A Spork in the Drawer

Illogical

The law is an ass:

Valerie Wilson may be the best known former intelligence operative in recent history, but a federal judge in New York ruled Wednesday that she was not allowed to say how long she worked for the Central Intelligence Agency in the memoir she plans to publish this fall.

Although the fact that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. from 1985 to 2006 has been published in the Congressional Record and elsewhere, the judge, Barbara S. Jones of Federal District Court in Manhattan, said Ms. Wilson was not free to say so. [Emphasis added.]

“The information at issue was properly classified, was never declassified and has not been officially acknowledged by the C.I.A.,” Judge Jones wrote.

So the information is publicly known, it's been published in the official journal of Congressional proceedings, and it's still "secret"?

It actually gets worse:

Judge Jones acknowledged that the C.I.A. “does not contest that the information is, in fact, in the public domain,” adding that “the public may draw whatever conclusions it might from the fact that the information at issue was sent on C.I.A. letterhead by the chief of retirement and insurance services.”

But she said a classified court filing from Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy director of the C.I.A., which lawyers for Ms. Wilson and her publisher were not allowed to see, contained a reasonable explanation for the agency’s position. Judge Jones did not reveal it, saying only that Mr. Kappes has persuaded her of “the harm to national security which reasonably could be expected if the C.I.A. were to acknowledge the veracity of the information at issue.”

“His explanation is reasonable,” Judge Jones wrote of Mr. Kappes’s secret statement, “and the court sees no reason to disturb his judgment.”

Mr. Rothberg said that aspect of Judge Jones’s ruling was particularly frustrating.

“Trying to argue a case in which the government was able to submit a supersecret affidavit which we were not able to review was like playing an opponent who has 53 cards in his deck,” he said.

"National security" or not there's no justice here.

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Justice Denied

Valerie Plame's lawsuit dismissed:

A federal judge on Thursday dismissed former CIA operative Valerie Plame's lawsuit against members of the Bush administration in the CIA leak scandal.

[...]

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds and said he would not express an opinion on the constitutional arguments. Bates dismissed the case against all defendants: Cheney, White House political adviser Karl Rove and former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Swell racket they've set up, huh?

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Shooting Fish In A Barrel

According to the WaPo's alleged liberal Richard Cohen Patrick Fitzgerald is a modern-day Stalin:

As Fitzgerald worked his wonders, threatening jail and going after government gossips with splendid pluck, many opponents of the Iraq war cheered. They thought -- if "thought" can be used in this context -- that if the thread was pulled on who had leaked the identity of Valerie Plame to Robert D. Novak, the effort to snooker an entire nation into war would unravel and this would show . . . who knows? Something. For some odd reason, the same people who were so appalled about government snooping, the USA Patriot Act and other such threats to civil liberties cheered as the special prosecutor weed-whacked the press, jailed a reporter and now will send a previously obscure government official to prison for 30 months.

This is precisely the sort of investigation that Jackson was warning about. It would not have been conducted if, say, the Iraq war had ended with 300 deaths and the mission had really been accomplished. An unpopular war produced the popular cry for scalps and, in Libby's case, the additional demand that he express contrition -- a vestigial Stalinist-era yearning for abasement. No one has yet explained, though, how Libby can express contrition and still appeal his conviction. No matter. Antiwar sanctimony excuses the inexplicable.

[...]

I don't expect George Bush to appreciate this. He is the privileged son of a privileged son, and he fears nothing except, probably, doubt. But the rest of us ought to consider what Fitzgerald has wrought and whether we are better off for his efforts. I have come to hate the war and I cannot approve of lying under oath -- not by Scooter, not by Bill Clinton, not by anybody. But the underlying crime is absent, the sentence is excessive and the investigation should not have been conducted in the first place. This is a mess. Should Libby be pardoned? Maybe. Should his sentence be commuted? Definitely.

I swear, the cocktail weenies in Georgetown must be drugged.

Anyway, this might very well be a new low for Cohen. Then again, he also wrote this:

On the contrary, I thought. We are a good country, attempting to do a good thing. In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic. The United States had the power to change things for the better, and those who would do the changing -- the fighting -- were, after all, volunteers. This mattered to me.

So regardless of the condition of Georgetown cocktail weenies this much is clear: Richard Cohen is seriously disturbed. I'd suggest he retire and take up woodworking as a hobby. Then again, he might accuse the drill-press of harboring Hitlerian fantiasies.

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ADDED: Glenn Greenwald's take.

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Good Doggie!

Have a biscuit:

But that would mean withstanding the pressure [to pardon Libby] that will intensify if and when Mr. Libby goes to jail, which could happen in a matter of weeks, even as his appeals are pending. Speaking with reporters with him for the Group of Eight economic summit in Germany on Wednesday, Mr. Bush was not showing his hand. “It wouldn’t be appropriate for me to discuss the case until after the legal remedies have run its course,” he said. He cut off a reporter’s follow-up question on a possible pardon by moving on to another reporter, Terence Hunt of The Associated Press, who changed the subject to the new tensions with Russia. “Nice going, Terry,” Mr. Bush said.

There's a good boy!

From the same article:

Kenneth L. Adelman, the former director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and one of Mr. Libby’s prominent supporters, said he did not believe a pardon of Mr. Libby would have any bearing on Mr. Bush’s legacy.

“Clinton is very popular in the world, and he pardoned Marc Rich, of all things,” Mr. Adelman said. (Mr. Rich was a fugitive from charges of conspiracy, tax evasion, racketeering and violating United States sanctions by trading oil with Iran when Mr. Clinton pardoned him.)

Uhhh...Marc Rich ≠ Scooter, Kenny. (Then again, Adelman was the guy who said the Iraq War would be a "cakewalk" so his judgment might not be the best.)

Fun Fact! Irving Libby used to be Rich's lawyer:

Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff testified Thursday he believes prosecutors of billionaire financier Marc Rich "misconstrued the facts and the law" when they went after Rich on tax evasion charges.

The testimony from Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who represented Rich dating back to 1985 but stopped working for him in the spring of 2000, came during a contentious, hours-long House committee hearing into former President Bill Clinton's eleventh-hour pardons.

It would have been nice - and relevant - for the NYT to have mentioned that bit of irony.

[Via FAIR.]

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Censorship

Plame:

An ex-spy whose unmasking led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s top aide vowed on Saturday to press on with lawsuits against Cheney and the CIA for the sake of freedom of speech.

[...]

Plame and her publisher, Simon & Schuster, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York on Thursday against top CIA officials for blocking publication of her memoir on national security grounds.

Everything indicates that Plame was very serious about her job so I very much doubt that she's spilling national security secrets in her book.

This is the CIA (and the Administration?) trying to save themselves from embarrassment.

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The End Of A Meme?

No, of course not. The rightists are impervious to facts. (As Stephen Colbert put it some years ago, "Facts have a well-know liberal bias.") Nonetheless, here's yet another confirmation:

In new court filings, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has finally resolved one of the most disputed issues at the core of the long-running CIA leak controversy: Valerie Plame Wilson, he asserts, was a “covert” CIA officer who repeatedly traveled overseas using a “cover identity” in order to disguise her relationship with the agency.

Fitzgerald cites Wilson’s covert status as part of his argument—advanced in two strongly worded memos filed in recent days—that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, should be sentenced to up to three years in prison.

The defenders and useful idiots (hello, WaPo editorial board!) of the BushCheney regime have insisted from the beginning the Plame was nothing more than a desk-jockey Whoops!

“It was clear from very early in the investigation that Ms. Wilson qualified under the relevant statute”—the Intelligence Identities act— “as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press,” Fitzgerald wrote in a sentencing memorandum filed late last Friday night.

What's more:

In the “unclassified summary” of his memom which was based on information cleared by the CIA and became publicly available Tuesday, Fitzgerald provided new details about Wilson’s previously classified activities at the agency. In January, 2002, she was working for the agency “as an operations officer” in the Directorate of Operations’s Counterproliferation Division (CPD) and serving as “chief” of a unit with responsibility for weapons proliferation issues related to Iraq. In that capacity, he added, she traveled overseas in an undercover capacity.

“She traveled at least seven times to more than 10 countries,” the document states. “When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity….At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson’s employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employe for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.”

Counterproliferation. In other words, Plame was working on WMD. Thanks to BushCo™ she's no longer working on WMD and who knows what intelligence networks were destroyed as a result of her exposure.

To put it bluntly: The administration actively took steps to weaken national security.

And, finally, an unintentionally funny comment:

One of Libby’s most ardent defenders, Richard Carlson, a former chief of the Voice of America who serves as a member of a defense trust set up for Libby, reacted harshly to Fitzgerald’s latest filings. “I think it’s certainly unseemly that he is kicking him while he’s down,” Carlson said. “For Fitzgerald, to get on his high horse, it’s disgusting and he should be ashamed of himself.”

Such sensitivity! And Richard Carlson is the father of the bow-tied twerp Tucker.

Unfortunately, Irving's criminal cover-up worked. The real author of the little bit of treason is still sitting safely in the Vice-President's Mansion.

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Have You Ever Heard Of Spiro T. Agnew?

By gum, they are arrogant:

Attorneys for Vice President Cheney and top White House officials told a federal judge today they cannot be held liable for anything they disclosed to reporters about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame or her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

[...]

Attorneys for Cheney and the other officials said any conversations they had about Plame with each other and reporters were part of their normal job duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate "policy dispute." Cheney's attorney went farther, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role, and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit. [Emphasis added.]

"So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing - these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment [whether it was] true or false?," U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked.

"That's true, your honor. Mr. Wilson was criticizing government policy," said Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department's civil division. "These officials were responding to that criticism."

The arrogance of this argument is breathtaking. DeFib Dick's attorney is arguing that he is immune from any and all lawsuits. Should Judge Bates agree with this reasoning the Vice President, and by extension the President, would be beyond the scope of the law. (Presumably, though, the immunity would end when they leave office.)

Oh, by the way:

The suit, Jones v. Clinton, was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas. Judge Susan Webber Wright, who had taken a class under then-Professor Clinton at the University of Arkansas School of Law, ruled that a sitting President could not be sued and deferred the case until the conclusion of his term (although she allowed the pre-trial discovery phase of the case to proceed without delay in order to start the trial as soon as Clinton left office).

Both Clinton and Jones appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which ruled in favor of Jones, finding that "the President, like all other government officials, is subject to the same laws that apply to all other members of our society."

[...]

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court affirmed the decision of the Court of Appeals.

In the majority opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court ruled that separation of powers does not mandate that federal courts delay all private civil lawsuits against the President until the end of his term of office.

In his concurring opinion, Breyer argued that presidential immunity would apply only if the President could show that a private civil lawsuit would somehow interfere with the President's constitutionally-assigned duties.

Ooops.

[Via The Muck.]

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Another Question

Why is the Washington Post giving space to Robert Novak (the "Douchebag of Liberty") to lecture us about the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and to further perpetuate the slanders against Valerie Plame?

And here I thought the WaPo was a liberal tool!*

*Yep, still sarcasm.

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16 Words

The WaPo takes a new look at the infamous "16 Words" - the section of George's 2003 SOU speech claiming that Iraq attempted to purchase enriched uranium from Niger that would eventually lead to the conviction of Irving "Scooter" Libby. It's a complicated story so I don't want to try to summarize it but I do want to point out two paragraphs:

The interviews also showed that France, berated by the Bush administration for opposing the Iraq war, honored a U.S. intelligence request to investigate the uranium claim. It determined that its former colony had not sold uranium to Iraq.

[...]

At this point, State Department analysts had determined the documents were phony, and had produced by far the most accurate assessment of Iraq's weapons program of the 16 agencies that make up the intelligence community. But the department's small intelligence unit operated in a bubble. Few administration officials -- not even Secretary of State Colin L. Powell -- paid much attention to its analytical product, much of which clashed with the White House's assumptions.

Putting aside facts because they "clash" with "assumptions" is the hallmark of the current regime and deliberately demonizing an ally to whip up war fever merely shows the utter lack of morals and ethics of the administration. That anyone still trusts these people - hello, 30%! - is nothing short of astounding.

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Plame Day IV

Valerie's statement:

[Via Nancy Pelosi's The Gavel.]

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Plame Day III

Victoria Toensing is a thoroughly horrible person.

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ADDED: digby on Toensing:

Toensing's testimony was extremely difficult to listen to. She is an arrogant gorgon and lies as easily as she breathes. Waxman even said at the end that he knows her testimony was inaccurate and that he was going to leave the record open to correct all of her misstatements.

Read the whole thing.

BooMan has more.

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Plame Day II

Henry Waxman has said that the CIA told him that Valerie was "covert."

Case closed.

FDL is is liveblogging the hearings.

C-SPAN stream here.



(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

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Plame Day

Breaking silence:

Valerie Plame's testimony will have all the trappings of a "Garbo speaks" moment on Capitol Hill, with cameras and microphones arrayed to capture the voice of Plame, the glamorous but mute star of a compelling political intrigue. But while she hopes to clear up her status as an agency operative when her name first hit newspapers in July 2003, America's most publicized spy is unlikely to betray any details in open session about her mysterious career.

[...]

People close to Plame say her primary goal in testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is to knock down persistent claims that she did not serve undercover. "She is so tired of hearing that," her mother, Diane Plame, said in an interview earlier this week.

[...]

Plame's testimony today "will be very forceful and clear, and there won't be any question what classified means," said Anne Weismann, chief counsel for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a group handling Plame and Wilson's civil suit against administration officials they accuse of destroying her cover in reprisal for her husband's debunking of prewar assertions that Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Niger.

It will be fun to see how the wingers choose to slander Valerie after her testimony. After all, they're shameless and dishonest.

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The End Of Dick?

Tom Schaller thinks DeFib Dick will be forced to go.

Atrios disagrees.

I'm with Tom on this though for a different reason. I've long suspected that Dick would go so that George could handpick a successor. The Plame issue would just be icing. If this happens it will be before the end of the August recess.

But I could be wrong.

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The End Of Dick?

Patrick Fitzgerald all but indicts DeFib Dick on the first day of arguments in the Libby trial.

Will Bunch:

As I typed this, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter came on camera to wonder why Cheney is not an unindicted co-conspirator and that Cheney is "a notch about Spiro Agnew as worst vice president in American history." The anchor said she wouldn't "quibble" with the assessment.

Liveblogging at FDL.

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ADDED: Via Atrios: Yep, the teevee people are now openly talking about Crashcart's political survival.

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