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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Rascal who wrote (10625)	10/5/2003 10:29:21 AM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793721

Rascal, you obviously have no legal training and didn't read my posts too carefully. You're right, I don't know where Plame has been in the last five years. I said so. But that's not the relevant point from a legal standpoint. If the statute contains ambiguous terms, as it appears to do with respect to the words "served" and "serving," it is unlikely in my view that a successful prosecution can take place. This isn't legal rocket science, believe me. This should have been obvious to the CIA when it made the referral to the DOJ. The question is why would the CIA get into a major pissing contest with the WH? I think I have found the reason. In retrospect, it's one that's not too difficult to appreciate. After watching interviews of present and former CIA agents on Nightline the other night, it seems obvious that Tenet was under serious internal pressure from his employees to do something drastic to prevent any further revelations of agents' identities because, obviously, revelations put them at risk. While the CIA surely knew that a criminal case was flawed, I suspect that Tenet was forced to go ahead with the referral to the DOJ simply to prevent a potentially explosive situation from developing internally at the CIA because of the unprecedented revelation. Whether the revelation was negligent or intentional is irrelevant to the CIA's agents since the danger it creates is the same. The CIA probably felt that it needed to act in a very forceful manner to remind the political classes that they will be burned if they put agents at risk. As a result, Tenet probably IMO went ahead and referred the matter to the DOJ, knowing full well that a political firestorm would result. Whether the prosecution of the alleged crime was flawed was probably irrelevant. In my view, perhaps a good thing from a systemic and policy standpoint, perhaps not. Legalities aside, the CIA and its employees are telling the WH and anyone else with security clearances who might be tempted to use them politically to think twice because it will make a huge political stink whenever anyone "outs" an agent. The CIA does not want "outings" to be part and parcel of accepted political practice. The CIA's message is not necessarily to Bush or the WH. It is made for posterity and to set limits for the future. A good thing? I don't know. Seems to me that the episode could have been handled differently. Perhaps in fact a non-public effort was made that was not satisfactory to the CIA. All IMO and FWIW.