Most Americans want independent probe of CIA leak: poll

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20031002/pl_afp/us_iraq_cia_probe&cid=1521&ncid=1480

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Most Americans want an independent investigator to probe charges that the White House leaked the name of a covert CIA agent.

According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll, sixty-nine percent of 505 adults surveyed Tuesday believed an independent probe was needed, compared with only 29 percent who believed Attorney General John Ashcroft would get to the bottom of the affair.

Valerie Plame, wife of former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was named as a Central Intelligence Agency operative in a July 14 column by conservative writer Robert Novak.

The US Department of Justice notified the White House late Monday that it was launching a full investigation into who leaked her name.

more

[emad]

1. CNN says lie detector might be used: independent enough?:

"Press secretary Scott McClellan strongly intimated that President Bush would expect White House aides to take polygraph examinations if the Justice Department asked for them"

see:http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/10/01/wilson.cia/index.htm

Hope they make Dumbo take the same lie detector...

[NNN0LHI]

4. No. Even I know there are ways to beat a lie detector test

Certain medications and such.

Don

[Tyler Durden]

5. I can beat one cold sober and straight.

I used to do it for laughs in college: I have some voluntary control over heartbeat and blood pressure. Not much, but enought to fool any polygraph.

Besides, the results are still inadmissable in every court in the country.

[NNN0LHI]

6. A polygraph IS admissible in some courts in the country. Some examples

http://www.polygraph.org/Browser%20Files/005%20GLV%20Introduction.htm

<snip>As of this date, 18 states admit by stipulation of the parties, in at least some circumstances, evidence of the results of polygraph testing. Only New Mexico generally permits the introduction of polygraph evidence without a stipulation (though its admissibility is tightly controlled by evidentiary rule). Of the remaining 31 states, the courts have either rejected admission of polygraphs, including by stipulation, or have not addressed the issue. In some jurisdictions, the status of admissibility of polygraph evidence is not clear. For example, in Illinois, the state appellate courts have held that stipulated polygraph evidence is inadmissible. Recently, however, the Illinois court of appeals upheld the admissibility of stipulated polygraphs in a civil case. It is unclear whether Illinois continues to be an inadmissibility state or is now a state where polygraph evidence is admissible by stipulation. In South Carolina, a recent decision of their highest appellate court observed that, while polygraph evidence is generally inadmissible, its admissibility is at the discretion of the trial court.

In the federal circuit, the admissibility of polygraph evidence is largely controlled by trial judge discretion under F.R.E. 702 and the decision in Daubert v. Merrill Dow Pharmaceuticals, Inc., 509 U.S. 579, 113 S.Ct. 2786, 125 L.Ed.2d 469 (U.S.Cal. 1993), though some circuits continue to adhere to a per se exclusion of polygraph evidence. Some courts, both federal and state, cite U.S. v. Scheffer, 523 U.S. 363, 118 S.Ct. 1261, 140 .Ed.2d 413 (1998), for support of judicially imposed per se ban of polygraph evidence. A close reading of Scheffer, however, does not support such reading.<2> Additionally, the federal courts are in conflict as to whether polygraph evidence should be admissible in capital sentencing proceedings. Compare Rupe v. Wood, 93 F.3d 1434 (9th Cir. 1996) and Goins v. Angelone, 226 F.3d 312 (4th Cir. 2000).

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[Tyler Durden]

7. I stand corrected, but it ain't DNA.

And if both parties don't agree, you can bet that no jury will see the results. Plus the perps still have to agree to it, if I read this correctly.

[NNN0LHI]

8. Yes. Both parties must stipulate to it being admissible

And in some cases the judge must also. But no. Its not DNA. Hope you didn't think I was suggesting that it was?

Don

[Tyler Durden]

2. "Large Possiblity," freely translated, FAT CHANCE.

We live in a country where the VICE PRESIDENT has realized almost $500,000 in deferred salary from a company he used to be CEO of that is raking in War Profits without having to bid its work WHILE HE IS IN OFFICE and his party still stands behind him 100%.

BBV IMHO will take care of the 2004 election just fine, thank you, and then they can load the courts and rule in perpetuity.

Republics die when they factionalize, and the prognosis is very poor.

[joshdawg]

3. with this administration,

if the majority of the people want something, they will not get it. This administration has no concern over what the people want.

[bushisanidiot]

9. What I Can't Understand Is Why the Neocon Apologists

Are pounding the point that Wilson has democratic ties.. doesn't that just make the case that the white house was pulling a partisan dirty trick by outting a democrats wife's covert position? They're basically admitting that they were trying to get back at Wilson for the Niger issue by going after his wife. hello? stupid much?

[havocmom]

11. Neocon Apologists are trying to trivalize this grave violation of security

and figuring their base is so well trained to jump at the "politics as usual" stimulus that no one will draw the logical conclusions about just what sort of usual politics this really is. Remember, too many of them work suffer from the problem of projection. It limits their field of vision severly.

[havocmom]

10. With news about the Ashcroft/Rove connections hitting mainstream news

look for that 69% figure to go up. Keep up the noise on the connections and keep legs under that part of the story. The congress critters need a bit of heat applied so they can justify breaking ranks and screaming for independent and serious investigation on Treasongate!

And keep hammering that Treasongate didn't just out an agent but it crippled US intelligent agency's ability to tack materials terroeists need to make real WMD (as opposed to the phantom ones Cheney Inc are chasing). This injury to the ability to watch traffic in dangerous items coming at a time when North Korea is making nuke threats is just awful. The clowns in the malAdministration have let personal politically moves to discredit a whistle blower and intimidate any future whistle blowers do incredible harm to the real fight against terrorism in the world. They should be held accountable! The CIA will do it, one way or the other. Bang the drum, blow the whislte and keep this story in the public eye!

To hell with Rush... he is not the important issue today!

[Say_What]

12. DEMOCRACRY NOW today will interview former CIA agent

Philip Agee. Here are clips from an article about him at their website:

<clips>
... But it’s not just intimidation; it’s a felony. Until now, a crime the Bush family has taken very seriously. According to Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst who worked under Bush Sr. at both the CIA and the White House, “The Intelligence Identities Protection Act was made draconian, it was made very, very specific, automatic penalties that would accrue to both officials and non-officials—anyone who knowingly disclosed the identity of a CIA agent or officer.” The penalty: fines of up to $50,000 and imprisonment of up to 10 years.

Many believe the law was passed in direct response to former CIA agent Philip Agee’s blowing the whistle on CIA dirty tricks in his book Inside the Company. George H.W. Bush, who was vice-president when the law was passed, said some of the criticism of the Agency ruined secret U.S. clandestine operations in foreign countries.

So seriously did the Bushes take the crime of exposing CIA operatives that Barbara Bush, in her memoirs, accused Agee of blowing the cover of the CIA Station Chief in Greece, Richard Welch, who was assassinated outside his Athens residence in 1975. Agee sued the former first lady and Mrs. Bush withdrew the statement from additional printings of her book. Still, at a celebration marking the fiftieth anniversary of the CIA, the elder Bush again singled out Agee in his remarks, calling him “a traitor to our country.”

David MacMichael worked as a CIA analyst at the time the law was passed. He told Democracy Now!: “If former President Bush could define Philip Agee as a traitor for exposing the identities of serving intelligence officers, if his son’s political advisor has done the same…it is a very serious felony under the current Act.”

http://www.democracynow.org/static/wilson1.shtml

Listen or read transcript at this link:
http://www.democracynow.org/index.pl

[Say_What]

13. Transcript available at Democracy Now's website

<clips>

...AMY GOODMAN: Did you have any dealings with, for example, some of the players we're talking about today: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, George Bush?

PHILLIP AGEE: I have not had dealings with them, but I followed the political positions of these people since the early 1990's when Wolfowitz first came out with this policy document on a new United States foreign policy based on what would best be called I think neo-imperialism – and then later in the Project for a New American Century.

The major players in this Bush administration were all signers of that policy statement back in the 1990's. It called for preemptive wars; it called for the control of the United States of the world essentially; and in this case it's a question of control of Middle East oil among several other reasons. These lies that were used to justify it have all now been exposed. The world knows that they were all false, justifications that is. So the United States has been left alone: Germany is not going to participate; France is not going to participate; Russia is not participating. The United States has been left totally isolated in its intervention in Iraq. Deservedly so.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you condemn the blowing of Valerie plain's cover?

PHILLIP AGEE: I don't have any feelings whether it's the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do. What is wrong is that it's simply dirty politics.Whether it was the blowing of her cover or some other action.

It's small potatoes compared to the whole scenario of lies that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq and the continuing occupation of that country.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you for being with us, former C.I.A. operative Phillip Agee who wrote the book "Inside the Company: C.I.A. diary". We're speaking to him in Cuba.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/10/02/159258#transcript