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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: carranza2 who wrote (4676)	10/27/2005 12:56:06 AM
From: wonk	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541658

If the statute don't fit, you can't convict. vbg. And it looks to me like the statute doesn't fit, which makes it a dumbass case since it is elementary that a case under the criminal laws requires a violation of the specific terms of a statute. But I can see you're no lawyer… C2, you were gracious enough to extend me a compliment on a post I did a couple a months ago over on Lindy’s thread. Thank you. Or perhaps it was a recollection of the old days - HITT or maybe AZNT? Let me tell you why I think you're wrong on the Plame matter. “They just don’t understand, Jack said quietly…. There is a difference between not knowing anything and understanding that you don’t know. We have a crisis and all the players are reverting to type. The President is thinking like a lawyer, trying to be cool, doing what he knows how to do, running down the evidence and trying to make a case, interrogating the witnesses, trying to reduce everything, playing that game….” Tom Clancy The Sum of All Fears (Clancy’s best book IMO.) You’re thinking like a lawyer and that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve read the Senate Report, and the Duelfur Report, and the NIE and the IIPA and the Espionage Act and the relevant case law pertaining thereto, the District Court decision, the Appeals Court decision regarding Miller’s and Cooper claims, and practically everything else. But if you focus on the trees you’ll miss the forest. Step outside yourself and take the broader view. The “real” issue is not the technical minutia of the IIPA – or even the Espionage Act - which is far more broad and could be used with ease from what we know of the case. The issue is the National Security Interests of the United States. I’m going to save myself the trouble of retyping this: … A. An “operative’s” identity was revealed. B. The revelation came in part from a Senior Official of the government. It almost doesn’t have to be said – but I’ll say it anyway. When a formerly covert agent or operative is revealed, besides the harm that comes from the loss of the intelligence that the operative was producing, the exposure reveals sources and methods of intelligence gathering. Its bad enough that she was a WMD analyst – and outing her did harm to one of very objectives we ostensibly went to war in Iraq about. Basically, whatever good work or results she generated in the past was compromised. Any human sources of information or foreign agents she may have developed are compromised and likely useless to us. Her foreign sources – if any – are now tainted and in fact could be at risk for imprisonment or death. Even if no human sources were used, the methods used to obtain sensitive or secret information can now be backtracked and shut down. That’s pretty damn bad. But now lets look at the collateral damage cause by point B. Here we have a senior official of the United States Government – charitably stated – being rather caviler with an undercover agent’s identity. Ask yourself, if you’re being recruited by the Operations Directorate of the CIA for a covert posting, whether its overseas or not, how will this incident effect your decision to take on such a job? Moreover, imagine you’re a foreigner being recruited to pass information to us, i.e. spy on your own country (in most places that’s a crime punishable by death). No matter how many inducements or how much money they (we) throw at you, your perception of the risk of exposure has now just gone up astronomically. It’s bad enough when agents are “blown” because the tales of what happens to those folks become well know in those very places we’re trying to penetrate (making it a lot harder to recruit new agents). But when officials of the U.S. government are perceived (at this movement I’ll stick with perceived) to toss away peoples covers with no more thought than tossing away a used Kleenex the ability to recruit and retain foreign agents has been immeasurably harmed. Message 21494825 Even if – for the sake of argument – there was no intent to reveal Plame’s identity, no malice, unless there are consequences and serious consequences to the perceived perpetrators – our ability to recruit foreign agents has been and will in the future be substantially harmed. Even if Fitzgerald indicts no one, this Government must insure someone or multiple someones fall on their sword – at minimum to at least provide a fig life of respectability to the argument to prospective foreign “recruits” that it was a big mistake. I don’t expect an answer here: Ever been asked to spy on behalf of your Government? It does make one think – real hard. I'm sure one thinks harder if one is asked to spy against their Government. As for the idea that Fitzgerald is pursuing some “technical violation” of the IIPA alone, well he knew as of Feb 6, 2004 (1 month after his appointment) that it was bigger than that when he got this authorization from Comey: …“to investigate and prosecute violations of any federal criminal laws related to the underlying alleged unauthorized disclosure, as well as federal crimes committed in the course of, and with intent to interfere with, [his] investigation, such as perjury, obstruction of justice, destruction of evidence, and intimidation of witnesses… usdoj.gov The letter is now up on the web. Before one had to peal that out of the appeals court decision. ww p.s. you might find this post on the Franklin case of interest. Message 21526072

To: carranza2 who wrote (4676)	10/27/2005 8:34:40 AM
From: Mary Cluney	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541658

If there's perjury, I cannot yet tell and neither can you. If there is such a charge that arises from Fitzgerald's investigation, I hope my guys will get the same treatment Clinton got for his perjury and suborning of perjury, namely, a walk and a by-your-leave. vbg. If there is perjury whose intention was to take us to war on false pretenses is equated with perjury based on some oversexed persons biblical definition of sex - we might just as well trivialize everything.