of Wilson is an undercover CIA operative. From there connections can be made and her identity revealed. He doesn't have to know her name to reveal her identity. People can know that Wilson has a wife, and think that she works for the company that was her cover. But once it comes out that his wife doesn't really work for that company, which was used to spy on goings on in the middle east(kind of important given the base of operations for the war on terror) but instead works for the CIA, her cover is blown. Every contact that her cover company had and made is blown. EVery agent who was also using that company as cover has been blown.
I would hardly call it wisdom. The writer says that leaks from the Grand Jury are somehow equal to blowing the cover of an entire company of CIA operatives who worked for Plame's cover business. That business supposedly was involved in the oil and energy business and had extensive ties with folks in Saudi Arabia, and was able to keep tabs on much going on in that strategic center in the war on terror. All of those contacts are now erased because of this leak, and somehow that is the equivalent of finding out that Judith Miller was asked about where the name 'Valerie Flame' from? That borders on stupidity and isn't even viewing distance to wisdom.
Here is some "wisdom" from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Good to see that losing against the Astros didn't put a clamp on their editorial board. They are still thinking. COMMENTARY St. Louis Post-Dispatch: The truth can be told – but first it will have to be found Friday, October 21, 2005 When our government marches the nation's youth off to die for a cause, it should feel a keen moral obligation to tell the truth about why that cause is critical to our nation. Yet history is full of official lies that have not provoked the slightest twinge of official guilt. Reporters who cover such weighty matters have a special responsibility to probe, challenge, validate and double-check the facts they are fed, so that policy-makers and the public can decide whether those facts justify war. History is full of lies in the press, too — some witting, some not. The events leading up to the current grand jury investigation in Washington, D.C., and the information that has emerged from the investigation, make it clear that our most influential elected officials and reporters fell far short of the truth. Maintaining a fair, neutral and balanced perspective is no simple task in the dizzying White House vortex. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is reported to be poised to announce the findings of his grand jury investigation into the leak of the name of CIA operative Valerie Wilson. The investigation appears to be focused on President George Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. Despite initial denials, both men apparently told reporters that Wilson, aka Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative. At the time of the leak, in June 2003, Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was publicly challenging the president's claim that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons. The prosecutor is trying to determine whether any crimes were committed in connection with the leak, which may have been intended to punish Joseph Wilson for his dissent. One of the reporters was Judith Miller of The New York Times, who recently spent 85 days in prison to protect the identity of Libby, who claims he long ago released her from a pledge of confidentiality. Miller was an imperfect heroine for press freedom. She had been the main author of stories in the Times that helped the White House fan the flames of war with stories about Saddam's nuclear bomb program. The press' ability to protect confidential sources lets whistleblowers tell the truth — or their version of it — while protecting themselves from official retribution. Unfortunately, Miller appears to have been the duped messenger of government misinformation; Libby was leaking information that may have been designed to punish a whistleblower. Times editors began to doubt her stories and took her off the WMD beat. Still, the Times publisher, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., recklessly staked the paper's reputation and important press freedoms on Miller's flawed methodology. The result, after a series of court losses, is that a reporter's ability to protect a confidential source has been damaged. In the end, though, the issue is not the Times' latest journalistic lapses but a graver question: Did members of the Bush administration violate the law by trying to punish someone who questioned their rationale for war? Bush has backed away from his earlier pledge to fire anyone who leaked information about Valerie Wilson. And the president and vice president have refused to support an independent inquiry into how they got the intelligence on Iraq so wrong. Nearly 2,000 young Americans have died in Iraq, a war launched on false premises. We owe it to them and any who follow to get to the bottom of how our government led us into a morass. http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editorial/stories/10/21iraqtruth_edit.html Indeed... let's get to the bottom of what led to this morrass. They make a good point. "The president and vice president have refused to support an independent inquiry into how they got the intelligence on Iraq so wrong." Why? Why? What are they afraid of, if they are "telling the truth?" When will they be held accountable for what they have led us to, the worst foreign policy disaster since Vietnam? When will they pay for smearing the good reputations of countless men and women they have attacked to cover up their perfidity? And will the Times regain their status as one of the nation's great newspapers? Not as important to the country as the Administration's bundle of slander, betrayal, and incompetence, but depressing to those of us that have held the paper in high regard for decades. Keep D&D Civil.
Thanks. I haven't really been following the case so I didn't know that her name was different from her husband's.
