<p>The right wing blog-borg will accuse anyone and everyone who exposes or confirms misdeeds by a Republican of partisanship. Staunch Republican judges and prosecutors who prosecute crimes by high ranking Republicans? Obviously: Left wing stooges. </p>
<p>It’s interesting to see how far out the faithful can be pulled by the “fair and balanced” stories spun by their blog leaders. They really seem to be able to believe anything - anything at all - no matter how far fetched the “explanation” for the conspiracy theory is.</p>
<p>“The only reason no one has been charged with the crime of outing Valerie Plame is that the statute requires that the leaker KNOW they are outing a covert agent. Libby’s perjury and obstruction of justice made it impossible to determine whether the leakers KNEW she was covert.”</p>
<p>First of all the prosecutor knows who “outed” Valerie Plame and it wasn’t Scooter Libby. It was Richard Armitage. Second he didn’t bring charges against the person who did out Plame because outting her wasn’t a crime. Third how the heck would Scooter Libby know what Richard Armitage knew or didn’t know? Fourth she Plame wasn’t covert and hadn’t been since she married Wilson. Fifth that bloviating dirtbag Joe Wilson blew the cover on a CIA proprietary (the cover firm his wife allegedly worked for) when he filed a correction with the FEC to split his campaign donations in two (a violation of federal election law BTW).</p>
<p>Ridiculous. You think you know whether Plame was covert better than the HEAD OF THE CIA? </p>
<p>You really think the head of the CIA having experience, training, and access to her personnel file is no match for a neocon sitting alone in a darkened room dreaming—I need Plame not to be covert…therefore she isn’t…</p>
<p>The head of the CIA confirms she was covert and conducting covert missions overseas, including running agents and travelling under cover names.</p>
<p>Neocon wishful thinking that a woman gives up her career upon marriage does not change this. </p>
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<p>Numerous people gave Plame’s identity to the press. The Libby trial proved that. Libby was one of them. Lying about it doesn’t help.</p>
<p>So, your theory is that the CIA routinely acknowledges the fact that their covert agents work for the CIA to any random journalist calling for that information? Riiiiight. You do a great job of keeping the lefty dream alive - facts be damned.</p>
<p>My “theory” is that a respected Republican-appointed prosecutor did his job well, believes (as he has said repeatedly) that he can’t tell whether an underlying crime was committed because the White House felon knowingly and deliberately perjured himself and obstructed justice, a jury of his peers unanimously found the felon guilty of two major felonies, a Republican-appointed judge found “the evidence of his guilt overwhelmingly”, and sentenced the felon to a term well within federal judicial guidelines, the President said the verdict was to be respected, and commuted the sentence rather than issuing a pardon in order to protect the felon’s ability to continue to plead the Fifth Amendment in any investigation of other White House felonies.</p>
<p>Well, mini, we all know how you come to your “theories” - such as the “Clinton committed genocide” theory. You grab whatever quotes or “evidence” that fits your theory and then refuse to acknowlege anything that may contradict that theory.</p>
<p>In this case you believe the “sand in the face” assertion from Fitzgerald. Yet, what Libby was essentially found guilty of was having a different recollection of who told about Plame to whom. Even if you believe the Russert view of events (that Libby mentioned it to Russert versus the other way around), there was still no evidence that a crime had been committed - if there was it would have been charged.</p>
<p>As for being “well rspected”, Fitzgerald certainly blew that by taking lessons from Mike Nifong in terms of waging his case in the court of public opinion. But, I guess as long as there are minis out there this will always work.</p>
<p>What a joke. Sorry, FF, but you’re the one living in a dream world.</p>
<p>It may not have been reported by Fox, but this was in comments that General Hayden gave to Congress:
[General Hayden is the director of the CIA].</p>
<p>So what’s your “theory” FF? General Hayden is lying to Congress? General Hayden is too incompetent in his position to know whether CIA employees are covert or not? If Fox didn’t cover it, it didn’t happen?!</p>
<hr>
<p>and more comments approved by General Hayden:</p>
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<p>I realise that this information from General Hayden interferes with the neocon pipe dream, FF, but facts have a way of doing that.</p>
<p>So, when does the trial start for the CIA person who knowingly divulged the employment status of a covert agent? Or, is that person exonerated because he/she is not a Republican official?</p>
<p>Do you have evidence that the CIA person who disclosed her status KNEW she was covert?</p>
<p>The status of her employment was classified. General Hayden and others with a high security clearance knew. But did whoever this was (and I’m not sure that this has ever been made clear) know? </p>
<p>And wasn’t that person just confirming what Libby and others had ALREADY made public?</p>
<p>But if you have evidence to show who that person was, and that person had a security clearance high enough and enough access to Plame’s personnel file to know her status–let’s hear it.</p>
<p>General Hayden says she was covert, she was covert.</p>
<p>The person who acknowledged this was at the very beginning of the saga of “let’s throw as many Republicans in jail as possible.” He/she was the person who acknowledged to Novack that Plame worked at the CIA and knew enough about her status to ask him to not print it. Obviously, however, if Plame was truly covert, no person at the CIA would ever be allowed to acknowledge her employment with them.</p>
<p>You think he IMAGINED her trips overseas under cover?</p>
<p>That he’s less informed than the underling who was so cozy with Novak?</p>
<p>Don’t you get friction burns grasping at those straws?</p>
<p>General Hayden is the boss. The person with the ultimate responsibility and decision-making authority within the CIA. To suggest that an underling can overrule him on such an important matter is ludicrous.</p>
<p>“Well, mini, we all know how you come to your “theories” - such as the “Clinton committed genocide” theory.”</p>
<p>That one’s not theory. That’s confirmed publicly by Clinton’s own Secretary of State, and by UNICEF data. (All that isn’t confirmed is why.)</p>
<p>"In this case you believe the “sand in the face” assertion from Fitzgerald. "</p>
<p>I don’t “believe” anything other than that Fitzgerald believes what he says. And that the President believes what he said, that the verdict “should be respected”. </p>
<p>Oh, and that Libby is a felon, and found so by a jury of his peers.</p>
<p>By the way, common sense (not dream) tells me you know way less than the judge (where’s your primary source of info anyway? Fox News? or some opinionated articles from conservative “writers”?). You seem to think you know better than the judge; so much for you calling others “dreaming”.</p>
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<p>LOL! I didn’t know it’s THAT easy to convict people in America. I’d better start writing diary everyday in great details from now on so I won’t be put into jail in the future simply because I can’t remember everything.</p>
<p>That is what spies do isn’t it? General Hayden is the guy who insists the dates of Plame’s CIA employment are still classified despite the fact they have been published in the Congressional Record.</p>
<p>The General is guilty of a little dissimulation. You cannot be a NOC (no official cover i.e. no diplomatic status) and married to a diplomat. Plame’s days as a covert agent ended when she married Joe Wilson. That happened April 1998 five years three months before the Novak column which BTW never said she was a covert agent. That time frame matters because it is part of the statute.</p>
<p>In fact you might want to refer to the following article written by two of the people who drafted and negotiated the scope of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. It will soon become clear why Fitzgerald had no crime to investigate.</p>
Yes, Hayden is the boss and therefore has the power to fire anyone who divulges the employment status of a NOC. So, if you want to believe that Plame truly was a NOC, then where’s the record of the firing - or prosecution? The fact that this did not happen is proof that Plame’s employment status was not a highly held secret.</p>
<p>FF, that article says nothing about Plame losing her covert status as a condition of her marriage. It doesn’t even say she wasn’t covert, just that in one underling’s opinion: “Plame was probably not getting another foreign assignment” something General Hayden says is untrue. </p>
<p>They suggest, as you do, that the behavior of the CIA in response to Novak’s phone call makes it hard to prove the elements of the crime. But quite frankly, we don’t know HOW the CIA reacts to news that high government officials have leaked the name of a covert agent. We’ve never had that happen before. </p>
<p>I might add that in your haste to find anything to exculpate Libby, you totally overlooked the fact that this article covers only the question of whether REPORTERS should be prosecuted for reporting the leak. Not whether the elements of a crime were present in the leak itself.</p>
<p>Additionally, are you aware that it’s a crime to lie to or mislead Congress, even if you AREN’T under oath?</p>
<p>Your suggestion that General Hayden, a Bush appointee, would commit a very serious felony in order to…what? make the Bush administration look bad?..is ridiculous. What a smear on the character of a fine officer.</p>
<p>What other basis do you have for accusing this man of a felony other than that he said something you didn’t want to hear?</p>