CIA Leak Case Explained In Five Words!

Secret Agent

Cover Blown

Whodunnit?

Yes, it really is that simple.

Missed It By That Much.

This explanation of the Valerie Plame Affair by the Christian Science Monitor isn't too bad, but they've managed to get a couple key facts wrong. This isn't really surprising given the complete lack of clue the RWCM has demonstrated over this case. (And if anybody is confused, it's only due to the efforts of the media - I can explain it in five words and will do so in my next post.) So let's look at this for a minute.

At issue is whether Mr. Novak's government sources blew her cover as a CIA agent, in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

That is an issue, but not the whole of the case. Much of the discussion two years ago was focused on the IIPA because it appeared that Ms Plame's identity had been deliberately disclosed and a prosecution under this law, known as the "anti-Agee law" might be in the cards. This is noteworthy for its rarity, as the law was written to address a very narrow set of circumstances. But it is a red herring as far as the question of whether a crime has been committed.

Disclosure of classified national security information is a crime. Period. Unless Ms Plame was not actually an undercover operative, it seems indisputable that a crime has occurred. The question is who did it and whether it can be proved in court.

Look at it this way. The police have a dead body. The homicide detectives don't limit themselves to one specific part of the legal code such as second-degree murder. They are trying to find out what happened and what evidence they can hand over to the DA. The charge might be first-degree murder, or it might be manslaughter. But they would never consider that these other offenses would not fall inside their "charter." Nor do they limit their scope to the person who pulled the trigger; if it's part of some organized crime activity they will bring in everyone involved.

Toward the end of the investigation, it has become clear that Mr. Fitzgerald has focused more on possible charges of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements, rather than on laws prohibiting public revelation of a CIA official's undercover status.

Nothing has become clear. The solid facts in this case are few and far between. Since this prosecutor has not been leaking information the way Kenneth Starr did, all of the "information" published in the last two weeks has come from "lawyers familiar with the case" which is another way of saying the criminal defense lawyers. The accuracy of their leads on where the investigation is focused is suspect, for obvious reasons.

It is not illegal for Libby and Cheney to discuss classified information; they both have security clearance.

Also not true, but a common misconception. Having a security clearance, regardless of how high it might be, is not sufficient. All classified information is segregated by need to know. Information on what is termed "sources and methods" is one of the most highly restricted categories because while the intelligence gathered is useful to many people, the real-world identity of the person who obtained it is not. So it would be very unusual for anyone in the White House to have a valid need to know that information. I realize this is not the way things work on TV or thriller novels, but that's how it is in the real world.

The brief timeline isn't bad, but it is missing one key development. The Justice Department did indeed start their investigation in September, after the matter hit the print and broadcast media, but that was not the beginning of the investigation. The CIA requested the investigation on July 30th, sending a letter to DOJ to inform them that the agency believed a crime had been committed.

A Fitzmas Fable

We wish you a Merry Fitzmas,
We wish you a Merry Fitzmas,
We wish you a Merry Fitzmas,
And a froggy perp-march!

In those days a decree went out from C-Plus Augustus that all Iraq should be disarmed by force. This was in the September before the first midterm, when Ari Fleischer was still Press Secretary, because one does not launch a new product in August. All Washington bowed down, and Iraq was invaded, yet no WMD were found. And Joseph Wilson went unto the New York Times, telling of his trip to Niger in Africa, because he had evidence that the president’s claim of uranium from Africa was bunk. Yet he did not mention his wife Valerie’s involvement, for she was undercover and hidden. Once Joseph went public her cover was treacherously blown, endangering her life. The time came around for the CIA to be furious, and they delivered a request for an investigation. And this gave rise to a case, and Joseph and Valerie laid their faith in Fitzgerald, for there was no justice for them at the White House.

Good Tidings we bring,
To you and your kin,
Good Tidings of Fitzmas!
And a froggy perp-march.

In that same country out in the fields (and gas stations) there were certain poor shepherds (and attendants and bus drivers) watching over their flocks (and pumps and routes and espresso counters) by night (and day or whatever rotten shift the boss’s nephew didn’t want, the jerk).

Unto these poor working stiffs an angel appeared from the heavens saying, “Do not be afraid, for I bring you good news of great joy; for you a charge has been made, an indictment has been given, born of the Rule of Law which may yet save this land. This will be a sign for you: you will see a man dragged from the White House in cuffs, and find the lying bastard in an Alexandria jail. And his name shall be Blossom-Turd, Too-Smart-By-Half Counselor, Prince of Sleaze.”

And suddenly there was with the angel a great multitude of the Kosterly host, praising Fitz and singing,

“Old Glory besmirched, but Glory to come,
Corruption in the highest!
Peace on Earth for those of goodwill,
Let’s bring our troops home now!”

Then all around the shepherds (etcetera) shone the light of reality, dispelling the dark fog that had settled over the land for four years. And they said to one another, “Let us go and see for ourselves the truth of the matter that the net has made known to us.“

So they went with haste and found Valerie and Joseph, and also the lying from the Oval. When they saw this, they made known all that had been sold to them about the war, and all were amazed at how much falsehood had been spun.

And America measured all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

Oh bring us some froggy marching,
Oh bring us some froggy marching,
Oh bring us some froggy marching,
On prime time T.V.!

There appeared in the land certain Techno-Magi from the East and West Coasts, who had been following the story in the internets for nigh unto two years. They came bearing gadgets, Phone and Treo and Blackberry, RSS-enabled for instant access to the breaking story. They came unto the domain of King Murdoch the Mogul of Media asking, “What of this case which might bring down George, King of the Losers? We have seen his star at its quenching, and have come to pay homage to Fitz.”

When King Murdoch heard this, he was sore afraid, and all the Media Moguls and Beltway insiders with him; and calling together all the chief pundits and scribes of the Media he inquired of them where the investigation was going. They told him, “In a contempt jailing for Judy Miller, for the prosecutor has gone astray. Is it not said that secrets are a dime a dozen in Washington? And surely highly classified material can be no different.” Yet their words rang hollow in their ears.

We won’t go until indictments,
We won’t go until indictments,
We won’t go until indictments,
And convictions to boot!

Then Murdoch secretly called for the Techno-Magi and learned from them the exact facts of the case. Then he sent them out on the internet, saying, “Go and search diligently for the truth, and when you have found it, bring me word that I may also go and have my people report it.”

When they had heard the old fox they set out, and there ahead of them went the investigation they had seen from its beginning, until it stopped over the office of the Vice President and the Rove. When they saw where the prosecutor focused, they were overwhelmed with joy.

Going into the indictments they saw the treason with Valerie its victim, and they knelt down with fear and trembling, but solemnly prayed for the Rule of Law. And all about the case the dumb beasts had come to comment, ox and ass and pundit, and the mouths of these were opened at last and they babbled, talking of the case incessantly.

But having been warned on the net that Murdoch wished only to spin and kill the story, the Techno-Magi reported back in a different way. Opening their personal electronics they offered up the news directly, on blog and wiki and list-server.

Good Tidings we bring,
To you and your kin,
Good Tidings of Fitzmas!
And a froggy perp-march.

Here endeth today’s lesson.

Fisking Richard Cohen

Somebody needs to dissect Cohen's dumbass column in detail, so here goes.

The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some real criminals.

Perhaps if by for his country Cohen actually means for George W. Bush and the GOP this sentence makes sense.  There are plenty of people - well, freepers mostly - who think in this pre-rational manner.  I thought that perhaps if I made that small substitution, the rest of the column  might make some kind of wacked-out sense.

I was wrong.  It only gets stupider.

As it is, all he has done so far is send Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail and repeatedly haul this or that administration high official before a grand jury, investigating a crime that probably wasn't one in the first place...

Probably wasn't a crime? Oh, I can feel a good rant comin' on already.  But I'll save that one for last.  Let's let Dick finish his sentence, shall we?

...but that now, as is often the case, might have metastasized into some sort of coverup -- but, again, of nothing much.

Well that's cute, ain't it.  I've heard many people say, "It ain't the crime that gets you, it's the coverup."  Usually that means you should just take your lumps for whatever you did wrong instead of digging the hole deeper.  This is the first time I've seen that concept twisted around to mean "where there's smoke, who cares about the fire?"  But I guess if you're inside with the Washington DC set you pick up that ethos that just laughs at the idea that breaking the law might be of any moment.

The alleged crime involves the outing of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative whose husband, Joseph Wilson IV, had gone to Africa at the behest of the agency and therefore said he knew that the Bush administration -- no, actually, the president himself -- had later misstated (in the State of the Union address, yet) the case that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger.

How bizarre.  Cohen actually sounds incredulous at the idea that the President - of the United States no less - might have devoted a large portion of a State of the Union address to laying out all sorts of wild claims about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical capability when months later not one bit of it would prove to be true.  I mean, next we'll be trying to tell him the guy said there were 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent in that same speech, right?

Where has this guy been the past three years?  Did he just get rescued from a desert island in the trackless expanse of the Pacific or something?  Even Osama in his cave in ____istan is better informed than this.

Wilson made his case in a New York Times op-ed piece. This rocked the administration, which was already fighting to retain its credibility in the face of mounting and irrefutable evidence that the case it had made for war in Iraq -- weapons of mass destruction, above all -- was a fiction. So it set out to impeach Wilson's credibility, purportedly answering the important question of who had sent him to Africa in the first place: his wife. This was a clear case of nepotism, the leakers just as clearly implied.

A momentarily glimpse of reality, followed by hallucinatory fiction.  

The question of who sent him to Africa was never the important question.  And for the record, it was the CIA.  They had been asked by the vice-president's office to investigate this whole "uranium from Africa" angle.

Now, Dick, if you really think a trip to Niger is nepotism, let me let you in on a little secret.  Since you think it's such a cushy and lucrative assignment, perhaps you'd be willing to tender me a - let's call it a finder's fee - cashier's check for $5,000 USD for me to arrange a very sweet gig for you over there.  I have a business associate over there named DR KWASEI M'BUTAFUKO who is a high-powered ATTORNEY in NIGER.  He is trying to reclaim a sum equal to $17 MILLION USD that is held up in the courts, and you, RICHARD COHEN are exactly the man he needs...

Not nice, but it was what Washington does day in and day out. (For some historical perspective see George Clooney's "Good Night, and Good Luck'' about Edward R. Murrow and that most odious of leakers-cum-character assassins, Joseph McCarthy.)

So, McCarthyism is alive and well in Washington, is that what he's trying to say?  And moreover, Cohen is just fine with it?

This is rarely considered a crime. In the Plame case, it might technically be one, but it was not the intent of anyone to out a CIA agent and have her assassinated (which happened once) but to assassinate the character of her husband. This is an entirely different thing. She got hit by a ricochet.

pffha!  Not worth wasting keystrokes on - Americablog's got the smackdown on that graf anyway.

Now we are told by various journalistic sources that Fitzgerald might not indict anyone for the illegal act he was authorized to investigate, but some other one -- maybe one concerning the disclosure of secret material.

The disclosure of secret material is the illegal act Fitz is investigating, moron.

Here again, though, this is a daily occurrence in Washington, where most secrets have the shelf life of sashimi.

Really, Dick?  Are you talking about the who-slept-with-what kind of secrets, or are you telling us that beltway insiders are blabbing classified national security secrets to anyone who will listen on a daily basis?  Because if it's the latter, there are tens of thousands of workers with security clearances at military bases, defense contractors, research labs and the like who really oughta know how the DC crowd treats classified material so they can modify their behavior accordingly.  I mean gosh, they're keeping the stuff locked in safes and subjecting themselves to the evil eye of DISCO (and I ain't talkin' the bad 70's music here) on a regular basis, apparently all over a misunderstanding of what "vital national security information" means.  They haven't even been telling their wives or kids, for chrissake.  They'll be relieved to know that it's OK to tell the sushi chef or the hot chick behind you in line at Starbuck's.

Then, too, other journalists say that Fitzgerald might bring conspiracy charges, an attempt (or so it seems) to bring charges of some sort. This is what special prosecutors do and why they should always be avoided.

It's also what they do to bring down mob bosses.  You got a problem wit' dat?

I have no idea what Fitzgerald will do.

This one's just too easy.  Fill in the blank.

My own diligent efforts to find out anything have come to naught. Fitzgerald's non-speaking spokesman would not even tell me if his boss is authorized to issue a report, as several members of Congress are now demanding -- although Joseph E. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, tells me that only a possibly unprecedented court order would permit it.

So there's a grand jury investigation happening, which is supposed to be closed and confidential, and Cohen can't get any information? To a logical person, this would be evidence that Fitz is a competent professional instead of a political hack like say, Ken "Brenda" Starr.

Whatever the case, I pray Fitzgerald is not going to reach for an indictment or, after so much tumult, merely fold his tent, not telling us, among other things, whether Miller is the martyr to a free press that I and others believe she is or whether, as some lefty critics hiss, she's a double-dealing grandstander, in the manner of some of her accusers.

That's some tortured sentence structure you got there, Dick.  Are you saying you pray he doesn't indict anyone after all this? Or just that you want to have your own curiosity slaked as to how bad a girl Judy M was?  And as to the question of whether she's a double-dealing etcetera etcetera, refer to my earlier curiosity about where you were when the whole WMD mess was unfolding.  Who and What she is is Wholly apparent to everybody.

More is at stake here than bringing down Karl Rove or some other White House apparatchik, or even settling some score with Miller, who is sometimes accused of taking this nation to war in Iraq all by herself.

Are there really people who say that?  Blaming the drumbeat to war on the media?  Who would say something that ignorant?

But you're right there is something more important than "getting" Karl Rove.  It's called treason, and some people think that's something that ought not go unpunished.<

The greater issue is control of information. If anything good comes out of the Iraq war, it has to be a realization that bad things can happen to good people when the administration -- any administration -- is in sole control of knowledge and those who know the truth are afraid to speak up. This -- this creepy silence -- will be the consequence of dusting off rarely used statutes to still the tongues of leakers and intimidate the press in its pursuit of truth, fame and choice restaurant tables.

So in this case Wilson knew the truth and was not afraid to speak up.  The administration - in order to keep control of the information - retaliated against him by endangering the life of his wife.  That was also a signal to people with information at the CIA to keep mum.  If they get away with retaliation against a whistleblower unpunished, you'll have your creepy silence.  If you are someone who wants the information getting out, you want the creeps in the administration responsible to be taken down.  It's really that simple.

Apres Miller comes moi.

The denser you get, Dick, the more that sounds like a good idea.

This is why I want Fitzgerald to leave now. Do not bring trivial charges -- nothing about conspiracies, please -- and nothing about official secrets, most of which are known to hairdressers, mistresses and dog walkers all over town. Please, Mr. Fitzgerald, there's so much crime in Washington already. Don't commit another.

F'real?  There's so much crime in DC that punishing someone for treason would, what? Open up the floodgates to prosecute all the crooks and shady characters?  Dick says it like it would be a bad thing.

And if it's really true that everybody in establishment circles in DC is spreading classified national security information as readily as office gossip, then I think we have two choices.  De-classify everything so the public can see what all those defense "contractors" have been doing with our money, or arrest, indict and convict all of these officials and their retinue, down to the mistresses and "dogwalkers."  Personally?  I'd do both.

Overall, Dick, when you say truly dumbass things such as "investigating a crime that probably wasn't one in the first place," you seem to lack any understanding of basic concepts here, such as what crime means.  Maybe we should make sure you're clear on that before I let you go.

Let's say the cops find a dead body floating in the river.  The coroner determines that the unfortunate died from a gunshot to the back of the head.  Since you can't do that yourself, the death was the result of someone discharging a firearm at the deceased.  Thus the police now have a crime on their hands, which they term homicide.  Now they don't know for sure if the crime was pre-meditated, or the other circumstances, so it might be first-degree murder, or if it was an accident, maybe it just winds up being prosecuted as manslaughter.  But the cops have the dead body, someone shot the guy, so ipso facto a crime has been committed.

Same thing goes here.  The identities of covert operatives, especially non-official cover operatives (NOCs) are highly guarded secrets.  They are classified and highly compartmentalized information.  And the transfer of classified national security information to unauthorized parties is a crime.

Valerie Plame was a NOC CIA operative working in the field of nonconventional weapons anti-proliferation.  This is something even highly idealistic libertarians and the most bleeding-heart liberals can agree is important to our national security, and a valid reason for covert activity. Even those who might think much of the rest of the CIA's activities are criminal.  Keeping Al Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyu from acquiring nuclear weapons and weaponized Ebola is pretty important. Wide consensus on that point.

Now I say she was a NOC operative because two years ago, everyone found out who she was and what she was doing.  This highly classified information, which by law and procedure should be limited to fewer people than you can count on one hand, is now known to all of us, as evidenced by the fact we're talking about it now.  So ipso facto a crime was committed.  Whether it was a violation of the Intelligence Identities Act or the Espionage Act or some other statute is a matter for a grand jury to decide.  And for the prosecutor to figure out what kind of case he can build based on the evidence.  

One of the great things about America is that we call ourselves "a nation of laws, not men."  Apparently we've been saying that longer than we've had gender-inclusive language.  What that means is that when crimes are committed, we go ahead and prosecute them whenever possible.  It depends on the ability of police and detectives and prosecutors and the like to get the evidence and witnesses needed to put the crooks behind bars, and they work like the dickens to make that happen.  It does not depend on whether newspaper columnists or politicians or anybody else would like to see an indictment.  That's the idea, anyway.  For the last two centuries we've considered it a national disgrace to work any other way.

actions speak louder than words

for most americans, talk is cheap.  and when it comes to politicians, nearly completely worthless.

so honing "the message" if we ever figure out what it is, doesn't get us very far.  and showing "spine" when it's merely talk or even voting choices we know won't prevail doesn't do a whole lot except for activists and political junkies.
the reason americans aren't switching over to trusting us in droves as they wake up the the stench of corruption from the right is simple:  they don't trust us either.

the only way to fix that is to start doing things — start making changes that positively impact working people.  

but, but, but we're in the minority the politicos and strategists and democratic camp followers all whine, we don't get to set the agenda!

nonsense.  that's only true in DC.

there are plenty of states and municipalities where we are in control.  we can take action and move forward there.  i see very little productive being done, with the major exception of the reform ohio now effort.

take connecticut for instance.  republican governor who replaced another republican resigning under a cloud of corruption that got national attention.  democrats have a super-majority in the legislature there after last november.  what are they doing with it?  well they did get civil unions enacted.  good from the standpoint of the activist wing and the gay rights constituency.  doesn't do a whole lot for the average working joe, even though standing up for our principles will be perceived positively.  

so where are the efforts to get universal healthcare for all residents?  why aren't they very visibly making serious changes to clean up corruption in the wake of rowland and help paint the whole GOP as corrupt?  why haven't they taken steps to prevent future home seizures for private developers as in kelo?  countering the new bankruptcy laws?  these are the kinds of things that get everyday people's attentions and get us some loyalty again.  that's just one small state - now magnify that by every state where we control the legislature or governor's mansion, every city where we dominate city hall.

if people think we're only saying the right things, they won't bother to show up at the polls for us.  once they see us doing things to help them, we get their respect and trust again, and then their votes.