Dumb enough for you?

The Newsweek bit does seem to explain one thing that has been a mystery to me from the beginning — what the phantom leaker was trying to achieve. From the Newsweek quote it doesn’t look like revenge but an attempt to make Wilson look like a lone crank using family connections to gain unofficial CIA status for his personal mission. Obviously that is quite a weak point and people didn’t get with the message fully until now. Still it seems more plausible than the revenge idea.

It remains a tawdry smear fabricated by playing fast and loose with important rules about relations with the intelligence service and stil probably demonstrably illegal. It is not the worst thing the Rove has done but probably one of the few where there might be a law against it.

Your continued failure to understand why the mafia can’t turn on itself is breathtaking.

Steve, are you defending Karl Rove’s conduct morally or prognosticating on the likelihood of a conviction?

None of your arguments seem to address the former. As to the latter it is not Ted doing the prosecuting, the current status of Ms. Plame at the time of the revelation may not be the relevant issue, (her contacts didn’t also get desk jobs in Langley and it isn’t for Karl Rove to decide whose cover gets blown) and if it was quite as simple as you appear to believe it would not have got this far. There is still the question of how Novak found out. It is not inconceivable that a lesser source came to Novak and he rang Rove to confirm. It would still beg the question.

You seem to see this as a kind of game. Dan Rather was duped by a document that may well have been essentially true but seems to have been a forgery and he paid a heavy price. Rove in this is in the opposite situation. He has clearly been spinning like a top and playing fast and loose with intelligence but may possibly get away with it. It may be different but you should be explaining how it is better.

Wasn’t this Republican talking point about how Plame wasn’t covert exhausted in 2003? Are we really supposed to believe that Fitzgerald, the judges, and the lawyers for Cooper, Miller, and Rove — not to mention the CIA itself, which referred the matter to the Justice Department — have all failed to notice that no crime could have been committed because Plame wasn’t covert and have instead wasted two years on something that has no chance of going anywhere? It’s too bad none of them have the powers of insight granted to pundits and bloggers.

In short, this theory is inconsistent with the facts that we know, and with the past statements of the involved parties. I will be sincerely shocked if these statements are operative a week from now.

How does the right react?

They will say what they’re told to say. Then, they will be told to say something else. They will then say something else. They’re nothing if not obedient.
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Steve, you’re saying Rove learned about Plame from Novak when, according to this most recent story, Rove testified that he told Novak “Yeah, I heard that, too.” Needless to say, you can’t “learn” something that you’ve already heard about from someone (or something) else.

I also love this idea — which is always sourced to Andrea Mitchell without a transcript — that everyone knew that Plame worked for the CIA. Matt Cooper obviously didn’t know. Robert Novak — who’s right in the middle of neocon circles — didn’t know. If these guys who spend all their time covering the White House didn’t know, how could it possibly count as common knowledge?

If I had access to the Top Secret CIA Employee Directory, and some reporter casually tells me “hey, I heard that so-and-so is a spy”, I would assume that the reporter is pretending to know more than he actually knows so that he can trick me into blabbing.

Surely a senior adviser to the President of the United States can be as discreet as I can…when he wants to be.

Perjury. Since we don’t know the facts yet, so my speculations are no dumber than yours.

Wilson then refused to state that Plame was covert prior to being mentioned by Novak. I can’t think of any explanation for that other than that Plame wasn’t covert.

Um, other than the law? His wife’s career? And just how many times does the CIA have to reconfirm her status?

In your world, what laws did Wilson and Plame break?

Wilson exposed the phony case for war. Veep’s office was freaking out. Rumsfeld was still trying to claim the Niger docs were genuine.

Plame was the available victim. At least with O’Neil, Clarke, Kwiatkowski, and Edmonds the administration didn’t attack family members.
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Ted: You’re a senior advisor to the President of the United States. You get a call from Reporter X, who tells you that the wife of a critic of your boss is a covert CIA agent …

Who told the senior advisor that Plame was covert? Are you inventing this detail because it’s politically convenient, or do you have a cite? “CIA employee” isn’t equivalent to “covert CIA agent”.

In any event, it turns out she wasn’t “covert”:

– Joe Wilson acknowledges, “my wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.”

– Plame was stationed in the U.S. for the six years preceding her “outing” by Novak.

Keep believing!

What would all the right-wingers say if the Clinton Administration did this? I think that they would say it was an impeachable offense!!

Do people just post without reading what’s already been said in the thread? How many times can a mistake be repeated? In God’s name, is the self-correcting blogosphere letting us down?

Urinated State of America said, “Better idiots, please.”

and I agree, starting with USA. As in:

So, agents from the clearance agency come by every few years and interview you about your neighbors. It’s distantly possible they inform you it’s in regard to her security clearance, but extraordinarily unlikely they tell you it’s “so she can continue to work in the CIA.”

(begin snark) Oh. Security Clearances. In DC. That’s unique, isn’t it? I mean, the only possible agency could be the CIA – they’re not necessary for DOD or DEA or DOE or FBI or NSA or DOJ or… (end snark)

Even all that makes some untoward assumptions. Such as that the interviewers were clumsy enough to say it was in regard to security clearances (though that might be obvious). Such as assuming that the interviews are required every couple of years for her level instead of the every 5-10 that most regs require – which would mean she’d had AT MOST one such review in her new digs in Georgetown (moved in in 1998, this mess blew into town in 2003).

By the way, if you look upthread you’ll see some links from Ted. One is “her friends and neighbors didn’t know.” That’s interviews with neighbors against your opinion – weight of evidence says you’re wrong.

mdp,

Wilson is cagey because the law requires him to be so. Even now, unless the CIA has officially de-classified Plame’s status, it is against the law for someone cleared to know that status to confirm or deny it. (Of course, generally anyone else can talk about it all they want.) And even though it’s doubtful that the government would prosecute someone with a clearance for discussing long-revealed information, if I were Wilson I’d be similarly careful in this particular case.

No effort is being made to conceal Plame’s identity, in fact she and Wilson have appeared in photos:

Well, that might be relevant if the thing that was covert is that she was married to Wilson. Has the CIA publicly confirmed that she is an agent?

In the procedures for security clearances (for everyone except Rove, apparently) “everybody’s talking about it” is not recognized as an excuse to release classified information.

How many impossible things can our wingnut contributors admit to believing before breakfast? This particular crop seems to lower the bar.

Redshift: Has the CIA publicly confirmed that she is an agent?

Wilson is willing to tell Vanity Fair that Plame was a undercover operative in 1997. Wilson is unwilling to tell CNN whether she had the same status just before Novak’s column. modus potus’ argues that “Wilson is cagey [talking to CNN] because the law requires him to be so,” but I don’t see how we can square that with the VF interview.

mdp, you finally have a good point. Why would Wilson admit it once and then not say it again?

Maybe he slipped the first time, and somebody (Valerie, or somebody official) called him on it and told him to never do it again?

I suppose we could make conspiracy theories. Bush has decided to destroy the CIA, and the CIA probably doesn’t like that. The last time we came anywhere close to this sort of thing was with Kennedy. It’s hard to be sure what strategies elements in the CIA might be thinking out, but it’s plausible that Wilson would be connected to them. Maybe he’s letting the administration and the wingnuts get all settled on the “defense” that Plame wasn’t really a spy that mattered, so it will be obvious how stupidly they’re lying when they pile on the next set of lies.

No person who can legally discuss this matter knows the true nature of Plame’s status in any detail. We do know, as interested foreign governments or enemy agents discovered, that she had been a highly respected expert on WMD, and the CIA invested millions of dollars in her training and cover. From time to time, even for personal or family reasons, a foreign agent may return to this country to do high level classified work that does not include “complete” cover, in terms of visible employment. That agent may still some day return to work as an undercover operative.
Novak has stated that after two high level White House sources told him about Plame, he called the CIA to verify the story, and spoke to an unnamed source there who asked Novak not to run the story. The source did verify that Plame had worked undercover but the source was not sure of her current level of “identity” or whether she might someday return to a foreign station.
Many partisan “talking points” have made the outing of her name itself to be an issue, as if an enemy of this country would not immediately be able to trace “Ambassador Wilson’s wife” from Novak’s column to Ms. Plame’s cover as both diplomatic spouse and “consultant” at the overseas Brewster-Jennings& Assoc. This Dunn and Bradstreet listed company was an elaborate front for the CIA, a way to cover other agents and to provide a trustworthy shield for contacts in foreign posts who risk death when discovered as CIA informants or moles. Yeah, there is a reason to take this seriously, and find out how this huge asset was destroyed during a time of war, and while the CIA was already scrambling to obtain human intel, sophisticated overseas cover and highly trained WMD experts.

If the prosecuter, a republican, turns on Rove…The prosecuter is through, FOREVER, in Washington, D.C. After Bush gets through with him , he’ll have no place to go.

You hit the nail right on the head. This is all about spin. If Karl Rove did nothing wrong, why did he deny doing anything for 2 years. Mr. Rove has a very high clearance and should not be talking about anyone in the CIA even if they are not a covert agent.

I the CIA diidn’t think there was a crime they wouldn’t have asked for an investigation in the first place. There would have been no outcry. If there was no crime why would the special prosecuter have put Miller in jail? One would have to believe this is not a lighthearted decision. It would seem to me that Bush was not in the loop or this administation is so cocky that they believed that no one would find out what was going on.
Perhaps many of you don’t remember Watergate. The denials, the gaul of men that believed they had the right to do anything they saw fit. This is so much the same thing. The same attitude seems to prevail here. They believe they are untouchable.
And what of Rove. It would seem that an honorable man would resign rather than expose his boss, his president to this scrutiny. It would seem that the right thing to do would be Quit before one was forced out,but then perhaps there is little honor here. Perhaps this is a case of meglomania as was hinted at with Nixon. Perhaps it will take the threat of impeachment.

I think Rove screwed up, the question breaks down to how badly he screwed up, and was his screwup illegal. Well, I’m going to wait until the investigation is done, and look at the additional information passed down before I make my judgements.

If you’re really, really tired of listening to the Republican ::coughSteve:: sheep throw out false and misleading statements, you’ll enjoy Gene Lyons column in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, a preview of which I was fortunate enough to see.

Let’s just say Lyons accurately captures with photographic accuracy the meth-amped calm, Soviet-style truthfulness, and Janus-like consistency of the Republican right.

MDP, you’re still shopping the same point that I refuted days ago. As I pointed out, people who have to deal with the requirements of security clearances get very cautious in live interviews.

If you’re going to hammer Wilson for essentially irrelevant inconsistencies, how about being proportional in evaluating Rove’s consistency?

Unless you are being paid to distribute talking points, you should care about whether your side (and I don’t think I’m inferring too much by calling it that) has been truthful.