So much for Joe Wilson's credibility - He's a proven Liar.

[fossten]

Joe Wilson in a Bind

By Clinton W. Taylor

Published 10/31/2005 12:07:45 AM

Last week I had the privilege of being lied to personally by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who spoke here at Stanford last Monday.

The fact that Joe Wilson is economical with the truth probably won't surprise many Spectator readers. Nonetheless I assure you the horse I am beating, although it may be lying in the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times, is far from dead.

But this week there's new evidence of his lies to flog him with. When the indictment of Scooter Libby was unsealed on Friday, it finally placed one of Wilson's oft-repeated fabrications beyond the most hopeful partisan's credibility.

First the lie: In the Q&A after his talk last Monday, Wilson answered a question of mine with essentially the same statement about the origin of his mission to Niger that he relates in his L.A. Times op-ed:

Valerie was an innocent in this whole affair. Although there were suggestions that she was behind the decision to send me to Niger, the CIA told Newsday just a week after the Novak article appeared that "she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment." The CIA repeated the same statement to every reporter thereafter.



The Newsday article he refers to notes:

A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."



This has been Wilson's story ever since the issue came up: he maintains his wife had nothing to do the CIA's decision to send him. It's important to his narrative that "outing" his wife was a bolt from the blue designed to intimidate and punish him.

The more plausible explanation is that the information came out because it cast Wilson's mission and his credibility in a new light. Evidence supports this interpretation. While the CIA may back Wilson's account to reporters, it has now twice contradicted him when the chips were down and the threat of perjury loomed.

The first contradiction, of course, occurred back in July 2004, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence devoted a few pages of its report on WMD intelligence failures to point out that Valerie Plame came up with the idea of sending her husband to Niger. Both a memorandum Plame wrote and the testimony of a CIA officer show that Wilson's trip was her idea. (The report can be downloaded here, and the relevant sections are on page 39, 40, and 72.)

That should have put an end to Joe Wilson's credibility, but it wasn't good enough for the diehard Wilson fans, like most of the audience at Stanford last week, or the editorial staff of the L.A. Times. But now the indictment of Scooter Libby has proved yet again that Wilson is full of it.

In order to claim that Libby had perjured himself and obstructed justice, the grand jury goes to great lengths to show how and when he had actually learned about the origin of Wilson's trip. To do so, they refer on page 4 of the indictment to a conversation between Libby and a "senior officer of the CIA" on June 11, 2003:

[Libby] was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.



And again on page 12 of the indictment:

[Libby] was informed by a senior CIA officer that Wilson's wife was employed by the CIA and that the idea of sending him to Niger originated with her.



This puts Wilson's fan club in a bind: either Wilson is lying, or the indictment is. Which is it? If it's the latter, then perhaps Scooter Libby didn't know what the indictment said he knew, and the indictment ought to be thrown out or at least amended.

Alas, most of the world sees it's the former. Wilson's lie, of course, wouldn't excuse any crime Libby might have committed, but it ought to be enough to prevent Wilson from ever being taken seriously again.


Clinton W. Taylor (clinton_w_taylor@hotmail.com) is a lawyer and a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Stanford.

 

[fossten]

More lies...

The Incredibles
The only debate about Joseph Wilson's credibility is the one taking place at the Washington Post and the New York Times.
by Stephen F. Hayes
10/25/2005 2:30:00 PM

ON JUNE12, 2003, when he first published a story about the matter, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus became the second journalist to have been used by Ambassador Joseph Wilson to peddle bogus information about his February 2002 trip to Niger.

Wilson told Pincus that he had debunked Bush administration claims that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger. He was specific and apparently seemed credible. And Pincus bought it all.

He wrote:

Armed with information purportedly showing that Iraqi officials had been seeking to buy uranium in Niger one or two years earlier, the CIA in early February 2002 dispatched a retired U.S. ambassador to the country to investigate the claims, according to the senior U.S. officials and the former government official, who is familiar with the event. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity and on condition that the name of the former ambassador not be disclosed.

During his trip, the CIA's envoy spoke with the president of Niger and other Niger officials mentioned as being involved in the Iraqi effort, some of whose signatures purportedly appeared on the documents.

After returning to the United States, the envoy reported to the CIA that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said. Among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong," the former U.S. government official said.

There is one problem with this: It's wrong. Wilson lied and lied repeatedly. His central contention--that he had seen documents about the alleged sale and determined that

they were forgeries--was a fabrication. We know this because Wilson took his trip in February 2002 and the U.S. government did not receive those documents until October 2002. It could not have happened the way Wilson described it to Pincus.

Wilson was later confronted about his misrepresentations. He told investigators from the Senate Intelligence Committee that he may have "misspoken." CNN's Wolf Blitzer asked Wilson specifically about these obvious discrepancies, citing Pincus's June 12, 2003, Washington Post story. Wilson decided to share the blame. He pointed the finger squarely at Walter Pincus:

Yes, I am male, I'm over 50. By definition, I can misspeak. I have gone back and taken a look at this particular article. It refers to an unidentified former government official. If it is referring to me, it is a misattribution, of facts that were already in the public domain and had been so since March. My first public statement on this, in my own words, was on July 6." [emphasis added]

The following day, Wilson was confronted again, this time by CNN's Paula Zahn. This time he played dumb before once again blamed the reporters who retold his phony story.

Zahn: I want you to respond to that very specific allegation in the addendum to the Senate report, which basically says that your public comments not only are incorrect, but have no basis in fact.

Wilson: Well, I'm not exactly sure what public comments they're referring to. If they're referring to leaks or sources, unidentified government sources in articles that appeared before my article in the New York Times [July 6, 2003] appeared, those are either misquotes or misattributions if they're attributed to me.


It was a stunning reversal. Wilson had turned on the very people who had given him prominence and had trusted that his story was accurate.

All of which brings us to the very bizarre story in today's Washington Post. The article is a rather transparent attempt to rehabilitate Joseph Wilson, casting the current debate about his credibilityas a battle between Wilson's antiwar supporters and his pro-war critics. It fails.

IT FAILS BECAUSE outside of the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times, there is no real debate over Joseph Wilson's credibility. He doesn't have any. It is something that Walter Pincus should understand well, having been one of the earliest peddlers of Wilson's fabrications. And one might think that Pincus would be angry at Wilson after the former ambassador accused him of sloppy reporting to cover up Wilson's own misrepresentations.

But one would be wrong. Pincus is the co-author--along with Dana Milbank--of this morning's amusing attempt to reframe the Wilson story.

"To his backers, Joseph C. Wilson IV is a brave whistle-blower wronged by the Bush administration," claim Pincus and Milbank. "To his critics, he is a partisan who spouts unreliable information."

And why has Wilson's credibility become an issue? A reasonable outside observer might think that Wilson's credibility is an issue because, well, he lied about his findings. That doesn't work for the Post reporters. Wilson's claims are once again at issue because "Republicans [are] preparing a defense of the administration."

The Post report continues: "Wilson's central assertion--disputing

President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger--has been validated by postwar weapons inspections. And his charge that the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq has proved potent."

It is the 60 Minutes defense all over again: Fake, but accurate. Yet there are two problems with these claims.

First, it is far from clear that Bush's claim has been invalidated by postwar inspections. Weapons inspections in 2003 and 2004 have little bearing on whether Iraq sought uranium in 1999. And the British review of prewar intelligence (known as the Butler report) concluded that the claim was--and remains--solid. Even Wilson's own reporting about a 1999 meeting between Nigerien government officials and an Iraqi delegation seemed to corroborate earlier reports, dating back to October 2001, that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

More problematic: Wilson's "central assertion" was not a soft, subjective claim that Bush's statement was incorrect. His central assertion was that he had seen the documents that proved the Bush administration had lied. Wilson's story was compelling not because he had simply come to a different conclusion than the Bush administration, but because he alone could demonstrate that the administration's claim was built on a lie.

So how does the Post deal with Wilson's fabrications? Very politely. Wilson "armed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair" and when later confronted with his misrepresentations "had to admit he had misspoken." But none of this was important, according to the Post. "That inaccuracy wasnot central to Wilson's claims about Niger, but his critics have used it to cast doubt on his veracity about more important questions, such as whether his wife recommended him for the 2002 trip . . . "

Come again? The fact that he misrepresented his findings and invented a story about evidence he had never seen is "not central to his claims about Niger?"

IN ANY CASE, Pincus hasn't always believed that the involvement of Wilson's wife was a "more important question." On August 8, 2005, he wrote an article with this headline: "Side Issue in the Plame Case: Who Sent Her Spouse to Africa?"

And what about Wilson's claims that his wife had nothing to do with sending him? When Time magazine interviewed Wilson for an article published July 17, 2003, the Time reporters confronted him with those allegations. Wilson, according to Time, "angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa." Said Wilson: "That is bull----. That is absolutely not the case."

Today's Post article once again plays this as an ambiguity: The reporters note a Senate report that suggests she was involved, but also cite anonymous CIA officials who "have always said" that "Plame's superiors chose Wilson for the Niger trip and she only relayed their decision."

Two points: By the CIA's own account, Mrs. Wilson was "involved" in sending her husband to Niger. So his denial is, again, false. Furthermore, the Senate Intelligence Committee report makes clear that Mrs. Wilson was instrumental in facilitating her husband's trip to Niger. She suggested him for the job, even writing a memo to her superiors detailing his qualifications for the mission. She introduced him at the subsequent meeting about the trip. And, upon his return, she was present for his debriefing, which was conducted by two CIA officials in their home.

The Post piece closes by citing "another item of dispute": The claim that Wilson was dispatched to Niger by Vice President Dick Cheney. In a recent interview with the Post, Wilson claims: "I never said the vice president sent me or ordered me sent."

But in his May 6, 2003, column in the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof wrote: "I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged." Was that Wilson? We cannot be certain. But both Kristof and Wilson have acknowledged that he was a primary source for the piece.

Wilson further claimed that Cheney had received Wilson's report--allegedly debunking the claim--and had chosen to ignore it. From the New Republic, June 30, 2003: "The CIA circulated the ambassador's report to the vice president's office, the ambassador confirms to TNR." Wilson added: "They knew the Niger story was a flatout lie."

TODAY'S Post story is one in a long stream of news reports in both the Post and the New York Times which have given credence to Wilson's bogus claims. For more than a year--from May 2003 until the release ofthe Senate Intelligence Committee report on July 7, 2004--the mainstream press regurgitated Wilson's fraudulent narrative as if it was true.

Here was Pincus on July 6, 2003, the first on-the-record interview with Wilson about his Niger trip. "Joseph C. Wilson, the retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons, has said for the first time publicly that U.S. and British officials ignored his findings and exaggerated the public case for invading Iraq.

Wilson, whose 23-year career included senior positions in Africa and Iraq, where he was acting ambassador in 1991, said the false allegations that Iraq was trying to buy uranium oxide from Niger about three years ago were used by President Bush and senior administration officials as a central piece of evidence to support their assertions that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program."

The New York Times, too, assumed that Wilson's version of events was true: "The agent is the wife of Joseph C. Wilson 4th, a former ambassador to Gabon. It was Mr. Wilson who, more than a year and a half ago, concluded in a report to the CIA that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein tried to buy uranium ore in Niger in an effort to build nuclear arms. But his report was ignored, and Ambassador Wilson has been highly critical of how the administration handled intelligence claims regarding Iraq's nuclear weapons programs, suggesting that Mr. Bush's aides and Vice President Dick Cheney's office tried to inflate the threat."

More troubling, though, is the credulous reporting that came after the Senate Intelligence Committee report had discredited Wilson. The New York Times, in an editorial on July 19, 2005, argues as if the Senate report had never been issued:

"In July 2003, Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article in The Times that described how he had been sent by the C.I.A. to investigate a report that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. He said he had found no evidence to support the claim of a uranium purchase, or even a serious attempt to negotiate one, and that he had reported this to Washington. That is entirely accurate."

Or, more recently, the July 27, 2005, Washington Post: "In a 2002 trip to Niger at the request of the CIA, Wilson found no evidence to support allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from that African country and reported back to the agency in February 2002. But nearly a year later, Bush asserted in his State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, attributing it to British, not U.S., intelligence."

But those were not Wilson' findings. And he wasn't sent by Vice President Cheney. And he was recommended by his wife. And he never did see the forgeries. And his report never was circulated to senior Bush administration policymakers. And on and on it goes.

The only debate about Joseph Wilson's credibility is the one apparently taking place at the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

 

[fossten]

Another peek at Joe Wilson's lies...

The nine lives of Joe Wilson's reputation

Weekly Standard, The, July 25, 2005

That sound you hear is THE SCRAPBOOK gagging at the images we saw on television last week. We're speaking, of course, about the spectacle of leading Democrats and sympathetic media types performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV's moribund reputation.

Sad but true, Wilson has seen yet another spike in what he once dubbed his "Notoriety Quotient." This, thanks to new developments in the ongoing investigation into who in the Bush administration, in the aftermath of an op-ed by Wilson attacking the honesty of the White House, told reporters in July 2003 that Mrs. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, one Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent.

When Newsweek discovered emails suggesting senior Bush adviser Karl Rove had discussed Plame with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper, for example, Wilson hustled to the nearest available television camera--in this case one from NBC News--to say that, while he'd "never spoken to Karl Rove," the man was nonetheless guilty of a flagrant "abuse of power." What the "abuse of power" may be, Wilson didn't say, perhaps overwhelmed with emotion: "I'm really very saddened by all this."

So are we. We're saddened--though not really surprised--by the amazing ability of Democrats to forget that last summer the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence thoroughly shredded Wilson's credibility.

Take New York senator Charles Schumer, for instance, who held a joint press conference with Wilson in the Capitol last Thursday. "This man has served his country," Schumer said. What's happened to him since, said Schumer, groping for a novel literary allusion, is downright "Kafkaesque." Whereupon a reporter pointed out that Wilson's credibility is seriously in doubt.

"I would urge you to go back and read the record," Wilson said.

A capital idea! What the record shows is that almost every public pronouncement of Joe Wilson's from the spring of 2003 forward is either an exaggeration or a falsehood or both. The essence of his tale was that he had selflessly gone to Niger and personally debunked reports that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium there to reconstitute its nuclear program. But his account didn't bear up under close scrutiny.

I. Wilson denied that his Feb. 2002 mission to Niger to investigate reports of an Iraqi uranium deal was suggested by his wife, who worked in the CIA's counterproliferation division. In fact, according to the bipartisan findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Wilson's wife "offered up his name" at a staff meeting, then wrote a memo to her division's deputy chief saying her husband was the best man for the job.

II. Wilson insisted both that he had debunked reports of Iraqi interest in Niger's uranium and that Vice President Cheney, whose interest in the subject reputedly prompted Wilson's trip, had to have been informed of this. The Intelligence Committee found otherwise when it questioned Wilson under oath:

On at least two occasions [Wilson] admitted that he had no direct
knowledge to support some of his claims.... For example, when asked
how he "knew" that the Intelligence Community had rejected the
possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book,
[Wilson] told Committee staff that his assertion may have involved "a
little literary flair."

III. In the spring of 2003, after a purported "memorandum of agreement" between Iraq and Niger was shown to be a forgery, Wilson began to tell reporters, on background, that he'd known the documents were forgeries all along. But the Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA (and Wilson) had been unaware of the documents until eight months after his trip. Moreover, it found that "no one believed" Wilson's trip "added a great deal of new information to the Iraq-Niger uranium story." It found that "for most analysts, the former ambassador's report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal."

IV. Wilson's confidence that Cheney knew about his trip served as the basis for his accusation, passed along uncritically by the New Republic, that it "was a flat-out lie" for President Bush to have accused Saddam Hussein of trying to obtain uranium in Niger. He told Meet the Press interviewer Andrea Mitchell, "The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there."

The Intel Committee's findings: "Because CIA analysts did not believe that [Wilson's] report added any new information to clarify the issue ... CIA's briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report, despite the Vice President's previous questions about the issue."

As Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Sen. Pat Roberts concluded in the "Additional Views" section of his report: "The former ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading."

Meanwhile, a grand jury still sits in the inquiry into whether someone in the administration broke the law by leaking Plame's name. We hope the outcome doesn't hinge on the reliability of testimony from her husband.

COPYRIGHT 2005 News America Incorporated
COPYRIGHT 2005 Gale Group

My question is, why hasn't he been called to testify? I'll bet they call him at Libby's trial.

 

[captainalias]

Funny how Bush has backpedaled on his statements about the Plame affair. First, he promised to fire anyone associated with the leak. Then he changed his story, and said that he would only fire people who would be guilty. I guess he wasn't so confident about his staff.

 

[fossten]

Funny how Bush has backpedaled on his statements about the Plame affair. First, he promised to fire anyone associated with the leak. Then he changed his story, and said that he would only fire people who would be guilty. I guess he wasn't so confident about his staff.

Funny how the whole time everybody was trying to get Rove, and he hasn't been indicted and probably won't be. In fact, if you read the prosecutor's statements, he clearly said not to infer that anyone outed Plame, because the indictment found no evidence of that.

By the way, the ONLY person that's even ACCUSED of wrongdoing in this case is Libby, and he's resigned.

Case closed.

 

[captainalias]

Funny how the whole time everybody was trying to get Rove, and he hasn't been indicted and probably won't be. In fact, if you read the prosecutor's statements, he clearly said not to infer that anyone outed Plame, because the indictment found no evidence of that.

By the way, the ONLY person that's even ACCUSED of wrongdoing in this case is Libby, and he's resigned.

Case closed.

The case isn't closed because the investigation hasn't concluded.

 

[Calabrio]

The case isn't closed because the fishing expedition continues.

But this isn't a complicated case. The only indictments that resulted from the investigation weren't because of the information released, but because it was felt that Scooter mis-remebered some of the testimony he stated.

None of the indictments had anything to do with releasing Wilson's nepotistic wife's identity. That wasn't illegal. And it doesn't take 2 more years to figure that out.

 

[captainalias]

The case isn't closed because the fishing expedition continues.

But this isn't a complicated case. The only indictments that resulted from the investigation weren't because of the information released, but because it was felt that Scooter mis-remebered some of the testimony he stated.

None of the indictments had anything to do with releasing Wilson's nepotistic wife's identity. That wasn't illegal. And it doesn't take 2 more years to figure that out.

Why wasn't it illegal?

 

[Calabrio]

Why wasn't it illegal?

If it was illegal, why weren't either of them indicted? Not only were they not convicted yet, but they weren't even indicted. As it stands, they aren't even going to be prosecuted.

But here is a more complete explanation:
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200510190902.asp


October 19, 2005, 9:02 a.m.
Indicted? For What?
In Plamegate, has anyone read the Espionage Act lately?

As speculation mounts that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will soon seek indictments against Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, or other Bush administration officials in the Plamegate investigation, there is still no clear idea on what anyone might be indicted for.

While defense lawyers involved in the case have carefully studied the two statutes most frequently mentioned as possible grounds for charges — the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act and the 1917 Espionage Act — some informed sources who follow the investigation find it difficult to believe that either could become the basis for prosecution.

One former intelligence official suggests that most of the speculation that charges might be brought under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act was the result of a misunderstanding in the press. "The Identities Protection thing, I don't think, was ever a likely act to be cited," the official told National Review Online Tuesday. "It's been misrepresented by a variety of people that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to look into that particular act, but that's not the way it works."

Instead, the former official explained, the original CIA referral of the Plame case was a somewhat routine, nonspecific matter. "When the agency has reason to believe that classified information has entered into the news media, it is required to notify the Justice Department to look into it," the former official says. "That happens frequently — about once a week. But they don't say to the Justice Department, 'And here are the laws that apply...' It's sort of poor form to tell Justice Department lawyers what laws apply."

Nevertheless, the official says, for many months press speculation about the case centered on the exceedingly hard-to-prove Identities Protection law. "People have, in the early coverage of this, leapt to the conclusion that that was the applicable law," the official says. "But I think that was never the likely issue."

That leaves the Espionage Act, originally passed during World War I, as the other law that might be a basis for a Fitzgerald prosecution. Last Saturday, the Washington Post reported that "some lawyers in the case think Fitzgerald may no longer be interested in proving whether Plame's name was illegally leaked to reporters" under the Identities Protection law, because that is simply too hard to prove; instead, the paper reported, "the lawyers, who based their opinions on the kinds of questions Fitzgerald is asking and not on firsthand knowledge, think the special prosecutor may be headed in a different direction. They said Fitzgerald could be trying to establish that a group of White House officials violated the Espionage Act, which prohibits the disclosure of classified material, or that they engaged in a conspiracy to discredit Wilson in part by identifying Plame."

But there are questions about whether the Espionage Act provides an appropriate basis on which to charge administration officials in the Plame matter. The crimes set forth in the act are clearly defined and, while some of them seem archaic today, do not appear to closely apply to the Plamegate affair. For example, the act prescribes punishment of up to 10 years in prison for:

Whoever, for the purpose of obtaining information respecting the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information is to be used to the injury of the United States, or to the advantage of any foreign nation, goes upon, enters, flies over, or otherwise obtains information concerning any vessel, aircraft, work of defense, navy yard, naval station, submarine base, fueling station, fort, battery, torpedo station, dockyard, canal, railroad, arsenal, camp, factory, mine, telegraph, telephone, wireless, or signal station, building, office, research laboratory or station or other place connected with the national defense owned or constructed, or in progress of construction by the United States or under the control of the United States, or of any of its officers, departments, or agencies, or within the exclusive jurisdiction of the United States, or any place in which any vessel, aircraft, arms, munitions, or other materials or instruments for use in time of war are being made, prepared, repaired, stored, or are the subject of research or development, under any contract or agreement with the United States, or any department or agency thereof, or with any person on behalf of the United States, or otherwise on behalf of the United States, or any prohibited place so designated by the President by proclamation in time of war or in case of national emergency in which anything for the use of the Army, Navy, or Air Force is being prepared or constructed or stored, information as to which prohibited place the President has determined would be prejudicial to the national defense...

Lawyers who have studied the act say that its specificity — torpedo station, dockyard, telegraph — suggests that lawmakers had very well-defined crimes in mind when they crafted the legislation. "They listed ship movements and maps and arms factories," says one lawyer, "so it wasn't like they didn't try to be all-inclusive. Certainly this [the Plame matter] is not on that list." Later in the act, the law outlines penalties for:

Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to, control over, or being entrusted with any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it on demand to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or

Again, the specificity — code book, signal book, blueprint — suggests that the act's authors had very circumscribed crimes in mind. And if Fitzgerald were looking to bring charges based on the Espionage Act, or to allege that administration officials conspired to violate the act, he would likely have to argue that the accused had reason to believe that information in the case "could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation." That could prove just as difficult as prosecuting under the Identities law.

"The Espionage Act would strike me as a huge leap," says the former intelligence official. "I don't think this amounts to espionage by any stretch of the imagination."

In addition, if the case focused solely on the disclosure of classified information to those who are not authorized to receive it, administration defenders might well argue that ambassador Joseph Wilson, the man whose wife's CIA identity was exposed in the matter, has done something similar. While that argument might on the surface appear plausible, on closer scrutiny it is not clear whether it applies to Wilson's actions.

The CIA has never released the written report made from Wilson's February 2002 fact-finding trip to Niger. (Wilson himself did not write a report, but the agency wrote up his conclusions from his oral report on the matter.) The document has not been released, apparently, because it is classified.

Wilson, however, spoke openly about his trip, both as an anonymous source for New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof and Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus, and later under his own name in his now-famous Times op-ed from July 2003. While Wilson is said to have not been asked by the CIA to sign a secrecy agreement before the trip, the absence of such an agreement would still not allow him to disclose classified information.

But the former intelligence official warns that it is possible that just some parts of Wilson's findings were classified — say, specific sources he contacted whose identities have not been revealed. If that is case, the official argues, then Wilson did not violate any laws in his statements to the press (even those statements that were later found to be untrue).

In addition, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were given the CIA's written report on Wilson's trip, and, at least as far as is publicly known, they did not recommend that he be investigated for revealing classified information. The discussion of Wilson's findings in the Intelligence Committee's report is blacked out in a few places, apparently to conceal at least one name originally mentioned by Wilson.

Given the difficulties with prosecutions under both the Espionage Act and the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, it appears that if Fitzgerald is indeed moving toward indicting anyone, he might well choose to base the charges on allegations of obstruction of justice or the making of false statements, either to Fitzgerald's investigators or to the grand jury. "At the end of the day," says the former intelligence official, "this could end up being a situation where there wasn't a crime until there was an investigation."

— Byron York, NR's White House correspondent

 

[captainalias]

If it was illegal, why weren't either of them indicted? Not only were they not convicted yet, but they weren't even indicted. As it stands, they aren't even going to be prosecuted.

But here is a more complete explanation:
http://www.nationalreview.com/york/york200510190902.asp

It could be because they don't know who leaked Plame for certain. AFAIK, leaking the name of an undercover operative is illegal. Let's wait for Fitz to close his case before commenting further.

 

[Calabrio]

It could be because they don't know who leaked Plame for certain. AFAIK, leaking the name of an undercover operative is illegal. Let's wait for Fitz to close his case before commenting further.

Read the Byron York article I just posted. I posted it so that I wouldn't have to paraphrase it. It will explain the situation very clearly. There is no point in my re-writing it when it is so clearly stated by York.

 

[captainalias]

Read the Byron York article I just posted. I posted it so that I wouldn't have to paraphrase it. It will explain the situation very clearly. There is no point in my re-writing it when it is so clearly stated by York.

yes, I read it. And, it seems that it's a hard act to prosecute, due to the archaic language of the law. Like I said before, let's see how it plays out.

 

[Calabrio]

It's not that the language is hard to define, it's the fact the language doesn't apply.

They didn't break any law. It's not an issue of debate. That's why they aren't moving forward with any prosecution. The issue is only being kept alive by activist Democrats who, again, would like to use the court system to compensate for their lack of vision or ability to win at the ballot box.

 

[97silverlsc]

If it was illegal, why weren't either of them indicted? Not only were they not convicted yet, but they weren't even indicted. As it stands, they aren't even going to be prosecuted.

Why weren't they indicted? Because they're as willing to lie to the prosecutor and grand jury as they are to the american public and are covering there asses. This is far from over, I'm sure we'll see more come of this.

 

[fossten]

Why wasn't it illegal?

1. She was no longer covert, according to the law.
2. She outed herself when she got her husband sent to Niger.
3. Wilson outed her in his book.

 

[fossten]

Why weren't they indicted? Because they're as willing to lie to the prosecutor and grand jury as they are to the american public and are covering there asses. This is far from over, I'm sure we'll see more come of this.

PURE...TALKING...POINTS.

You ignore the findings of a two-year investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald (Liberal Democrat Chucky Schumer's "Prosecutor's prosecutor") in favor of your supposition and prediction of the future, which is the same tactic you took on Rove.

So far you have been nothing but WRONG about this entire thing, and I know it's got to be tearing you apart inside, since you had your hopes up so desperately high.

Keep up the good work, it's actually a lot of fun watching you and your lib buddies going bananas over this.

 

[97silverlsc]

PURE...TALKING...POINTS.

You ignore the findings of a two-year investigation by Patrick Fitzgerald (Liberal Democrat Chucky Schumer's "Prosecutor's prosecutor") in favor of your supposition and prediction of the future, which is the same tactic you took on Rove.

So far you have been nothing but WRONG about this entire thing, and I know it's got to be tearing you apart inside, since you had your hopes up so desperately high.

Keep up the good work, it's actually a lot of fun watching you and your lib buddies going bananas over this.

Wrong again, fossten. First of all, the prosecutor is still investigating, so it's premature on your part to say all your other shrubites are in the clear.
Rove and the rest are still under investigation, the only thing that has changed is that the grand jury that was convened has now been adjourned.
Going bananas? Tearing me apart? Hardly. There is no new low that this administration could reach that would surprise me.

 

[MonsterMark]

Wilson was proved to be a liar. Unfortunately Democrats are keeping the public from knowing the truth. Once again, it is the Dems that lie and obfuscate.


[ The details of the Committee’s findings and conclusions on this issue can be found in the Niger section of the report.

What cannot be found, however, are two conclusions upon which the Committee’s Democrats would not agree. While there was no dispute with the underlying facts, my Democrat colleagues refused to allow the following conclusions to appear in the report:

Conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador’s wife, a CIA employee. That makes Wilson a Liar

The former ambassador’s wife suggested her husband for the trip to Niger in February 2002. The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on behalf of the CIA, also at the suggestion of his wife, to look into another matter not related to Iraq. On February 12, 2002, the former ambassador’s wife sent a memorandum to a Deputy Chief of a division in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations which said, “[m]y husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” This was just one day before the same Directorate of Operations division sent a cable to one of its overseas stations requesting concurrence with the division’s idea to send the former ambassador to Niger.

Conclusion: Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.

At the time the former ambassador traveled to Niger, the Intelligence Community did not have in its possession any actual documents on the alleged Niger-Iraq uranium deal, only second hand reporting of the deal. The former ambassador’s comments to reporters that the Niger-Iraq uranium documents “may have been forged because ‘the dates were wrong and the names were wrong,’” could not have been based on the former ambassador’s actual experiences because the Intelligence Community did not have the documents at the time of the ambassador’s trip. In addition, nothing in the report from the former ambassador’s trip said anything about documents having been forged or the names or dates in the reports having been incorrect. The former ambassador told Committee staff that he, in fact, did not have access to any of the names and dates in the CIA’s reports and 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. Of note, the names and dates in the documents that the IAEA found to be incorrect were not names or dates included in the CIA reports.

Following the Vice President’s review of an intelligence report regarding a possible uranium deal, he asked his briefer for the CIA’s analysis of the issue. It was this request which generated Mr. Wilson’s trip to Niger. The former ambassador’s public comments suggesting that the Vice President had been briefed on the information gathered during his trip is not correct, however. While the CIA responded to the Vice President’s request for the Agency’s analysis, they never provided the information gathered by the former Ambassador. The former ambassador, in an NBC Meet the Press interview on July 6, 2003, said, “The office of the Vice President, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there.” The former ambassador was speaking on the basis of what he believed should have happened based on his former government experience, but he had no knowledge that this did happen.

These and other public comments from the former ambassador, such as comments that his report “debunked” the Niger-Iraq uranium story, were incorrect and have led to a distortion in the press and in the public’s understanding of the facts surrounding the Niger-Iraq uranium story. The Committee found that, for most analysts, the former ambassador’s report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal.

During Mr. Wilson’s media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the President had lied to the American people, that the Vice President had lied, and that he had “debunked” the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. As discussed in the Niger section of the report, not only did he NOT “debunk” the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true. I believed very strongly that it was important for the Committee to conclude publicly that many of the statements made by Ambassador Wilson were not only incorrect, but had no basis in fact.

In an interview with Committee staff, Mr. Wilson was asked how he knew some of the things he was stating publicly with such confidence. On at least two occasions he admitted that he had no direct knowledge to support some of his claims and that he was drawing on either unrelated past experiences or no information at all. For example, when asked how he “knew” that the Intelligence Community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book, he told Committee staff that his assertion may have involved “a little literary flair.”

The former Ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading. Surely, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has unique access to all of the facts, should have been able to agree on a conclusion that would correct the public record. Unfortunately, we were unable to do so. ]