'S' Is For Secret (Not Share)--Rovegate

[rodeodance]

I got this as an email today:

----- Original Message -----
From: American Progress Action Fund
To:
Sent: Thursday, July 21, 2005 10:01 AM
Subject: Progress Report: Winners And Losers

.......PLAMEGATE

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=899161
'S' Is For Secret (Not Share)

That didn't take long. The CIA leak scandal has already made its return to the front pages after a one-day respite, throwing a wrench in the reported White House strategy to push Plamegate out of the public eye by rushing their Supreme Court nomination. Adding new details to yesterday's Wall Street Journal article, the Washington Post reports this morning that a "classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked '(S)' for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified." But wasn't Plame, as Rove's defenders say, just a desk jockey at Langley? No. "The CIA classifies as 'secret' the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials."

WHY THE MEMO MATTERS: The State Department memo in question has become a "key piece of evidence in the CIA leak investigation" because it is thought to have been the way "someone in the White House learned -- and then leaked -- the information that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and played a role in sending him on the mission." Previous reports have also indicated that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald subpoenaed phone records from Air Force One -- where the memo was first seen by many administration officials -- to "determine whether presidential aides used the aircraft's phones to leak the name of a CIA employee to reporters."

WHY THE NEW REVELATIONS MATTER: For weeks, Karl Rove's attorney Robert Luskin has insisted that his client "never knowingly disclosed classified information." Yet we now know that "nyone reading should have been aware that it contained secret information," as the Post reports. Thus, the memo's details are significant because they "make it harder for officials who saw the document to claim that they didn't realize the identity of the CIA officer was a sensitive matter." The Wall Street Journal noted yesterday that "Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, may also be looking at whether other crimes -- such as perjury, obstruction of justice or leaking classified information -- were committed."

NO IFS, ANDS, OR BUTS: Also in this morning's Post, Rove's lawyer insists that Rove first saw the State Department memo from individuals from the special prosecutor's office. "He had not seen it or heard about it before that time," Luskin said. Yet, in some respects, it doesn't matter whether Rove learned of Plame's identity from the State Department memo (and so knew for certain that information regarding her role in the Niger trip was classified). Administration officials who are given the national security clearance to receive classified information are required to sign the "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement," also known as the "SF 312." In other words, Rove not only had a duty not to disclose classified information, but he also had an affirmative duty prior to "confirm through an authorized official that , in fact, been declassified."

IT ALL COMES BACK TO IRAQ: One other new fact unearthed in today's Post report is that the State Department, like the Iraq war hawks within the White House, also opposed Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger. But unlike the hawks, the State Department opposed the trip because their own investigations "already had disproved the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger" in February 2002. That's nearly a year before President Bush tried to terrify the American people by including that claim in his State of the Union speech.