TIME FOR BUSH AND CHENEY TO GO TO JAIL!
Ex-C.I.A. Aides Ask for Leak Inquiry by Congress
January 22, 2004
By DOUGLAS JEHL
WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 - A group of former intelligence
officers is pressing Congressional leaders to open an
immediate inquiry into the disclosure last summer of the
name of an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie Plame.
Their request, outlined in a letter on Tuesday to Speaker
J. Dennis Hastert and others, reflects discontent and
unrest within the intelligence services about the affair,
along with concern that a four-month-old Justice Department
investigation into the matter may never identify who was
behind the disclosure. The syndicated columnist Robert
Novak, who first identified Ms. Plame as a C.I.A. officer
in a column last July, has identified his sources only as
Bush administration officials, and the Justice Department
inquiry has not yet produced any public findings.
It is unusual for former intelligence officers to petition
Congress on a matter like this. The unmasking of Ms. Plame
is viewed within spy circles as an unforgivable breach of
secrecy that must be exhaustively investigated and
prosecuted, current and former intelligence officials say.
Anger over the matter is especially acute because of the
suspicion, under investigation by the Justice Department,
that the disclosure may have been made by someone in the
White House to punish Ms. Plames's husband, former
Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for opposing administration
policy on Iraq.
Attorney General John Ashcroft disqualified himself last
month from any involvement in the inquiry, and Justice
Department officials have named Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the
United States attorney in Chicago, as a special prosecutor
in the case. Mr. Ashcroft's decision to step aside came
after months of criticism from Democrats in the Senate who
complained that the attorney general could not impartially
lead an investigation that focused in part on his political
patrons and friends at the White House.
Justice Department officials have said almost nothing in
public about the status of the investigation. But they have
said they are focusing on conversations between White House
officials and reporters that both sides might try to cast
as private.
Critics of the White House, including Representative Rush
D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat who is a member of the House
Intelligence Committee, have said they fear that the
administration may eventually call a halt to the inquiry by
announcing that investigators have found no evidence of
criminal wrongdoing. Mr. Holt and several other Democrats
introduced legislation on Wednesday that would authorize an
independent inquiry by the House.
The 10 former intelligence officers who signed the letter
include respected intelligence analysts and retired case
officers, including at least two, John McCavitt and William
Wagner, who were C.I.A. station chiefs overseas. The former
analysts include Larry C. Johnson, a former analyst at the
Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department's
intelligence branch, and Ray Close and Ray McGovern, former
C.I.A. analysts in the agency's Near East division.
"The disclosure of Ms. Plame's name was an unprecedented
and shameful event in American history and, in our
professional judgment, has damaged U.S. national security,
specifically the effectiveness of U.S.
intelligence-gathering using human sources," the group
wrote in the two-page letter.
In a telephone interview, Mr. Johnson, who described
himself as a registered Republican who voted for President
Bush, said he and other former intelligence officers had
been discussing the idea of a letter for months and decided
to go forward with it because of a lack of evidence of
progress in the Justice Department investigation.
"For this administration to run on a security platform and
allow people in the administration to compromise the
security of intelligence assets, I think is
unconscionable," Mr. Johnson said.
In addition to Mr. Hastert, the letter was sent to
Representatives Tom DeLay, the House Republican leader;
Nancy Pelosi, the House Democratic leader; Porter J. Goss,
a Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee; and Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the panel.
A copy was made available to The New York Times by a
Congressional official who received one.
Current and former intelligence officials have felt
particularly bruised in recent months as the C.I.A. and
other agencies have come under criticism from some in
Congress and the public as having underestimated the danger
of attacks on the United States like those on Sept. 11,
2001, and having overestimated the dangers posed by Iraq's
alleged stockpiles of illicit weapons.
In the letter, the former officers called on Congress to
act "for the good of the country" and said it was time to
"send an unambiguous message that the intelligence officers
tasked with collecting or analyzing intelligence must never
be turned into political punching bags."
The request for a Justice Department investigation into the
matter was made last summer by the C.I.A.'s general
counsel, as part of what intelligence officials have
described as an automatic response to the disclosure of
classified material. Asked to describe the current
sentiment within the community about the affair, an
intelligence official said that "people within the agency
obviously don't like it when classified information appears
in the press, and they especially don't like it when the
names of intelligence officers get into the press."
The intelligence official added, however: "There's an
investigation under way at the Justice Department, and
that's appropriate. If Congress gets involved, there's
always the risk of turning this into a political football,
and that would make it even worse."
The officials who identified Ms. Plame as a C.I.A. officer
to Mr. Novak were apparently trying to cast doubt on the
credibility of Mr. Wilson, who emerged as a prominent
critic of the administration after being enlisted by the
C.I.A. to investigate a claim related to Iraq's reported
nuclear weapons program.
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Holt said it was time to
"put the heat on the Justice Department" and compel
investigators to share with members of Congress the
information they had gathered.
"Congress needs to make a statement that whoever was behind
this is going to be held accountable," he said.
The "resolution of inquiry" that Mr. Holt introduced Friday
followed a model that the House has previously used to
begin investigations of the Iran-contra affair and other
matters that were independent of any inquiries conducted by
the Senate.
Among Democrats who joined Mr. Holt in introducing the
resolution were Representatives Anna G. Eshoo of California
and Silvestre Reyes of Texas, who like Mr. Holt are members
of the Intelligence Committee, which oversees the C.I.A.
Ms. Harman, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel,
said in a separate interview that Justice Department
investigators "should be given time to complete their work"
and that Congress should "not meddle in the investigation."
But she said she would consider joining the call for a
Congressional inquiry if the leaker was not identified by
next month.
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