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June 30, 2005

Plame probe may reveal more than Bush critics want America to know

No crime has been committed in the Valerie Plame case. That is, none that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is looking into. His narrow focus is to determine who it was at the White House that mentioned Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak. This futile exercise, while it may ruin careers if anyone is indicted, will not result in a conviction.

From the outset, there has been a question as to whether the CIA operative was still covert in 2003. Some openly questioned her status, including Nicholas Kristof on the pages of the New York Times and I, at several White House daily briefings.

To this point the agency has not been required to prove that Plame was covert, which is the high threshold for prosecution that must be met under the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act. But it would need to do so in court if anyone is ever brought to trial. A requirement of the Act is for the agency and the agent to demonstrate that it had taken "affirmative measures" to conceal an identity. Plame therefore, had an obligation to protect her identity, which it is clear she did not fulfill. The most glaring example of this is the fact that she actively promoted her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson to be sent on a mission to Niger to investigate a claim that Saddam Hussein had sought to acquire uranium. When his report
did not get the attention from the Bush administration that he desired, he wrote a damning piece about it for the New York Times. It was that act that exposed Plame, since the spotlight that Wilson craved was inevitably shone on his wife.

To make the case Plame had been "outed" by someone at the White House, the agency needed to conceal that Plame was part of the group that engaged Wilson, a critic of the Bush policy toward Iraq. The details of the meeting at which Wilson was decided upon were contained in classified internal memo.

First, the CIA tried to discredit the memo and anyone who spoke of it. Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote a December 26, 2003 article that quoted a source that said the memo was forged. However, the Senate Intelligence Committee determined otherwise and, in 2004, chastised Wilson for making misleading public statements about how he came to be sent to Niger. Within hours, the Kerry campaign purged him from his role as a senior foreign policy advisor and ceased promoting his book.

I acquired knowledge of the memo and the Wall Street Journal reported on it, but no other media outlet mentioned it. I confronted Wilson about it in a September 2003 interview, for which I was rewarded by a visit from two FBI agents. All of the their questions surrounded the document they could "neither confirm nor deny" even existed. They were not interested in what I had heard that suggested a cell at the agency was actively undermining the Bush administration, payback for being blamed for not preventing the 9/11 attacks. When Porter Goss became the CID in 2004, some familiar names quickly headed for the exits. Grumblings from faithful leakers to the mainstream press indicated that Goss was looking into this.

Still unexplained is Plame's motivation to push her husband to go to Niger. Why wouldn't the agency use one of its own people to get the information? Either the CIA didn't have anyone that was monitoring one of the largest suppliers of uranium or those in charge of the investigation wanted to be sure of the outcome. Plame is purported to be an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction, yet the CIA brings in an outsider for a critical mission?

I'm inclined to believe that Fitzpatrick will simply close up shop, with or without the information from Matt Cooper and Judith Miller, because there is no case. Additionally, there are many more questions that will be raised if the probe results in an indictment. Ultimately, Democrats and the media would probably prefer to wail about the injustice of it all instead of being confronted with the truth about the Plame affair.

Posted by jeffgannon at June 30, 2005 12:18 PM

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