Slate's Jack Shafer Falls for Clifford PNAC May's "Who Didn't Know?" Lie!!

[BurtWorm]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2089249/


Stop the Investigation!
Exactly what law did Robert Novak's leakers break?
By Jack Shafer
Posted Friday, October 3, 2003, at 2:49 PM PT


Democrats in Congress want a special counsel appointed to investigate and prosecute the administration officials who reportedly blew the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak, who published it, and to at least six other journalists, who did not.

To them I say, good luck!

...


3) That the individual knew he was disclosing information that identifies a "covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States." (Shafer's emphasis added.) So far, we have no evidence that the United States is taking "affirmative measures" to protect Plame's identity. Anecdotal stories in the press indicate that she's raising 3-year-old twins. The government would have to prove it was actively protecting her identity for a future assignment. This could mean keeping her name out of CIA phone directories; giving her an office off the Langley, Va., campus of the CIA; etc. But Clifford May and others say Plame's identity was well known in some Washington circles. That could argue that the agency wasn't taking affirmative measures to conceal her identity. Plame's husband, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd this week that she surrendered her secret identity to him somewhere around the time of their first kiss! If Plame's been sloppy with her identity, should somebody go to jail for leaking it? Last, the individual would have to know the government was taking affirmative measures to protect her identity. If he didn't know that, he'd be free from prosecution.

<more at link>



Remember, folks...the Cheney people (allegedly ;) ) were passing out this story to friends in the press--Novak, Mitchell and May among them--like so many jellybeans. Who didn't know? Anyone who wasn't a friend of Dick, that's who.

[BurtWorm]

1. kick

[bryant69]

2. This is why this is such an ideological story

The key fact is was Ms. Plames identity a secret? If yes, than the Bush administration is clearly to blame for outing a secret agent for the basest of motives. If no, than it was still a lousy thing to do, but we'll have to move on to the next thing on the list.

The problem is that there's no way to know unless you actually are a "Washington insider" I'm not, personally. I have know way of knowing if Ms. Plame's real employer was well known. Clifford May is hardly an unbiased source; but is he flat out lying here? There's no way to know, until a bunch of Washington insiders come out and tell us (and then, the most likely scenario is a Democrat saying it was a secret to be refuted by a republican saying it wasn't and so on ad naseum).

Anyway I'm inclined to disbelieve May currently, but I would like some harder evidence to come out one way or another. But i'm not holding my breath.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[BurtWorm]

3. To believe May, you'd have to believe the Washington clique

of officials, think tankers, politicos, lobbyists, and journalists would have filed somewhere in their mind that Joe Wilson's wife, the lovely Valerie Plame, was a CIA agent, a little factoid they may have picked up on the cocktail party circuit or that they figured out while perusing Wilson's entry in Who's Who. This seems extremely unlikely--and if true, it's an extremely unflattering picture of the Washington elite's utter provinciality. More likely, Libby, Cheney et al. were passing around this fact to all their pals this summer as part of a campaign to discredit Wilson, to make it look like Wilson and Plame had an agenda. The people who knew this were carefully selected to know it.

[goforit]

4. BUT....It was NOVAC that said it came from top WH officials.

So this still does not let the WH off the hook, considering
their were a total of 6 that were all notified.
No one else leaked it publically in written form.

[NoKingGeorge]

5. Details details details . Who knew details ?

Ok so maybe you could find out Mrs.Wilsons' maiden name.

Who knew she was employed by CIA and bennings&jennings was a front?
Who would know her department , Operations.
Who is autorized to know her duties, working on WMD and terrorists.

No, not an accident or inadvertant comment. Too much detail about her to beleive it did not come from someone with a need-to-know-clearance.

[BurtWorm]

6. Excellent points!