Plame Case May End With Criminal Going Free and 'Witnesses' Jailed

[Robbien]

By William E. Jackson Jr.

(March 23, 2005) -- A Washington week of interviews with numerous reporters and editors for national news outlets leaves one with a checkered perspective in the case of Valerie Plame and the two witnesses/defendants -- Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, who wrote about Plame, and Judith Miller of The New York Times, who did not -- still under sentence for contempt of court.

On March 21, more than a month after a three-judge panel of the circuit court for the District of Columbia upheld their October contempt convictions, joint counsel Floyd Abrams filed an appeal requesting a re-hearing. In talking to E&P this week, he did not sound very optimistic as to their chances: ""It's not as if the court routinely grants such a request -- but we are taking every step available to us."

If the appeal is heard, there is a widespread assumption among close observers that it will result in a unanimous opinion upholding the lower court. (And virtually no lawyer involved thinks the Supreme Court would later consider the case on appeal.) But no one knows how long it will take for the eight judges to decide. In the meantime, should the grand jury expire, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald can renew it.

Paradoxically, there is now little expectation that Fitzgerald will succeed in identifying the person or persons in the Executive Office of the President who was first to knowingly and intentionally violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by revealing Valerie Plame's covert CIA identity to journalists. It appears that every official is in a position to claim that her name was "out there," in circulation, before Bob Novak's July column, and that they merely repeated what had been heard from someone else to members of the press or the administration.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/shoptalk_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000853514

[trudyco]

1. Didn't Novak disclose to a grand jury or something?

[loudsue]

2. This had better not just go away! This was TREASON, and bush's

monkeys are the ones who did it!

I want BLOOD!

:kick::kick::kick:

[90-percent]

3. damn!

You mean; No Karl Rove perpwalks?

Hasn't it been estimated that people who were providing info to Ms. Plame were killed as a direct result of her outing? Didn't this act of treason result in human deaths back where Valerie was working undercover?

Isn't this leak an act of both treason and murder?

And now it's like Republican talking points? They all use it but nobody knows where it comes from?

I really really wonder what Joe Wilson has to say about all this?

America should not let this stand!

-85%

[dbeach]

4. Main media again is wide awake napping...

The deliberate exposure of a CIA agent could be considered Treason!???



"Gannon alias Gosch received reportedly directly from George W. Bush in the White House and/or right nearby, the secret American CIA records used to blow the cover of CIA operative Valerie Plame. The result was that some of the 70 CIA penetration agents, supervised by Plame, operating in countries very hostile to the U.S. were identified and murdered. Blowing the cover of Plame was a reprisal against her husband, a former U.S. Ambassador who criticized George W. Bush."

http://www.rense.com/Datapages/ganndat.htm

"The Mayberry Machiavellians" will stop at nothing to maintain power...

[90-percent]

5. kick

re-kick

-85%

[struggle4progress]

6. and again

:kick:

[Vitruvius]

7. Remember, IOKIYAR; It's OK if you're a Republicam. Even if it's treason.

And they've done it before; e.g. the Reagan-Bu$h campaign telling the Iranian ayatollahs to hold on to the US hostages -- to help the Rethugs beat Carter, and promising to sell them arms (as in Iran-Contra); like the Nixon campaign telling the South Vietnamese puppets to sabotage the Paris peace talks to keep the Vietnam war going and help Nixon beat Humphrey. And like the Chicago Tribune (a Rethug paper) publishing -- in 1943 during WWII -- the fact that we'd broken the Japanese codes to try and embarrass FDR; if the Japanese had seen the story, they'd have changed their codes and we'd have lost that advantage.

Treason is part of the Rethug stock-in-trade.

[acmavm]

8. No surprises here. The criminal cabal isn't known as the criminal cabal

for nothing. There is no way that they can't find out who's really responsible for that treasonous act. They just never wanted to.

As far as old Judith is concerned, they can lock her up and lose the key. I wouldn't feel one damn bit bad.

[90-percent]

9. plame

I read somewhere 70 operatives Ms. Plame was working with could have died as a direct result of this leak?

This BFEE can get away with MURDER!

I'm sure getting away with this will embolden them to do something even more heinous, and on a larger scale.

What now, drop a nook-u-lar bomb on NYC to shut down Air America Radio?

-85%

[applegrove]

10. See they cannot ask sociopaths to take lie detector tests... becuase they

pass. Which is how they may have gotten people to clear their own names in an investigation. The good news is that much better MRI tests are in the offering - tests that can diagnose sociopaths.