Talk Me Through Talking My Friends Through Plame >

[Stephanie]

Indictments are imminent.

As the resident lunatic I am again called on to guide my friends through the evidence. (BTW, when you are called "conspiracy theorist" - calling them "coincidence theorist" right back works very well!)


So please talk ME through Plame once. I have too much information and not enough narrative to make it make sense to them.

Tell me the story.

How did it all come down? How do I explain it to the liberal but uninformed and doubtful friends?

It was WHIG who first decided to get Wilson?

Right after that the CIA memo surfaced on AF1?

When Rove outted Plame, did he actually violate the Espionage Act?

Why is Judith Miller in jail? Why is John Bolton visiting her there?

What is taking so long?

[Syrinx]

1. I can answer one of those questions

>What is taking so long?

The grand jury in question disbands sometime next month. (Can someone tell exactly when?) Indictments should come then -- hopefully.

[H2O Man]

5. The grand jury might

finish next month. Or it might get another extension. If, however, it has completed its investigation, it could issue indictments in a week, or in six months. Or, it might not.

[longship]

2. Espionage Act...

You mean what they call the 1982 Intelligence Identities Act? The one B*sh Sr. said violators were nothing better than traitors?

There's other laws which may apply other than 1982 IIA. All staffers with security clearance have signed agreements to not violate security. Go to findlaw and snag John Dean's recent articles on Rove/Plame.

AFAIK, the 1982 IIA only applies to the first person who both had legal knowledge of the information and also knowingly told people who did not have legal access. IANAL, but it's pretty narrow whatever way it's interpreted. This would point the ugly finger at somebody other than Rove. Maybe Condi, Bolton, or somebody like that. (Powell? I don't think so. But if he could be rigged for the part... Ooops. Sorry. Thought this was the last scene of "The Maltese Falcon".)

But this thing has been going on for over two years. That's two years after the WH promised to investigate itself about the leak. Fitzgerald has to be thinking conspiracy and obstruction justice here. When the WH says it's going to investigate itself hang on to your wallet because there's going to be some major cover-up operations launched.

And let's not forget the perjury. That probably means conspiracy to suborn perjury. I wonder how many counts of perjury or perjury in front of Congress Condi Rice will be indicted for?

[John Q. Citizen]

3. And the Huffington Report may have some good stuff archived.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. I'm probably the last one that should answer this, but to help you

get this kicked:

Bolton may be the original leaker or may be one degree away from the leaker. He had an assistant when he was in the State Department who had access to the critical information. The fact that he was bold enough to see Judith Miller gives me a hunch that he may have ordered someone to pass on the information, but I can't believe he actually did it himself. That would be sheer lunacy to out himself that way. But, I would wait for another DUer to come out and confirm what I've written before repeating it.

The Plame-Wilson scenario has been around a lot longer. It's all about Iraq. Or more to the point, it showed that this Administration was willing to out a CIA operative, in order to silence someone that had information that shot down Bush's case for war in Iraq. And the Bush Administration WAS making a case for war. Remember he had Cheney in the CIA headquarters muscling the people in the CIA so they would only produce reports that supported his case. Cheney should never have gotten involved, but he did and the media allowed that one to slip by.

One of the most tangible reports that came out in favor of war was a document that is referred to as the Niger Report. It claimed that Saddam had "yellow cake" which is either plutonium or uranium, but we'll just say that it was an element needed to make a nuclear bomb. Therefore, the story that was pushed by the Administration was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.

That's where Wilson comes in. He had the proof that the Niger report was bogus. The Bush Administration swiftboated Wilson in order to make him less credible to Congress and to the American people. They started by outing his wife in order to shut him up. But they also tried to discredit him by claiming that Wilson, who was a Democrat, was being partisan and that his wife pulled strings to assign him the job that allowed him to question the report in the first place. That was bogus, but it did buy this Administration the time it needed to fool Congress and the American people.

Wilson, who knew his information was accurate, kept speaking out. He never stopped trying to tell his story, which is a good thing for us. But it really wasn't until after we went into Iraq and found no weapons of mass destruction that anybody really started to listen to him. In fact, it wasn't until the British Downing memo came out that people actually began to believe that the Bush Administration was "fixing" the data to create an argument for war. When you look at how far this Administration went to push for this war, it's hard to come away with any other conclusion but that they committed treason.

Finally, about Rove and the Espionage Act. There was a post which got it right. Gave the legal definition and did the walk through you're looking for, so I hope that someone kept it and will repost it for you. The conclusion was that, yes, Rove violated the Espionage Act.

But that's not what I think will be the source of the indictments for Rove. Fitzpatrick's schtick is perjury. From what I hear, his big thing is catching these bigwigs in a critical lie, and then making a case for perjury. I believe that is Rove's downfall. It's possible that Novak has already given the testimony that will indict Rove, and Judith Miller may be in there because this goes much further than Rove. Someone may actually be trying to find out if Judith Miller had anything to do with Kelly's demise in Britain.

But, now I think I've written enough to stoke someone into responding to your post and I would certainly wait until someone else confirms what I've written, before repeating it.

[Stephanie]

8. excellent, thank you

I am hoping for much more than perjury. That's where I get hung up in telling the story. They say, oh, maybe he'll get some perjury charges, but you can't prove anything else. I think you can prove it, especially with the WHIG and the CIA memo - there's your paper trail. But I lose the thread of how it all fits together when I try to explain it. Yours is great, thanks!

[OKJackson]

6. For incredibly deep detail and alternate analasys...

...check out what Citizen Spook has to say about all of this.

http://citizenspook.blogspot.com/

In a nut shell it's less about Plame and more about the outing of Brewster & Jennings, plus CS points out a set of laws Wilson isn't talking about. They don't need to prove malicious intent, all Fitzgerald has to do was show they shared state secrets with someone they weren't intended for.

[H2O Man]

7. Better yet

read Wilson's book. He absolutely does talk about what some conclude he doesn't talk about, without having read his book.

[Stephanie]

9. I think I have it around here somewhere

:hi:

What would you say to someone who claims Fitz won't get anything better than perjury on them?

[H2O Man]

10. Not much.

They are entitled to their opinion. After the indictments are handed down, I might have a little more to say to them. But we are at a point where we can be confident that bigger things are going to happen, and to feel no pressure to "prove" anything to anyone.

Also, keep in mind that the first round of indicments are not the last word.

[Stephanie]

11. So tired of holding my breath

Let's wrap it up, Fitz! Did you see, in one of the articles (Time or Newsweek maybe) one WH excuse for blowing it on Katrina is that they are all distracted by Plame. That none of them knows what's coming down and they are calling reporters hoping for info.