History happening all over again.
Story in today's Washington Post. Edwin Wilson's a rat, convicted in 1982, but this part of the story caught my attention.
Remember who was President in 1982? And who was his Attorney General? And his CIA head?
What's with repubs outing CIA operatives? And they wonder why we don't believe them about Plame.
If this happened when Clinton was President, or Reno the AG....!
--------------------------
“Facing 52 years in prison, Wilson was shipped to the super-max prison in Marion, Ill., and placed in solitary confinement. He spent 10 years there -- "10 years locked down 23 hours a day," he says. Meanwhile, his wife divorced him. His two sons cut off communication with him. The IRS seized his property, and the man who'd once been worth $23 million declared bankruptcy.
“…Instead, Wilson bombarded the CIA and the Justice Department with Freedom of Information Act requests, demanding documents about himself. The feds balked. Wilson sued and won. Slowly, over a decade, the documents began to trickle out and Wilson pored over them, searching for evidence that would help free him.
“By 1996, he'd uncovered a Justice Department memo titled
"Duty to Disclose Possibly False Testimony. " It described the CIA's Briggs affidavit - which had helped persuade the Houston jury to convict Wilson - as "inaccurate." Wilson filed a motion to overturn the Houston conviction, attaching the memo as evidence.
“…The documents also showed that, within days of the Houston trial, the
CIA had informed the Justice Department that the Briggs affidavit was false. Lawyers at both CIA
and Justice argued that they had a "duty to disclose" the false testimony to Wilson and the judge, as required by law. But
they never did.
“In 1999 Adler filed a motion to overturn Wilson's conviction because "the guilty verdict was obtained through the government's knowing use of false evidence." In response, the Justice Department admitted that the Briggs affidavit was "inaccurate" but claimed that the conviction should be upheld because the CIA had never authorized Wilson's sale of C-4.
“Last October, Judge Hughes,
a Reagan appointee, threw out Wilson's conviction, denouncing the government's "fabrication of evidence." If the jurors had known about Wilson's 80 CIA contacts, Hughes wrote in a scathing 29-page decision, they "very likely would have believed Wilson's theory and acquitted him."
<
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/print/style/?nav=left>