Thanks for the reply.

There have been numerous documented problems with the U.S. government and its “protection” of whistleblowers going back for decades. Bush’s administration isn’t unique in this respect, just much more “accomplished,” if you will.

As for the Plame case, it’s hard to charge anyone with outing her identity if they are, as Scooter has allegedly done, obstructed the investigation. If Scooter is willing to take the fall, then the White House gets a pass and we may never find out what really went down.

However, there are some major misconceptions regarding her CIA status that keep making the rounds. First, regardless of her current CIA status, the program she was involved in was still operating. That means numerous individuals she worked with were potentially exposed by her outing. Some might be actual agents, but imagine what might happen if you had regular contact with Mrs. Plame and were nothing more than a local shop keeper or artisan or whatever? If your government is paranoid enough, they might be inclined to round up anyone who had contact with the now outed CIA agent. We round up those with “known” ties to terrorists. Wouldn’t a hostile government view contact with an american spy in the same way? That’s just one way her outing could have serious consequences, whether she was an active agent or not.

The CIA says she was active, though
Not everyone seemed to be in on the secret.

One reporter’s opinion on whether Valerie Plame’s identity was actually commonly known

Can anyone name any reporters who have come forward to say that Plame’s identity was commonly known? I have looked for some basis for that claim and I can’t find any outside of conservative blogs like The Nation and Townhall. There is also a claim by Republican activist Clifford May in National Review Online that he got her identity from an anonymous source. Of course, you have to wonder, why would her identity be common knowledge? Why would she be the subject of so much discussion? It seems a little convenient, doesn’t it, that out of the CIA’s ranks the one NOC whose identity is purported to be common knowledge just happens to be the wife of a man having a very public battle with the administration. It also strains credibility to think that the CIA would work so hard to establish Plame as a NOC, the deepest cover there is, and then go all chatty Cathy around Washington about it. It also contradicts stories that have the CIA calling reporters after it learned of the Plame story in an effort to get them to suppress her name (which Novak ignored).

It seems there is a lot of questionable reporting on her covert status:

http://mediamatters.org/items/email/200510260005

“In all, eight of Jimmy Carter’s cabinet members eventually resigned during his one term in office,” while “[o]ther top administration officials, including Carter’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young, were forced out& because of unauthorized meetings with PLO leaders.” Analysis of their archives by Lexis-Nexis researchers found that Ronald Reagan “saw all but one of his cabinet positions change hands during his two terms in office from 1981-1989″ and that he had a total of “four chiefs of staff and six national security advisors.” Lexis-Nexis also determined that “[b]efore he finished his second term in office, [Bill Clinton] had 10 of his original cabinet members resign and several of their replacements also resign.” Further, resignations on moral and ethical grounds during the Clinton Administration included “top Department of Health and Human Services officials Peter Edelman, Mary Jo Bane and Wendell Primus.” In a 1998 article in the New York Times, a then-less-known Judith Miller reported that a then-less-known United Nations weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, had resigned& [from his UN post] charging that the U.N. secretary-general, the Security Council and the Clinton administration had stymied the inspectors& .”

And

“Over the years, many public servants from many administrations have been fired, forced out, or have quit their posts in protest. Unfortunately no one, to my knowledge, has bothered to catalogue them all. Despite a lack of precise figures, it also seems that no administration in recent memory has come close to the Bush presidency in producing so many high-profile public statements of resignation, dissatisfaction, or anger over administration policies, actions or inaction.”

Sounds like this has been an endemic part of government for decades, although they appear to be getting a much higher profile in the media now. Bottom line, the system is broken, has been broken for a long time and needs to be fixed.

Continued below…

I’ve looked over those links you posted. Here are some thoughts:

The normal whistleblower system is obviously badly broken.

Some of the cases (i.e. Sibel Edmonds, Jesselyn Radack, Russell Tice) seem pretty blatant. Although I have to question some of the people that were used as examples of punished whistleblowers (smear campaigns against Cindy Sheehan? Richard Clarke?).

I also found a another good story on this issue here which notes cases going back into the 90’s.

If the reports are accurate, it looks like Bush’s appointment of Scott Bloch, as the head of the Office of Special Counsel was a bad idea. Bloch sounds like a guy way too concerned with closing files to make his backlog reductions look good. Or he’s Bush’s henchman simply doing his bidding. I’m sure people here have their own opinion, but you just can’t tell for sure.

However, in all this, what isn’t clear is how much of this retaliation is at the direction of the administration and how much is pissed off and petty superiors wanting to get back at people who dare to rock the boat. You see this kind of crap in private industry as well. And not every complaint can be taken at face value. Not every person crying wrongdoing is doing it for altruistic reasons… some have their own agendas and axes to grind as well.

Continued below…

To date, Fitzgerald has not charged anyone with “outing” Ms. Plame. The indictment against Scooter Libby is for perjury and obstruction of justice relating to the investigation itself, not for anything he might or might not have said about Plame. Whether the reason Fitz is declining to charge anyone with outing Plame is because (1) Plame was no longer a covert agent, having been out of the field for more than 5 years or (2) Plame’s CIA background was already common knowledge within DC, as several of the reporters involved have stated, or (3) some other reason, is unknown. He may still decide charge someone, but I must say it’s been awfully quiet for quite a while now.

Regarding Bill L.’s post, I had completely missed it. I’ve noticed in the past that new postings can suddenly pop up between 2 other previous posts. Bill’s seemed to be one of these. Apologies to Bill, as he had asked for my response. I will check out the links he posted.

No rush was needed in 2003

In reference to FISA:

Government officials describe both ["national security letters" and "emergency foreign intelligence warrants"] as crucial tools in the war on terrorism that allow authorities to act rapidly in the pursuit of potential threats without the delays that can result from seeking a judge’s signature.

Apparently nobody felt the need to push the notion that FISA was too slow in 2003.

FISA FAQ

8. How is surveillance authority different under FISA?

Although orders issued under FISA are sometimes called FISA “warrants,” this is misleading because it suggests that the FISA order is like an ordinary search warrant or Title III intercept order — and it isn’t. Under the Fourth Amendment, a search warrant must be based on probable cause to believe that a crime has been or is being committed. This is not the general rule under FISA.

In short, FISA issues warrants for montioring phone conversations and the like in cases where there may not even be any criminal activity going on. The probable cause standard is much lower for FISA.

Anyway, FISA and wiretaps are meant for monitoring communications over a period of time and not for detecting potential dangers by listening in on thousands, if not millions, of calls at once in the blind hope that you might hit paydirt. That’s blatantly unconstitutional and appears to be exactly what Bush authorized.

Besides, the whole effort was a complete dud

…More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and counterterrorism officials, including some in the small circle who knew of the secret program and how it played out at the F.B.I., said the torrent of tips led them to few potential terrorists inside the country they did not know of from other sources and diverted agents from counterterrorism work they viewed as more productive.

…After you get a thousand numbers and not one is turning up anything, you get some frustration.

Anything short of jail time for Bush and his dog will certainly be spun as a “major non-event” by the right wing. Sort of like you’re doing here with Plamegate. Last I checked Libby was still under indictment and Fitz’s investigation is still open.

But by all means, lets investigate the leak too. Unlike you folks on the right, most of us think leaking classified information is very wrong, unless you’ve got a much, much better reason than the smearing of a political oppoent.

Re: “legal whistleblower avenues”, however, refer to Bill L.’s well documented post above, which (pardon for the reminder) you seem to have ducked completely.

I have no problem with an impartial, non-partisan investigation of this issue. Personally, I think the outcome will turn out to be a major non-event. Much like the Plamegate investigation (Karl Rove is going to be frog-marched out of the White House ANY day now…). But time will tell.

Along with that investigation, I would also like them to find and prosecute the NSA/CIA staffer who leaked the program to the NYTimes in the first place. As I noted above, leaks are bad and there was no excuse for it… there are legal whistleblower avenues for that person to pursue if they truly felt the program was illegal.

Bush had three years to do this, and both houses of legislature in its pocket. Piece of cake. He never even tried. He preferred to keep on circumventing the law.

I can think of three explanations for that:
1) Bush has been conducting surveillance that he thinks the FISC would not approve
2) Bush wants to reserve for himself the power to conduct domestic surveillance without oversight
3) Bush does not really take seriously his oath to be a faithful steward of the constitution, so can’t be bothered to try to maintain the constitutional checks and balances on his own authority.

All of these possibilities are disturbing to me. Can you say that they aren’t disturbing to you? Or maybe you can suggest another plausible explanation.

and impartial would not, of course, mean by the justice department that approved Bush’s actions to begin with.

I have no idea if the truth will turn out to be one of those 3 or something else entirely. I guess we’ll find out when the investigation is done.

Two questions for you Wilbur:

(1) The “retroactive” part requires you submit the full paperwork package to the FISA court within 72 hours. Do you know how much paperwork this is and how long it typically takes to assemble?

(2) What happens if the full package is not submitted within the 72 hour window?

The answers… after the break

The real problem..

We seem to talk a lot about ‘Bush Hate’ when perhaps we
should be discussing ‘BUSH AFFECTION”.

Wilbur, the answers are:

(1) People familiar with the process say the problem is not so much with the court itself as with the process required to bring a case before the court. “It takes days, sometimes weeks, to get the application for FISA together,” says one source. “It’s not so much that the court doesn’t grant them quickly, it’s that it takes a long time to get to the court. Even after the Patriot Act, it’s still a very cumbersome process. It is not built for speed, it is not built to be efficient. It is built with an eye to keeping [investigators] in check.”

(2) What if the Government misses the 72 hour window, or else gets the FISA application to a judge on time, but the judge has not yet signed the order when the 72nd hour expires. At that point, there is a forfeiture: the surveillance is to be terminated immediately, and information gained from the surveillance during that key 72 hour period cannot be used for any purpose–not even communicated to federal anti-terror employees–without a certification that it “indicates a threat of death or serious bodily harm to any person.” Which they may not yet be able to confirm.

I guess you’re right… it’s a piece of cake… practically a rubber stamp. No reason why Bush should circumvent that process to get time-limited intel on possible terrorists in the US. Damn power hungry dictator-wanna-be.

We remember the bad old days of the democrats lobbing a missile and then walking away, or at the first sign of difficulty cutting and running.

One of the most disturbing yet most undiscussed aspects of the rabid support for Bush and his lawbreaking from right-wing bloggers is just how much of it seems to be based on a personal affection for Bush and not actual…

What makes you think so?

Excellent question, Quaker. That’s the whole point: Bush never tried to get FISA to approve his program, not even retroactively as was allowed by law. He just decided at the beginning that he didn’t need no steenkin warrants, and operated on that assumption for three steenken’ years.

It ain’t that hard: you take your case to FISA, retroactively if you have to act in an emergency. If FISA says no, _then_ you can consider whether a limited and temporary circumvention of the act is necessary for national security purposes. Bush didn’t do that, he just followed the commands of his inner dictator. Again: for three years without any attempt at bringing his actions under some semblance of the normal system of checks and balances.

That bothers a lot of people on the Republican side of the aisle, but apparently not the crazies who post here. I’ve seen a lot of questionable positions put forward by our right-wing friends on this site, but this is undoubtedly the most craven and tawdry.