Every stupid hate-radio commentary about the Valerie Plame case boils down to this: "She had a desk, and worked at it sometimes." Pathetic.
Thank you BMW540I6speed, thank you for your glimpse into delusional thinking 101.
Fitzgerald isn't making politics illegal, we're making dirty rotten politics illegal wherein a politician uses the political system and his/her vested powers for political revenge.
Thank you BMW540I6speed, thank you for your glimpse into delusional thinking 101.
Fitzgerald isn't making politics illegal, we're making dirty rotten politics illegal wherein a politician uses the political system and his/her vested powers for political revenge.
While that's true, Fitzgerald was quoted recently as saying (I'm paraphrasing here) "Libby's lies and obstruction of justice prevented us from taking the investigation further, right to the top."
The implication of course, is that Libby is a firewall and it will not be breached, even if he has to do 2-3 in some country club jail.
and what's really frightening about libby's criminal act is that to some people here on this forum believe what libby did was a very honorable thing to do and they deeply respect him for it.
edit - syntax
Libby won't do a day in prison- he'll be free on appeal bond when Bush issues a midnite pardon... January, 2009. If not, Scooter will be singing like a bird in an effort to reduce his sentence. G Gordon Liddy he ain't...
Clearly, however, being convicted of obstruction of justice means different things to different people-
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/celebrating_the.html
Clearly, however, being convicted of obstruction of justice means different things to different people-
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/celebrating_the.html
Fern
Elite Member
- Sep 30, 2003
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Bah, can't find Novak's remarks using google. IIRC, Novak has stated before that he wouldn't have run the story if he was told not to. I'm pretty sure Novak said something to the effect that if had been told it might jepordize her saftely he wouldn't have printed.
If the only way the CIA can get reporters not to publish such stories is tell them classified info, well the whole "courtesy call" thing is a joke.
But again, IIRC, in testimony it became known that Wilson and at least one CIA agent were aware that Novak was going to publish. Sounds like no one made any effort to stop it, why?
Would it have been so difficult for an agency spokeperson to call th editor and squash the story?
I still find the whole lame & fishy.
Fern
Fern
Elite Member
- Sep 30, 2003
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Nobody (at least that I can see) is pooh-pooing Libby's perjury etc.
I just find it silly to put forth that Libby's crime is somehow 'worse" because Plame was covert. Libby wasn't convicted of outing her. His crime was lying AFTER she had already been outed - a seperate (non) crime.
Oh, the prosecution still looks silly because we all know it was Armitage who outted her. And we all know that Fitzgerald knew that almost from the begining. So, unless his mandate was something other than investigating that leak/outting, his continued investigation was an unauthorized "fishing expedition".
Fern
Yeah, i'm sure you're an expert on what operatives do.
Really, how does it feel to have your head that far up your ass? Don't you ever take it out for some little air? To see what the world really is like?
Lemon law
Lifer
- Nov 6, 2005
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I think Jhhnn has asked the relevant question----if Judge Watson does decide on a substantial sentence and does order Libby to report to jail---and GWB does not immediately pardon Libby, will Libby start singing like ze bird. And we must also never forget, that subsequent events could come to light that puts a jailed Libby under the shadow of even more jail time---regardless if its tangentially related to the Plame outing or not. Cheney has been up to a lot since becoming VP---and Cheney may be on the receiving end of criminal charges---how could his chief of Staff not be also involved?
But it has to be hard for Libby---to see all his friends who have now disowned him continue to live the good life---while he may be rotting in prison---and speaking of friends---last time I heard Dick Cheney has not even communicated with Libby since he was found guilty.
Fern said:
Sigh...
Again, per Fitz...
Fitzgerald is in a bit of a conundrum because of the evidence he received in this case. He received much of Rove's email and I think it is entirely possible that in addition to the Plame evidence, he also has evidence on the US Attorney case. However, with the changes to the special prosecutor law.
It's not clear how he can move this information to the proper investigative body. Note that the White House is still thumbing its nose at Leahy on this and seems to have "lost" the emails it sent to Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is careful and may be biding his time to make sure that his case doesn't compromise another.
An obstacle, is to prove that that person "deliberately", with "intent", outed this person's covert status.
This statute is not about repeating gossip, it is about someone with sufficient clearance to "know" the names of individuals "deliberately" blowing their cover.
It's very hard to prove what someone "knew" and in this case where there was quite a little gossip mill (Novak had, was it 3 sources?) buzzing, it would be very hard to prove, for instance, that Dick Cheney, (who doubtless insists of access even to things he should not want, like NOC lists) in mentioning Valerie Plame to Dick Armitage "intended" for Plame's status to be blown.
Dick Armitage, in repeating Cheney's gossip, as I understand it would not be liable because he did not have clearance or access to PROOF of Plame's status.
Armitage is unfortunately not prosecutable for his actions since he was not cleared to know Plame's identity anyway.
Again, this is not about repeating gossip, it is about the deliberate outing of covert agents, not CIA employees (of whom there are hundreds and/or thousands who are NOT covert).
Unless you can prove that Cheney had access to classified documents containing Plame's status, read them, absorbed them and repeated them with intent, it's going to be rough sledding.
If say, Cheney, merely repeated office gossip from Tenant, that Plame was or had been CIA and worked on weapon proliferation (or something both vague and detailed like that, approximating Novak's blurb), he could still claim to have just "repeated gossip" because he had not been given clearly labeled "classified information".
Everyone agrees that it is and has always been a badly written statute, very very very difficult to prosecute.
Again, Armitage is unfortunately not prosecutable for his actions since he was not cleared to know Plame's identity anyway.
It has to do with criteria for federal prosecution, and it was designed with big fish in mind.
It's not about an accidental slip of the tongue.
there are, doubtless, plenty of internal mechanisms to deal with chatty-cathies and gossips like Armitage (he admitted to being an inveterate gossip) that have nothing to do felony prosecution and jail time.
The "smoking gun" has always been the question of who actually had provable access to covert and/or NOC status.
But, regardless, splashing the information about as "gossip" would make proving a genuine leak damn near impossible.
Like the stopped clock, sometimes "gossip" is accidentally accurate, or so one could argue, plausible deniability is all that's required.
Gossip about who works for "the agency" is common - several prominent journalists who have often been said to have ties.
Thus, Plame's status was not an element of any charge against Libby, precisely because he had obstructed the investigation into any possible crimes that did involved her status as an element.
Sigh...
Again, per Fitz...
Fitzgerald is in a bit of a conundrum because of the evidence he received in this case. He received much of Rove's email and I think it is entirely possible that in addition to the Plame evidence, he also has evidence on the US Attorney case. However, with the changes to the special prosecutor law.
It's not clear how he can move this information to the proper investigative body. Note that the White House is still thumbing its nose at Leahy on this and seems to have "lost" the emails it sent to Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald is careful and may be biding his time to make sure that his case doesn't compromise another.
An obstacle, is to prove that that person "deliberately", with "intent", outed this person's covert status.
This statute is not about repeating gossip, it is about someone with sufficient clearance to "know" the names of individuals "deliberately" blowing their cover.
It's very hard to prove what someone "knew" and in this case where there was quite a little gossip mill (Novak had, was it 3 sources?) buzzing, it would be very hard to prove, for instance, that Dick Cheney, (who doubtless insists of access even to things he should not want, like NOC lists) in mentioning Valerie Plame to Dick Armitage "intended" for Plame's status to be blown.
Dick Armitage, in repeating Cheney's gossip, as I understand it would not be liable because he did not have clearance or access to PROOF of Plame's status.
Armitage is unfortunately not prosecutable for his actions since he was not cleared to know Plame's identity anyway.
Again, this is not about repeating gossip, it is about the deliberate outing of covert agents, not CIA employees (of whom there are hundreds and/or thousands who are NOT covert).
Unless you can prove that Cheney had access to classified documents containing Plame's status, read them, absorbed them and repeated them with intent, it's going to be rough sledding.
If say, Cheney, merely repeated office gossip from Tenant, that Plame was or had been CIA and worked on weapon proliferation (or something both vague and detailed like that, approximating Novak's blurb), he could still claim to have just "repeated gossip" because he had not been given clearly labeled "classified information".
Everyone agrees that it is and has always been a badly written statute, very very very difficult to prosecute.
Again, Armitage is unfortunately not prosecutable for his actions since he was not cleared to know Plame's identity anyway.
It has to do with criteria for federal prosecution, and it was designed with big fish in mind.
It's not about an accidental slip of the tongue.
there are, doubtless, plenty of internal mechanisms to deal with chatty-cathies and gossips like Armitage (he admitted to being an inveterate gossip) that have nothing to do felony prosecution and jail time.
The "smoking gun" has always been the question of who actually had provable access to covert and/or NOC status.
But, regardless, splashing the information about as "gossip" would make proving a genuine leak damn near impossible.
Like the stopped clock, sometimes "gossip" is accidentally accurate, or so one could argue, plausible deniability is all that's required.
Gossip about who works for "the agency" is common - several prominent journalists who have often been said to have ties.
Thus, Plame's status was not an element of any charge against Libby, precisely because he had obstructed the investigation into any possible crimes that did involved her status as an element.
Imagine having risked your life to go undercover for your country as a CIA operative and then having to listen to the likes of Jonah Goldberg, Fred Barnes and company belittle your work by falsely insulting you as a "desk jockey" and acting as though you were nothing but a worthless file clerk, all in order to protect the Leader and assure his followers that they did nothing wrong.
You know, the way these "talking heads" talk, when someone is assigned any sort of covert status for a particular job, it means that all of a sudden they vanish from visible society, skulk in darkened alleys and abandoned warehouses, and wear dark sunglasses while speaking through a voice changer.
Valerie Plame never claimed that the CIA made her entire existence "covert''.
She never claimed that they gave her an invisibility cloak, or face replacement surgery, or rubbed off her fingerprints.
The covert part was that Brewster Jennings was a CIA front, and that her job was therefore a CIA position. Brewster Jennings would hardly have succeeded as a front company if everyone employed by the firm were faceless nobodies in dark glasses and trench coats & a cloak of invisibility.
With their dilusions, next they will now blame Plame for willfully fooling everybody.
They'll claim her blonde good looks skewed the issue, that the men dealing with her were distracted by her "liberal sexiness."
That a women this seductive is a danger to national security because she's, well, too sexy to remain covert forever.
The wingnuts will come up with hitherto fore unimagined conspiracy theories, but rest assured Plame will, in some form or fashion, now be attacked for being too sexy for the job, that a woman who looks like her is unhinged by default.
Ultimately, her "socialist" beauty cast a spell over all "good patriots".
Are we to conclude that the goal of those who have persisted in this falsehood is not to inform but to disinform?
I've been baffled by the strident persistency of this meme, the obviousness that there was in fact a "correct answer" -- that it was not some "gray area".
Certainly, for instance, Valerie Plame would not persist in claiming covert status if in fact that was not the case . She certainly would not seek legal remedy, to be eventually discredited, humiliated.
A lot of the gasbag pundit based media appears to try to keep all the balls in the air endlessly, denying that there are objective, verifiable facts that can be checked.
It's not unlike the continuing "but everyone thought Saddam had WMD" arguments. Everyone was listening to the same stovepiped "facts" obtained from unreliable sources, repeated endlessly and declared "incontrovertible".
These "pundits' like Goldberg don?t even consider whether this leak (Plame?s identity) hurt our national security or comprised what she and others were working on, or revealed the identities of other CIA operatives that were using the same ?agency? as a front for their covert careers in the CIA. Nope, ?does this help us promote the war?? is the only question that matters.
That same standard applied to the intelligence for the "wingosphere". It doesn?t matter to them whether the intelligence is good or bad, true or false ? does it help promote their Ideology is the only yardstick by which all intelligence is measured.
They?ve built up their fantasy world, and their sticking to it, reality be damned. Anything that helps them prop up their fantasies is good and will be embraced while everything else will be condemned as false, laughable, or treasonous and evil.
That?s how they view everything. And it?s why facts (like Plame?s true status) simply don?t matter.
Why can Tony Snow say with impunity that Plame "wasn't a covert agent" when their own CIA confirms that she was?" is that a group of RWA's bold enough to fix the intelligence around their policy of invasion (as the Downing Street Memo showed) thinks nothing of fixing the information in the press around their desired reality.
It's an inconvenient truth for them that Plame was covert or that Scooter was convicted but they can quite easily minimize the damage, and create a convenient untruths, by constantly repeating untruths such as "Plame wasn't covert" or the "Fitz was on a partisan fishing expedition." They do this even when the CIA says otherwise and despite the fact that Fitz is a decorated Republican terrorism prosecutor chosen by Comey.
The real question is how do you deal with an opponent who cares nothing about the truth and who believes he is above the law when the institution charged with enforcing the former lets them get away with lies and the institution charged with enforcing the latter is headed by Alberto Gonzalez, who takes his orders directly from Rove?
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