If Plame recommended Wilson, how does that exonerate the leaker?

[spotbird]

Not that she did or didn't, but the issues are unrelated, right?

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usnige113888255jul11,0,2551452.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines
Panel finds holes in envoy's report
Senate committee says Joseph Wilson was recommended to Niger mission by wife, a CIA employee


The article starts out with the "report" that Wilson lied about the yellow cake and Plame's suggesting him for the job. Then goes on to say:

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as a weapons investigator. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

But what is the legal justification for outing Plame? If every word Wilson has ever spoken is a lie, intentionally outing Plame was still a crime, right? How does releasing her name become "unintentional" simply because the administration really didn't like Wilson?

[yellowcanine]

1. It doesn't - it is an attempt to kill the messenger and distract from the

crime that was committed. You are correct. The "outing" of Plame is a crime in and of itself - regardless of what the motivations of the leakers were and what her husband did or did not do.

[spotbird]

3. This story also raises another obvious question,

If Wilson did really misrepresent the yellow cake story publicly while sending a contradictory report privately, why didn't they just discredit him directly with his own words. They could have declassified the report contemporaneously, Wilson would have disappeared and Plame could have gone on as before.

[HootieMcBoob]

2. It's a red herring

they're trying to throw the public off the path.

[spotbird]

6. But what is the theory they are proposing?

The claim that this vindicates the administration in the Plame affair is just words strung together with no meaning at all, right?

[NWHarkness]

4. Muddying the water

It's a favorite GOP tactic, make everyone look bad and hope the public tunes out in disgust.

[welshTerrier2]

5. an answer and a question ...

the real answer is: it doesn't matter ... but the Republican spin will be that Wilson's report was dismissed by the administration because they didn't think Wilson was credible ... if they admitted that it was Cheney who selected Wilson to do the investigation, it confers a degress of credibility on him (i.e. Wilson) ... they want to be able to say "we didn't send him because we felt his history was tainted ... we had no faith in him or anything he had to say ..."

but the far more important question that keeps getting conveniently swept under the rug is: who wrote the Niger memo ???

because whoever wrote the memo was clearly out to distort the case against Saddam ... that's where the real crime occurred ...

[spotbird]

7. Couldn't both be true?

Cheney wanted an investigation and Plame suggested Wilson for the job? I haven't seen anywhere in this latest round of mud slinging the assertion that Cheney had nothing to do with the original request.

[MallRat]

8. Check out Talking Points Memo about this article.

Josh Marshall tears Susan Schmidt a new one in this column from over the weekend. She's a right-wing shill, and a rather poor one at that.

-MR

I'll dispense with the literary prologue and get right to the point.

Susan Schmidt is known, happily among DC Republicans and not so happily among DC Democrats, as what you might call the "Mikey" (a la Life Cereal fame) of the DC press corps, especially when the cereal is coming from Republican staffers.

This morning she has an article on the Senate intel report and Joe Wilson, specifically focusing on the relevance of Wilson's reporting on Niger (the report says analysts did not see Wilson's findings as weakening claims that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from Niger) and his wife's role in recommending him for the assignment.

(snip)

From Schmidt's article:

"The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional."

Again, a conversation with a lawyer may have been more helpful than one with a staffer.

There's no 'challenging the bona fides of a political opponent' exception to the law in question. While Plame's alleged role may have some political traction, it's legally irrelevant. Government officials are not allowed to disclose the identity of covert intelligence agents, whether they feel like they have a good reason or not.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/003143.php

[grytpype]

9. It's just Steno Sue. Ignore her.

Crap like this isn't going to matter once the indictments happen. And when they do, they are going to be the coup de grace for this administration.

When the Plame story first hit the mainstream media in September 2003 (when the CIA asked the DOJ to investigate), polls showed a large majority of the public thought it was a serious matter.

We have Bush on video sheepishly saying he didn't know if the leakers would ever be caught... when he knew farking well who the leakers were. That video is going to make Bush look like complete shite, even if he is not himself indicted.

I think it will be the last straw for a lot of people. Bush is hanging by a thread right now. When he is exposed as a criminal, a traitor, and a liar, that is going to peel off even more supporters, the ones that are on the fence about him right now.

Bush will not be an electable candidate come November.

[madrchsod]

10. there is no legal justification

and of course it`s from steno sue,the biggest whore of them all

[librechik]

11. I refuse to believe it. She had just given birth to twins!

why on earth would she volunteer her husband to leave town? It's ridiculous.

[gmaki]

12. Also keep in mind that it has not at all been shown she was

the one who suggested he go. The Senate report only shows some brief quotes from a memo she allegedly wrote listing his qualifications for the assignment.

I think it is very possible that someone else suggested Joe Wilson and that Plame was contacted and asked if she concurred with him as the selection. In that context her reply to such a request would include his qualifications for the assignment like the ones cited in the Senate Intelligence report.

The thing I find most interesting about this is that if she had been the one to suggest Wilson, she would have had to be part of the team working on the story in the first place. I am basing that on my understanding of the way the CIA is compartmentalized. Had she not been working directly in that particular issue, how would she have ever known that the intelligence needed that sort of vetting?

Unless of course someone approached her and asked her.

In the Senate intelligence report they mention a meeting to "discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger." They note that Plame stated that she "only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes."

If she was part of the "team" working on the issue, wouldn't she have attended the meeting?

Later on, the day after Wilson had returned from Niger he was debriefed by two "CIA DO officers" at Joe Wilson's House. It then says although Plame was there "she acted as a hostess and did not participate in the debrief."

Again if she had been closely involved enough to suggest Wilson in the first place why would she not participate in the debrief?

I know it can't be said to be a fact, but it seems to me that Plame was not closely involved in the assignment and was most likely contacted by someone else in the CIA about sending Wilson, and that the memo cited by the report is only her response to that request.

[leftofthedial]

13. typical RW illogic

kill the messenger

handwaving

distraction

make the issue seem far more complicated than it is, knowing that most Murkans have the attention span of a gnat.