Prophecy fulfilled
It may be a little premature for me to assert my prediction that the Valerie Plame investigation would go nowhere is now confirmed, but only a little.

I wrote last Oct. 8,

But be not deceived by the Dems calling for the heads of Novak’s sources. The sources will almost certainly never be identified and everyone knows it. Even President Bush said so yesterday, and no one on either side of the aisle objected. The Dems’ goal is not punishing the guilty sources, it is embarrassing the White House.

But the record shows that "solving the case" is not what anyone, left or right, is truly seeking.

Now, reports Winds of Change, citing the WaPo's coverage of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq's WMD programs.

In conventional anti-war mythology, the name of Wilson's wife [Valerie Plame, a CIA officer] was leaked to the press in order to punish him for having "debunked" the administration's claims with respect to Iraq attempting to purchase uranium from Africa. As the report very clearly indicates, this was simply not the case and while it is indeed puzzling why the administration allowed him to go on as long as he did during his 15 minutes of fame without airing some of this information to the public given the considerable damage that he did to the president's reputation during this period.

The Post goes on to explain the legal implications of whether the disclosure of Plame's identity in fact violated the law. But the law is very technical.

The key question is whether Valerie Plame's CIA employment status fell under the provision of US Code: Title 50: Section 421, "Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources." The kind of intelligence-related employment or affiliation protected by the code is that of "covert agent," not "operative" or "employee."

In order for Plame's identification in Novak's column to be considered violating the law, all the following elements of proof must be met:

1. The person who told reporter Robert Novak had to have had access to classified information that identified Plame as covert. Even if the information is accurate, if the "leaker" did not learn it from classified sources, there is no violation of the law.

2. The disclosure of Plame's covert status (if such she was) must have been intentional.

3. The person receiving the information, i.e., Novak, was not authorized to receive classified information; again, this would seem easy to prove.

4. The discloser must have known that the information identified Plame as covert.

5. The discloser must have known that the United States was taking positive actions to conceal Plame's covert intelligence relationship to the US government.

Note well: all five of these things had to have happened in order for the law to have been violated.

But with the bipartisan Senate report wrecking Joe Wilson's credibility, in fact showing him as both untruthful and incompetent, the political rationale for the Plame investigation is obviated. And a political rationale is the only one there ever was.

This whole thing will fizzle now, and members of the Congress in both parties will be glad to let it. So will the Washington press corps. After all, every new revelation now can only shore up Bush's position.

by Donald Sensing, 7/12/2004 09:19:21 PM. Permalink |