Super-secret agent Valerie Plame is to testify before the House Government Reform Committee, chaired by Henry Waxman, who are looking into wheter the feds provide adequate protection of identities, on March 16.
Here are the members:
Majority
Henry Waxman, Chairman, California
Tom Lantos, California
Ed Towns, New York
Paul E. Kanjorski, Pennsylvania
Carolyn B. Maloney, New York
Elijah Cummings, Maryland
Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio
Danny K. Davis, Illinois
John F. Tierney, Massachusetts
William Clay, Missouri
Diane Watson, California
Stephen Lynch, Massachusetts
Brian Higgins, New York
Eleanor Holmes Norton, District of Columbia
Betty McCollum, Minnesota
Jim Cooper, Tennessee
Chris Van Hollen, Maryland
John Yarmuth, Kentucky
Bruce Braley, Iowa
Paul Hodes, New Hampshire
Patrick Murphy, Pennsylvania
John Sarbanes, Maryland
Peter Welch, Vermont
Minority
Tom Davis, Ranking Member, Virginia
Dan Burton, Indiana
Christopher Shays
John M. McHugh, New York
John Mica, Florida
Mark Souder, Indiana
Todd Russell Platts, Pennsylvania
Chris Cannon, Utah
John James Duncan, Jr., Tennessee
Michael R. Turner, Ohio
Darrell Issa, California
Kenny Marchant, Texas
Lynn Westmoreland, Georgia
Patrick McHenry, North Carolina
Virginia Foxx, North Carolina
Brian Bilbray, California
Bill Sali, Idaho
Perhaps any of you who are served by any of these Representatives might have some questions that you feel the Committee ought to put to Valerie “Deep Cover” Plame, such as: Was Armitage right when he told Novak that her position was widely known? How did Joe get the idea that the Vice-President’s office had sent him to Niger? Who was endangered by the publication of her status within the CIA? Inquiring minds want to know.
You can always judge a committee’s effectiveness by it’s size.
Oh, bigger isn’t better.
About the only questions I would have for Mrs. Plame would be, “Do you ever fuck around on your husband?” She may be married to a damned traitor, but she is pretty hot.
Q: Was Armitage right when he told Novak that her position was widely known?
VP: No.
Q: How did Joe get the idea that the Vice-President’s office had sent him to Niger?
VP: Joe simply misspoke.
Q: Who was endangered by the publication of her status within the CIA?
VP: I can’t tell you. If I told you, I’d have to kill you. Or get Larry Johnson to kill you.
Will C-SPAN superimpose a blue dot over her face?
As it happens, my congressman is a member of that committee.
If anyone has even better questions than Dan’s, drop me a line and I’ll send ‘em along with his.
<evil, maniacal cackle>
My question is not for Valerie Plame but for the committee: Why are you wasting your fucking time on this?
Er, drop me a line at
Yeah, well. Be seeing you, Val.
How did Joe manage to get a CIA assignment without a confidentiality agreement?
Joe momentarily confused Valerie with Dick Cheney? Bwaahahahaha!
“Mr. Chairman, can we have a recess while the committee picks itself up off the floor?”
Hilarious, and a good idea, but I fear Nostrildamus will displace all face-time, not to mention even Plame’s holy-victimized voice.
Anyway, try to get your rep. to ask Plame how outing her as Wilson’s wife would have discredited Wilson, and/or how she could have been and was punished by the “outing”.
My email don’t work.
I’m sorry, you’re not cleared to know that.
I may e-mail Danny Davis my questions; he might ask them, if only because I doubt he would understand their import.
What’s truly baffling about all of this is why Larry Johnson keeps showing up after having spent all of three or four years in the CIA as a sort of appealable authority figure, and why people don’t just fall down laughing when he does that.
She’s a moose, Sticky. Or are you seeing through a glass darkly, as one lost in the Malt Whiskey Maze?
This is a moose? This?
One of us is blind, and even if it turns out to be me, it’s also you.
I guess it’s possible that you’re more fond of Kate Moss than of Rebecca Romijn, but Romijn is no moose, either. She’s a bigger girl than Valerie Plame is, though.
Don’t forget to follow the shiny stuff.
Are Americans full of the most stupid people in the world or what?
Here goes (I’m about to agree with the Right–mark this day on your calendar), Plame’s status is trivial (hence the reason it got so much play, and why the Right wanted to make believe it’s a big deal).
There’s trivia, and then there’s real news. Americans (the people, the press, and the political body) simply LOVE trivia.
BTW, the real news is that Saddam WAS NOT recently “trying to acquire Yellowcake from Africa”.
That’s what we used to call a lie when I was in school.
Ahh for the days when the President of the United States lying to the American public during a speech was news.
Not so much anymore I’m afraid.
Joe Wilson never said that Cheney sent him to Niger. His exact quote was that Cheney’s office asked the CIA to look into the claims. That Valerie was asked if her husband might agree to go and the CIA higher ups requested and gave sent Joe to Niger. Niger isn’t exactly the garden spot of the world but he was chosen because of his experience in that part of Africa as an Ambassador. You righties continue to spew lies.
Kate Moss reminds me of Mick Jagger, which is not a turn-on. Hadn’t seen Rebecca Romijn before, but I wouldn’t crawl over her to get at la Plame.
Robert:
“Are Americans full of the most stupid people in the world or what?”
Speaking just for this American, I’m not full of any people at all, let alone the most stupid ones in the world.
Unless they’ve all turned into Kazakh-eating cannibals, it would have to be “or what”.
“Q: How did Joe get the idea that the Vice-President’s office had sent him to Niger?
VP: Joe simply misspoke. “
He didn’t misspeak. Here’s what he said:
“Well, I went in, actually in February of 2002 was my most recent trip there  at the request, I was told, of the office of the vice president, which had seen a report in intelligence channels about this purported memorandum of agreement on uranium sales from Niger to Iraq.”
The trip was on the request of the VP. Since right-wingers have serious problems with reading comprehension, they assume that Wilson is saying that Cheney ordered Wilson specifically to go… but Wilson never said that. The trip WAS requested by Cheney’s office, though Wilson himself wasn’t specifically requested to go on that trip. Wilson simply stated the the trip was on request of the VP, and nothing else.
No lie, no misspeaking…just poor reading comprehension on the part of the right-wing.
So, you haven’t seen any of the X-men movies?
Oh, I don’t know about that. The crawling-over part might be fun.
But, shorter me: Valerie Plame is an above-average attractive woman, as far as I’m concerned. Her politics don’t affect that finding, because, you know, it’s not like I’m ever going to do anything about her being attractive.
Or about Rebecca Romijn, for that matter. But it’s a nice thought.
That’s true. What he’s been doing recently is not a hell of a lot, even by Arab standards.
Who was endangered by the publication of her status within the CIA?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40012-2003Oct3?language=printer
Well, you should just track down the right-wing, and when you find him, slap him across the knuckles with a ruler.
As for Wilson being sent at the request of the VP, well:
So, a decent question for Ms. Plame is suggested, here.
Who was endangered by the publication of her status within the CIA?
1. Answering this with any specifics would obviously put more agents at risk.
2. Vaguely… anyone who ever used Brewster Jennings as a cover organization, and anyone who was associated to Valerie Plame during her undercover work.
If that isn’t obvious to you, something else should be…there’s no way you will ever know who or how many people were effected, becuase all the parties involved are UNDERCOVER AGENTS, and their circumstances will not be divulged to the public. So for anyone to say this is a non-story, or that the leak didn’t hurt anyone, is really pretending to know something that they can’t possibly know.
Furthermore, it doesn’t really matter whether anyone was specifically hurt…the point is that many people could have been hurt as the result of a callous political operation designed to intimidate political foes. Outing an agent and their cover organization is wrong. Is that something that people are seriously dissagreeing about? ridiculous.
Now that he’s done with the Plame affair, I want Fitz to investigate why my penis is so damn big. It’s not illegal, but I guess since he a super Xerxes 300 god, if he asks you and you don’t feel like answering, you could go to jail for 30 years. So–why is my penis SO BIG???
My reading comprehension skills tell me that this quote has Joe Wilson saying “at the request, I was told”. Told by whom? Not by the VP, that much is certain. Weasel words, “ME”. You need to repeat a year.
Slartibartfast,
A couple of things.
1. We know the VP requested more info, so, again, wilson’s statement that he believed the VP ordered the trip is not a lie, though the fact that they were considering a trip before that is interesting. It’s possible wilson didn’t hear anything about it until after the VP made the request…i dunno.
2. The whitehouse was trying to leak to reporters the idea that Plame organized the trip…which we know just isn’t true. What is true is that when asked, she suggested sending Joe, for obvious reasons (he had contacts, knew the players involved, etc…). The trip wasn’t her idea…picking joe wilson to go on it was. I don’t think anyone disputes this.
so whetever happenned, the white house was still leaking lies in order to make the trip look contrived, etc… regardless of the “chronology of events”.
Who was endangered by the publication of her status within the CIA?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40012-2003Oct3?language=printer
You know that, do you?
“Told by whom? Not by the VP, that much is certain. Weasel words, “MEâ€Â. You need to repeat a year.
“
He never said the VP told him…. Told by whom? someone at the CIA that knew of Cheney’s request to look into this matter. Is that so hard to comprehend?
And yes, the VP did request that the CIA look into it, so this is totally plausible. Jeesh.
Sure, so long as you ignore causality.
The VP’s office actually found out about Wilson’s trip after he’d gone.
The Whitehouse said, correctly, that the trip was organized by the CIA and that Valerie Plame had chosen her husband for the mission. If you can show me where they claimed that the mission was concocted by Plame, then I’ll acknowledge they were floating bad info.
The best smear you clowns can come up with is to deliberately fail to understand what Wilson said, then call him a liar?
(Note: ‘deliberately’ I’m giving you guys the benefit of the doubt.)
Come on, I have much higher expectations of the right’s ability to smear. I think you jokers are getting lazy.
ME: You’re wasting your breath here today. But if you’re looking for juvenile discussion on penis size, you’ve apparently come to the right place.
What did Wilson say, Colin? Enlighten us.
ME,
Then that “callous political operation” must have included Richard Armitage. Where is the outrage at and where is the prosecution of the leaker?
Apparently people are disagreeing about that once the political motivations of the responsible party come into play. Otherwise, we’d be watching the Armitage trial.
Well, I think you should track the right down and castigate him, Colin. Scathe him!
That’ll serve the right. But if you’re looking for the right here, he hasn’t commented in weeks. Months, maybe.
The whitehouse was trying to leak to reporters the idea that Plame organized the trip
Uhhh…”organize”? I’d like to see a cite for that, please. Valerie Plame has never, to my knowledge, been portrayed as a travel planner.
I think this statement has even less supportability than “the trip was her idea”. Without Joe, the trip doesn’t make any sense to begin with.
Like Joe Wilson’s bullshit editorial in the NYTimes? You described it perfectly.
Talk to Wilson, he should have considered that before going on his self-aggrandizing rampage.
I would just like to hear one Wilson defender explain the logic process that leads one to believe his findings “prove” that Iraq wasn’t trying to buy yellowcake.
I know that he said it does, but what makes you agree with him?
Since we are, after all, on the same topic that includes the infamous 16 words…
It’s fascinating that you don’t already know who Dick Cheney endangered when he leaked the information that Valerie Plame was a CIA Field Op without official cover!
After all, the single largest point of failure caused by the Vice President’s treason was the destruction of the CIA network investigating the IQ Khan network and the issue of nuclear weapons inside Iran.
In fact, given Cheney’s belligerence with respect to Iran, it looks like Cheney intentionally destroyed that information network just so he could say that we don’t know enough about Iran’s nuclear programs.
Betraying US national security interests for these criminals is like water for a fish – it’s all they swim in. When are you right-wing wackos gonna wake upo and smell the treason on your side of the aisle?
You mean that information that Armitage leaked to Novak?
fiskhus jim:
That is satire, right?
‘Cause, if so, it’s pretty good. Just a little more over-the-top than the kind of thing people say with a straight face all the time. Subtle enough that I’m wondering if you’re serious.
I am utterly and completely serious – I consider the VP to be a traitor to the Constitution of this Great republic no less than the 3 generations of the Bush Family who have committed treason and betrayed the national security interests of this country for personal financial gain.
What you rank and file Publicans do not get about your own politicians is that NONE of them have the national security interests of this country at heart – they are out to steal and extort a quick buck from the taxpayers of this coutnry and nothing else.
Treason for profit is a Publican tradition. Dick Cheney – also under investigation for corruption in 5 countries for his involvement in the Nigerian bribery scandal – is no exception.
All I’m saying, Jim, is let’s get to the bottom of this. Plame’s going to testify. I’m interested about knowing why it is that Wilson seems to have so much trouble telling the truth.
You’re also a moonbat, insofar as you seem to believe that Republicans are EVIL and Democrats are GOOD.
Um…okay, uh…fiskhusjim.
Quit sniffing the glue for a minute and maybe, just maybe, post a link or two. Y’know, just to humor us. Or not. Your call.
[Damn, Jeff, were gonna have to start tagging and codifying these trolls. This one here’s a doosie!]
Actually, no, I don’t think Democrats are good.
I think that the temptation to steal from the Commonwealth is just too tempting and corrupting.
I think that nearly everyoine in D.C., on both sides of the aisle, are more interested in pocketing our tax dollars and in handing out “gummint” contracts to their buddies than in protecting this country.
There is no real difference between most Publicans and most Democrats – especially the DLC Democrats, because they all wold sell this country out for the right price and they all subscribe to, applaud and abet the treason of the rich elite.
kelly:
As the President says in Peter Benchley’s Q Clearance, “It’s true, that’s what counts. Facts don’t matter, ‘slong as they support the truth.”
Why should fiskhus jim have to substantiate any of his assertions? Cheney is a traitor and Bush is a 3rd-generation criminal. He only forgot to lead with that old Pravda favorite, “As is well known,….”
Oh, and clearly we only disagree with him out of party loyalty. If I sincerely believed Bush were selling out the country for his personal enrichment, I would be A-OK with that, because…because I’m a Republican and that’s what we’re all about!
It’s got to be fun, arguing as fiskhus jim does. “Tennis, with the net down,” as Robert Frost said of free verse.
A field op who worked at a desk in Langley?
Interesting.
Dayum! This is a curious one. Oddly, no mention of…Joos. I get some sense of the “pale” of the paleocon but no Jewish conspiracy tie-in…yet.
Wait a minute, he did mention the “rich elite.” Is that you, Wes?
Slartibartfast,
The expression ‘the right’ is a bit vague. I get annoyed when people attack ‘the left’.
I’ll be more specific:
I have much higher expectations of right-leaning wankers’ ability to smear.
McGehee,
ME posted what Wilson said earlier in the thread.
Oh my! There’s a fence down at DailyKos or the Huffpo. Either that or fiskhus jim escaped from an asylum.
What Wilson said was a lie. The VP didn’t request someone go until after Plame suggested to the CIA that Wilson go.
So unless you’ve inverted causality, there’s no way Wilson went at the request of the VP. More importantly, the CIA took Wilson’s report as corroboration that Saddam was trying to get yellowcake from Niger! So Wilson lied in his op-ed; he kicked this whole thing off with a lie!
And your point?
Yes, wouldn’t it be fanatstic if we could get thoroughly lost in the minutae of these untimately unverifiable details for years to come? That way, we wouldn’t need to focus on all the other fundamental ways this administration is actively undermining the Democratic process in this country. Sure, the complete subversion of the criminal justice system for partisan political purposes may be the most glaring and transparently Nixonian example, but there are so many others. Just pick up the paper on a single day, and you’ve got anough material for a lifetime. Firing career prosecutors for refusing to contribute to rigged elections? Yup, no problem. Promiscious and unlawful use of National Security letters enabling the FBI to ignore citizens civil rights on a mass scale? You bet; like peas in a pod with domestic spying, kidnapping, and authorized torture. Farming out essential functions of the federal government in order to destroy its credibility with the public? Well, sure; but this isn’t the one about injured soldiers lying in urine-soaked, rat-infested snake pits. That’s so yesterday. Today it’s outsourcing the drafting of the U.S. tax code by the I.R.S. to Republican corporate cronies.
Boy, it sure would be a happier world if we focused on Valerie Plame’s hairdo and parsed Joe Wilson’s claims about the Snarling Savage.
I would send some questions to my congress critter (one Dennis Kucinich) but then again, he can’t read. So, it would be a wasted effort. Now, if I called Dennis a faggot, I would NOT mean a man who sucks cock. I would mean a 9/10th’s of a man in scale. Not quite a man, but not quite a woman. Maybe, naive pussy, is the best descriptor.
Do you shoo imaginary flies away from your head while you are typing, legaleagle?
INFESTATION!!!!!!
“MEâ€Â, Colon and fiskijism.
Here is what “ME†kicks off with.
. “
Here is my rebuttal.
Then Anne joins in:
And I, unhelpfully, but using their own words, point out that their own words are self-contradictory.
Now, there is a contradiction here. “ME†(“just poor reading comprehension on the part of the right-wing.â€Â)
Whereas Anne (“You righties continue to spew lies.â€Â) states
is an unsubstantiated assertion by Wilson. You can choose to believe it, or you can choose to see it as a lie. I am inclined to doubt its truthfulness.
You cannot, however, say that “his exact quote was that Cheney’s office asked the CIA to look into the claimsâ€Â, as Anne does, unless you can substantiate that assertion by evidence which outweighs the actual words quoted by Wilson, which do not support Anne’s accusation.
And “ME says. “Wilson simply stated the the trip was on request of the VP, and nothing else.
No lie, no misspeaking…just poor reading comprehension on the part of the right-wing.â€Â
Posted by ME | permalink
But that is not true, as I point out:
“Told by whom? Not by the VP, that much is certain. Weasel words, “MEâ€Â. You need to repeat a year.
Then “ME†gets a little hard to follow:
“
“He never said the VP told him…. Told by whom? someone at the CIA that knew of Cheney’s request to look into this matter. Is that so hard to comprehend? “
Yes, it is hard to comprehend. It is an unsubstantiated allegation by “ME†that Cheney requested someone to look into the matter, when “MEâ€Â’s opening claim that this was so was immediately undermined by his own quote which has Wilson saying
If the VP did make that request, the quotes that you have chosen to support the assertion do not support it.
Then a new idiot appears, Colin.:
I understand perfectly what “ME†has said. I am not misunderstanding what he has reported Wilson as saying, I understand it perfectly. It is a deliberate obfuscation of the truth, in which Wilson seeks to pass off an unsubstantiated allegation as the truth by using reported speech:
I will repeat, as you, Colin, and you, “MEâ€Â, clearly do have comprehension problems. “Told by whomâ€Â?
Meanwhile, some freeform idiot going by the name of fiskijism claims that the whole thing is being orchestrated by Jews in Black Helicopters.
Pathetic.
Erm, that’s “non-official cover”. Meaning, her cover wasn’t official. Meaning, she didn’t have a State Department cover, for instance; she was a spy.
Which in turn implies, as far as I’m aware, that she was overseas, because that kind of cover doesn’t make sense, domestically.
Anyway, the implication is that in order to be NOC, Plame had to have met a number of requirements that are almost entirely disjoint with her being a domestic housewife and mother. There’s loads of information available though miracle intertube search engines such as Google; arming yourself with a bit of it might be indicated.
Who was endangered by the publication of her status within the CIA? Inquiring minds want to know.
Yeah – you’d like to have her contacts countering nuclear proliferation revealed, and put them at risk, just to score political points.
Some of us have more loyalty to our country tnan that.
If she has been your defence against nuclear proliferation while Pakistan sold the pass to Libya, Iran and everyone with a Mastercard and North Korea went ballistic, the sooner she is outed, exposed, laid off, removed, whatever, the better. You silly little self-righteous fraud.
You know, the question of whether he ever said Cheney sent him, overlooks the fact that Richard Armitage, by no means a Bushista, is the one who first “outed” double-super-secret agent Plame, Valerie Plame.
And Armitage said Wilson was going around telling everybody his wife was CIA before Novak’s column.
Love how the LLL dems keep lying to make it seem as if the VP officer asked for someone to be sent to check the rumor and then the CIA decided to send Joe. Check the dates on the emails from VP suggesting Joe be sent and the date the VP asked someone to check it out. VP’s email to send Joe was dated before the VP asked to have the rumor checked. Therefore how could Joe be sent there because of the VP? Apparently the LLL dems need a calendar as well as a brain.
Facts:
1) Non-official cover does not require that the agent in question be based overseas. It only requires that the agent travel overseas while in non-official cover for Agency purposes at least once in the past 5 years.
Valerie Plame made such travels in 1998-2002. Therefore she is able and eligible for NOC status.
So as you can see, any claim that she could not have been a NOC specifically because she was lived in Washington, DC are baseless, null and void.
If you wish to logically prove she was not a NOC, you will need to look elsewhere for such proof.
2) Now to Wilson’s statement.
Some here have stated reasons why this is weaselly – but none have posted any reasons that prove this is a lie.
You can hate the words you call ‘weaselly’ all you want – but proving a statement is a lie requires the ability to disprove the facts in that statement.
And to prove this is a lie, you need to quote and prove a reliable, non-partisan source that the Vice President’s office did NOT request further information about memorandum of agreement.
The easiest route for such proof is the office of the VP. The whole White House has now been thoroughly embarassed by this whole situation – if Cheney’s office had nothing to do with starting the chain of events that caused the CIA send Wilson to Africa, why would they not simply say so?
The fact that they don’t, clearly indicates Wilson is accurately relating the truth.
And it also clearly indicates that their effort to pretend Wilson said Cheney asked for Wilson directly – which Wilson never stated – is an attempt to discredit Wilson, rather than attack directly the basis of his claims.
If Wilson was so wrong and baseless, why would the Bush administration need to bring his wife into it, even? Why wouldn’t they just show how wrong he was in his claims, and end it there? I ask you.
“You can hate the words you call ‘weaselly’ all you want – but proving a statement is a lie requires the ability to disprove the facts in that statement.
And to prove this is a lie, you need to quote and prove a reliable, non-partisan source that the Vice President’s office did NOT request further information about memorandum of agreement.”
Jim, since your spoon feed explanation of what it takes to prove something is a lie may still elude comprehension by some visitors here, I thought a couple examples would help:
GWB: “We found the weapons of mass destruction.”
VP Cheney: “And we believe he (Sadaam Hussein) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
These were retracted as mis-statements by the two leaders of our nation who uttered them. So there can be no doubt they are both false.
In most peoples lives, if someone says something to them while trying to persuade them or gain support from them and that person doesn’t correct it until it’s rebutted by a third party, that person is known as a charlatan or liar.
What if your neighbor told you he needed you to keep a look out while he broke into another neighbor’s house to sieze evidence of the child molestation that he knew was taking place there. Later your neighbor said he meant to say he was breaking in because he’d heard the guy liked kiddie porn. I think you’d come to the conclusion that this guy “exaggerates for emphasis”, more commonly referred to as lying.
johnd:
If you bother to look up the transcript of the interview where Cheney said that, it becomes obvious that he misspoke.
Nice of you to not provide a date or transcript of when the President made his statement, either.
Darn, you broke my irony meter. I guess I’ll have to play “third party” and find the transcript for others to read. Here. Sorry I can’t find any at MSNBC itself. For some reason, the transcripts go back to August 2003, or perhaps I’m searching in the wrong place.
I’m hoping those still reading this thread will read the whole thing and decide for themselves. I know what your likely response will be.
Hint: I first dug up a link to the transcript in question in response to someone trying the same thing you did in, oh, mid-2003 or so. That someone handwaved it away and kept repeating the claim. Guess you’ll do so as well.
1. Cheney and Libby wanted more information about a report, given to them by their CIA briefer, that Iraq tried to acquire uranium from Niger. The CIA took the request seriously.
2. Valerie’s status at the CIA was classified information.
3. Valerie did not send her husband but she did say he would be a good resource to go there and inquire. The trip to Niger was not a junket. Wilson was not compensated.
4. Wilson’s op-ed challenged the case for war including ‘mass quatities of uranium from Niger’, Saddam’s nuke program, biological weapons and other WMD. The facts support Wilson’s challenge. It raises the question if the office of the vice president was criminally fraudulent in asserting “evidence” as justification for an invasion of Iraq.
5. Cheney personally wrote the all talking points during this felony scandal and directed Scooter Libby’s actions.
6. Scooter Libby is a lying felon who obstructed justice in the CIA leak investigation.
7. Scooter’s trying to protect Dick Cheney from legal jeopardy. Disclosing classified information to unathorized people is still a felony in this country. To do so in order to discredit a perrson who was blowing the whistle on the bogus caase for war raises the issue of the bogus case for war.
Hmmm. Well, there are some problems here. First, Wilson was already sent to Niger by the time Cheney’s office asked for the information. Wilson claimed that Plame had no role in sending him there. Wilson’s report was seen as generally shoring up the idea that Saddam’s people had been seeking uranium in Niger. Wilson claimed, falsely, that he had seen the bogus “Italian intercept” and knew that it was a put-up job, only to retract that when the timeline wouldn’t admit the possibility. Valerie Plame’s status was disclosed by the CIA’s office of information.
Tell it to the NYT.
No, because she had previously been under official cover—having been previously assigned to an embassy. And there’s no point in giving someone NOC if they’ve already been used “out” under OC.
In fact, reassigning someone from OC to NOC is far more dangerous to that person than “outing” someone who is genuinely NOC.
1) If Plame was NOC, there was a short list of people who could know that.
2) If Plame was NOC and Scooter was on the list, then he can and should be tried.
3) OTOH if Scooter wasn’t on the list, then he didn’t know her NOC status, and hence didn’t know it was classified in any way, and so he committed no crime. The NDI can’t possibly apply to information that you have no clue might be classified.
Sounds pretty cut and dried to me. Find the list of people cleared to know who’s NOC, and see if Lewis Libby is on it.
<<Nice of you to not provide a date or transcript of when the President made his statement, either.>>
http://www.whitehouse.gov/g8/interview5.html
“THE PRESIDENT: We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories. You remember when Colin Powell stood up in front of the world, and he said, Iraq has got laboratories, mobile labs to build biological weapons. They’re illegal. They’re against the United Nations resolutions, and we’ve so far discovered two. And we’ll find more weapons as time goes on. But for those who say we haven’t found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they’re wrong, we found them.”