YinYangMom:
Naming the wife isn’t the offense…
outing the wife as being a CIA operative is .
Bolding mine - you can read the entire article here:
washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A2305-2005Jan11
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.”
The law also requires that the disclosure be made intentionally, with the knowledge that the government is taking “affirmative measures to conceal [the agent’s] relationship” to the United States. Merely knowing that Plame works for the CIA does not provide the knowledge that the government is keeping her relationship secret. In fact, just the opposite is the case. If it were known on the Washington cocktail circuit, as has been alleged, that Wilson’s wife is with the agency, a possessor of that gossip would have no reason to believe that information is classified – or that “affirmative measures” were being taken to protect her cover.
There are ways of perceiving whether the government was actually taking the required necessary affirmative measures to conceal its relationship with Plame. We can look, for example, at how the CIA reacted when Novak informed the press office that he was going to publish her name. Did the general counsel call to threaten prosecution, as we know has been done to other reporters under similar circumstances?
No. Did then-Director George Tenet or his deputy pick up the phone to tell Novak that the publication of her name would threaten national security and her safety, as we know is done when the CIA is serious about prohibiting publication?
No. Did some high-ranking government official ask to visit Novak or the president of his newspaper syndicate to talk him out of publishing – another common strategy to prevent a story?** No.**
I’d rather leave it up to the Grand Jury to decide who gets prosecuted for what - because it’s looking more and more like this whole thing was a “Get Bush” set-up from the very start - namely, Joe Wilson’s fake “report on uranium.”
There may not
be anyone to prosecute for this thing, except perhaps Joe Wilson, himself! He may well end up with libel and perjury charges before this is done.
Rove and anyone else involved need to be put on trial so that the evidence can be presented and those guilty charged, while those not-guilty are cleared of any wrongdoing.
Rove on trial for what? Again, I think we have to leave it in the hands of the GJ, for now.
Rove gave Cooper his permission long ago to tell the Grand Jury exactly the conversations that had transpired between Cooper and him. That doesn’t sound like a man who has been involved in anything criminal. But it sure does sound like Cooper has a new credibility problem. (And therefore, possible charges of perjury for him, too. And yes, I would smirk at that, uncharitable as it might be. They’ve made their own bed.)
Ann Coulter’s nailed it, in her inimitable way:
"Karl Rove was right. The real story about Joseph C. Wilson IV was not that Bush lied about Saddam seeking uranium in Africa; the story was Clown Wilson and his paper-pusher wife, Valerie Plame. By foisting their fantasies of themselves on the country, these two have instigated a massive criminal investigation, the result of which is: The only person who has demonstrably lied and possibly broken the law is Joseph Wilson
.
So the obvious solution is to fire Karl Rove." (snip)
Wilson intentionally blew his wife’s “cover” in order to lie about how he ended up going to Niger. Far from a serious fact-finding mission, it was a “Take Your Daughters to Work Day” gone bad.
Maybe liberals shouldn’t have been so insistent about that special prosecutor.
The whole article here:
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45268
Elizabeth
