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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated
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To: LindyBill who wrote (10544)10/3/2003 11:26:05 AM
From: carranza2  Read Replies (1) of 793719
 
The statute in my view is a bit ambiguous.

If you recall my exchange with JohnM yesterday, I raised the five-year service outside the US issue since it is obviously going to impact whether a crime has been committed.

With regard to this specific issue, the statute defines the person whose identity it is a crime to disclose as one who is "...serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States."

What does "served" or "serving" mean? Beats the heck out of me. It could be someone who occasionally goes on intelligence-related trips outside the US. It could also mean someone who is assigned permanently to a foreign country.

Since the statute appears ambiguous in this respect, it seems quite possible that no crime is involved. One of the basic precepts of criminal law is that a statute has to provide fair notice of what the prohibited conduct is. It appears likely that this one doesn't.

Naturally, there have been no cases interpreting the five-year provision to guide us in determining what "served" and "serving" mean.

The immortal words of Johnny Cochran seem to apply: if the statute don't fit, you can't convict.

I would assume that the CIA's lawyers know about Plame's residency as well as the potential invalidity of the statute for vagueness/ambiguity. It doesn't take Oliver Wendell Holmes to get to the heart of the issue, a point that makes me wonder the following: Why?

If the CIA presumably knows that they can't convict any White House staffers for divulging Plame's identity to Novak, why did it bother making an issue out of it?

To me this is a very serious matter that completely overshadows the debate we engaged in yesterday. Why is an agency presumably under White House control taking a patently flawed legal position against the Administration? What does this say about the Agency? The White House?

What is really going on?
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