What NewsMax is saying: "Valerie Plame Leak Not Illegal"

[tuvor]

Deputy AG: Valerie Plame Leak Not Illegal

The White House press corps lapsed into a full-blown feeding frenzy on Monday over the news that Karl Rove is identified in emails from Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper as someone who mentioned that Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA - just days before her name was revealed by columnist Robert Novak.

But the former deputy attorney general who helped draft Intelligence Identities Protection Act - which Bush critics insist was violated when Valerie Plame was identified to Novak - said earlier this year that it's unlikely any laws were broken in the case.

Writing in January in the Washington Post, former Assistant Deputy Attorney General Victoria Toensing explained that she helped draft the 1982 law in question.

Said Toensing: "The Novak column and the surrounding facts do not support evidence of criminal conduct."

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2005/7/11/221829.shtml

[xray s]

1. (ahem) and just how the fuck would Victoria know the facts?

Does she have a bug in Fitzgerald's office?

[Dave Reynolds]

2. NewsMax,

the other "fair and balanced" white meat.

[devilgrrl]

3. If it is not illegal, why did it take so long to fess up?

Victoria Toensing is a lying windbag

[Patchuli]

4. Really? Even when lives are endangered

and tax dollars paid into the operation over 20 years go down the toilet ? BS! National security was compromised because of it but it's not "criminal conduct?"! BS!!! Even Snot McClellen calls it a "criminal investigation."

"Said Toensing: "The Novak column and the surrounding facts do not support evidence of criminal conduct."

[BattyDem]

5. As Proud2BAmurkin said in another thread ...

If Rove didn't do anything wrong, why did he deny it?

[Erika]

6. Bush said if anyone in his WH leaked confidential info they

would be fired. This is so funny.

Now they are arguing over semantics, was this a legal leak or an illegal leak? Scott McClellan looked like a total idiot in the press gaggle today.

[LibDemAlways]

7. Toensing said the same thing tonight on ABC News.

Expect the official spin to be that whatever the hell Rove did or said, it was not illegal. This will be repeated like a broken record
and affirmed by Scotty at the earliest opportunity. Rove will not go down without a hell of a fight.

Of course had this happened in a Dem administration the aide would have been indicted for treason and the President impeached two years ago.

[Pirate Smile]

9. She is quoted in the NYT's in tomorrows paper also.

"A prosecutor seeking to establish a violation of the law has to establish an intentional disclosure by someone with authorized access to classified information. That person must know that the disclosure identifies a covert agent "and that the United States was taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States." A covert agent is defined as someone whose identity is classified and who has served outside the United States within the last five years.

"We made it exceedingly difficult to violate," Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee when the law was enacted, said of the law.

The e-mail message from Mr. Cooper to his bureau chief describing a brief conversation with Mr. Rove, first reported in Newsweek, does not by itself establish that Mr. Rove knew Ms. Wilson's covert status or that the government was taking measures to protect her.

Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove's disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times. Ms. Miller has gone to jail rather than disclose her source.

"It is clear that Karl Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category" of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. "That's not 'knowing.' It doesn't even come close."

There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was.

"She had a desk job in Langley," said Ms. Toensing, who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. "When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/12/politics/12rove.html?pagewanted=3&ei=5094&en=722d41bfc0b4802a&hp&ex=1121140800&adxnnl=0&partner=homepage&adxnnlx=1121136658-flXmFsZ6yowYtWYF7nO82g

[shraby]

8. If no laws were broken, then why

is Fitzgerald conducting an investigation? He had to have looked at the information and determined there is a reason to investigate.

[enough already]

18. For what it's worth....

....I heard Tom Freidman and David Gregory (yes, the same Gregory who killed McClellan yesterday) on Imus today and both say they don't think Rove broke the law. I've thought from the start this was going nowhere.

[struggle4progress]

10. Republican zeros have echoed this standard talking point from day one.

[upi402]

16. These links have something else to say

NewsMax and the previous BushCo minion may disagree, but;
one
two
three

[struggle4progress]

17. Thanks! eom

[Zen Democrat]

11. I don't remember NewsMax being the Special Prosecutor here. eom

[kestrel91316]

12. Gee, maybe somebody should tell Fitzgerald????

[Erika]

13. W said if there was ANY leak of confidential info from the WH

that the person(s) would be fired. Now he's trying to parse it as to whether the leak was legal or illegal. This is hilarious!!!

[leesa]

14. Right, just keep repeating that and click your heels three times...

[Gyre]

15. That is a "question of fact"

Jury's make those decisions all the time. Media outlets never get asked to make those calls. Dep AG Toensing isn't investigating the case, hence, she's talking out her ass because she doesn't know what evidence Fitzgerald has or doesn't have.

Is Rove "guilty", or "not guilty" of the crimes charged would be a question for a jury. It's up to Fitzgerald to bring the appropriate charges (if any) based on what he believes he can prove based on the elements of the crimes (he's contemplating charging) and the evidence he accumulates.

Gyre