I will rely on the evidence of the CIA investigators, Congress' investigations, etc. The fact that CIA feels her cover was blown, after an investigation is pretty good circumstantial evidence. They probably have the best access to her assignments and status of anyone around. The fact that when asked about the case Intel officials gave their reply that she was undercover pretty much counts at least as expert witness evidence. They didn't mention it as part of her resumee. They mentioned it when asked specifically about the leak. So I think it is reasonable to assume it relates to the time of the leak.
i meant any evidence that specifically pinpoints her as being on overseas undercover assignments in the 5 years prior to the novak article. Valerie Plame was 40 at the time of the Novak article, according to the WaPo. we know she give bith to twins three years earlier. twins at any age are a higher risk pregnancy, and in older women (plame would have been 36-37 when she got preganant), it's even more so. now, i suppose it's possible plame, in a high risk pregnancy, was assigned over seas, or, later as a new mother w/ two young children, but is it likely? once again, do you have any evidence to support your theory thta she was overseas? i've seen nothing, and until you can produce such, i will have to assume that you can't.
Again, the CIA wouldn't recommend criminal investigation if they didn't feel that a crime had been committed. The evidence they based their recommendation on would be the evidence that I rely on most strongly. They know if she had assignments over seas. She wouldn't have had to go over seas for very long so the children wouldn't have been an issue. She could easily have been sent over to verify something, go to a recruiting meeting with someone, etc. It could have been nothing more than a week long trip. It is silly to rule out that she was overseas in her capacity as under cover operative in the past five years, especially given the information from the article I posted. The job description mentions someone who might work in the U.S. but also includes overseeing some operations out of the country. This would fall in line perfectly with that scenario. That job desription was given by Intel officials, who would know what the job entails. It is logical and easily conceivable that she fits into that job description. But like I said, there is also the espionage act that would make the leaker a felon as well. There is no five year out of country clause in that one. Either way a felony was committed.
as i suspected, you have no evidence, only theories. as to the CIA recommending an investigation, it's analogous to investigating the cause of a house fire. it may be faulty wiring, it may be arson, but there's no way to know for sure until you find the source, and even then it may not be clear. was a flammable liquid spilled on a rug by accident, perhaps a child kicked it over, or on purpose? you're making fantastical assumptions based on the fact of an investigation, w/ zero evidence to back up your claims. an investigation is evidence of nothing, other than the facts need elucidating. show me evidence she was out of the country, if you can produce it. i've demonstrated, rather thoroghly, if not conclusively, that it's highly unlikely she was- you've offered nothing in return but continued homilies about an investigation. where's the evidence to back up your scenario? it's not in the article you linked to back on the second page. in fact, that's where most of my timeline came from!
As I suspected I've posted evidence from intel sources, the vanity fair article, a newsday article, and a whole list of other things, and you choose to pretend they don't exist. You haven't demonstrated anything, other than she was in the country for part of that five years. Once again, the CIA investigation of one their employees isn't the same as investigating a fire on this point. They have the records of what assignments their employees have been on. The CIA would be able to definitively know one way or the other that Plame was in or out of the U.S. There is no 'maybe she was, but it isn't certain, let's recommend further investigation' about it. They know her status. In addition we know that she continued to use the cover of an energy consultant with a front called Brewster Jennings corporation. This was all a lot of work to do for someone who wasn't really covert. It is odd that you are accusing me having no proof. All you have is that because she has twins, she most likely didn't work at all over seas in the last five years. That isn't proof, but your assumption. Anyway here is an article claiming that she frequently went overseas.
As I suspected I've posted evidence from intel sources, the vanity fair article, a newsday article, and a whole list of other things, and you choose to pretend they don't exist. You haven't demonstrated anything, other than she was in the country for part of that five years. Once again, the CIA investigation of one their employees isn't the same as investigating a fire on this point. They have the records of what assignments their employees have been on. The CIA would be able to definitively know one way or the other that Plame was in or out of the U.S. There is no 'maybe she was, but it isn't certain, let's recommend further investigation' about it. They know her status. In addition we know that she continued to use the cover of an energy consultant with a front called Brewster Jennings corporation. This was all a lot of work to do for someone who wasn't really covert. It is odd that you are accusing me having no proof. All you have is that because she has twins, she most likely didn't work at all over seas in th
a) nowhere in the "article" is it mentioned whether she was overseas in the past five years, and b) any "article" that includes such unbiased reporting such as "The same administration, which invaded Iraq after bullyragging the American people with dire predictions of biological and chemical weapons flooding out of that nation and into the hands of al Qaeda, reached out and crushed the career of an undercover agent working to keep that exact nightmare scenario from unfolding." is pretty hard to take seriously. and i love the bit about joe wilson claiming she'd been outed to damage his career- he listed her name on the web site of his bio for crying out loud!
The article was an opinion piece, but it did include facts about her being overseas, and the fact that she was undercover. What we have is incomplete. 1. Your theory is that because she's a mother of twins she hasn't been out of the country in 5 years. There is nothing to prove it. 2. My theory is that because the CIA investigated they would have a records and their own evidence about whether she's been out of the country in the last five years. I don't have any articles listing specific dates to prove it either. However, I know that being a mother of twins and/or getting married won't prevent someone for going out of the country for work an entire five years. I also believe that the CIA would be more aware of her assignments than I would, or anyone else for that matter. If they say that her status was ruined as a result of the article by Novak, then I believe that is closest to expert testimony we can get. We do have that, and it points toward a felony being committed. Even if she never stepped foot in a duty free shop in the last five years, it doesn't address the felony committed by the espionage act which doesn't have the '5 year' clause in it. A Felony was committed.
you're assuming the CIA in 2003 was necessarily aware of all provisions of a fairly obscure 1982 law. once again, being overseas is simply one of the criteria, but one that should be fairly straightforward to establish. and if she was overseas, why hasn't joe wilson just come out and said so? he certainly hasn't been shy about pimping his wife's career when he thought it might benefit him?
Not in the last several months. I agree that the CIA should be able to easily establish she was out of the country in last five years.
http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/ -- The Supreme Court on Monday turned aside pleas by two reporters and a magazine urging the Justices to create, for the first time, a right not to be forced to reveal to the government their confidential news sources. The action means that, at least for the time being, the Constitution and federal common law do not recognize a “reporter’s privilege” of confidentiality. (The Court denied review in Miller v. U.S., 04-1507, Cooper and Time Magazine v. U.S., 04-1508.)
an interesting twist, miguel estrada, filibustered by the democrats earlier, is time magazine's lawyer in this case... http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/06/27/scotus.reporters.ap/index.html -- Supreme Court refuses to hear reporters' appeals Monday, June 27, 2005; Posted: 11:27 a.m. EDT (15:27 GMT) WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court rejected appeals Monday from two journalists who have refused to testify before a grand jury about the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity. The cases asked the court to revisit an issue that it last dealt with more than 30 years ago -- whether reporters can be jailed or fined for refusing to identify their sources. The justices' intervention had been sought by 34 states and many news groups, all arguing that confidentiality is important in news gathering. "Important information will be lost to the public if journalists cannot reliably promise anonymity to sources," news organizations including The Associated Press told justices in court papers. Time magazine's Matthew Cooper and The New York Times' Judith Miller, who filed the appeals, face up to 18 months in jail for refusing to reveal sources as part of an investigation into who divulged the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame. Plame's name was first made public in 2003 by columnist and CNN contributor Robert Novak, who cited unidentified senior Bush administration officials for the information. The column appeared after Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, wrote a newspaper opinion piece criticizing the Bush administration's claim that Iraq sought uranium in Niger. Disclosure of an undercover intelligence officer's identity can be a federal crime and a government investigation is in its second year. No charges have been brought. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago, the special counsel handling the probe, told justices that the only unfinished business is testimony from Cooper and Miller. Cooper reported on Plame, while Miller gathered material for an article about the intelligence officer but never wrote a story. A federal judge held the reporters in contempt last fall, and an appeals court rejected their argument that the First Amendment shielded them from revealing their sources in the federal criminal proceeding. Every state but Wyoming recognizes reporters' rights to protect their confidential sources of information, justices were told in a brief filed on behalf of 34 states, and without those privileges "reporters in those states would find their newsgathering abilities compromised, and citizens would find themselves far less able to make informed political, social and economic choices." But Fitzgerald said in his own filing that the federal government is different. "Local jurisdictions do not have responsibility for investigating crimes implicating national security, and reason and experience strongly counsel against adoption of an absolute reporter's privilege in the federal courts," he said. In the last journalist source case at the Supreme, the 1972 Branzburg v. Hayes, a divided court ruled against Louisville, Kentucky, reporter who had written a story about drug trafficking and was called to testify about it. Justices said that requiring journalists to reveal information to grand juries served a "compelling" state interest and did not violate the First Amendment. That decision has been interpreted differently and clarification is needed because dozens of reporters around the country have been subpoenaed over the past two years, said Washington lawyer Miguel Estrada, representing Time magazine. The cases are Miller v. United States, 04-1507, and Cooper v. United States, 04-1508.
Why wasn't Robert Novak forced to testify? With today's ruling by Supreme Court, it's helpful to expose the "deep throat" who disclosed Plame's identity to Novak.
We're all better off if journalists' confidentiality is protected, but I can't help but hope that those in the Bush administration responsible for the leak are revealed.
http://online.wsj.com/public/articl...cITOynBMKYsM_zsy50_20050730,00.html?mod=blogs -- Time Inc. Attorneys Consider Cooperating With Prosecutors By LAURIE P. COHEN and JOE HAGAN Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL June 30, 2005; Page B1 Lawyers for Time Inc. are considering turning over documents that would reveal the identity of a correspondent's anonymous source, according to the reporter and people with knowledge of the matter. The correspondent, Matthew Cooper, faces a prison sentence of as much as 18 months for contempt of court if he refuses to reveal the source to a federal grand jury by next Wednesday; if that were to happen, lawyers for Time Inc., a unit of Time Warner Inc., believe the company could be exposed to legal liability or government sanctions. [Matthew Cooper] The Cooper case stems from a special prosecutor's investigation into whether people in the administration broke a law meant to protect intelligence agents when they disclosed to several reporters the identity of Valerie Plame, a Central Intelligence Agency officer. In a Washington, D.C., courtroom yesterday, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan that Time Inc., as a big corporation, ought to be forced to comply with the law. The judge agreed and threatened to raise the ante by requiring Time to pay steeper fines than the $1,000 a day he already had proposed, and that they be paid retroactively. The fines themselves wouldn't be material for an $80 billion company, but they could anger shareholders and perhaps even spawn litigation. This sets up a conflict between the company's arguments of journalistic standards in protecting a reporter and its financial concerns as a publicly held company. It also puts distance between the concerns of Mr. Cooper and his employer. In an interview, Mr. Cooper said he recognized the diverging interests between him and Time Inc. in deciding whether to comply with the court order. If Time Inc. does hand over documents, it would spare Mr. Cooper jail time. "Now they've got a decision to make, and I've got one," he said. "A corporation is not the same thing as individual. They have different responsibilities and obligations and there is no dishonor obeying a lawful order backed with the force of the Supreme Court of the United States. I prefer they not hand over documents that disclose the identity of my sources, but that's their decision to make." The company said no final decisions had been made. "We're not going to do anything until everything has wound its way through the system," Time Inc. spokeswoman Dawn Bridges said yesterday. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear the cases of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller of the New York Times for refusing to testify about conversations with their confidential sources in the Plame matter. The Times and Ms. Miller have said she will go to jail rather than testify. Time Inc. has taken a less certain stance, saying it planned to ask Judge Hogan to reconsider the ruling that holds the reporters and Time Inc. in civil contempt. One way in which Time is in a different position than the New York Times is that it published an article naming the agent, while Ms. Miller's reporting on the subject was never published. Moreover, Time refused to hand over documents -- Mr. Cooper's notes -- to the grand jury, while it isn't known if the Times even possesses any documents. Through a spokeswoman, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of New York Times Co. and publisher of the Times, said he was sympathetic to Time and its reporter because the newspaper faced a similar situation in the late 1970s. "We're very aware of the pressures Time Inc. faces because we were in a similar situation when our reporter Myron Farber and the Times were held in contempt of court." Mr. Farber spent 40 days in prison in 1978, while the paper was forced to pay fines. Eventually a shield law was created in New Jersey as a result of the incident. Judge Hogan said he would rule next Wednesday on the fate of Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper, following courtroom arguments from their lawyers on why their clients shouldn't be ordered to jail. Time Warner's precise worries about continuing to defy the subpoenas weren't clear, but the company deals frequently with the federal government and may want to avoid a standoff that could involve possible criminal prosecution, such as obstruction of justice. Another concern: other Time Warner employees who might have seen the documents the government seeks could themselves face subpoenas. Time Warner depends on government approval for a number of matters. It is, for example, awaiting antitrust approval for its acquisition -- with Comcast Corp. -- of Adelphia Communications' cable assets. It depends on the government's largesse to issue securities. And though it is a cable operator and holds no broadcast licenses from the Federal Communications Commission, the company is vulnerable to FCC pressures on issues of media content. One other potential issue is a deferred-prosecution agreement struck last year between the Justice Department and Time Warner relating to America Online. A deferred prosecution contemplates cooperating with the government in its ongoing investigation into specific wrongdoing, in this case alleged accounting fraud. "Time Warner has got to be inclined to be as cooperative with the government as they can on all fronts," says Washington attorney Hank Asbill, who is representing a former America Online executive charged with securities fraud. Another person close to Time Warner said yesterday that Time's decision in the case won't be affected by the deferred prosecution. This person said Time Inc. would make its decision based solely on the facts of the case and wouldn't be made because of issues relating to Time Warner. In the event that Time does give up documents, the decision is likely to come from the legal side of the company rather than the editorial side, which at Time Inc. has a proud tradition of independence from the business operations. Up to this point in the investigation, Time had stalwartly proclaimed that unidentified sources were vital to the company's journalistic mission and stood firmly behind Mr. Cooper's decision to resist the federal grand jury. "We believe we must protect our sources when we grant them confidentiality, an obligation we do not take lightly," wrote Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine in a recent editorial in Fortune magazine. "We also believe we must resist government coercion." Bob Giles, the curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University, says that if Time were to hand over information to the government prosecutor it would set a dangerous precedent, signaling to other prosecutors that they could push journalists "to the jail door" to force them to give up sources. "It could embolden other prosecutors and other judges," Mr. Giles says. "Because this is going to be a case that everyone is going to interpret in other cases in instances of this kind." Mr. Cooper and Time signaled a shift in legal strategy in April when they dropped First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, of Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP, as their legal counsel. Mr. Abrams had represented both reporters before Judge Hogan in October, arguing for constitutional protection against having to turn over sources to the government. After losing an appeal in a Washington, D.C., circuit court, Mr. Cooper hired Theodore B. Olson, the former solicitor general who argued and won Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court over the 2000 presidential election. Criminal lawyers said yesterday that Time Inc. also may fear being perceived as aiding and abetting Mr. Cooper in his refusal to testify. Time has been paying Mr. Cooper's legal fees and supporting his refusal to testify. Given all of the recent attention to the government crackdown on corporate wrongdoing and holding companies responsible for employees' legal violations, Time Inc. officials "could be skittish about obstruction charges," says New York attorney Barry Bohrer. Mr. Bohrer says, however, he thinks such charges for a media company are unlikely. If Time Inc. reveals the identity of its confidential source, it could face a host of other problems, including a potential lawsuit from the source. A violation of an oral agreement to protect a source's confidentiality is a "good breach-of-oral-contract case," says New York attorney Martin Garbus, who specializes in media law and First Amendment issues. The prosecutor has called several administration officials to testify before a grand jury to determine the source of the leaks to reporters. If Mr. Cooper's source is one of these individuals and lied to the grand jury, he or she could be indicted for perjury, as well as for the potential leak. Even so, Mr. Garbus says, a breach-of-contract claim still could stand. "If the source gets indicted, he's going to have plenty of legal expenses and no other income," Mr. Garbus says. Corrections & Amplifications: One way in which Time Inc. is in a different position than the New York Times is that it published an article naming CIA agent Valerie Plame, while the New York Times's reporting on the subject was never published. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said Time published the name of a confidential source.
As much as we need to get to the bottom of this find who is respsonible for leaking Plame's identity which is a crime, it is wrong to imprison journalists for protecting their sources.
Writer in Sources Case Laments Threat to Jail 2 Reporters By JACQUES STEINBERG Robert D. Novak, the columnist whose unmasking of a C.I.A. operative prompted an investigation of who had given her name to him and others, expressed disappointment yesterday that two other reporters faced going to jail for not cooperating in the case. But Mr. Novak, in an appearance on "Inside Politics" on CNN and in a subsequent telephone interview, once again refused to answer questions about what contact, if any, he had had with the federal prosecutor conducting the investigation or about what extent he might have cooperated in the case. He did say in the phone interview, as he had on CNN, that neither of the two reporters - Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine - faced going to jail because of anything that he might have done or not done. "If anyone thinks they're going to jail because of me, it's madness," said Mr. Novak, a columnist for The Chicago Sun-Times and a CNN contributor. "Some people seem to think that." Mr. Novak has chosen to maintain his silence about his role in the inquiry despite persistent demands from some journalists, as well as others in the Washington establishment, that he at least disclose whether he had received a subpoena in the case and, if so, how he had responded to it. That pressure appeared to intensify this week after the United States Supreme Court refused to hear arguments on behalf of Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper, who had appealed a judge's order that they be jailed for refusing to testify about who might have disclosed the name of the operative, Valerie Plame, to them. Mr. Novak's comments about Mr. Cooper and Ms. Miller were by far his most extensive on the case, and his appearance on "Inside Politics" was the first time that CNN colleagues had pressed him intensely on the air for information about his role. Although Mr. Cooper wrote about Ms. Plame in an article two years ago, after Mr. Novak had disclosed her name in his syndicated column, Ms. Miller never did. A special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is investigating whether people in the Bush administration broke a law meant to protect intelligence agents when they told reporters about Ms. Plame. As part of the inquiry, several senior administration officials have testified before a grand jury. In an interview yesterday, Al Hunt, a former columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a colleague of Mr. Novak's on the recently canceled CNN program "Capital Gang," said he supported Mr. Novak's decision not to discuss his sources publicly. But Mr. Hunt said Mr. Novak, while protecting his sources, could probably shed some light on why Ms. Miller and Mr. Cooper were facing jail on contempt charges, while he, apparently, was not. "It does beg the question why Matt and Judy, and not Bob," Mr. Hunt, an editor for Bloomberg News, said. "It's just so confusing to citizens and people in our business. If Bob could provide some context, I think it would be helpful." Robert S. Strauss, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee who said he had been a friend of Mr. Novak's for 40 years, agreed, in an interview, that Mr. Novak could probably say more than he had. "I think he would certainly help out a lot of people if he told his side of the story," said Mr. Strauss, a lawyer for Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, the Washington law firm. "Maybe he likes the controversy." A moment later, Mr. Strauss softened slightly, saying, "He may have some good reason for not doing it." Gina Lubrano, reader representative for The San Diego Union-Tribune, which publishes Mr. Novak's columns on Sundays, said she found it baffling that someone who demanded answers to tough questions as part of his job could be so reticent when the spotlight turned on him. "As a journalist, he would find that response unacceptable from others," Ms. Lubrano said. In a column published yesterday on the Op-Ed page of The New York Times, William Safire, a former columnist for the paper, urged Mr. Novak to "finally write the column he owes readers and colleagues, perhaps explaining how two sources - who may have truthfully revealed themselves to investigators - managed to get the prosecutor off his back." In response, Mr. Novak said he would "write a column when the case is closed" and "tell everything I know." Among those defending Mr. Novak yesterday was John Cruickshank, publisher of The Sun-Times. "We, as news people, never want to be in a position of saying, No comment," Mr. Cruickshank said. "But he cannot respond and at the same time abide by the legal strategy his counsel has been recommending." In a telephone interview on Tuesday, Mr. Novak, 74, said that reverberations from the case had had no effect on his ability to do his work as a columnist and commentator. "I spend no time on this controversy," he said in the interview. "I either do as well or as badly as I would otherwise." The developments in the inquiry occur at a time of transition for Mr. Novak. On Saturday, CNN broadcast the last program of "Capital Gang," the 16-year-old talk show on which Mr. Novak had been a commentator and a co-executive producer. In canceling the program, Jonathan Klein, president of CNN domestic operations, cited the desire to devote more time to reporting news. Mr. Klein had offered a similar rationale in canceling "Crossfire," another program that featured clashing pundits, on which Mr. Novak had been a panelist. In the interview on Tuesday, Mr. Novak said of Mr. Klein's explanation, "I don't understand it, but he's the boss." Mr. Novak has hardly hidden from public view in the midst of the Plame case. On Thursday, he traveled to Mr. Hunt's house for a party for the end of "Capital Gang." Among those on hand were Mr. Strauss, a guest on the program's pilot episode, as well as Senators Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona. Despite his former colleague's protestations, Mr. Hunt said he believed that Mr. Novak was showing some strain. "Wouldn't you?" Mr. Hunt asked. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/politics/30novak.html
if we could merge the two plame threads, they'd have more posts than Macbeth's thread. how pathetic is that?
i'm not enough of an expert to know how significant this is (but that won't stop me from leaping to conclusions!) but Valerie Plame has been listed as Joe Wilson's wife in his Who's Who entry since at least 1999. Clearly, "Valerie Plame is Joe Wilson's wife" was not a secret. Does it follow then that "Joe Wilson's wife works at the CIA on WMD" was also not a secret? perhaps not, but it certainly makes the discussion a whole lot more interesting... http://wizbangblog.com/archives/006664.php
