Rove’s critics claim that Valerie Plame was a covert agent at the time he spoke to Matt Copper about her role in sending Wilson to Niger, citing a hastily-written article from Newsday in 2003 (link unknown) as the source:
A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked “alongside” the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
In fact, the situation is a bit more complicated. See Mark Levin in The Corner:
USA Today has it right. In the end, as a legal matter this won’t be about outting Plame. Among other things, the five year rule can’t be met. The paper reports, in part:
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. “Unless she was really stationed abroad sometime after their marriage,” she wasn’t a covert agent protected by the law, says Bruce Sanford, an attorney who helped write the 1982 act that protects covert agents’ identities.
A number of other links at Tom McGuire’s say the same thing. Plame wasn’t a covert agent in the meaning of the law, just a CIA employee with an ax to grind.
LOL!
I guess you’re sooo much smarter than Fitzgerald, huh? He can go home; it’s all over with.
Or…maybe… just maybe… it turns out that a) Plame was stationed abroad, and b) Joe Wilson didn’t put it in his book because it was classified!
BTW, there’s 2 other sections besides the 5 year section.
So technically the last paragraph is false.
And that’s what you’re using to bolster the fortunes of a traitor like Rove?
I don’t claim to be smarter than Fitzgerald, who’s diligently working on his investigation, but yes, I do claim to be smarter than you Moonbats of the Left who claim to know what his conclusions are before he’s made them.
The statute also requires the CIA to take affirmative steps to protect a covert agent’s identity. After Plame finished her foreign service in 1997, they took none.
You have no case.
Like I said, either Fitzgerald’s a complete idiot (not likely), or – much more likely- evidently Plame has been serving in capacities that you and your moonbats on the right didn’t know about from The Politics of Truth.
Look, one of the first thing Fitzgerald has no doubt done has been in fact to verify that she was a covert agent. If not, no case.
It’s only the right-wing moonbats that are claiming otherwise- and why? -well, because they don’t want to lose Edgar Bergen.
But you think posting tripe like that’s going to cut any mustard with Fitzgerald?
No. It only makes you look like a pitiful right-wing blogger who appears to be on the losing side of history here.
Fortunately, this argument will someday be settled conclusively, just as the Schiavo matter was with the autopsy report. Fitzgerald will recommend prosecution or not, and if he does the court will convict or not.
Until that happens we’re all speculating, but I have the facts and the law on my side, and you have raving suppositions and overblown claims.
So we’ll see.
I have the facts and the law on my side, and you have raving suppositions and overblown claims…
Ummm… you don’t know the facts, or the law as it applies to the specific set of facts.
Rave on.
I’ve stated the pertinent facts and law here several times, showing my sources.
Try and make an argument without lying, as an engineer might.
Fact:
You don’t know that Valerie Plame was not a covert agent.
Fact:
You do not know if the outing of Valerie Plame compromised the identity of other covert agents.
Fact:
Fitzgerald has access to classified information that you haven’t read.
Fact:
You’re not a lawyer. Neither am I.
Fact:
It’s you who’s been repeating Repub spin-lies.
The evidence I have suggests, rather strongly, that Plame hadn’t been a covert agent for many years, at least since 1997. Is this evidence credible? Well, maybe not, since the source is Joe Wilson. But if Joe’s not credible, well, that’s what we’re trying to prove, isn’t it?
So it’s a regular “liar’s paradox”.
Like I said, I’m happy to be contradicted by the court’s findings, but until I am I see no reason to rag on Rove.