Who Knew What When?

Josh Marshall parses Bob Novak and Scott McClellan on the Plame affair. Conclusions? The leaker knew Plame was covert (contra the current legalistic spin) and the White House knew who the leaker was from the get-go. Fairly persuasive on both points.

Comments

[Andrew]

Ah, another special prosecutor! We can anticipate a long and inconclusive investigation, while meantime we choose our political leadership by, you know...elections.

It will be commonplace to say that the Democrats "seek a partisan advantage here"-- but that is not even really true...it's just make-work for lawyers. We don't sponser race-cars in our culture-- but we sure sponser attorneys.

The Hungarians are getting off at 4 million...and they get a race car! What will this cost? What will we get?

[PapayaSF]

As far as I can tell, this is a tempest in a teapot. I doubt it will get anywhere. It's notable mainly for the striking hypocrisy of the left, which has taken a pause from its decades-long crusade against the CIA to suddenly be all concerned about protecting the identity of an agent. Yeah, sure.

[Andrew]

A question of judgment:

A patrolman finds a wallet in the gutter-- ID, but no cash. Trace the owner, he says his pocket was picked, didn't see the guy.

Probably a middling serious crime was committed. (Maybe not-- the owner could have blown his pay-check on a bottle and a 'ho, and needs a story for the wife.)

Now should the police conduct a thorough investigation to find that perp, and bring him to justice? 'Cause, you know, pick-pocketing is a serious crime? (It is.)

It is imaginable that Novak made the story up, had another source. But probably a middling serious crime was committed.

Is is good judgment to spare no effort on this one?

[Jon H]

"But probably a middling serious crime was committed."

It's a felony. Besides that, it damages our resources for investigating WMD.

[Andrew]

Jon

It IS a serious crime-- so is pick-pocketing.

How likely is is that this investigation will serve justice? What will have to be done, to out a reporter's souce?

If you CATCH someone slipping data to a journalist, he should be prosecuted. If your only evidence that it happened is the story...a question of judgment.

[thoreau]

Well, as anybody who opposed the war in Iraq can tell you, this was obviously a horrendous breach of national security. We must spare no expense to bring this person to justice, and when all is said and done we'll have clear evidence that people at the highest levels of power were responsible for this crime.

And as anybody who supported the war in Iraq can tell you, this is a trivial thing at best. She wasn't an important CIA asset, there was very little cover to protect, and it's all just a crusade against the Bush administration.

So, let's all break out our favorite cliches, reiterate our entrenched positions, and pretend that we're actually engaging one another in a discussion.

You know, like we do in all the other threads even tangentially related to invading Iraq.

[Andrew]

Thoreau

I was inclined to take the same attitude as you, and several times gave this thread a pass.

But the two questions of special prosecutors, and whistle-blowing ARE interesting.

Here is my thinking. Special prosecutors are bunk, and the law authorising them should be canned. Whistle-blowing should only be prosecuted-- or investigated-- when evidence that it occured, independent of a reporter's story, surfaces, or is likely to.

Novak may not have had an admin source. He could have come by a surmise any number of ways, and fictionally "sourced" it to the administration. And we will likely never know. If we do know, a reporter's associations for several months (and the behavior of several admin officials) will have to be scrutinised...sound appetising?

The whistle-blowing crime most resembles an unattended theft-- you know it happened because the goods are missng. You either catch the guy with the goods, or catch him in the act. The goods here are invisible, so you catch him in the act...or you don't.

Whistle-blowing is not trivial. For one thing, foreign intellegence agents commonly mis-represent themselves as journalists.

[Dan]

"But probably a middling serious crime was committed."

It's a felony.

So is conspiracy to jaywalk.

[Douglas Fletcher]

Is it really an affair if nobody took their clothes off?

[joe]

thank you for the link, alex. now that I know Palme and her husband were in a magazine, the likelihood of people in White House blowing agents' cover for political reasons doesn't scare me at all.

[thoreau]

Gene-

Was Plame's husband an ambassador when she told him of her affiliation, or was he in some other job that involved a security clearance?

I honestly don't know the answer, I just know that at some point in his life Plame's husband was an ambassador, and ambassadors usually have access to a certain amount of classified information. I also know that many (but most certainly not all) ambassadors have had other jobs requiring a security clearance.

So, if he had a security clearance at the time that she told him of her status then it might not be a breach on the same scale as telling a reporter. Particularly since normally people tell a reporter something so that the info will be widely disseminated, whereas normally people tell a date something for the benefit of the date and nobody else.

[Howard Owens]

thoreau, revealing classified information involves more than just having proper clearance.

If I work for the Air Force and I know where a nuke is stored, and you work for the State Department in accounting, I can't tell you were that nuke is -- even if we both have Top Secret clearances. Why? Because in this scenario, you don't have a need to know. You would only have a need to know if it was your job to account for all of the nukes in this country.

When I was in the Air Force, I couldn't tell my brother, who was a major in the Air Force working in intelligence, what I knew about my bases nuke capabilities ... even though my brother and I had the same level of security clearance and he was an officer dealing with even more senstitive material than I was. He just didn't have the requisit need to know.

Again, the key phrase in any exchange of protected data is "need to know." It is a requirement for sharing secrets on par and equal to clearance.

So, if Plame was working undercover in Russia (I'm just making this up) and Wilson was ambassador to Brazil (I'm just making this up), then there is not likely any "need to know" for Wilson to know Plame was undercover.

Of course, this bit of the story is an unknown known. We don't know what Wilson had a need to know about Plame, but we do know that he needed a need to know to know it.

[Kevin Carson]

thoreau,

I doubt it was a very serious breach of security. But it was very likely a deliberate reprisal by the Rove/Feith machine against an embarassing whistle-blower. They deserve to have their scrotes nailed to the wall for it, the same way Sid Blumenthal deserved that treatment for publicly defaming Clinton's critics with their confidential records.

[Kevin Carson]

And BTW, PapayaSF, thoreau pretty much hit it on the head about hypocrisy being a bipartisan phenomenon.

Leaving aside your assumption that Democrats or liberals are coextensive with "the Left" (a pretty tame Left), it's true that many liberal Democrats are outraged about the kind of stuff they wouldn't be under similar circumstances. But then, diehard Bush supporters are *failing* to be outraged about stuff that they'd have gone ballistic over if that godless Clinton had done it.

Just goes to show that there are a lot of whores in EVERY party who only care about cheerleading for their own side.

[thoreau]

Howard-

Thanks for the explanation of "need to know."

Kevin-

I think it's inevitable that this incident, and the results of any investigation, will be viewed through a partisan lens. The only way to get some sort of consensus would be if somebody was caught on tape saying to a co-conspirator "Wilson crossed the line when he criticized our policies! I'm going to make sure his wife never works in an undercover job ever again. We'd better hope that reporter keeps his mouth shut about our identity, however, because revealing this info is a hanging offense."

Otherwise, one side would inevitably claim that (a) the leak was no big deal (hence we need the guilty party to admit he committed a serious felony) and (b) the leak was done with malice.

Or else a tape of Plame saying to somebody at a dinner party "Yeah, I work for the CIA. There's no law against me naming my employer, I just can't discuss the details of the info I work with. But there's no danger to me, since I never go in the field."

Otherwise one side would always insist that this was a serious breach that endangered her life.

(Disclaimer: Not being in the intelligence business I have no idea what the actual laws and customs are regarding this sort of info. But neither does the other 99% of the population. That hasn't stopped any of us from commenting on it, and I'm just observing that without some very specific admissions by key players there's no way that partisans will change their minds. Of course, it could turn out that the in reality both of the above statements run counter to the facts, in which case the partisans will NEVER be satisfied.)

[R C Dean]

Why are we paying multiple lawyers to investigate all this when we already know the one witness who has all the answers? The whole damn thing is an obvious and transparent charade. If this is so damned important, subpoena Novak and force him to testify. If its not important enough to subpoena Novak, then its not important.

[Will Spencer]

An American cannot really be an undercover CIA "operative".

"Operatives" are, by definition, foreigners.

Americans can be analysts or agents or janitors.

If you are an American, the presumtion is that you are on the same side as the American government, represented in this case by the CIA.

How can an America be an undercover American?

[Ruthless]

Quickly scanning the comments, I didn't see reference to Spy vs. Spy in Mad Magazine.

Mad made the point that few get even after all these years:
It's silly to invest much emotionally in either the white or the black spy.

[Gene 6-Pack]

Plame told her now hubby of her affiliation between their first and second kiss.
Was he the only man she ever kissed?
I would like to fire the dumb SOB who paid good money for what is the most incompetent bit of investigation extant - the yellow cake "Investigation."

[Zathras]

Thoreau and Howard Owens are making this more complicated than it needs to be. The issue is not whether Wilson knew of his wife's status in the CIA (he almost certainly did) or anything about the secret projects she worked on (there is no evidence that he did). The issue is whether Plame had a covert status that was compromised by White House staffers in a deliberate effort to discredit Wilson's story that his Niger uranium investigation was requested by the Vice President's office.

I have to say that is the way it looks to me. The business about whether the (as yet unnamed publicly) officials who sought to spread this story knew about Plame's covert status is just more Clintonian hairsplitting. If this administration had been really interested in repudiating its predecessor's lamentable ethical legacy it would have said months ago that, yes, Wilson had been requested to undertake his Niger mission, what he found undercut the Iraq uranium assertion in the State of the Union, and we screwed up in letting that assertion in the speech. If administration officials had done that this whole business would be ancient history by now.

[Jean Bart]

As I understand it, don't at least a few reporters know the source of the leak, because they leaker approached them first?

[Alex]

Har.

[Alex]

Joe, the point isn't that being in a magazine is a bad thing, it's that being in fucking VANITY FAIR in a cornball spy disguise after getting your knickers in a bunge over your blown cover that's fishy. Sorry, Wilson just comes off as a great big publicity whore and a baby to boot. The fact is, you have no idea what kind of agent was Valerie Plame and neither do I -- who knows if "national security" was compromised one iota?

The Vanity Fair piece also uncritically rehashes the phony yellowcake/Niger claim that Bush never made to begin with. It remains unobvious how "outing" ms. plame is meant to constitute revenge.

[Alex]

"And my wife has made it very clear that?she has authorized me to say this?she would rather chop off her right arm than say anything to the press and she will not allow herself to be photographed "

Judging from her 2-page pictorial spread in Vanity Fair Ms. Plame appears to have both arms attached and therefore appears to have told a fib.

[thoreau]

Let's take a poll:

Question 1: Was it a serious offense for somebody to leak Plame's identity to the press?

(a) yes
(b) no
(c) I don't know

Question 2: Are Plame's appearances in the press relevant to this matter?

(a) yes
(b) no
(c) I'm not sure

Question 3: Should we have invaded Iraq?

(a) yes
(b) no
(c) I don't know

Question 4: Will we be able to predict people's responses to question 3 based on their responses to questions 1 and 2?

(a) yes
(b) no

My responses:

1. (c) I don't know
2. (c) I'm not sure
3. (b) no
4. (a) yes

[John Hood]

Plame's "secret identify" was put at risk by herself and her husband, whose supposedly clandestine "investigation" in Africa was exposed by himself (unintentionally as a sham, IMHO) before the alleged "leak." Given that Wilson's wife was likely involved in the decision to send him, his subsequent behavior was completely irresponsible, as was his selection in the first place. Nor is it clear, despite assertions to the contrary, that the leak was felonious, given that the relevant statute has a number of tests that may not have been met here.

Mostly, though, I agree with Thoreau -- this disagreement simply leads back to the same old Iraq-campaign debate.

[Topdogchad]

OK I'll play along......granted I dont know much of the relevant facts other than what I've seen on this thread but polls are fun so here goes....

1. Yes - It is even more than serious if she were outed by the current admin. for the reasons claimed.

2. Yes - to claim you've been "compromised" (i.e. put in physical danger) due to this and then appear in VF the way she did suggests a serious disconnect somewhere. I'd say it's relevant.

3. Yes - no..wait a minute..let me rephrase....
HELL YES!!!! WHY'D THEY WAIT SO DAMN LONG FUCK THE U.N. WE BETTER NOT STOP WITH IRAQ YES!!!

4. No - apparently

[HH]

Oh good Lord... Josh Marshall goes back to one of the least-persuasive arguments of 2003, his lame-ass research on Novak's use of "analyst" which didn't prove a damn thing other than Marshall was flailing around for something to show that he was right. If Marshall persuades you based on this, I have some bridges to sell you.