Plame Was Covert
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in The Plame GameFYI.
Newly released court papers could put holes in the defense of Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, in the Valerie Plame leak case. Lawyers for Libby, and White House allies, have repeatedly questioned whether Plame, the wife of White House critic Joe Wilson, really had covert status when she was outed to the media in July 2003. But special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that Plame had indeed done “covert work overseas” on counterproliferation matters in the past five years, and the CIA “was making specific efforts to conceal” her identity, according to newly released portions of a judge’s opinion. (A CIA spokesman at the time is quoted as saying Plame was “unlikely” to take further trips overseas, though.)
Now, this still doesn’t effect Libby because Fitzgerald doesn’t think he can prove he knew that she was covert, but it is an interesting sidenote to this story.
However, I do wonder if this will make Tom Maguire think twice about wanting to chip in so much to Libby’s defense fund…
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2006 and is filed under The Plame Game. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 5th, 2006 at 11:56 pm
Thanks for the link.
I actually have a response to Isikoff’s story, and I do hope people catch your joke about my “fundraising”.
February 6th, 2006 at 1:16 am
Hey, don’t sell yourself short. I’m sure the CD sales have skyrocketed due to that link, and I’m doubly sure the piano man will thank you personally (heh).
Regarding the response post, I know you’ve said that the Plame case wasn’t prosecutable under the IIPA, but I did find this followup post of yours lacking. Okay, the CIA didn’t push the media as strongly as it did with others. Is that really supposed to matter? To that point, she was still covert and the CIA did say “please don’t run this.” Not bringing in the big guns does not mean they didn’t want the info to surface. You can qualify and compare till we’re all blue in the face, but it doesn’t change that fact.
In the end, though, it doesn’t really matter because Fitz doesn’t think Libby even knew. We’ll never know if that’s true, and for our country’s sake, I hope Libby didn’t know. Because to think that he knowingly outed an agent would be a ridiculously sad commentary on who our leaders choose to help them make their decisions.
Thanks for the comment.
February 6th, 2006 at 12:41 pm
Plame was operating domestically in some political groups for CIA. CIA has always had a dometic mandate from Congress.
Fitzgerald caused changes at DOJ and the Pentagon(he would not prosecute the CIA agent under criminal conspiracy laws as is traditional) who now have to report all HUMINT, whether domestic or international, to the Director of CIA. Congress would like to replace DOJ with something that reports to them, like CIA or Peace Corps are mandated.
The Attornye General is now in trouble for NSA domestic wiretaps. This has been done since the beginning of the NSA. NSA is part of the Pentagon and now has to report to the Director of CIA also; did Plame operate dometically with the NSA? She is a bad agent and the mess needs to be cleaned up and Congress generally asks for more money and power when they have to do the cleaning.
Plame seemed to be constantly trying te get people in the US government to leak her. Her husband did this constantly and claime his rights as a husband, noting that the person he blew Plame to was, in fact, not married. The j’Vanity Fair’ article is pretty clear. She acknowledges she is a CIA operations officer, paramilitarily trained. There were immediately ten or so assassinations of people in the intelligence community in Iraq. Mostly Spanish, go figure where Wilson’s diplomatic father and he grew up.
Plame seemed to want to be leaked and stress the ‘huge consequences’ of ‘blowing’ a CIA operations officer. Nothing happened until she admitted who she was at ‘Vanity Fair.’ These results seemed to be wanted.
It does not matter who blew her or when, she has done this herself and that is the only way the results, apparently wanted, could be achieved.
War critics? Bush’s speech was the end of the covert CIA WMD program for all operations officers, something for which they blamed Rice and her WMD degree. The goal seemed to be to use the war to end the covert WMD program and its was very popular. Why pass on the war?
February 6th, 2006 at 12:42 pm
I’m doubly sure the piano man will thank you
A former colleague of my wife actually played in a band with Billy Joel in high school.
Billy was on guitar, and this guy was the piano man. Go figure.
Okay, the CIA didn’t push the media as strongly as it did with others. Is that really supposed to matter?
Well, it speaks to their seriousness. As does Valerie letting her husband publicize his own CIA connections in the NY Times.
February 6th, 2006 at 2:09 pm
I was kind of impressed by some of the names mentioned as founders of the Libby Defense Trust. I’m a Kilpatrick fan.
February 6th, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Pardon me if I take anything with a Michael Isikoff byline with a truckload of salt after his sloppy “Koran flushing” story, and after reading Maguire’s response, I’d say that that load of salt was justified.
I have but a simple request: how can someone who drives to work through the main gate at Langley five days a week be considered a”covert” agent?
February 6th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Interesting stuff about Joel. How about that eh?
…switching gears…
Listen Tom, I know you’ve got a lot invested in this Plame thing, and I understand why you wrote what you did. However, it seems like this latest post makes it appear as if you’re trying to respond to this new information simply because it makes some of your past speculation look much weaker in hindsight. Don’t fall into this trap.
Again, this whole “covert-lite” stuff is really disappointing to read. And while I know you’re no fan of Joe Wilson’s, I really wish you would reconsider pushing the meme about his role in outing his own wife and her role in outing herself. The guy had been in Iraq for christsakes. He knew how much of a scumbag Saddam was. It’s not like he was the amabassador to Lichtenstein. Simply put, these arguments seem intellectually dishonest and only serve to support a version of this story that seems to be quickly fading into irrelevance.
Also, you do realize that you’re giving people like Safis (who commented above) plenty of ammo to fire off these ridiculous claims that Plame was trying to get the US government to leak her identity, right?
Being a covert agent does not mean you have to be in a Columbian drug ring or Al Qaeda cell somewhere. There are many different reasons why the CIA sets up its operations the way it does, so I’m just going to trust that they knew what they were doing when they deemed Plame covert.
February 6th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
For all of the many times I seen it written that Plame “drove through the main gate at Langley,” I’ve never seen anything to actually back that up. I can’t say for certain that she didn’t, but can anyone point me to any evidence that she did? Her cover company had its own offices, after all. But why listen to the CIA and Special Counsel about her status? Surely the right wing bloggers are in a better position to know.
And the notion that Joe Wilson played up his ties to the CIA is ridiculous. He was an ambassador in some very sensitive locations, including Iraq. Do you honestly mean to say that foreign intelligence services are so ignorant that they assume an ambassador has no contact with the CIA? Who’s the first person he met with in Niger? The ambassador. This is a total straw man. It’s not like Wilson was a totally non-public person before he wrote his op-ed.
By the way, Confederate Yankee, your comments made no sense. This hatred of the MSM is irrational when you refuse to believe something that is in a publicly available document, just because Isikoff reported it. He’s just reporting a fact, for crying out loud.
I’ll be interested in reading more about this on all those right wing blogs that are admitting they were wrong, after stating as incontrovertible fact that Plame wasn’t covert. If only I could find one…
February 7th, 2006 at 8:52 am
That article was written based on Judge Tatel opinion…
“As to the leaks’ harmfulness, although the record omits specifics about Plame’s work, it appears to confirm, as alleged in the public record and reported in the press, that she worked for the CIA in some unusual capacity relating to counterproliferation. Addressing deficiencies of proof regarding the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the special counsel refers to Plame as “a person whose identity the CIA was making specific efforts to conceal and who had carried out covert work overseas within the last 5 years” â€â€? representations I trust the special counsel would not make without support.”
Judge Tatel’s opinion was based on a footnote of a document released by Fitzgerald…
“If Libby knowingly disclosed information about Plame’s status with the CIA, Libby would appear to have violated Title 18, United States Code, Section 793 [the Espionage Act] if the information is considered “information respecting the national defense.” In order to establish a violation of Title 50, United States Code, Section 421 [the Intelligence Identities Protection Act], it would be necessary to establish that Libby knew or believed that Plame was a person whose identity the CIA was making specific efforts to conceal and who had carried out covert work overseas within the last 5 years. To date, we have no direct evidence that Libby knew or believed that Wilson’s wife was engaged in covert work.”
It really isn’t very clear if Fitzgerald is actually saying that she ‘was’ covert or if her is listing the requirements for prosecution under this Act.
Then if you dig a little deeper you find that when Libby’s attorneys requested any evidence of Plame’s CIA status. Libby’s defense team asked Fitzgerald for “All documents, regardless of when created, relating to whether Valerie Wilson’s status as a CIA employee, or any aspect of that status, was classified at any time between May 6, 2003 and July 14, 2003.” (Those dates mark the period in which some Bush administration officials discussed Wilson with reporters.)
Fitzgerald said no. “We have neither sought, much less obtained, ‘all documents, regardless of when created, relating to whether Valerie Wilson’s status as a CIA employee, or any aspect of that status, was classified at any time between May 6, 2003 and July 14, 2003,’” Fitzgerald wrote to the Libby team on January 9, 2006. Fitzgerald told Libby’s lawyers that he would look for any such documents, and “if we locate” them, he might turn them over.
In a letter dated Jan. 23 from Fitzgerald, he refused to saywhether he knew if Plame had been an undercover agent during the five years preceding her exposure. Referring to a 1963 Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland, which requires prosecutors to turn over evidence that might point toward the defendant’s innocence, Fitzgerald wrote, “We do not agree that if there were any documents indicating that Ms. Wilson did not act in an undercover capacity or did not act covertly in the five years prior to July 2003 (which we neither confirm nor deny) that any such documents would constitute Brady material in a case where Mr. Libby is not charged with a violation of statutes prohibiting the disclosure of classified information.”
None of this sounds very conclusive - if she was covert and Fitzgerald knew it - wouldn’t it bolster his case of pergury against Libby to actually show a ‘motive’ to lie under oath??? I realize that Libby isn’t charged with a violation of statutes prohibiting the disclosure of classified information, but it would show a ‘motive’ to lie under oath. Then I’m wondering that if Fitzgerald hasn’t dug into whether Plame was ‘covert’ or not what the hell was he investigating from the beginning of this mess???? Wasn’t that supposed to be what the investigation was about??? He has been working on this for several years and he said that he hasn’t requested all documents relating to Plames CIA status… and you aren’t the least bin curious as to why??? How much investigation has really taken place here??? How many reporters were questioned about their knowledge about Plame’s CIA status? How secret was it? There have been reporters state that they knew it for a long time but Fitzgerald hasn’t questioned them on it at all… why not??? It would certainly be relevant….
February 7th, 2006 at 10:58 am
So it appears to me that you’re basing your argument on how you think Fitzgerald should be conducting his investigation (”wouldn’t it bolster his case of pergury against Libby to actually show a ‘motive’ to lie under oath???”) Fitz asserts that Plame was indeed a covert agent, which is good enough for Judge Tatel. I’m sure many on the Right are holding out on acknowledging that fact until they are actually shown all of the classified documents. Fitzgerald is refusing to play the Libby team’s game, which is to focus the story on everything except the charges at hand, which have nothing to do with whether Plame was covert.
As for your statement “There have been reporters state that they knew it for a long time but Fitzgerald hasn’t questioned them on it at all… why not???” To the best of my knowledge, one reporter has claimed he knew of her status prior to Novak’s article, and he is a right-wing mouthpiece. Perhaps Fitzgerald finds it as incredible as I do that the one person Wilson confided in was a reporter for National Review.
February 7th, 2006 at 3:58 pm
Chris,
You missed my point entirely…
“Fitz asserts that Plame was indeed a covert agent, which is good enough for Judge Tatel.”
Where does Fitz ever make the assertion that Plame was a covert agent…. that is my point… Judge Tatel’s whole premise is based on al footnote that it isn’t very clear if Fitzgerald is making the claim that Plame was covert or if he is listing the requirements needed to prosecute for that crime.
Everytime Fitz has been in public he has always maintained that ‘he was making any statement as to whether Plame was covert or not’…. then when he is asked for documentation about it, he claims that he hasn’t sought it nor does he have any documents about it… and you don’t find it a little strange that since the initial investigation was to see if there was a crime committed in leaking her name that they haven’t begun to investigate it???
“So it appears to me that you’re basing your argument on how you think Fitzgerald should be conducting his investigation (â€Â?wouldn’t it bolster his case of pergury against Libby to actually show a ‘motive’ to lie under oath???â€Â?) ”
No I’m basing my argument on the exact text that the article was based on instead of the reporter’s conclusions. I’ve learned never to accept anybody’s conclusions without reading or learning the facts that they are based on. In this case the facts are lacking to jump to this conclusion…. especially since Fitzgerald has maintained in public numerous times that he was not saying whether Plame was covert or not.
What are you basing your argument on?