Valerie Plame Sues Cheney, Libby and Rove Over CIA Leak

Status
Not open for further replies.
Yes, but from which side first? --Not that I much care. It's a tawdry business and attracts mostly bottom-feeders. The days when politics attracted the high-minded and idealistic are long past, if they ever were at all. As for espionage, it's not honest work and it never was. Perhaps it is necessary but so are porta-potties. Necessity doesn't make either one of them any less nasty.

These are the United States. You can sue darned near anyone for just about anything. Just about; if Mr. Cheney, et al. were acting in an official capacity, sovereign immunity might apply to them. Is that right? I don't know.

And Ms. Plame, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Rove can now have their day in court to find out. Then maybe they'll all shut up and we can worry about other things.
 
Bob Novak recently stated that he got her name from "Who's Who.” It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
 
From a legal standpoint:

1. I don't see how the plaintiffs will get around the absolute immunity that the VP has and the qualified immunity that the aides have;

2. I do not see how Plame was a covert agent as her name was in "Who's Who" of DC and IIRC she was on the cover of a magazine--hardly trying to keep a low profile;

3. The plaintiffs will have a tough time proving scienter (the defendants knew Plame was a secret agent, instead of an analyst at CIA);

4. Plaintiffs are wannabe big wheels in the Democratic Party and this suit reeks of politics. Discovery on plaintiffs should be fun.

Wait and see.
 
Eh, being above average in looks, she, IMO, is just milking the media for future lucrative employment, preferably in front of the camera. (I'm not thinking porn but if you'd like to think that, that's fine too.)
 
This lawsuit is a tempest in a chamberpot. Even commentators on NPR--doing my version of "monitoring enemy communications"--have said it's basically a non-issue.
 
...well, if you put yourself in her place...

Say you got a career, a steady job,... then... because someone has an axe to grind with you're spouse, you're unemployed and unemployable in your chosen career...

She does deserve her day in court.

... and if this was a "whisper campaign" initiated by the Whitehouse, to discredit someone who threatened their plans for war,... someone who had facts the Whitehouse did not want the American public to hear, which exposed government lies... then I, for one, hope she wins her case...
 
It has been reported that Plame's identity as a covert agent was blown in the 1990s, either by Aldridge Ames or by Cuban intelligence. Regardless, while she may not get another covert assignment again, I don't know what prevents her from remaining a federal employee with a diplomatic passport.
 
Ah, yes... this is but a genius response from a secret agent who is upset about her identity being leaked... file public lawsuits and put your smiling mug on the cover of every newspaper and website! CLEARLY, she is concerned over this publicity. :rolleyes: BRILLIANT!
 
Her career with the CIA is over... allegedly, people who didn't care much for what her husband was saying made sure her career was over...

She worked in counter-proliferation... do you suppose this is a good time to play political games with operatives in that field?...
 
Her career with the CIA is over
Click to expand...
Just to be clear, are you saying her career as a covert CIA operative is over? Or are you saying she can't even work as an analyst? She was fired?

Doing interviews and magazine covers and the like probably don't help one to keep a clearance. I know that if I'd done something like that during my Navy days, the Navy would have yanked my clearance. Having never worked for the CIA, I don't know if they would do a similar thing, but it wouldn't surprise me.
 
Followup:

Joe Wilson has claimed that his wife’s career was ruined by the Bush administration. But Wilson has made a lot of claims that weren’t true.

There's a 511-page report from the bipartisan Senate Select Intelligence Committee that looked into the intelligence used by the Bush administration. The committee looked at all the intelligence and all the documents and interviewed all the figures involved. The report has a 48-page section on Wilson. The report was signed by all committee members of both parties. The report reveals some interesting things.

Before Wilson went to Niger for the CIA, the CIA had received two reports from “foreign sources” that Iraq was negotiating with Niger to obtain uranium. Cheney asked the CIA for more information. Later, when the CIA’s Conterproliferation Division discussed how to get that information, Plame recommended sending her husband, Wilson, because he had once been a U.S. ambassador to Gabon and had good relations with the former Prime Minister of Niger, Ibrahim Mayaki.

Wilson would later claim that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Niger. That was false.

Before Wilson arrived in Niger in late February 2002, the U.S. embassy in Niger sent a cable that recommended a closer investigation of the situation. So before he ever got there, strong suspicions about Iraq’s activities had developed.

Wilson spoke with Mayaki, who told him that in 1999, the Iraqis had visited Niger to explore "expanding commercial relations" between Iraq and Niger. Mayaki had met with them and concluded that what they really wanted was to purchase uranium, which Mayaki claimed he didn’t do because U.N. sanctions prohibited it.

When Wilson returned, he never filed a written report with the CIA. Though in his debrief he voiced doubts as to whether the Iraqis had sought uranium from Niger, Mayaki’s comments regarding the Iraqi visit in 1999 raised further suspicions. If Mayaki had negotiated with the Iraqis, he certainly wouldn’t admit it to Wilson. And the CIA had reports of similar Iraqi visits seeking uranium from Congo and Somalia in 1999.

Between the time Wilson returned and October 9, 2002, the CIA cleared various speeches and reports that carried the claim of Iraq seeking uranium. On September 24, 2002, the British government made public in a white paper the claim that “There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa." On October 9, 2002, an Italian journalist delivered to the U.S. embassy in Rome documents claiming that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. These documents turned out to be forgeries.

Wilson would later claim, through articles in the New York Times (Kristof) and Washington Post (Pincus) in 2003 that he had advised the CIA that the information was wrong and forged. He did so again through an article in The New Republic (Judis and Ackerman). However, Wilson’s visit to Niger was in February 2002. Our embassy in Rome received the forgeries in October 2002.

He could not have known they were forgeries. He lied. He admitted as much on July 6, 2003, in his article in the New York Times: “As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it.” And also on Meet The Press: “I had not, of course, seen the documents.”

If Plame’s career is ruined, she may want to point the first finger at her husband, who lied in very public forums. She might also reserve a finger for herself for her newspaper and magazine interviews, and for her “Spy vs. Spy” cover photo with her decked out in dark glasses and a head scarf. For a covert agent concerned about her career and keeping her security clearance, she’s hardly doing herself any favors.

Plus, without any of this, she wouldn’t have her second career as an author with Simon and Schuster. Somehow, I think a lucrative book deal just may ease her financial pain. Cha-ching. Throw me into that briar patch.
 
Last edited:
The issue is not whether Wilson lied. It's should be obvious by now that Wilson got it right when he cast doubt on the Iraq-Niger claim.

Without the now-debunked claims that Iraq had reconstituted their nuke program and were less than a year away from having a weapon, there most likely would not have been public support to go to war. The country was lied to... Wilson contradicted those lies... I have no problem with him.

Plame deserves due process. If the CIA can testify and offer proof that her career was not affected, that she was just a regular employee without a covert status, that she could have continued as usual on her job, but that she made the choice on her own to pursue a different career... then fine, her suit should be dismissed.

But if she can prove that she was a covert operative working on counter-proliferation, and her career was ruined for reasons of political retribution... then she should, at the very least, have the satisfaction of seeing those responsible exposed.
 
A large part of the issue is whether Wilson lied; it leads to various areas and in various directions. As for his analysis, he originally claimed as part of his analysis that he knew the documents delivered to the U.S. embassy in Rome were forgeries. That is impossible for him to have known.

Also, his analysis cast no new doubt on the matter nor helped settle anything. He only said that the Iraq-Niger link was "unlikely." According to the Senate report, "DIA and CIA analysts said that when they saw the intelligence report they did not believe that it supplied much new information and did not think that it clarified the story on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal." (p. 46)

In fact, other parts of his analysis worked in favor of an Iraq-Niger link. According to the Senate report, the CPD (Counterproliferation Divison) reports officer said that Wilson's report "did not provide substantial new information." He said that "the most important fact in the report was that the Nigerian Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting." (p. 46)

Ultimately, "Because CIA analysts did not believe that the report added any new information to clarify the issue, they did not use the report to produce any further analytical products or highlight the report for policymakers. For the same reason, CIA's briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report, despite the Vice President's previous questions about the issue." (p. 46)

However, Wilson claimed in the New Republic article that Cheney's office had seen the report of his findings: "He returned after a visit to Niger in February 2002 and reported to the State Department and the CIA that the documents were forgeries. The CIA circulated the ambassador's report to the vice president's office, the ambassador confirms to TNR. But, after a British dossier was released in September detailing the purported uranium purchase, administration officials began citing it anyway, culminating in its inclusion in the State of the Union. 'They knew the Niger story was a flat-out lie,' the former ambassador tells TNR."

The British dossier was released a month before the U.S. embassy in Rome received the forgeries, which are different documents. So how did Wilson warn anyone that the "Niger story was a flat-out lie"? Also, the Senate report shows that Cheney's office did not see Wilson's report.

So when Wilson makes claims about retribution, I have to wonder about the validity of those claims given the poor record of his other claims. It will be most unlikely that any court will proceed with Plame's case without questioning Wilson, and therein will come the problems with his lies.

You might want to read the Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq at: http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2004_rpt/

Pages 36-72 are of the most interest regarding Plame and Wilson.

Be warned: The file is 24Mb
 
If the issue is whether Wilson lied or not, why did the Administration not just confront Wilsons allegations head-on in the media, and refute the lies?..

They could not do that because Wilson was right, and they were wrong... no amount of cherry-picking the facts will change that basic premise.

Why single out inconsistencies in Wilsons account, while avoiding all the "mis-remembering" by Rove and Libby as to their involvement?
 
If the issue is whether Wilson lied or not, why did the Administration not just confront Wilsons allegations head-on in the media, and refute the lies?..
Click to expand...
Again, I said a LARGE PART of the issue is what lies Wilson told. Like most situations of this nature, there is more than one component. As for refuting Wilson's lies, it seems to me that the Administration has tried to do that on various occasions.
They could not do that because Wilson was right, and they were wrong...
Click to expand...
What was he "right" about? His report claimed the Iraq-Niger link was "unlikely." His report didn't say the link was false. That's why the DIA and CIA didn't find much value in it.

At this point, you and I are talking past each other. I've presented quotations and sources from a nonpartisan source. You've presented unsupported allegations. If you are interested in getting more information, I've given you the link to the nonpartisan report. I've given you the names of newspapers and magazines and publication dates and authors' names. You'll either read the sources or you won't.

Ultimately, I believe the Plame case will end with the same result whether or not the court allows it to go to trial: Nothing will happen. If her case goes to court, she'll lose and her supporters will scream, "Cover up!" If her case does not go to court, her supporters will scream, "Cover up!" The conclusion is foregone.
 
What was he "right" about? His report claimed the Iraq-Niger link was "unlikely." His report didn't say the link was false
Click to expand...

Have you read his NYT article, the one that caused the furor, titled "What I didn't find in Africa"? What part was wrong?

I've given you the link to the nonpartisan report.... You'll either read the sources or you won't.
Click to expand...

I've read the senate committee report, and many other sources of info. To describe the Senate investigation report as "nonpartisan" is remarkable - how many senators attached "alternative views" onto that one again?... and how many more years before Roberts will let phase 2 be completed?

"nonpartisan sources" vs. "unsupported allegations"?... there is no shortage of sources out there with, at least the same amount of objectivity as you've presented, that support any allegations I have made... I'm not providing footnotes...
 
Have you read his NYT article, the one that caused the furor, titled "What I didn't find in Africa"? What part was wrong?
Click to expand...
Yes, I've read it. Did you not see my quote from it: "As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it."

What part of it was wrong?

The NYT article you refer to was published July 6, 2003 ... after the earlier articles in the New York Times (Kristof) and Washington Post (Pincus) that quoted him as advising the CIA that the information was wrong and forged. He did so again through an article in The New Republic (Judis and Ackerman).

Again, he could not have told the CIA or anyone else anything about the forged documents. His report to the CIA was done 7 months prior to receipt of those documents. The documents themselves weren't known to be forgeries until 5 months after they were received, a full year after Wilson reported back to the CIA.

So ... prior to his op ed in the NYT, he claimed to have seen the documents and warned the CIA that they were forged. This was 7 months before we even had the documents and a full year before the documents were discovered to be forged. And then, later, he claimed that he never actually saw the documents.
I'm not providing footnotes
Click to expand...
No, of course not. :rolleyes: This is pointless. See ya.
 
Give it up, WhyteP38. If you work backwards from "Bush lied - people died" you don't need to bother with all of those extraneous facts.

by HJB
The issue is not whether Wilson lied.
Click to expand...
Maybe not, but it does consume 5 pages of the 23-page lawsuit (by plaintiffs Valerie Plame Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson IV).
 
Don't quit now, Whyte, you're almost there!:)

So there is nothing factually wrong with his NYT op-ed?

(we can ignore the irrelevant tangent about CLAIMS by REPORTERS who quoted Wilson ANONYMOUSLY OFF-THE-RECORD as saying the documents were forged... although, granted, we all know that reporters are known to be 100% accurate in their anonymous, off-the-record, reporting...)

So,... if there is nothing factually wrong with the NYT op-ed,... then... is it your opinion that it would be justified for public servants working for the federal government to respond to that op-ed by misusing their access to classified information, in retaliating against the author of the op-ed... by ruining his wife's career, who happens to be employed in matters of national security?
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top