Joe Wilson, Still In The News
The latest Newsweek provides an interesting angle on the Valerie Plame Wilson leak investigation. We are scoring this as a "good news/better news" story for Karl Rove's side:
Aug. 9 issue - Secretary of State Colin Powell recently testified before a federal grand jury investigating the leak of the identity of CIA covert officer Valerie Plame, NEWSWEEK has learned. Powell's appearance on July 16 is the latest sign the probe being conducted by prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is highly active and broader than has been publicly known.
NO, Powell is not a suspect. However, while traveling with the President in Africa, Powell requested and reviewed an INR report on Niger, uranium, and Joe Wilson (and this seems to be similar to the information attributed to the INR analyst on p. 40 of the Senate Intelligence report):
The report stated that Wilson's wife had attended a meeting at the CIA where the decision was made to send Wilson to Niger, but it did not mention her last name or undercover status.
Depending on who discussed this report with whom, and *assuming* that this report provided the background for the leak, it is plausible that the leaker was not aware of Ms. Plame's covert status. As to whether the leaker provided Ms. Plame's last name, only Novak can tell - his original column was vague on that point. But it hardly matters, since there was a time when Joe Wilson's on-line bio mentioned his wife as "Valerie Plame", so either Novak or an earnest White House staffer might have unearthed that tidbit. There is also the Clifford May / Marty Peretz "open secrets" argument - Joe and Valerie were well known in Washington social circles.
So, we score this news as a bit of a boost for the "inadvertent outing" theory. Whether lack of intent is an issue in the outing, or "reckless disregard" can be invoked is something for the lawyers to judge. But in terms of the politics, "reckless disregard" amounts to sloppiness - the White House leakers should have checked Ms. Plame's status, and didn't - which is not an ideal White House defense. However, it is preferable to the Bush Brute Squad evil intent theory - they KNEW this would endanger her safety and national security! - so enrapturing many of the Bush critics.
This story also includes unmistakeable bad news for the "Impeach Now" crowd:
Though most lawyers thought the investigation was nearly complete, sources say Fitzgerald has recently recalled witnesses before the grand jury—apparently to ask about issues raised by a new Senate intelligence committee report that seemed to contradict some of Wilson's public statements about Plame's role in his trip to Niger.
What might he be looking at? One glaring issue was raised by Kevin Drum of the Washington Monthly - where was Wilson getting his information, and what prompted him to time his leaks as he did? If, (we say IF), as Kevin Drum speculates, Wilson got classified, uncirculated CIA tidbits from his wife to buttress his leaks, the prosecutor has a bit of a challenge figuring out just who the bad guys are in this investigation.
Or maybe the prosecutor has some testimony from Wilson himself that he doesn't like right now. Hah! (OK, I'm dreaming).
More on Wilson's implausible story below:
MORE: As to the timing of Wilson's leaks, one wonders why he did not object in January 2003 when the President uttered the 16 Words. In his op-ed he explains that initially he accepted the view of a friend at the State Department that maybe the President's 16 Words meant some African country other than Niger. But he includes this tidbit: "At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case."
He didn't know? He was appearing on talk shows and panels opposing the war, he had been to Niger, but neither he nor his buddies at State remembered this? From his book, we learn that he began appearing on televison shows in the summer of 2002, and wrote his first newspaper article (opposing the march to war) in October 2002. How did he overlook the case the Administration (through the State Department, his old stomping grounds) )was making in December 2002? Henry Waxman normally makes a bit of news - did the Ambassador miss this March letter? And Seymour Hersh printed a widely-read reminder in March 2003 - did he miss that, too?
We get a bit more insight from his book - "I did not see the fact sheet at the time, but I learned later that the first iteration contained a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy Niger. The reference was apparently scrubbed soon after, and the Niger charge was removed - at least for a time. News reports after the fact suggested that the neoconservative mole in the State Department, John Bolton... had slipped the reference into the first version, but someone at State had caught the mistake and deleted it."
Really? The unscrubbed mistake lives at this official-looking web-site, and appeared in the NY Times and this BBC report from Dec 20, 2002. That said, the Niger claim is dropped from this Jan 2003 report titled "What Does Disarmament Look Like?".
This may be an interesting road for the prosecutor to travel.
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