If that as meant for me, don’t follow.

Dugger

And since you bring it up…

From Rove’s original column:

“Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.”

Here’s what’s oddd. Rove says his White House sources, one of which we now know was Rove, told him Plame SUGGESTED Wilson for the trip. That’s consistent with what we now know. But so why did Rove tell Cooper that it was, and I quote from Cooper’s email,  wilson s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who AUTHORIZED the trip ? Between first speaking with Novak and then speaking with Cooper, it appears that Rove added a little embellishment, or maybe, he got his hands on the State Department memo that first implied that Plame sent Wilson on the trip. Who knows. But once again there are more differences and discrepancies in what Rove said to whom and when.

Curioser and curioser …

http://www.davidcorn.com/ (go to page and scroll to transcript).

A quote that seems apt: “There is a very serious message here. Before you shine up your American flag lapel pin and affix your patriotism to your sleeve, think about what the impact your actions will have on the security of the American people. Think about whether your partisan obfuscation is creating confidence in the United States in general and the CIA in particular. If not, a true patriot would shut up.”

Dude, when will you get it. Rove told Cooper that it was “wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.” But she didn’t authorize the trip! Let me say it again: she did not AUTHORIZE the trip! She recommended him for the job but it was her superiors who made the final decision and sent Wilson to Niger. So Rove told Cooper something that was not true. Are you saying that Rove was trying to correct Cooper’s story by telling him something that wasn’t true?

Indeed. So why are you so upset at Rove for reporting the truth to Cooper about how Wilson got the job?

It’s been evident for a while now that Plame had no authority to send Wilson anywhere in an official capacity. Her bosses asked her to recommend someone and she recommended Wilson who, while he is her husband, has more than enough qualifications for undertaking a fact finding mission to Niger. It was Plame’s bosses who okayed Wilson and authorized his trip. This is one reason why Rove’s assertion that he was merely trying to correct a false story is so misleading. The only people who ever asserted that Plame authorized the trip and sent Wilson on it is the administration itself.

Indeed, the CIA has raised questions about portions of the State Department memo that mention Plame because the memo is the first place, that I know of, that asserted Plame was directly involved in sending Wilson to Niger. The CIA had a problem with that characterization of Plame’s role in the matter because the guy in the State Department who wrote the memo wasn’t at the meeting when the decision was made. This is at least how I understand the story as reported.

Second of all, the idea that a group of agents in the CIA was “working against the administration” is an utterly absurd way of looking at it. The more reasonable reading is that there were a group of agents and analysts who were doing their jobs to get the best intelligence they could about the threat Hussein posed and that the evidence they found didn’t jibe with White House claims. It is a strange day indeed when reporting the truth is automatically considered “working against the administration.”

It is a strange day indeed when reporting the truth is automatically considered  working against the administration.

Where you been, frameone? That day arrived long, long ago.

Where was it the CIA said Ms Plame was covert – at the time of Novak’s column? I missed it.

Dugger

And again, he’s diving into an empty pool.

The potential reasons run the gamut. We first need to find out exactly WHO authorized the investigation. We already know from Wilson himself that there was a faction inside the CIA that was actively working against the Administration. Maybe this branch of the CIA authorized it. But even if it came from the Tenet wing, it could merely be a cover-your-a## request because Tenet knew that if he hadn’t referred the matter, people like Oliver, neocons, etc. would go batty screaming “Cover Up!!”.

3. The CIA sent Joe Wilson to Niger. Noone has ever asserted otherwise.

But WHO in the CIA authorized it? That’s the whole question. If Plame authorized it, or had any part in authorizing it, then we have a clear ethical violation by Plame.

Why won t you answer the real question: Why is the White House being used to smear Joe Wilson, because he wrote an article contradicting the White House?

Now we come down to it. Your real question is: Why should Republicans be allowed to defend themselves? Sorry, but that’s life.

Yes, the CIA—run by a GOP hack named Porter Goss–is off and running a covert operation against AWOL George. Of course, John Ashcroft–then-head of the DoJ—is in on the plot to discredit our boy from Andover.

Oh my! Farris rotated too much during his conspiracy-spinning. That’s gotta hurt.

Maybe his focus isn’t on the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s name, but on the disclosure-by-association of other operatives who worked with her.

Is that what he’s thinking? Beats me. At this point, it’s a fool’s errand to guess who will or won’t be charged and what they can or can’t be charged with.

1. The CIA referred the matter for a criminal investion in the belief that the cover of one of their operatives was illegally compromised. It strains credulity to believe that the agency itself would have referred the matter for prosecution if Ms. Wilson/Plame did not have an official covert status.

2. Any prosecuter investigating a case for potential filing goes over the evidence to determine if all the elements of the crime can be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Step one in this case – was Ms. Wilson/Plame a covert agent. i.e., did the relevant statutes apply to her? A simple 2 minute phone call by Fitzgerald would have cleared that up at the outset. It’s hard to believe that Fitgerald didn’t sit down and discuss the matter with CIA brass to get an idea of what the case was about before he set out on his investigation. He is by all accounts meticulous.

If Ms. Wilson/Plame wasn’t covered by the statute, the investigation would have ended 2 years ago. There would have been no grand jury proceedings and the principals, Rove, Libby, Miller, Cooper, et al wouldn’t be in any trouble because there wouldn’t have been any need for them to testify in the first place.

3. Just for further edification here’s what a couple former CIA agents (as well as an unidentified current agent) have said about Ms. Wilson/Plame and her status (from Time magazine): “CIA sources say Plame held highly sensitive jobs during the past two decades. In the late 1990s she was serving as an NOC, working as an analyst with Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a CIA front company that has been shut down. … But in 1997 she moved back to Washington. The New York Times has reported that the CIA feared that her cover had been blown to the Russians by double agent Aldrich Ames. Her marriage to a high-profile former diplomat further limited her ability to fly under the radar. She began working at CIA headquarters in Langley, assigned to the directorate of operations, the CIA’S clandestine branch that manages its human spying overseas and is one of the agency’s most secretive directorates. …

… But while she may no longer have been a clandestine operative, she was still under protected status. A U.S. official told TIME that Plame was indeed considered covert for the purposes of the Intelligence Identities Protection law. And even if the leak was not illegal, intelligence officials argue, it is not defensible. “I’m beyond disgusted,” a CIA official said last week. I am especially angry about the b_______ explanations that she is not a covert agent. That is an official status, and there are lots of people in this building who are on that status. It’s not up to the Republican Party to determine when that status will end for an agent.”

And one more from Newsweek: “To get an idea of how destructive (a leak such as this can be), I talked to Melissa Mahle, a former CIA covert operative turned author whose career parallels Plame’s. She explained what happens when someone’s cover is blown. It isn’t pretty, especially when, like Plame, you have been under “nonofficial cover” (working for a phony front company or nonprofit), which is more sensitive than “official cover” (pretending to work for another government agency). The GOP’s spinners are making it seem that because Plame had a desk job in Langley at the time she was outed, she wasn’t truly undercover. As Mahle says, that reflects a total ignorance about the way the CIA works. Being outed doesn’t just waste millions of taxpayer dollars; it compromises hundreds of other people in the field you may have worked with in the past. [Jonathan Alter, "Why the Leak Probe Matters," Newsweek, July 25, 2005]

Finally, what Mr. Wilson said about his wife’s status is totally irrelevant and without any legal force to the question of whether his wife was covered by the statute at the time of the leak. And in fact, such a statement isn’t an “admission” at all in the legal sense since he isn’t the person affected by the statement nor is he a party to the possible criminal action.