CIA Seeks Probe of White House

This could end up being a ticking time bomb for some people in the Administration. You don't want the CIA seriously pissed off at you. Sooner or later, someone is going down for this. Just my opinion.

 

Ditto, though I can't help thinking that the investigation will be pushed behind the secrecy curtain and not completed until after Nov. 2004.

 

Whammo! NBC has a late report that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether the White House broke federal law by exposing the identity of one of its undercover employees, Valerie Plame, to retaliate against her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson.

Wilson of course is the former foreign service officer who made the trip to Niger to investigate those claims of uranium sales to Iraq.

The way this works is that the CIA does its own investigation to determine whether there is reason to believe laws were broken. But the CIA has no law enforcement powers itself. So it makes a referral to the Justice Department, which obviously does have law enforcement powers. If the folks at Justice concur in the Agency's determination that there is reason to believe that laws were broken, they then task the FBI with mounting a formal criminal investigation.

(Joe Wilson discussed some of these particulars and the issue of possible White House leaks about his wife in his September 16th interview with TPM, which is now available in .pdf format.)

On its face, this news tonight almost certainly means that the CIA's internal investigation concluded that laws were broken or that there was sufficient evidence of wrong-doing for a criminal investigation to be undertaken.

The decision on whether to task the FBI with investigating the White House is now in hands of John Ashcroft. Once that happens -- if that happens -- it's not a matter of blogs and chat shows, but subpoenas and depositions.


-- Josh Marshall

 

Did Rove Blow a Spook's Cover?
The White House won't say.
By Timothy Noah
Posted Tuesday, September 16, 2003, at 4:59 PM PT


A minor flap has been brewing since syndicated columnist Robert Novak, citing "two senior administration officials," reported in July that Joseph C. Wilson IV was married to a Central Intelligence Agency specialist on "weapons of mass destruction" named Valerie Plame. Wilson is the former diplomat sent by the CIA last year to check out allegations that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. He caused the Bush administration no small embarrassment by stating, in a July 6 op-ed, that he'd reported "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." Novak hasn't particularly supported the Iraq war, and his column essentially took Wilson's side. But the fact that Novak blew Plame's cover (in the course of relating that Wilson was sent at Plame's suggestion) gave The Nation's David Corn the opportunity to accuse the Bush administration of compromising national security, in violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. Wilson wouldn't confirm that his wife works for the CIA, but he told Corn that if she did, then

Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames.

The question of whether to investigate who in the Bush administration blew Plame's cover surfaced Aug. 21 at a forum about intelligence failures on Iraq held by Rep. Jay Inslee, a fervently anti-war Democrat. Wilson, who was present, had this to say:

It's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words.

This appeared to be an unsubtle hint that Wilson knew one of the leakers to be Rove. Taking the bait, someone asked White House press spokesman Scott McClellan about it today:

Q: On the Robert Novak-Joseph Wilson situation, Novak reported earlier this year quoting "anonymous government sources" telling him that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative. Now, this is apparently a federal offense, to burn the cover [of] a CIA operative. Wilson now believes that the person who did this was Karl Rove. He's quoted from a speech last month as saying, "At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." Did Karl Rove tell that—

A: I haven't heard that. That's just totally ridiculous. But we've already addressed this issue. If I could find out who anonymous people were, I would. I just said, it's totally ridiculous.

Q: But did Karl Rove do it?

A: I said, it's totally ridiculous.

Now, on one level, Chatterbox feels mildly sympathetic toward McClellan. White House etiquette prevented him from saying, "How the hell should I know? If Rove blew the cover of a CIA agent, do you suppose he'd be stupid enough to tell me about it?" And McClellan deserves points for not taking a leaf from his predecessor Ari Fleischer's playbook, which says that you should always deny damaging stuff well before you know whether it's true.

But on another level, it's pretty unsettling that McClellan refuses to answer the question at all. Rove is, after all, the president's principal political adviser, a man so influential that a recent book about him was titled Bush's Brain. McClellan could have said something like, "I have a very hard time imagining that to be true, but if you like I'll ask him." But McClellan didn't say that. Maybe he finds all speculation about wacky national-security skullduggery repellant in light of his father's embarrassing new book alleging that Lyndon Johnson murdered John F. Kennedy. Or maybe—just maybe—McClellan wonders himself whether Rove got a little overzealous.

Wilson, for his part, denied today that he ever accused Rove. He told Chatterbox "Karl Rove" was simply a handy metonym for whatever two "senior administration officials" fingered Plame (correctly or falsely, Wilson still won't say). But Wilson's "I measure my words" comment at the Inslee forum suggests to Chatterbox that Wilson is now being coy about what he knows, or at least suspects, regarding Rove. Maybe it's time for somebody to ask Rove himself whether he risked 10 years in jail in order to suggest that Wilson got his Niger assignment based on nepotism. And, perhaps, deliberately to punish Wilson by destroying his wife's career at the CIA. Rove is ruthless enough to have done so. The only real question is whether Bush's Brain is stupid enough.

 

Watergate II anyone?

 

Didn't you guys know that Karl Rove was a big prankster in his younger days? I mean, come on, is this really that bad. . .

 

Come on, Oski... you've got to be kidding!
Yes, it is that bad, if true. If this guy's wife was a CIA operative, like was mentioned in one of rimrocker's posts, everything she has ever done during her career is compromised. People could end up dead. Who knows?

It's a big deal, if true, for whoever did it.

 

I was doing a sarcastic impression of people who will sure enough come in here and defend Rove no matter what.

 

Sorry!
I'm suffering from carpet cleaning fumes.
(I wish I was kidding)

 

Without some real pressure from the media and congressional spotlights, I don't see Ashcroft pursuing this matter.

 

That's fine - the stench of scandal would follow the Chimp king all the way to the election.

 

This, if true, along with the way the justice department is using the terrorism laws for everything (as the Liberals warned everyone...give them their due!), and the international gaffs... is realing making me fed-up with this administration.

Next...

 

BOOM! Floodgates opening.
________________
Leak of CIA Name Being Investigated
Agent's Identity Disclosed to Journalists

By Mike Allen and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, September 28, 2003; Page A01


At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that an administration official leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, administration officials said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa, which can be used in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity can violate federal law.

A senior administration official said two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. That was shortly after Wilson revealed in July that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account eventually touched off a controversy over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers' allegation was that Wilson had benefited from nepotism because the Niger mission had been his wife's idea. Wilson said in an interview yesterday that a reporter had told him that the leaker said, "The real issue is Wilson and his wife."

The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists. The official said he had no indication that Bush knew about the calls. Columnist Robert Novak published the agent's name in a July column about Wilson's mission.

It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's occupation, has suggested publicly that he believes Bush's senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, broke her cover. He said Aug. 21 at a public forum in Seattle that it is of keen interest to him "to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said he knows of no leaks about Wilson's wife. "That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing," McClellan said. "I don't have any information beyond an anonymous source in a media report to suggest there is anything to this. If someone has information of this nature, then he or she should report it to the Department of Justice."

McClellan, who Rove had speak for him, said of Wilson's comments: "It is a ridiculous suggestion, and it is simply not true." McClellan was asked about Wilson's charge at a White House briefing Sept. 14 and said the accusation is "totally ridiculous."

Administration officials said Tenet sent a memo to the Justice Department raising a series of questions about whether a leaker had broken federal law by disclosing the identity of an undercover officer. The CIA request was reported Friday night by MSNBC.com. Administration sources familiar with the matter said the Justice Department is determining whether a formal investigation is warranted.

The CIA request could reopen the rift between the White House and the intelligence community that burst into view in July when Bush and his senior aides blamed Tenet for the inclusion of the discredited uranium claim -- the so-called "16 words" -- in the State of the Union address in January.

Tenet issued a statement taking responsibility for the CIA's approval of the address before it was delivered, but made clear the CIA had earlier warned the White House not to use the uranium ore allegations. After an ensuing rush of leaks over White House handling of intelligence, Bush's aides said they believed in retrospect it had been a political mistake to blame Tenet.

The Intelligence Protection Act, passed in 1982, imposes maximum penalties of 10 years in prison and $50,000 fines for unauthorized disclosure by government employees with access to classified information.

Members of the administration, especially Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have been harshly critical of unauthorized leakers, and White House spokesmen are often dismissive of questions about news reports based on unnamed sources. The FBI is investigating members of the Senate for possibly leaking intercept information about Osama bin Laden.

The only recipient of a leak about the identity of Wilson's wife who went public with it was Novak, the conservative syndicated columnist, who wrote in The Washington Post and other newspapers on July 14 that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, "is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." He added, "Two senior administration officials told me his wife suggested sending Wilson to Niger."

When Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson's wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name "for security reasons," according to one CIA official. Intelligence officials said they believed Novak understood there were reasons other than Plame's personal security not to use her name, even though the CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover.

Novak said in an interview last night that the request came at the end of a conversation about Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's role in it. "They said it's doubtful she'll ever again have a foreign assignment," he said. "They said if her name was printed, it might be difficult if she was traveling abroad, and they said they would prefer I didn't use her name. It was a very weak request. If it was put on a stronger basis, I would have considered it."

After the column ran, the CIA began a damage assessment of whether any foreign contacts Plame had made over the years, or projects she had worked on, had been compromised. CIA officials working undercover often pass themselves off as members of the diplomatic corps or, if they are in deeper cover, called "nonofficial cover," as business members or other types of employees not associated with the U.S. government. Sometimes they use their real names or continue to use false names until they have gone through a lengthy, secretive process to reemerge as "overt" employees no longer undercover.

The CIA occasionally asks news organizations to withhold the names of undercover agents from developing stories. News organizations usually comply. An intelligence official told The Post yesterday that no further harm would come from repeating Plame's name.

Wilson was acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq during the run-up to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. He was in the diplomatic service from 1976 until 1998, and was the Clinton administration's senior director of African affairs on the National Security Council. He is now an international business consultant. Wilson said the mission to Niger was unpaid except for expenses.

Wilson said he believes an inquiry from Cheney's office launched his eight-day mission to Niger in February 2002 to check the uranium claim, which turned out to be based at least partly on forged documents. "The way it was briefed to me was that the office of the vice president had expressed an interest in a report covering uranium purchases by Iraq from Niger," Wilson said in a telephone interview yesterday.

He said that if Novak's account is accurate, the leak was part of "a deliberate attempt on the part of the White House to intimidate others and make them think twice about coming forward."

"There is a whole group of intelligence analysts who have spoken anonymously to the press about such things as pressure they felt when Cheney and others may have come out there," Wilson said. "They have not attached their names to their stories, and this is clearly designed to let them know that if they were to come out publicly or if they were to respond to the various congressional statements that they wanted to hear from these people in hearings, that they can expect the same thing from the White House."

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has been pushing the FBI to investigate the disclosure, said it "not only put an agent's life in danger, but many of that agent's sources and contacts."

 

Wow. The leaders of the free world.


I hate what they are doing to our international standing, am afraid of what they are doing to our civil rights, and suspicious of some of their motives...but to think that they'd be this petty, low, and childish...amazing.

To all the people who have out of hand dismissed charges of corruption, lying, manipulation etc. by this government...if this is accurate...does this give you second thoughts? If this reflects the kind of decisions made on high, it should again shatter the facade of supreme competence and intelligence we sometimes build up about the White House, the way the Bay of Pigs, Watergate etc. did.

Are any Bush apologists countering or defending this?

 

Where are the traders and slammers when you need them?

 

Give 'em a chance... this was posted late Saturday night and it's only early Sunday morn.

One of the many things I find interesting about this is the fact that the quotes in the Wash Post story suggest some major bureaucratic infighting happening in the WH. The subjects of the leak could leak back on their accuser and pretty soon we might see leaks galore as officials try to present info that might be damaging to the WH but keeps them viable for the President, party, public. The politics of personal survival if you will.

This is also the first bit of blood in the water that can be explained in a soundbite, so expect the press to be all over it. If a press frenzy develops, expect other things to pop up (see previous paragraph). The WH can either deal with the internal antagonists in such a way as to stop future leaks or they can let this fester. How they respond will go a long way in determining if we have a lame duck by Spring or a race leading up to next Nov.

 

Just flipped on the TV and found Fox News interviewing Condi Rice. As it happened, a minute or two after I tuned in Brit Hume asked Rice about the Wilson/Plame matter. Let's be honest, I didn't expect Hume and Tony Snow to be the most hard-hitting questioners on this issue. But you couldn't watch the exchange without seeing how big a deal this is. First of all, Rice denied nothing. It was, in so many words, all no comments. More telling I thought was how visibly rattled Rice seemed. She seemed to have a hard time getting her words out. Her breathing was halting.

To their credit, Hume and Snow followed up by noting that this was a sufficiently serious charge that a bland 'no comment' didn't really cut it. But all Rice could do was awkwardly say that she wasn't going to answer questions because it's in the Justice Department's hands, they're investigating, and that this is the kind of thing that the president doesn't accept. What I took from this is that the White House was stunned by this rapid escalation of events. And they haven't figured out what to do. Or, if they have, they haven't let Condi in on it yet.

When your best argument is 'the Justice Department is investigating us and we hope they get to the bottom of it', you're in a jam.


-- Josh Marshall

 

Rice basically gave the same answer on Meet the Press.

Russert asked her if the administration should be held accountable for this and her answer was along the lines of "I think it should be handled by the justice department and the president shouldn't get involved".

Something must really be going down if she is making the rounds on all the Sunday talk shows trying to play this down.