After the almost two years of this investigation of who leaked Valerie Plame’s covert status, we still do not know the answer, and apparently neither do the prosecutors. Tonight, the New York Times is reporting that lawyers involved in the case say that Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, and Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, face the possibility of indictment on perjury or other charges related to covering up their actions. Apparently their actions regarding the disclosure of Ms. Plame’s name were not unlawful, but they tripped up on something else, somewhere along the way.
I could have told the government who leaked Valerie Plame’s spymistress status, as I have written much about it, (Superboy Wilson and Lady Spy Plame) and, after all, who could have missed Joseph Wilson screaming about it to every media outlet on planet earth.The government would rather pay millions of tax payer dollars to lawyers and come up with nothing but anemic charges relating to a cover-up.
None of the journalists, nor the government operatives have been found to have had knowledge that Ms. Plame was covert. They knew only that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA. No one in the entire White House would have known about her spy status, with the exception of George Tenant, CIA Director. Surely he would not have released her undercover status to anyone. So that leaves Joseph Wilson who is the one who leaked Valerie Plame’s spy identity.
Essentially this is a war between the White House and the CIA, and the CIA has reached into the inner sanctum of the White House and is about to snatch those of most value to the president and his administration. How clever of The Agency to create a cover for one of its spies by placing her in a desk job at Langley. Who would have thunk it? Even more clever of them it was to have the “undercover” spy send her own spouse on a mission to undermine the elected President of the United States. A win-win for the CIA all around. Too bad The Agency is not as successful in protecting the American people.
Joe Wilson for the next Democrat President!
In contrast to the New York Times, WaPo reports tonight that “Fitzgerald may charge one or more officials with illegally disclosing Valerie Plame’s CIA affiliation“. It will be interesting to see if Rove and Libby can be indicted for telling Washington something that all of Washington already knew - that Valerie Plame Wilson drove to work everyday to the CIA in Langley, Virginia.
A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an “undercover agent,” saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency’s headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.
“She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat,” Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.
“Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren’t minding the store here. … The agency never changed her cover status.”
Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under “nonofficial cover” — also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson — also said that she worked under extremely light cover.
In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn’t been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday.
The distinction matters because a law that forbids disclosing the name of undercover CIA operatives applies to agents that had been on overseas assignment “within the last five years.”
“She was home for such a long time, she went to work every day at Langley, she was in an analytical type job, she was married to a high-profile diplomat with two kids,” Mr. Rustmann said. “Most people who knew Valerie and her husband, I think, would have thought that she was an overt CIA employee.”
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