Top CIA leak investigation falsehoods

[struggle4progress]

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Falsehood: It is legally significant whether the leakers disclosed Plame's name in their conversations with reporters

Shortly after Newsweek published an email by Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper to Time Washington bureau chief Mike Duffy saying that, according to White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, "Wilson's wife" worked at the CIA, Rove's lawyer responded by noting that his client had not stated her actual name. Several news outlets went on to report Rove's response as if his reported omission of Plame's name was relevant to whether he violated the law. Simultaneously, commentators such as former presidential adviser David Gergen and Washington Times chief political correspondent Donald Lambro, as well as the Republican National Committee (RNC), began to advance the argument that because Rove didn't specifically name her, he did not reveal her identity.

But whether leakers identified Plame as "Valerie Plame," "Valerie Wilson," or "Wilson's wife" is irrelevant, both as a practical matter and likely as a legal matter. Practically speaking, a quick Google search of Joseph Wilson at the time would have produced Plame's actual name. As such, administration defenders have declared that whether her name was mentioned to reporters likely has no bearing on whether there was a violation of the law. Despite having previously implied that there is a meaningful distinction between disclosing her name and her identity before, Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, later conceded that drawing such a line was "too legalistic." Similarly, Victoria Toensing, the Republican lawyer who helped draft the potentially applicable 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), agreed that the use of her name is "not an important part of whether this is a crime or not."
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http://mediamatters.org/items/200510210008