Pundits WRONG the Plame Outing Won't Put Somebody Away

[UTUSN]

It's lovely when even lawyerly slouches outside the literary flame-wars skewer HITCHENS (and the ilk).

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http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-delavega12aug12,1,7070171.story?coll=la-news-comment

Exposing the Plame case mistake
The pundits say the law that protects covert agents' identities won't put anybody away in this investigation. Here's why they're wrong.

By Elizabeth de la Vega, ELIZABETH DE LA VEGA recently retired after more than 20 years as a federal prosecutor in Northern California. A longer version of this article appears on the website www.TomDispatch.Com.



PUNDITS RIGHT, left and center have reached a rare unanimous verdict about one aspect of the grand jury investigation into the Valerie Plame leak: They've decided that no charges can be brought under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 because it imposes an impossibly high standard. Christopher Hitchens, for instance, described the 1982 act as a "silly law" that requires that "you knowingly wish to expose the cover of a CIA officer who you understand may be harmed as a result." Numerous other columnists have nodded their heads smugly in agreement.

Shocking as it may seem, however, the pundits are wrong, and their casual summaries of the requirements of the 1982 statute betray a fundamental misunderstanding regarding proof of criminal intent. ....

So what, exactly, does the prosecutor have to prove about the defendant's state of mind under this law? Simply break down the run-on sentence. The defendant must "intentionally disclose" the information. To determine what "intentionally disclose" means, you must follow some basic rules of statutory construction. First, you look to see if the word is specifically defined within the statute itself. For example, the term "disclosed" is defined in the act to mean "communicate, provide, impart, transmit, transfer, convey, publish or otherwise make available." ....

Nowhere does this statute require proof that the defendant "wished to harm" an undercover agent or jeopardize national security. The reason why someone disclosed the information — whether for revenge, to prevent the publication of a story or to harm the U.S. — is an issue of motive, not intent. ....

NONE OF US can presume to know the universe of facts that have been uncovered in the Fitzgerald investigation. On the contrary, at the risk of sounding like Donald Rumsfeld, we can be quite sure that there is much that we do not know, and that some of what we think we know is wrong. It would be presumptuous to declare that the Intelligence Identities Protection Act is definitely still under consideration in the grand jury proceeding. But it is equally presumptuous — and illogical — to declare that it is not under consideration, especially when the opinion is based solely on mistaken assumptions about the requirements of the law.

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[BlueEyedSon]

1. The pundits are right, but their reasoning is wrong....

No one will get "put away" because the tendrils of the BFEE criminal enterprise run deep throughout the entire system.

[electropop]

3. I have a different idea why their reasoning is wrong...

Though the top of the CIA has been hijacked, the thousands of case officers and mid-managment CIA officers are career people. They do not like what is going on one bit, and they very much dislike (to put it mildly) the endangering of one of their own, and destruction of a major case. :grr:

I think those involved won't go to jail because before that can happen, they will find themselves "terminated with extreme prejudice," probably in some very difficult to trace manner.

:yoiks: :nuke: :nopity: O8) :smoke:

:popcorn: :applause:

[geek tragedy]

2. It's inaccurate to focus on the IIPA. The Espionage Act is where the

action is here. Rove's indictment, if it happens, may very well read like the AIPAC indictments.