Matt Cooper on Rove's leaking Plame's name

[turbo]

On Meet the Press yesterday, Matt Cooper flatly stated that Rove outed Valerie Plame to him as a CIA agent that "worked on WMDs." What is not made clear and needs to be is that she was a NOC. She had no official cover and no diplomatic immunity that could prevent her for being arrested and prosecuted as a spy. Her job was preventing the proliferation of WMDs, and the Bush administration willingly ruined her career as revenge for Joe Wilson's unmasking the Niger yellowcake story as a fabrication. Why aren't these treasonous crooks in prison?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/...rove-did-leak-valerie-plames-identity-to-him/

 

[mgb_phys]

It surely wasn't deliberate, it was just an example of the open and free flow of information at the heart of government.
It's like saying 'who would rid me of this troublesome priest' it was just a rhetorical question and certainly not an order to the two heavily armed knights standing in front of him to go and kill the archbishop of canterbury.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

It surely wasn't deliberate, it was just an example of the open and free flow of information at the heart of government.

It's too bad that this free flow of information doesn't pertain to the Congressional investigations. This has been the most secretive admin in history!

Excuse me while I get sick now.

 

[turbo]

It's too bad that this free flow of information doesn't pertain to the Congressional investigations. This has been the most secretive admin in history!

Excuse me while I get sick now.

Yep! Carefully selected and dangerous information flows freely to Matt Cooper and Judith Miller and Bob Novak when it serves the administration's plans, but our Representatives and Senators can't get a straight answer out of these jerks. I wonder how many of Plame's foreign contacts were lost (tortured, imprisoned, killed, "disappeared") when foreign intelligence agencies found out that she was a CIA NOC? For this administration, it was apparently a small price to pay for the chance of getting revenge on Joe Wilson.

 

[mgb_phys]

To be fair to the poor guy, he never managed to graduate from any of the multiple colleges he attended and has only ever had a variety of unspecified and miscellanous political jobs for one party.
From this and the number of other apparently illegal things he seems to have accidentally done throughout his career we can assume he is basically an idiot who doesn't know better.

 

[chemisttree]

Did Matt Cooper say something like this?

So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the "agency" on "WMD"? Yes. When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me. At this point, I'm as curious as anyone else to see what Patrick Fitzgerald has.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1083899-1,00.html

Apparently the dropout told the truth to Fitzgerald (gasp!) and the magna cum laude Yale graduate perjured, lied and obstructed justice.

Nobody was convicted of outing Valerie Plame because she wasn't covert and even if she was, no one knowingly outed a covert agent. If that were indeed the case, Fitzgerald would have sunk his fangs in a little deeper on both of these guys.

 

[turbo]

She WAS covert! Not only was she covert - she was covert without official cover, (NOC to the Republican apologists that seem to want to hoe the party line). She, and every foreign operative that cooperated with her and her team (her mission was to prevent the spread of WMDs) was ratted out by Rove, Bush, and Cheney. These treasonous creeps ruined the life of a career CIA agent to exact revenge against her husband. The Bush administration is the most corrupt bunch of creeps that have ever squatted in our seat of government.

 

[chemisttree]

She was ONCE covert. Not at the time of the articles and not within the 5yr timeframe stipulated by law. The Law:

SEC. 601. [50 U.S.C. 421] (a) Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

(b)Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identity of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

The term 'covert' means:

The term "covert agent" means—

(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency—
(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and

(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States; or

(B) a United States citizen whose intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information, and—

(i) who resides and acts outside the United States as an agent of, or informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency, or
(ii) who is at the time of the disclosure acting as an agent of, or informant to, the foreign counterintelligence or foreign counterterrorism components of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; or

(C) an individual, other than a United States citizen, whose past or present intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information and who is a present or former agent of, or a present or former informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency.

By this definition, Valerie Plame is not covert. Some have argued that since she traveled abroad in the course of her duties at the CIA within the last five years, she is covert. That is arguable but has not been defined to be the case in any court. In fact, Victoria Toensing and Bruce Sanford, two lawyers who "drafted and negotiated the scope of the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act" have written in the Washington Post,

Congress also did not intend for government employees to be vulnerable to prosecution for an unintentional or careless spilling of the beans about an undercover identity. A dauntingly high standard was therefore required for the prosecutor to charge the leaker.

At the threshold, the agent must truly be covert. Her status as undercover must be classified, and she must have been assigned to duty outside the United States currently or in the past five years. This requirement does not mean jetting to Berlin or Taipei for a week's work. It means permanent assignment in a foreign country. Since Plame had been living in Washington for some time when the July 2003 column was published, and was working at a desk job in Langley (a no-no for a person with a need for cover), there is a serious legal question as to whether she qualifies as "covert."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2305-2005Jan11?language=printer

It is very telling that although Fitzgerald knew the disclosure of Plame's employer to the press was admitted to by several individuals, no prosecution of that 'crime' did or ever will occur. It isn't a crime.