"My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob
    Novak blew her identity."

    In The Politics of Truth, former ambassador Joseph Wilson
    writes that he and his future wife both returned from
    overseas assignments in June 1997. Neither spouse, a
    reading of the book indicates, was again stationed
    overseas. They appear to have remained in Washington,
    D.C., where they married and became parents of twins.

    Six years later, in July 2003, the name of the CIA
    officer — Valerie Plame — was revealed by columnist
    Robert Novak.

    The column's date is important because the law against
    unmasking the identities of U.S. spies says a “covert
    agent” must have been on an overseas assignment “within
    the last five years.” The assignment also must be long-
    term, not a short trip or temporary post, two experts on
    the law say. Wilson's book makes numerous references to
    the couple's life in Washington over the six years up to
    July 2003. 

    "She had a desk job in Langley," said Ms. Toensing, who
    also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court,
    referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. "When you want
    someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to
    Langley."

          Media Admits Rove is Innocent

    An amicus brief has been filed in the US Court of appeals
    for the DC Circuit by the following media organizations: 

    There is ample evidence on the public record to cast
    considerable doubt that a crime has been committed... 
    Congress intended only to criminalize only disclosures
    that "clearly represent a conscious and pernicious effort
    to identify and expose agents with the intent to impair
    or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the
    United States..."

    Public information casts considerable doubt that the
    government took the "affirmative measures" required by
    the Act to conceal Plame's identity.

    At the threshold, an agent whose identity has been
    revealed must trule be "covert" for there to be a
    violation of the Act. To the average observer, much less
    to the professional intelligence operative, Plame was not
    given the "deep cover" required of a covert agent. See 50
    USC § 426 ("covert agent" defined). She worked at a desk
    job at CIA headquarters, where she could be seen
    traveliong to and from, and active at, Langley. She had
    been residing in Washington—not stationed abroad—for a
    number of years. As discussed below, the CIA failed to
    take even its usual steps to prevent publication of her
    name...

    Novak's column can be viewed as critical of CIA
    ineptitude: The Agency's response to a request by the
    State Department and the Vice president's office to
    verify whether a specific foreign intelligence report was
    accurate was to have "low-level" bureaucrats make the
    decision to send a non-CIA employee [Joseph Wilson]
    (neither an expert on Niger nor on weapons of mass
    destruction) on this crucial mission at his wife's
    suggestion...Did no one at Langley think that Plame's
    identity might be compromised if her spouse writes a
    nationally distributed Op-Ed piece discussing a foreign
    mission about a volatile political issue that focused on
    her subject matter expertise?

    The public record provides ample evidence that the CIA
    was at least cavalier about, if not complicit in, the
    publishing of Plame's name. Moreover, given Novak's
     suggestion of CIA incompetence plus the resulting public
    uproar over Plame's identity being revealed, the CIA had
    every incentive to dissemble by claiming it wash shocked,
    shocked" that leaking was going on...