Hmmmm, seems now the WaPo and NYTimes feel that perhaps a crime hasn't been committed? i don't recall them feeling that way during the campaign. Flip, Flop? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61388-2005Mar23.html -- Media Groups Back Reporters In Court Filing Judges Urged to Determine if Crime Occurred in Leak Case By Dan Eggen Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, March 24, 2005; Page A03 A federal court should first determine whether a crime has been committed in the disclosure of an undercover CIA operative's name before prosecutors are allowed to continue seeking testimony from journalists about their confidential sources, the nation's largest news organizations and journalism groups asserted in a court filing yesterday. The 40-page brief, filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, argues that there is "ample evidence . . . to doubt that a crime has been committed" in the case, which centers on the question of whether Bush administration officials knowingly revealed the identity of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in the summer of 2003. Plame's name was published first by syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak and later by other publications. The friend-of-the-court brief was filed by 36 news organizations, including The Washington Post and major broadcast and cable television news networks, in support of reporters at the New York Times and Time magazine who face possible jail time for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating the allegations. Those two organizations filed a petition Tuesday asking the full appeals court to review the case. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit ruled in February that two reporters -- Judith Miller of the Times and Matthew Cooper of Time -- should be jailed for contempt if they continued to refuse to name their sources to the grand jury. Attorneys for the news organizations said yesterday that their decision to submit the brief underscores deep concern in the journalism community over special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's tactics. Fitzgerald, who heads the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago, is in the midst of two separate battles with journalists over testimony related to confidential sources. The petition by the Times and Time magazine focuses on whether reporters have a First Amendment right to resist disclosure of confidential sources. The brief by the other news organizations takes a different approach: It argues that the statute at issue in the case, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, was aimed at egregious attempts to expose U.S. spies and was crafted to avoid ensnaring reporters going about their business. It asks for a hearing to determine whether a crime has even been committed. Bruce W. Sanford, a lawyer who handled the case for the group of news organizations, said yesterday that "it's a very poor result if somehow reporters got entangled in a net of prison sentences in an investigation which ends up with no indictment because no crime has been committed." Attorneys for the Times and Time magazine have said that they will appeal to the Supreme Court if necessary. © 2005 The Washington Post Company
This is huge. Do you know what else is huge? The fact that search is enabled and bigtexxx can perform valuable research on the board. My exercise for the morning involves researching how many references many of the worst offending liberals on the board made about Plame. They relished what they thought was a "gotcha" to rub in the face of conservatives! Now what, liberals? How do you answer this article??? Unique threads in which the poster referenced "Plame": FranchiseBlade: 22 SamFisher: 18 andymoon: 11 glynch: 9 Deckard: 8 No Worries: 5 Batman Jones: 4
texxx, I cannot offer any comment at this juncture due to professional ethics concerns. Suffice it to say, you and basso are once again misinterpreting this 6-month old news item and are don't seem to get its various facets.
yeah, sam andy and FB in particular carried joe wilson's jock for about 6 months. their silence now is pretty revealing.
This friend-of-the-court brief leaves me undone. It is so unexpected that the NYT and the WaPo was submit a CYA brief. Carry pn.
And interestingly, during those six months, you and yours had no objection whatever to an undercover CIA agent being outed by a high level official at the White House. Back then, to you, it was a non-story. Now the disingenuous (what's new?) suggestion that an official crime might not have been committed -- suggested by a group of professionals whose core priniciple of not revealing sources is in danger as a result of this story -- is huge. Yawn. Wake me up when this turns into a story. I expect I'll get a nice long nap.
really batman, this is silly. if a high-level whitehouse operative "outed" an under cover cia agent, the wouldn't a crime have been committed? if there's no crime, it's hard to see how there's been an "outing."
This is the first time any credible person has suggested the possibility a crime might not have been committed. Where were you for those six months or however long that the conventional wisdom was (and still is, by the way) that an agent was outed by someone high up at the WH? You crow about Sam, FB and the rest not rushing to address your non-story that's been up a few hours. The big story has been out there for over a year and you didn't make a peep. First sign there might be more to the story and you pee your pants. You also act like you've got some kind of huge story here. As usual, you blow off the big story and inflate the tiny one, according to your purposes. Like I said, disingenuous party line crap as usual.
texxx, TJ, myself, and many others have long maintained that there was no crime here, that valerie plame was "out" long before she posed for vanity fair. the "BIG STORY" was always a non-story. the news now, is those who'd long claimed it was some sort of huge scandal have realized that it's not, and now that the special prosecutor the clamored so agressively for has come back to bite them in the ass, have belayedly realized that, HEY! perhaps there's no there there after all. i know you see this, and it's only some sort of malign hatred of all things bush that obscures what is blindingly obvious to all but the most rabidly partisan.
the people that pimped the story for a year now say there may have been no crime committed. isn't this stunning about face news? Gifford, Batman, moonie, Fisher King?
I think what they're saying is before you throw reporters in jail you might want to confirm there was an actual crime. Not exactly explosive stuff. It's impossible to prove Novack got his info from a criminal act without knowing where it came from. What I don't understand about this case is why Novack apparently hasn't been instructed to reveal his source before these other ones were. And if Plame was out before, we surely would have heard that from Novack. And we double sure would have heard it from the well oiled, greatest in the history of US politics, smear the whistleblower campaign whose altar you, Troller Jorge and bigtwinnn so love to worship at.
basso, while it might seem like I was kidding, I wasn't so I 'll leave it at that, save to say that you are whiffing mightily in the usual fashion (incomprehension, strawmen, misattribution of sentiments, etc.)
from the brief: there is "ample evidence . . . to doubt that a crime has been committed" in the case it's a pretty stunning about face.
It is more like a pratfall, really. There was a rush to judgement on this board to condemn the WH over the Plame "crime" and I believe that that is the screw-up that basso was trying to explore with this thread. None of you brought this story to our attention, did you?
Actually I just now saw this thread, my absence from it wasn't revealing of anything. I am proud that I referenced it more than anyone on that list. I will keep mentioning the Plame case, and this article does nothing to lessen the damage to our national security, nor does it show that a crime hasn't been committed. The quote of ample evidence that a crime wasn't committed was merely part of a legal brief. It was something that the lawyers filed. Next let's look at the lawyers that filed it. Lo and behold they are news agencies who have a vested interest in seeing that reporters are able to publish information they get from whitehouse officials, and that they don't have to reveal sources in order to spend time in jail. Should this go to trial for the felony that has been committed there are reporters from major news outlets that might end up doing time, and held in contempt. I don't know why you are surprised because lawyers for a parties involved in the case files legal briefs. It isn't strange and certainly doesn't signal a victory for you or others on your side that are afraid to hold the administration accountable for one of the higher-ups in Bush's whitehouse that committed the felony.
Yet another liberal lie EXPOSED for all to see. SamFisher and FranchiseBlade, you guys are really on the hook here for propagating these lies for so long. DEFEND YOURSELF
I don't need to defend myself. I, unlike some in this thread, understand that briefs filed by lawyers on a particular side in a case don't always represent the truth, nor are they in any way conclusive. Have you seen some of the briefs filed in the trial involving the 2000 election? Because if I put into evidence from the legal briefs filed by Al Gore's lawyers then it appears that our nations democracy was undermined. Because according those legal briefs(the same level of proof you and your conservative companions are crowing about now) claims that only by allowing all those votes cast in Florida would democracy be validated in that election. So if Legal briefs now end up qualifying as legal proof our nation is doomed! Check out this pdf to read some of the briefs. http://news.findlaw.com/cnn/docs/election2000/uscgorebrief1210.pdf
