Or perhaps the more pertinent question would be, "Who cares?" Apparently nobody.
In a most remarkable development, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton has ruled that the defense team for I. Lewis Libby is not entitled to know the identity of a government official who may have been the first to reveal the indentity of Valerie Plame. In a development that is considered a blow to Libby's defense, Judge Walton decided, according to the Washington Post,
to continue to protect the anonymity of one administration official, whom Libby's attorneys described as a confidential source about Plame for two reporters, one of them apparently Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward...
Defense attorneys had said they needed to know the official's identity and the details of his conversations with the two journalists to show that Libby was not lying when he testified that many reporters knew about Plame's identity.
But Walton said the source's identity is not relevant, and there is no reason to sully the source's reputation because the person faces no charges.
Last November the Post reported as hard fact what they said was only "apparently" true this morning. According to Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig, the Post's own Bob Woodward learned of Plame's identity a month before Robert Novak disclosed it in his famous column. And Mr. Woodward was willing to say so under oath.
Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed...
Woodward's testimony appears to change key elements in the chronology Fitzgerald laid out in his investigation and announced when indicting Libby three weeks ago. It would make the unnamed official -- not Libby -- the first government employee to disclose Plame's CIA employment to a reporter. It would also make Woodward, who has been publicly critical of the investigation, the first reporter known to have learned about Plame from a government source.
It was at the urging of the press that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald was given the task of investigating and prosecuting the individual who leaked the identity of Valerie Plame. Just to remind ourselves of what he was supposed to be doing, let's refer to the text of his December 30, 2003 letter of appointment from James S. Comey.
By the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U. S .C. §§ 509, 510, and 515, and in my capacity as Acting Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 508, I hereby delegate to you all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity, and I direct you to exercise that authority as Special Counsel independent of the supervision or control of any officer of the Department.
One might conclude Fitzgerald took his appointment seriously. At his press conference announcing the indictment of Scooter Libby, he emphasized that at issue was a breach of national security.
FITZGERALD: The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well- known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It's important that a CIA officer's identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation's security.
Valerie Wilson's cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003.
But Mr. Novak was not the first reporter to be told that Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, Ambassador Wilson's wife Valerie, worked at the CIA. Several other reporters were told.
In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.
But that was in October, before our anonymous administration official and Bob Woodward both stepped forward to lend a hand to the Fitzgerald investigation. So now that the dastardly outing of Valerie Plame has been solved, can we call the investigation a success? Apparently not.
To understand why not, it might help to know, how the goals of the investigation have changed, since they are no longer clear. In early February 2004 Fitzgerald requested and received confirmation that the scope of his investigation included,
"any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, your investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses;"
This was little over a month into his investigation. But does this mean he could abandon the original goal altogether? Not entirely. In his explaining his decision to force Judith Miller to testify before Fitzgerald's grand jury, U.S. Circuit Judge David S. Tatel called it a matter of national security. According to the Washington Post:
"While it is true that on the current record the special counsel's strongest charges are for perjury and false statements rather than security-related crimes ... perjury in this context is itself a crime with national security implications," he wrote.
To better understand why "perjury in this context is itself a crime with national security implications" it would help to have more of that quote. As luck would have it, J.M. Hanes of posted a bit more of it on Quasiblog.
Insofar as false testimony may have impaired the special counsel’s identification of culprits, perjury in this context is itself a crime with national security implications. What’s more, because the charges contemplated here relate to false denials of responsibility for Plame’s exposure, prosecuting perjury or false statements would be tantamount to punishing the leak.
Judge Tatel keeps Libby's charges closely tied to Plame's exposure. There may not even be a crime if Libby's actions are not related to the outing of Valerie Plame or its investigation.
Call me simple minded and unsophisticated, but it seems to me the revelation of another administration official who leaked Plame's identity before Libby was supposed to have done it, supports Libby's supposedly false denial. One might further think the defense team would be entitled to explore those possibilities, but Judge Walton said the reputation of our anonymous official deserves protection "because the person faces no charges".
Why not? Didn't this the person compromise our national security by revealing the identity of Valerie Plame? Isn't this anonymous official the person Fitzgerald was supposed to be looking for in the first place? This case has gone beyond bizarre.
Update, December 28, 2010: Having noticed that this post still gets an occasional hit, I thought I might as well include the answer to the question posed at the top. It was former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage. Here are some choice bits from a September 1, 2006 Washington Post article.
WE'RE RELUCTANT to return to the subject of former CIA employee Valerie Plame because of our oft-stated belief that far too much attention and debate in Washington has been devoted to her story and that of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, over the past three years. But all those who have opined on this affair ought to take note of the not-so-surprising disclosure that the primary source of the newspaper column in which Ms. Plame's cover as an agent was purportedly blown in 2003 was former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage.
Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. Unaware that Ms. Plame's identity was classified information, Mr. Armitage reportedly passed it along to columnist Robert D. Novak "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip," according to a story this week by the Post's R. Jeffrey Smith, who quoted a former colleague of Mr. Armitage.
I'm not so certain I would agree that Armitage passed Plame's identity along "in an offhand manner, virtually as gossip." In two years prior to his conversation with Armitage, Novak couldn't get the time of day from the guy. Then suddenly he invited him in for a chat. Why then? And why Novak? But let's go back to the Post article:
It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame's identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. The partisan clamor that followed the raising of that allegation by Mr. Wilson in the summer of 2003 led to the appointment of a special prosecutor, a costly and prolonged investigation, and the indictment of Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on charges of perjury. All of that might have been avoided had Mr. Armitage's identity been known three years ago.
[...]
Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame's CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush's closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It's unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.
Yes, it is unfortunate, and it's even more unfortunate that people still take him seriously. Hollywood even made a movie about the Wilsons, casting them as heroes. Pure B.S. of course, as was the whole sorry affair.
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