Was Valerie Plame's Involvement in Joe Wilson's Niger Trip Classified Info ?

[Webruary]

A liberal friend of mine tells me that a crime can be committed if one knowingly leaks CLASSIFIED CIA INFORMATION.


He then argues that even if Valerie Plame's status at the CIA was not covert, her recommendation of the Niger trip to Joe Wilson was CLASSIFIED INFORMATION which should not have been leaked.


In this way, Karl Rove might have commited a crime.

In other words, even if Rove did not leak her personal covert/overt status he leaked classified information ( i.e., her recommendation of Wilson's trip ).


Can anyone verify this for me ?


What is the source for this information.

[tacitus]

How does this person know that the recommendation was classified?

[Warlady]

I thought it was the reporter that told Rove not the other way around but at any rate I don't think that info is classified. I'm sure Plame didn't want it to get out since it's definitely a conflict of interest for her to recommend her husband.

[tacitus]

Liberals will grasp any straw to destroy the administration. In this regard, the truth is optional.

[The_Elucidator]

A liberal friend of mine tells me that a crime can be committed if one knowingly leaks CLASSIFIED CIA INFORMATION.


He then argues that even if Valerie Plame's status at the CIA was not covert, her recommendation of the Niger trip to Joe Wilson was CLASSIFIED INFORMATION which should not have been leaked.

Web - ask your liberal friend to comment on this:

Little blurb from newsmax..




The unaccountability and lack of consequences for egregious (criminal?) ineptitude is, sadly, routine in the 87 square miles surrounded by reality.

Senator Pat Leahy was annoyed with the Reagan administration's war on terrorism in the 1980s. At the time he was vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.



<LI>"Leaky Leahy," allegedly threatened to sabotage classified strategies he didn't like.



<LI>Leahy ‘inadvertently' disclosed a top-secret communications intercept during a 1985 television interview.



<LI>"The intercept … made possible the capture of the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered American citizens. …"



<LI>"The reports cost the life of at least one Egyptian operative involved in the operation."



<LI>In July 1987, it was reported that Leahy leaked secret information about a 1986 covert operation planned by the Reagan administration to topple Libya's Moammar Gaddhafi.



<LI>U.S. intelligence officials said Leahy, along with the Republican panel chairman, sent a written threat to expose the operation directly to then-CIA Director William Casey.



<LI>Weeks later, news of the secret plan turned up in the Washington Post, causing it to be aborted.



<LI>A year later, as the Senate was preparing to hold hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal, Leahy had to resign his Intelligence Committee post after he was caught leaking secret information to a reporter.


He should have been indicted, tried and sentenced. Leahy's Iran-Contra leak was considered to be one of the most serious breaches of secrecy in the Intelligence Committee's 10-year history. But that was before Senator Richard Shelby leaked that we were tapping Osama bin Laden's satellite phone. Bin Laden immediately stopped using it, denying us the opportunity to find and kill the s.o.b.


http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/3/13/202146.shtml

The double standard is amazing...

:rolleyes:

[Naturalized-Texan]

I thought it was the reporter that told Rove not the other way around but at any rate I don't think that info is classified. I'm sure Plame didn't want it to get out since it's definitely a conflict of interest for her to recommend her husband.
Right! When Novak told Rove that Wilson's wife recommended that Wilson be sent to Niger, Rove said something like, "I heard something about that." Then Novak told Rove her name. That was when Rove learned her name.

[Webruary]

The liberal explanation is that

It’s more likely that Rove orchestrated the leak in such a way that he’d get phone calls from reporters that he could then confirm while still insisting that it was ‘gossip.’ Would Karl Rove be capable of such a chess game? He’s a professional strategist… of course he would. They can even think of the mechanism by which he could have accomplished that sleight of hand.

BUT THE MAIN ISSUE I WANT TO ADDRESS NOW IS THE CLASSIFIED INFORMATION.

Is the fact that Plame recommended Wilson to Niger A CLASSIFIED INFORMATION ?

If so, why isn't Wilson's trip itself classified information ? ( If it were classified, he would not and should not have announced it to the world in an op-ed piece ).

Can Anyone answer the classified information bit ?

[Webruary]

More of the liberal reasoning....

1) Rove will at least have his hand slapped for insisting that he was unaware of the memo that shows that the Plame recommendation was classified.

2) Rove might be indicted for obstruction of justice on the technicality of the reason for Matt Cooper’s phone call (it wasn’t welfare reform).

3) Fitzgerald might have the information required to tie Rove to the memo’s leak, which gets him outright perjury, as well as the unveiling of classified information.

4) Because Plame’s covert status is discernible by how she’s described in the memo, whoever is found to have leaked the memo might also be found to have revealed her covert status. Then the only thing that will keep the leaker from facing REALLY serious charges will be if her status had already effectively lapsed, which will probably turn out to be the case.

[Naturalized-Texan]

In all the liberal nonsense about Karl Rove and his non-disclosure of Plame's name, I have NEVER heard or seen any mention that Wilson's "mission" to Niger was classified or that Plame's recommendation was classified or that there was a memo that shows that Plame's recommendation was classified. In fact, at the time of the so-called outing of Valerie and in his book, Wilson lied that he was sent to Niger at the behest of Vice President Cheney. The 9/11 Commission revealed that Plame was actually the one who recommended that her husband be sent to Niger.

As for Plame's covert status: She was NOT covert any time after 1998 which is too far back to be covered by the relevant law. Moreover, as I showed in one of the threads I started, she was actually "outed" inadvertently by the CIA long before the Novak column appeared.

[Webruary]

The main thing about this argument is -- IT DOES NOT PASS THE SMELL TEST.

You cannot have Plame's recommendation be classified, and NOT have Wilson's trip to Niger itself be classified. THE TWO HAVE TO GO TOGETHER. It does not make sense to say that Plame's recommendation is secret ( and mentioning it to a reporter is a crime) and then say Wilson's trip is NOT secret ( and mentioning it openly is NOT a crime).

The problem is this --- Joe Wilson BROADCAST HIS SO CALLED "secret" TRIP TO NIGER TO THE WHOLE WORLD IN AN OP-ED PIECE. Why does this not make him liable for leaking (no, make that broadcasting) Classified information ?

You can't have your cake and eat it too.

[DesertFox]

Actually, Web, there is no connection between the two. The recommendation is an internal procedure; the trip is a public act.

[hdmundt]

Web - ask your liberal friend to comment on this:

Little blurb from newsmax..




The unaccountability and lack of consequences for egregious (criminal?) ineptitude is, sadly, routine in the 87 square miles surrounded by reality.

Senator Pat Leahy was annoyed with the Reagan administration's war on terrorism in the 1980s. At the time he was vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.







<LI>"Leaky Leahy," allegedly threatened to sabotage classified strategies he didn't like.







<LI>Leahy ‘inadvertently' disclosed a top-secret communications intercept during a 1985 television interview.







<LI>"The intercept … made possible the capture of the Arab terrorists who had hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro and murdered American citizens. …"







<LI>"The reports cost the life of at least one Egyptian operative involved in the operation."







<LI>In July 1987, it was reported that Leahy leaked secret information about a 1986 covert operation planned by the Reagan administration to topple Libya's Moammar Gaddhafi.







<LI>U.S. intelligence officials said Leahy, along with the Republican panel chairman, sent a written threat to expose the operation directly to then-CIA Director William Casey.







<LI>Weeks later, news of the secret plan turned up in the Washington Post, causing it to be aborted.







<LI>A year later, as the Senate was preparing to hold hearings on the Iran-Contra scandal, Leahy had to resign his Intelligence Committee post after he was caught leaking secret information to a reporter.




He should have been indicted, tried and sentenced. Leahy's Iran-Contra leak was considered to be one of the most serious breaches of secrecy in the Intelligence Committee's 10-year history. But that was before Senator Richard Shelby leaked that we were tapping Osama bin Laden's satellite phone. Bin Laden immediately stopped using it, denying us the opportunity to find and kill the s.o.b.


http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2005/3/13/202146.shtml

The double standard is amazing...

:rolleyes:



Leahy's history doesn't lend credence to his pleas of "inadvertency". He belongs in prison. (Not that it mattered to the operation's failure, but I believe Shelby's mistake was the result of a brain-jam as opposed to an intentional leak. That's what I've read, anyway.)

[Bluemoon_Rising]

Right! When Novak told Rove that Wilson's wife recommended that Wilson be sent to Niger, Rove said something like, "I heard something about that." Then Novak told Rove her name. That was when Rove learned her name.

Moreover, Wilson later claimed that he was sent by the vice president. That's a lie. Wilson knows that's a lie. This whole thing started -- all the noise -- as a means of covering up that lie. Also, Wilson's full of it: Saddam never sought to obtain yellow cake? Wilson's a liar.

[Webruary]

the trip is a public act.
If it is a trip to determine whether Saddam had sought purchase Yellowcake, isn't it supposed to be secret ?

[aaron11]

If it is a trip to determine whether Saddam had sought purchase Yellowcake, isn't it supposed to be secret ?

Not when the President, and Britain had already made an announcement to the affect. The original claim was made by Britain! After that it was public knowledge...

[Webruary]

Not when the President, and Britain had already made an announcement to the affect. The original claim was made by Niger! After that it was public knowledge...


I don't understand this. What claim was made by Niger and when did they make such a claim ?

[aaron11]

I don't understand this. What claim was made by Niger and when did they make such a claim ?

Britain! sorry my error...

[Webruary]

I am not really so sure about the whole thing as you guys are. Read this for instance :
http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2005/07/send_in_the_wea.html

Here is the Relevant part:




Mr. Russert's testimony last August provides intriguing clues. A statement issued by NBC at the time suggests that Mr. Libby had told Mr. Fitzgerald that he had heard about Ms. Wilson from Mr. Russert.

According to the statement, lawyers for Mr. Russert and Mr. Fitzgerald reached an agreement under which Mr. Fitzgerald questioned Mr. Russert only about Mr. Russert's end of a conversation in early July 2003 with Mr. Libby. That would be an unusual way to go about pursuing a leak inquiry, but it is consistent with an attempt to try to establish that Mr. Russert provided information to Mr. Libby.

Mr. Russert, however, according to the NBC statement, said "he did not know Ms. Plame's name or that she was a C.I.A. operative and that he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby." Indeed, the statement said, Mr. Russert first learned the information from Mr. Novak's column.

A spokeswoman for NBC declined to elaborate on the statement yesterday.



If you notice Russert's answer is vague-he says he didn't know Plame's name and didn't know she was a CIA operative, not "I didn't tell him about Wilson's wife who worked at the CIA."

Although the more I am reading right now, the more this case is looking to be about perjury or obstruction of justice as it does about whether or not a crime was committed with the release of Plame's name.

And the more I read, the more the media is complicit in this story, and driving the story in one direction while hiding facts and involvement-that is troublesome. For instance what business did Russert have interviewing Cooper-when both are witnesses and involved in the case-neither one of them were objective at all.

Of course Clearly, the MSM has a partisan agenda. Want further proof? Try this on for size. What impression does the following headline relay to you?

Plame's Identity Marked As Secret

That Plame's identity was clearly marked as secret, no? However, we find in paragraph #4 the following admission:

Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information, though that designation was not specifically attached to Plame's name and did not describe her status as covert, the sources said.


What this "source" is clearly trying to relay is that the inclusion of Plame's identity was secondary, tertiary, or inconsequential to the classified substance of the paragraph in question. Obviously, not every word, even in a paragraph marked secret, is classified -- if they were, we'd run out of nouns, verbs, and gerunds pretty quickly. The same is true of Ms Plame's name, if she was not the focus of the classified content.

Now take a look back at Washington Post's first three paragraphs describing the memo, here:



A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret



and here:




A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified



and finally, here:




The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level



Notice anything? In every instance (other than the headline, for which they can claim journalistic license), they're very careful to never come out and claim that was Plame's identity that was classified, but rather the "paragraph that contained information" and the "paragraph identifying her".

But that's not the implication they're trying to leave with the public reading the story.

What we really don't know is how many paragraphs were in the memo, what was the security classification of those paragraphs - if this para was marked (S) the other paras will be similarly marked with (S) or (U) if unclassified, and what was the overall classification of the memo.