This is what is going to make this case very hard to prosecute.
The CIA "asked me not to use her name but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else," Novak said, because a CIA source had told him Plame was an analyst, not a covert operative.
____________________________________________________________________________
One Heckuva Leak
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 30, 2003; 8:52 AM
Judging by a flood of questions yesterday, the public is real interested in this story about the Bush administration leaking a CIA operative's name -- and the media are not looking too good in the process.
In my online chat yesterday, the leaking of the name of Joe Wilson's wife -- he's the former ambassador who took on the president over the uranium tale -- was heavily criticized. But so was columnist Robert Novak, who published the leak, based on "two senior administration officials," on July 14. And so were at least six other journalists who received such calls from government officials but did not publish the information.
Now it turns out that Time.com published the same leak around the same time as the Novak column, titled "A War on Wilson":
"Some government officials have noted to TIME in interviews, (as well as to syndicated columnist Robert Novak) that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA official who monitors the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. These officials have suggested that she was involved in her husband's being dispatched Niger to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein's government had sought to purchase large quantities of uranium ore, sometimes referred to as yellow cake, which is used to build nuclear devices.
"In an interview with TIME, Wilson, who served as an ambassador to Gabon and as a senior American diplomat in Baghdad under the current president's father, angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa. 'That is bull--. That is absolutely not the case,' Wilson told TIME. 'I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the Feb 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job.'"
Here's what some of you had to say about the controversy:
"If this is a federal crime and Robert Novak knows who the guilty party is, would it not be responsible to report the identity of the leaker?"
"Do the reporters, Andrea Mitchell and five others, who were contacted by the two 'Bush senior administartion officials' have any obligations to these sources since they did not report the story about Joseph Wilson's wife? Would it be unethical for them to comment about which 'Bush senior administration officials' contacted them about stories that were not reported?"
"Why is it that lower echelon reporters like Jayson Blair at the New York Times get fired for plagiarism, but at the same time syndicated columnists like Robert Novak, and by complicity Fred Hiatt, your editorial page director, can destroy a career and risk a life with impunity?"
"When a news story reveals information from an anonymous source that it's a crime to reveal, is it ethical for a reporter to protect the source? Let's say, hypothetically, that the revelation was intended to harm a political enemy, rather than to blow the whistle on government misconduct. Let's say, hypothetically, that this source went to several journalists, some of whom had the principles not to go with the story: would it be unethical for these journalists to reveal the name of the source, if another journalist used that information and an inquiry is launched to investigate it? Do journalists who do not reveal the source run the risk of being complicit in the crime?"
All good questions. Reporters who got these calls are now in the uncomfortable situation of having to honor their confidentiality pledge to the administration officials, even as Justice looks into who the officials are and whether they committed a crime. Not since Ken Starr and his folks were accused of illegal leaks during the Clinton impeachment have journalists, and their willingness to grant high-level people anonymity, become part of the story in this fashion.
There are situations in which it might be useful for a journalist to take information from a prosecutor or grand juror -- say, involving a scandal that could affect public health or safety -- even though it is a crime for the leaker to reveal it. It is not a crime for a reporter to receive such information, and the reporter could be serving the public by getting it out. That does not always make it right for the journalist to publish information that could jeopardize, for example, a military operation or police investigation. Each situation has to be carefully weighed on its merits.
In this case, it's hard to fully understand what the benefit was of outing Wilson's wife. If she is indeed a CIA operative, her effectiveness has now been destroyed. And to what benefit? It certainly appears, on the surface, like a couple of administration officials were trying to discredit a prominent White House critic by going after his wife.
Novak, on CNN's "Crossfire," declared that "nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this." He said the information came up while he was interviewing a senior administration official -- a second one confirmed it -- and that the CIA provided confirmation. The CIA "asked me not to use her name but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else," Novak said, because a CIA source had told him Plame was an analyst, not a covert operative. "So what's the fuss about? Pure Bush-bashing?" (Wilson told CNN last night that his wife was on the clandestine side of the agency.)
NBC's Andrea Mitchell, one of the journalists who received the CIA information from an administration official, told Don Imus yesterday why she didn't use it: "I didn't think it was related and we never broadcast information about covert operatives unless there is an overriding journalist reason to do so."
Can you imagine what conservative commentators would have said about such a Clinton White House leak? But most are pooh-poohing it, such as Rush Limbaugh: "This Wilson non-story looks like it's going to be another one of those times when the Democrats open the door right into their nose again."
One lingering question: Where was the press in the weeks after the July 14 Novak column? Other than a few news stories and outraged columns by David Corn and Paul Krugman, the media were napping on this story until the CIA kicked it over to Justice.
By the way, remember the flap in July when Matt Drudge reported that someone in the White House communications office, displeased with an ABC reporter's dispatch on Iraq, had complained that he was gay and Canadian?
Here's the latest political maneuvering, in the New York Times:
"The White House today dismissed as 'ridiculous' the suggestion that Karl Rove, senior adviser to President Bush, had illegally disclosed the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, as the F.B.I. opened an investigation into the case.
"At the same time, the White House rejected growing calls from Democrats for the appointment of a special outside counsel to determine whether someone in the administration had disclosed the officer's identity in an effort at punishment for criticism of its Iraqi intelligence by the officer's husband."
Democrats don't want a John Ashcroft probe: "In a letter to Mr. Ashcroft, the Senate minority leader, Tom Daschle of South Dakota, and three other leading Democrats said, 'We do not believe that this investigation of senior Bush administration officials, possibly including high-level White House staff, can be conducted by the Justice Department because of the obvious and inherent conflicts of interest involved.' "
The Los Angeles Times marvels at the political theater:
"The White House struggled yesterday to fend off pressure for an external probe into whether administration officials deliberately -- and illegally -- 'outed' an undercover CIA agent in retribution for her husband's criticism of President Bush's prewar claims about Iraq. . . .
"The issue has metastasized into a mini-scandal with such speed that many in Washington, including the White House, appear to have been caught off-guard. The allegations suddenly threatened to pose a major problem for an administration that prides itself on avoiding the culture of leaks and swirling criminal probes that waylaid its predecessor on Pennsylvania Avenue.
"It is a classic Washington whodunit, with speculation swirling around the Beltway over the identities of the 'two senior administration officials' who passed the CIA officer's name to conservative columnist Robert Novak."
The Note floats this theory: "Based on the original Novak story; on the language in Sunday's Washington Post story; on the 'kind' of people Novak talks to; on the prophetic warnings of Wayne Slater; and on the fact that CIA agents have memories and the capacity to hold grudges nearly as long as the Bush family -- based on all that, here's what people are thinking:
"Two White House officials lashed out at Wilson, hoping to smear him in the minds of enough elite reporters to discredit him before his platform grew. They didn't want his wife's name out there in the public domain, so much as they wanted it in the brains of gatekeeping reporters.
"Again, it might not be right or fair, but we dare you to find a member of the Gang who doesn't think the Post 's source was someone familiar with George Tenet's thinking."
Salon's Joe Conason asks: "Which Washington journalists -- in addition to Robert Novak -- did Bush administration officials select to receive the revenge leak about Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife? And why hasn't a single one of them stepped forward to report the crime?"
Slate's Jack Shafer deconstructs the meta-story:
"When Sunday's Washington Post gave Page One, above-the-fold treatment to the Novak-Wilson-Plame triangle, it bestowed official Washington scandal status upon the story, sending the rest of the press corps to the blogosphere and Nexis to catch up with what had been a slow-moving story. Today, TV producers are frantically booking reporters who've covered the story to come on their shows and bring the hosts and viewers up to speed. . . .
"An unnamed source -- 'a senior administration official' -- told the Post so, adding that he 'would not name the leakers for the record and would not name the journalists.' In other words, a White House leaker is leaking to the Washington Post about Novak's White House leakers, but the leaker to the Post draws short of dribbling out the identities of who leaked to Novak and who else they tried to leak to. The Post source does, however, pass stern judgment on Novak's leakers, saying the leaks were 'wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility.' "
Shafer finds some admirable media conduct, though:
"Any of the six journalists who were offered the Plame story and declined to run with it could have gotten some sort of career-enhancing bump out of it. That they ignored the calculated leak, and the story ended up with an opinion journalist who used it to make his political point, indicates a level of discipline I didn't know existed in the press corps.
"The hidden bad news is that none of them reported that the Plame information was being leaked by sources who wished to embarrass her and Wilson -- which they could have legitimately done without burning their sources by name. In other words, they all protected the White House from its blunder."
Right. Although Time.com did highlight the administration's counterattack.
On National Review Online, Clifford May asks whether this was really a big secret:
"Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?
"What also might be worth asking: 'Who didn't know?'
"I believe I was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson, a retired diplomat sent to Niger to look into reports that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium for his nuclear-weapons program.
"On July 6, Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he said: 'I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.'
"On July 11, I wrote a piece for NRO arguing that Mr. Wilson had no basis for that conclusion -- and that his political leanings and associations (not disclosed by the Times and others journalists interviewing him) cast serious doubt on his objectivity.
"On July 14, Robert Novak wrote a column in the Post and other newspapers naming Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative.
"That wasn't news to me. I had been told that -- but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhanded manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.
"I chose not to include it (I wrote a second NRO piece on this issue on July 18) because it didn't seem particularly relevant to the question of whether or not Mr. Wilson should be regarded as a disinterested professional who had done a thorough investigation into Saddam's alleged attempts to purchase uranium in Africa."
The California recall is turning rather ugly, says the San Francisco Chronicle, with Gov. Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger going at it:
"A day after Schwarzenegger said a 'desperate Davis is going to do all kinds of tricks,' the governor's campaign also accused Republicans linked to Schwarzenegger of trying to sabotage a Univision 'town hall' forum yesterday with the governor by stacking the audience with Republicans.
"[Davis spokesman Peter] Ragone called the attempt 'deeply troubling and deeply disrespectful.'
"Sean Walsh, a spokesman for Schwarzenegger, said their outrage was a 'sad, desperate attempt to throw anything against the wall and hope it sticks.' Four Schwarzenegger allies will attend the town hall to observe, but they won't ask the governor questions, the actor's campaign said."
The Chronicle also quotes Arianna Huffington, who's at just 2 percent in the polls, as saying she may quit and back Cruz Bustamante. Apparently all that interrupting of Arnold during the debate didn't work.
Gregg Easterbrook takes Arnold on -- over policy:
"Who says Arnold Schwarzenegger has no specifics? Particularly amusing is his call to 'Get gross-polluting vehicles off the road now.' Arnold was instrumental in convincing General Motors to mass-market the ultra-offensive, gross-polluting Hummer mega-SUV; Schwarzenegger drove the first Hummer in to its sales debut media event. Hummers, like all ultra-offensive SUVs, are exempt from the strict pollution standards that apply to regular cars. (Ford voluntarily complies with regular car standards for its SUVs.)
"AHH-nold also wants to 'relieve traffic congestion.' Such as that caused by the 8,000-pound Hummer? He wants 'hydrogen highways' to pipe in hydrogen for zero-emission fuel-cell cars: Sounds good, but he doesn't mention where the hydrogen will come from, and that's the small omission in all hydrogen-nirvana plans. Plus Arnold wants to turn the current moratorium on California coastal drilling into a permanent ban. This is the sort of thing advocated by the kind of people who want unlimited cheap gasoline for their Hummers, but don't want it to come from anyplace they see -- which is another way of saying their want to move the eyesores and environmental risks into someone else's neighborhood."
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