I'm still puzzling over the press and their insistence that the outing of Valerie Plame is a crime for which either Karl Rove or Scooter Libby are going to be indicted. It strikes me as thoroughly unreasonable, and here are a couple of the things that lead me to think so. First, here's this little excerpt from JustOneMinute:
And that said, the actual criminal referral generated by the CIA does not specifically refer to the Plame leak, but rather to "unauthorized disclosure of unauthorized information", per the letter to John Conyers from the CIA. And since the report prepared based on Wilson's trip has not been declassified, it may be that the CIA is relying on leaks about Wilson's trip as the basis for its referral. [emphasis mine]
That criminal referral ought to be something of a hint to folks who write news stories that this is not about the outing of Valerie Plame, not about revenge taking by the White House. If, as the MinuteMan speculates, the "CIA is relying on leaks about Wilson's trip as the basis for its referral", doesn't it suggest that Ambassador Joe's tea tasting in Africa at the behest of the CIA, by itself could have been considered classified information? Might not Wilson's New York Times article, What I Didn't Find in Africa, qualify as a leak? OK, so far I don't notice anybody jumping up and down about it, so it must not be, but I'd like to find out someday, why not.
Speaking of unauthorized disclosures here's another candidate that comes to mind -- those forged documents purporting to record the sale of uranium to Iraq. Let's go back once again to the American Thinker article by Clarice Feldman, in which she quotes the from the original subpoena issued to New York Times reporter Judith Miller.
...on August 12 and August 14, grand jury subpoenas were issued to Judith Miller, seeking documents and testimony related to conversations between her and a specified government official “occurring from on or about July 6, 2003, to on or about July 13, 2003, . . . concerning Valerie Plame Wilson (whether referred to by name or by description as the wife of Ambassador Wilson) or concerning Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium.”
The subpoena requires her to testify about two things: conversations between Libby and Miller (from July 6 to July 13) about Wilson/Plame or about Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium. The topic of conversations about “Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium” almost certainly relates to the Niger Mission of Joseph Wilson and to the forged documents relating to Iraqi efforts to obtain African uranium. [emphasis hers]
The public began to hear about uranium from Niger and forged documents in the spring of 2003. Here's an excerpt from the May 6, 2003 Kristoff article.
As Seymour Hersh noted in The New Yorker, the claims were based on documents that had been forged so amateurishly that they should never have been taken seriously. 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.
The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade.
Here's what AJ Strata has to say about the phrase "according to someone present at the meetings."
Kristof spilled the beans in his May 6th article when he said his sources for the forged document charge were present at the debriefing (held at the Wilsons’ home). Of the four, only the Wilsons would have pushed the erroneous forged document charge.
So, in May 2003, the story as told by Kristoff has Ambassador Joe providing details about the forgeries. The July 7, 2004 report from the Senate Committee on Intelligence about Ambassador Joe's debriefing, confirms the gist of the Kristoff article, although the Senate Committee has the date of it as March 5th. Here are clips from pages 43, 44, and 45 of that report.
In early March 2002, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for an update on the Niger uranium issue. In response, on March 5, 2002, WINPAC analysts sent an analytic update to the briefer...
Later that day, two CIA DO officers debriefed the former ambassador who had returned from Niger the previous day. The debriefing took place in the former ambassador's home and although his wife was there, according to the reports officer, she acted as a hostess and did not participate in the debrief...
But the Kristoff article and the report from Senate Committee on Intelligence differ on the subject of the forgeries. According to the Committee report and at odds with the Kristoff article, Ambassador Joe was not told about the forgeries at his debriefing because that information was classified.
...the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger unanium transaction and that the source of the information was the [redacted] intelligence service. The DO reports officer told the Committee staff that he did not provide the former ambassador with any information about the source or the details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and, noted that there were no "documents" circulating in the IC at the time of the former ambassador's trip, only intellegence reports from [redacted] intelligence regarding an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. [emphasis mine]
If Ambassador Joe was not cleared to know about the forgeries, somebody had to leak that information to him. Gee, any guesses who that might be. And even if he was cleared to know about them, he was not likely to be at liberty to say anything. Now maybe it's possible that the there is something in the law that allows a whistle blower to disclose classified material, but Ambassador Joe wasn't the whistle blower. In certain quarters there is the sentiment that, if there's a whistle blower to be found in any of this, it's Karl Rove.
He's the one who warned Time's Matthew Cooper and other reporters to be wary of Mr. Wilson's credibility. He's the one who told the press the truth that Mr. Wilson had been recommended for the CIA consulting gig by his wife, not by Vice President Dick Cheney as Mr. Wilson was asserting on the airwaves. In short, Mr. Rove provided important background so Americans could understand that Mr. Wilson wasn't a whistleblower but was a partisan trying to discredit the Iraq War in an election campaign.
So who are the likely targets in this thing. Going by the MWQ rule of thumb -- frequent and lengthy testimony to a grand jury is a good sign -- Libby and Rove are probably off the hook. Both have been cooperative, and their testimony has been high profile. About whom have we not heard mention lately in the same breath with the words "grand jury"? Wilson, Plame, Kristoff, Pincus, Russert, to name a few. And we should not forget the VIPS. After all, those forgeries had to come from someplace. The possibilities are nearly limitless. I think the entertainment value will be, too. In any case, we won't have to hear much more, what a dastardly crime was the of outing poor Valerie Plame. And won't that be a blessed relief.
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