Finally!

[Gary Sisco]

I brought up this issue when it happened in the press -- that they'd both placed her and her contacts lives in question (and ruined forever her career) as a form of retaliation against her husband. These guys are simply vicious. There are people in the US today doing life for passing this kind of information along to foreign intelligence services. And the Bush admin goes ahead and publicly passes it along to the world media. It'll be interesting to see what spin gets put on this bit of murderous thuggery.

Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry

By Mike Allen and Dana Priest

At CIA Director George J. Tenet's request, the Justice Department is looking into an allegation that administration officials leaked the name of an undercover CIA officer to a journalist, government sources said yesterday.

The operative's identity was published in July after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush later backed away from the claim.

The intentional disclosure of a covert operative's identity is a violation of federal law.

The officer's name was disclosed on July 14 in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak, who said his sources were two senior administration officials.

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.

Sources familiar with the conversations said the leakers were seeking to undercut Wilson's credibility. They alleged that Wilson, who was not a CIA employee, was selected for the Niger mission partly because his wife had recommended him. Wilson said in an interview yesterday that a reporter had told him that the leaker said, "The real issue is Wilson and his wife."

A source said reporters quoted a leaker as describing Wilson's wife as "fair game."

The official would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists. The official said there was no indication that Bush knew about the calls.

It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's occupation, has suggested publicly that he believes Bush's senior adviser, Karl C. Rove, broke her cover. Wilson said Aug. 21 at a public forum in suburban Seattle that it is of keen interest to him "to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said yesterday that he knows of no leaks about Wilson's wife. "That is not the way this White House operates, and no one would be authorized to do such a thing," McClellan said. "I don't have any information beyond an anonymous source in a media report to suggest there is anything to this. If someone has information of this nature, then he or she should report it to the Department of Justice."

McClellan, who Rove had speak for him, said of Wilson's comments: "It is a ridiculous suggestion, and it is simply not true." McClellan was asked about Wilson's charge at a White House briefing Sept. 16 and said the accusation is "totally ridiculous."

Administration officials said Tenet sent a memo to the Justice Department raising a series of questions about whether a leaker had broken federal law by disclosing the identity of an undercover officer. The CIA request was reported Friday night by MSNBC.com. Administration sources familiar with the matter said the Justice Department is determining whether a formal investigation is warranted.

An intelligence official said Tenet "doesn't like leaks."

The CIA request could reopen the rift between the White House and the intelligence community that emerged this summer when Bush and his senior aides blamed Tenet for the inclusion of the now-discredited uranium claim -- the so-called "16 words" -- in the State of the Union address in January.

Tenet issued a statement taking responsibility for the CIA's approval of the address before it was delivered, but made clear the CIA had earlier warned the White House not to use the allegations about uranium ore. After an ensuing rush of leaks over White House handling of intelligence, Bush's aides said they believed in retrospect it had been a political mistake to blame Tenet.

The Intelligence Protection Act, passed in 1982, imposes maximum penalties of 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines for unauthorized disclosure by government employees with access to classified information.

Members of the administration, especially Vice President Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, have been harshly critical of unauthorized leakers, and White House spokesmen are often dismissive of questions about news reports based on unnamed sources. The FBI is investigating senators for possibly leaking intercept information about Osama bin Laden.

The only recipient of a leak about the identity of Wilson's wife who went public with it was Novak, the conservative columnist, who wrote in The Washington Post and other newspapers that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, "is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." He added, "Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger."

When Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson's wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name "for security reasons," according to one CIA official. Intelligence officials said they believed Novak understood there were reasons other than Plame's personal security not to use her name, even though the CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover.

Novak said in an interview last night that the request came at the end of a conversation about Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's role in it. "They said it's doubtful she'll ever again have a foreign assignment," he said. "They said if her name was printed, it might be difficult if she was traveling abroad, and they said they would prefer I didn't use her name. It was a very weak request. If it was put on a stronger basis, I would have considered it."

After the column ran, the CIA began a damage assessment of whether any foreign contacts Plame had made over the years could be in danger. The assessment continues, sources said.

The CIA occasionally asks news organizations to withhold the names of undercover agents, and news organizations usually comply. An intelligence official told The Post yesterday that no further harm would come from repeating Plame's name.

Wilson was acting U.S. ambassador to Iraq during the run-up to the Persian Gulf War of 1991. He was in the diplomatic service from 1976 until 1998, and was the Clinton administration's senior director of African affairs on the National Security Council. He is now an international business consultant. Wilson said the mission to Niger was unpaid except for expenses.

Wilson said he believes an inquiry from Cheney's office launched his eight-day mission to Niger in February 2002 to check the uranium claim, which turned out to be based at least partly on forged documents. "The way it was briefed to me was that the office of the vice president had expressed an interest in a report covering uranium purchases by Iraq from Niger," Wilson said in a telephone interview yesterday.

He said that if Novak's account is accurate, the leak was part of "a deliberate attempt on the part of the White House to intimidate others and make them think twice about coming forward."

Sources said that some of the other journalists who received the leak did not use the information because they were uncomfortable with unmasking an undercover agent or because they did not consider the information relevant to Wilson's report about Niger.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has been pushing the FBI to investigate the disclosure since July, said yesterday that it "not only put an agent's life in danger, but many of that agent's sources and contacts."

Staff writer Richard Leiby contributed to this report.

[Pete C]

If we're going to have Nixonian tactics we'd be much better off with Nixon.

Maybe not Kissinger, though.

[Mingus]

Read that in the WashPost this morning as well. Pure slime of the gangsta variety. Sell out his wife to get to him. Truely evil.

I blame it on Dick (not Nixon).

[Gary Sisco]

Pete -- The sad truth is that, all jesting aside, I'd agree with you. Nixon, crazed as he was, which was truly crazed (probably due to his nightly habit of getting knocked-down loaded), was smarter than this whole Crew-In-Charge combined. At least he had a strategy. Even if it was a crackpot strategy.

This gang is definitely equally as vicious as the Nixon gang was, though, and even moreso, in some ways.

They essentially signed some people's death warrants, and absolutely put an end to the woman's career, as a purposeful act of political retaliation against her husband. Reminds me of the Salvadoran death squads, actually, who made a practice of killing activists' family members, especially if they weren't political, as a punishment for the activist.

If there is anything remotely resembling the rule of law left in the US, this investigation should be very thorough and anyone involved with leak or the decision to make it, should be do time and lots of it, and not at Allentown, either. Leavenworth would be a good taste of their own medicine.

What a vicious pack of scum.

And again we see what happens to those who ignore history: Two 20th-C presidents decided to fuck with the CIA for political reasons of their own: John Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

[Gary Sisco]

From the Independent (UK) today:

Bush officials who leaked name of US spy 'for revenge' could face jail
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington
29 September 2003


The Justice Department is investigating whether Bush administration officials broke the law by revealing the identity of an undercover CIA operative whose husband disparaged claims by the White House that Iraq was seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

George Tenet, the director of the CIA, has sent a memo to the department asking it to find out who revealed Valerie Plame's identity in July.

Ms Plame, a weapons expert, is the wife of the former US ambassador Joe Wilson. It is alleged that her identity was revealed in retaliation for comments he made about Iraq's alleged scheme to buy uranium from Niger to develop nuclear weapons. Mr Wilson, who travelled to Niger to investigate the claims, toldThe Independent on Sunday that he believed they were false.

Ms Plame's identity was first mentioned by a syndicated newspaper columnist, who said his sources were "two administration officials".

Yesterday The Washington Post reported that the two officials had telephoned at least six journalists and identified Ms Plame. "Clearly it was meant purely and simply for revenge," a White House official said.

Mr Wilson's comments caused the White House to admit that "16 words" in President George Bush's State of the Union address last January which claimed Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa were incorrect.

Mr Wilson, who went to Africa at the request of the CIA, has never confirmed his wife's position. He said previously that if she were an operative, "naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames."

Mr Wilson said yesterday: "I have always said that the desire to implicate my wife in this was intended to intimidate others from coming forward. The idea that someone would do this is an anathema to me and should be an anathema to a president who came to office promising to restore honour to the White House." Naming a undercover operative is a federal offence which carries penalties of $50,000 (£30,000) and up to 10 years jail.

After Ms Plame was named, the CIA launched a widescale investigation to ascertain whether any of her overseas contacts had been put at risk. That investigation continues.
29 September 2003 09:36

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[Gary Sisco]

Like they have any choice.

The harder they come, babeeezzzzz:

Bush Aides Say They'll Cooperate With Probe Into Intelligence Leak


By Mike Allen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 29, 2003; Page A01


President Bush's aides promised yesterday to cooperate with a Justice Department inquiry into an administration leak that exposed the identity of a CIA operative, but Democrats charged that the administration cannot credibly investigate itself and called for an independent probe.

White House officials said they would turn over phone logs if the Justice Department asked them to. But the aides said Bush has no plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role in revealing the name of an undercover officer who is married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, one of the most visible critics of Bush's handling of intelligence about Iraq.

An administration official told The Washington Post on Saturday that two White House officials leaked the information to selected journalists to discredit Wilson. The leak could constitute a federal crime, and intelligence officials said it might have endangered confidential sources who had aided the operative throughout her career. CIA Director George J. Tenet has asked the Justice Department to investigate how the leak occurred.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on "Fox News Sunday" that she knew "nothing of any such White House effort to reveal any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the president would expect his White House to operate."

She also said the White House would leave the probe in the hands of the Justice Department, calling it the "appropriate channels now."

White House press secretary Scott McClellan said the Justice Department has requested no information so far. "Of course, we would always cooperate with the Department of Justice in a matter like this," he said.

Asked about the possibility of an internal White House investigation, McClellan said, "I'm not aware of any information that has come to our attention beyond the anonymous media sources to suggest there's anything to White House involvement."

The controversy erupted over the weekend, when administration officials reported that Tenet sent the Justice Department a letter raising questions about whether federal law was broken when the operative, Valerie Plame, was exposed. She was named in a column by Robert D. Novak that ran July 14 in The Post and other newspapers.

CIA officials approached the Justice Department about a possible investigation within a week of the column's publication. Tenet's letter was delivered more recently.

The department is determining whether a formal investigation is warranted, officials said. The officials said they did not know how long that would take.

Democratic lawmakers and presidential candidates seized on the investigation as a new vulnerability for Bush. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), who has been pushing the FBI to pursue the matter for two months, said that if "something this sensitive is done under the wing of any direct appointees, at the very minimum, it's not going to have the appearance of fairness and thoroughness."

From the presidential campaign trail in New Hampshire, Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (Mo.) called it "a natural conflict of interest" for Justice Department appointees to investigate their superiors, and said congressional committees should step in to try to determine what happened.

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean said Attorney General John D. Ashcroft should play no role in the investigation and should turn it over to the Justice Department's inspector general, who operates independently of political appointees. "President Bush came into office promising to bring honor and integrity to the White House," Dean said. "It's time for accountability."

Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.) said the investigation "must be conducted by an independent, nonpartisan counsel."

Although the Independent Counsel Act, created after the Watergate abuses, expired in 1999, the attorney general can appoint a special counsel to investigate the president and other top government officials. Special counsels have less independence from the attorney general, but proponents of the system said that makes them more accountable.

More specific details about the controversy emerged yesterday. Wilson said in a telephone interview that four reporters from three television networks called him in July and told him that White House officials had contacted them to encourage stories that would include his wife's identity.

Novak attributed his account to "two senior administration officials." An administration aide told The Post on Saturday that the two White House officials had cold-called at least six Washington journalists and identified Wilson's wife.

She is a case officer in the CIA's clandestine service and works as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction. Novak published her maiden name, Plame, which she had used overseas and has not been using publicly. Intelligence sources said top officials at the agency were very concerned about the disclosure because it could allow foreign intelligence services to track down some of her former contacts and lead to the exposure of agents.

The disclosure could have broken more than one law. In addition to the federal law prohibiting the identification of a covert officer, officials with high-level national security clearance sign nondisclosure agreements, with penalties for revealing classified information.

Wilson had touched off perhaps the most searing controversy of this administration by saying he had determined on a mission to Niger last year that there was no clear evidence that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore for possible use in a nuclear weapon.

His statement led to a retraction by the White House, and bolstered Democrats' contention that Bush had exaggerated intelligence to build a case against Iraq. The yellowcake allegation became known as "the 16 words" after Bush said in his State of the Union address in January that the British government had learned that Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

An administration official said the leaks were "simply for revenge" for the trouble Wilson had caused Bush.

Wilson said that in the week after the Novak column appeared, several journalists told him that the White House was trying to call attention to his wife, apparently hoping to undermine his credibility by implying he had received the Niger assignment only because his wife had suggested the mission and recommended him for the job.

"Each of the reporters quoted the White House official as using some variation on, 'The real story isn't the 16 words. The real story is Wilson and his wife,' " Wilson said. "The time frame led me to deduce that the White House was continuing to try to push this story."

Wilson identified one of the reporters as Andrea Mitchell of NBC News. Mitchell did not respond to requests for comment.

Wilson has suggested publicly that Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, was the one who broke his wife's cover. McClellan has called that "totally ridiculous" and "not true."

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on ABC's "This Week" program: "The CIA has an obligation, when they believe somebody who is undercover was outed, so to speak, has an obligation to ask the Justice Department to look into it. But other than that, I don't know anything about the matter."

Democrats also questioned why Bush's aides had seemed to show little interest in the disclosure before the CIA request was made public. McClellan was asked about the Novak column during briefings on July 22 and Sept. 16. He replied that no one in the White House would have been authorized to reveal the operative's name and that he had no information to suggest White House involvement.

Democrats e-mailed a quotation from former president George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director, who said in 1999 at the dedication of the agency's new headquarters that those who expose the names of intelligence sources are "the most insidious of traitors."

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.


© 2003 The Washington Post Company

[Gary Sisco]

Now's the time, Dems: Attack! Attack! Attack!

If they can't make some political scorched earth over the lies and conduct of the war, and now this most insidious of traitorous activities, they don't deserve to win the election, because it would reveal that they are too dumb to rule, even by comparison with Alfred E. Bush.

The possibility exists for a rout, but only if the enemy is attacked at his weak points, at their weakest time: Now now now. The Civil War could have been ended at Gettysburg if Meade had attacked Lee's retreating army and backed them up against the Potomac, with nowhere to go.

We'll see who has balls, now. No balls, no vote.

That's my new party-of-one line.

Damn the torpedoes. Full speed ahead.