The grinch who stole Fitzmas?

Merry Fitzmas? Hardly: maybe that's because there's less and more to the story than the left wants to admit. Depending on whom you ask there were indictments coming down for the entire White House-- for the 'illegal war' in Iraq no less. Both the media and the left refuse to look at the reason why Libby would have been having conversations about Wilson's wife in the first place.

One thing is for sure, Lewis Libby did not 'out' a covert CIA agent.

QUESTION: Can you say whether or not you know whether Mr. Libby knew that Valerie Wilson's identity was covert and whether or not that was pivotal at all in your inability or your decision not to charge under the Intelligence Identity Protection Act?

FITZGERALD: Let me say two things. Number one, I am not speaking to whether or not Valerie Wilson was covert. And anything I say is not intended to say anything beyond this: that she was a CIA officer from January 1st, 2002, forward.

I will confirm that her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003. And all I'll say is that, look, we have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert agent. washington post

Just how bad was the damage to National Security? The correct answer is: Negligible.

WOODWARD: No, no. And this is not even a firecracker, but it's true. They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that Joe Wilson's wife was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone and there was just some embarrassment. Woodward on Larry King Live

But according to the indictment Libby certainly appears to have lied... or his testimony contradicted other statements he made and/or his own notes. This is a far cry from outing a covert CIA agent. And a farther cry from the witch-hunt the left thinks it is entitled to after so recently discovering that national security is the most important thing in the world.

QUESTION: There's a saying in Washington that it's not the crime, it's the cover up.

Can you just tell us whether if Mr. Libby had testified truthfully, would he be being charged in this crime today?

Also, how do you decide if whether or not to charge Official A?

And also, it's a little hazy I think for many of us -- you say that Valerie Plame's identity was classified, but you're making no statement as to whether she was covert.

QUESTION: Was the leaking of her identity in and of itself a crime?

FITZGERALD: OK. I think you have three questions there. I'm trying to remember them in order. I'll go backwards.

And all I'll say is that if national defense information which is involved because her affiliation with the CIA, whether or not she was covert, was classified, if that was intentionally transmitted, that would violate the statute known as Section 793, which is the Espionage Act.

That is a difficult statute to interpret. It's a statute you ought to carefully apply.

I think there are people out there who would argue that you would never use that to prosecute the transmission of classified information, because they think that would convert that statute into what is in England the Official Secrets Act.

Let me back up. The average American may not appreciate that there's no law that's specifically just says, "If you give classified information to somebody else, it is a crime." washington post

The only laws that appear to be broken here are that of conflicting testimony and common sense. The fact that Fitzgerald is not indicting Libby or anyone else for disclosing classified information should tell you something.

Many of the talking heads who know Libby, both right and left, are saying that it is very unlike Libby to lie or be in such an obvious contradiction so as to create a situation of perjury. From all accounts he is a sharp lawyer who just wouldn't out and out lie like that. But if he did perjure himself, (and that will be determined by a jury of his peers), then he should be punished. I would expect no less. (You might also notice that this White House has said all along that Fitzgerald is doing his job as a prosecutor-- let the chips fall where they may.)

What lies at the bottom of all this is the fact that Joseph Wilson's wife, working at the CIA, arranged to have him sent to Niger to discredit the Bush administration. My argument is that this puts her outside the purview of her employment. It is an act that moves them both from non-partisan civil servants to political actors and I have to think somehow, somewhere crosses the line of nepotism.

It also begs the question, why did the CIA, 1) allow Wilson to go to Niger at the behest of his wife, supposedly a covert agent, and 2) allow Wilson to go public exposing that covert agent to a higher level of public scutiny, and 3) why didn't they try harder to keep Novak from publishing her name, but instead confirmed her involvement!

Joseph Wilson is guilty of the very thing he charges Bush with. Manipulating intelligence. He went to Niger, not to actually investigate anything, which he was obviously not qualified to do anyway, but to check out this 'crazy story' as his wife put it. He didn't mean to actually do any real fact finding, he went with a purpose in mind. Distorting intelligence? Predetermined analysis? This is precisely the purpose of his trip.

The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion. washington post

When Joseph Wilson returned he lied about his trip. He lied about the fact that he went at the suggestion of his wife (twice), about what he had found there, and about the conclusions he came to from his trip.

Wilson said that he knew that the documents about Iraq and yellowcake were forged because the, "dates were wrong and the names were wrong," yet he had never been in a position (or shouldn't have been) to examine or see those CIA documents. (The CIA themselves didn't have the documents until some months after.) He tried to intimate that he went to Niger at the Vice President's behest and it was reported as such in the NY Times and picked up by other press sources. (Which prompted the Vice President's office to ask, 'who is this guy?' after he went public.)

The Senate Intelligence Committee, the CIA, and British intelligence all concluded that there was more evidence, not less, to believe that Iraq had attempted to gain nuclear materials after Wilson's trip.

So is disclosing this fact wrong? I don't think so. Not when you have CIA employees and their spouses playing partisan political games. The CIA is not supposed to be a partisan organization and should not be used by its employees to try and discredit the executive branch. Let the chips fall where they may, by all means find the truth, but don't send partisan hacks to confirm predetermined conclusions (that turn out to be wrong) about whether Iraq attempted to acquire nuclear materials. Political employees of the Executive branch have that luxury but supposedly not the civil service.

He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials, which should have been on the documents.

Hmm, confused about the difference between what you have lived and what you have read? ...

justoneminute

In my humble opinion, 'Plame-Gate' is a sorry affair brought about by Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame as much as by the White House. Joseph Wilson should have never been sent to Niger. I am not saying that because Valerie Plame worked for the CIA that Joseph Wilson should not be allowed to voice his opinion or exercise his political free speech, what I'm saying is that it was not ethical for him to use his wife's 'covert' position in the CIA to do so.

Fitzgerald is a prosecutor who goes by the book and calls it like he sees it according to the law. Fitzgerald turned in his indictments, he explained his mandate, and he explained his rationale for indicting Libby. His mandate did not extend to the CIA and does not encompass the political actions of Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson, nor should it. I do however feel that Joseph Wilson and his wife crossed the line from non-partisan employees (in the case of Plame) to political actors. This is why there are rules, or should be, about nepotism.

QUESTION: Just to go back to your comments about the damage that was done by disclosing Valerie Wilson's identify, there are some critics who have suggested that she was not your traditional covert agent in harm's way, that she was working, essentially, a desk job at Langley.

Just to answer those critics, can you elaborate on, aside from the fact that some of her neighbors may now know that she was -- and the country, for that matter -- that she was a CIA officer, what jeopardy, what harm was there by disclosing her identity?

FITZGERALD: I will say this. I won't touch the specific damage assessment of what specific damage was caused by her compromise -- I won't touch that with a 10-foot pole. I'll let the CIA speak to that, if they wish or not.

I will say this: To the CIA people who are going out at a time that we need more human intelligence, I think everyone agrees with that, at a time when we need our spy agencies to have people work there, I think just the notion that someone's identity could be compromised lightly, to me compromises the ability to recruit people and say, "Come work for us, come work for the government, come be trained, come invest your time, come work anonymously here or wherever else, go do jobs for the benefit of the country for which people will not thank you, because they will not know," they need to know that we will not cast their anonymity aside lightly.

FITZGERALD: And that's damage. But I'm not going to go beyond that.

[H]egemonic Word count: 1811