The Italian Connection

[Mickey]

This all sounds pretty crazy to me but the story is starting to get picked up here in the states so it will be making the rounds sooner or later so here goes:

 

La Repubblica, an Italian magazine has published an explosive series of articles reporting the results of their investigation of connections between the Italian military intelligence agency, SISMI, and the forged documents which figured so prominently in the Yellowcake Caper. Those articles have spurred the Italian government to action as they now have a Parliamentary Commission investigating the matter. They have summoned the head of the agency, Nicolo Pollari, to testify regarding the role SISMI may have played in the forgeries. It has become clear that Italy is the original source of the forgeries. How that all came about is the subject of the articles.

 

As near as I can tell, the allegation is that beginning in October of 2001, SISMI and primarily Pollari, was trying to convince the CIA that Saddam tried to buy uranium from Niger. The CIA was unimpressed with the data but the WH apparently was. It was these rumors that led to Wilson's trip to Niger after which he reported to the CIA that there was nothing to the rumors. Even so, the administration wanted to make the allegation in a major speech the President was going to give in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002. Only after Tenet personally called Stephen Hadley, Rice's deputy director at the NSC?, and in no uncertain terms told him that the intel was not sound, was the allegation removed from the speech.

 

Meanwhile, Pollari, the main purveyor of the uranium-Iraq-Niger rumor, met with Hadley in early September of 2002. La Repubblica reports that SISMI had an asset working in Niger's embassy in Rome and a sometime operative it used to sell intel to France named Rocco Martino. Martino was introduced to the asset by SISMI Vice Captain, Antonio Nucera. Apparently the asset stole some stationary from the embassy and gave it to Martino. Shortly thereafter, writer Elisabetta Burba is contacted by Martino and told that he has some documents he thinks she woud be very intersted in.

 

Burba meets with him and gets the documents, the forged documents about Iraq and Yellowcake, etc. She doubts their authenticity and suggests to her editor that she be sent to Niger herself to check out the story. He refuses and instead tells her to turn the documents over to the US. She turns the documents over to the US Embassy in Rome on October 9, 2002. Ultimately, these crude forgeries are the fig leaf used to justify the charges, later withdrawn as a mistake, made in the President's State of the Union Address that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

 

I can't read Italian so all I can do is read what others are reporting and I don't think they read Italian either. For all I know the information is based on evidence as unreliable as those now famous forgeries. The gist of the allegations is that the Yellowcake Caper involved the US soliciting trumped up evidence from the Italians who were happy to provide it and that evidence was used to help justify our invasion of Iraq.

 

For more details:

 

Laura Rozen-lots of details

TPM on Italian Yellowcake

AP picks up the story

LA Times picks it up as well

For those who can read Italian-the original ariticles

 

We shall see if anything comes of this opera. In the meantime, leave the gun, take the cannolis.

 

Update: Here is a link to the Italian Government's denial of the La Repubblica allegations: Italian Government Denies Involvement in the Yellowcake Caper

[meazza]

i read it

the translations are accurate

[Ghost of BiB]

There is a lot more to this story than is being pushed through certain medias. Going to be hard to convince anyone, but it did not take long for everyone involved, including the WH to realize that the documents were poorly done forgeries. The problem is, there was SEPARATE evidence known to British and also German intelligence that somrthing might be going on in so far as a uranium purchase involving Niger. Wilson went to investigate - another long story, and absolutely the wrong guy for the job - but his focus was on the Italian documents that everyone, including him knew were garbage. I don't know, but i don't think he had the full skinny on what else was going on. I'm pretty sure he was given "go forth and do well" types of instructions, and then in a large part due to the fact he has NO counterproliferation experience, didn't put everything together, and didn't really know who to talk to. So, he once again corroborates that the Italian documents were junk, meanwhile the WH runs with other information that can't be easily discussed. The lines between it all get blurred, and here we are. Once again.

[Mickey]

There is a lot more to this story than is being pushed through certain medias. Going to be hard to convince anyone, but it did not take long for everyone involved, including the WH to realize that the documents were poorly done forgeries. The problem is, there was SEPARATE evidence known to British and also German intelligence that somrthing might be going on in so far as a uranium purchase involving Niger. Wilson went to investigate - another long story, and absolutely the wrong guy for the job - but his focus was on the Italian documents that everyone, including him knew were garbage. I don't know, but i don't think he had the full skinny on what else was going on. I'm pretty sure he was given "go forth and do well" types of instructions, and then in a large part due to the fact he has NO counterproliferation experience, didn't put everything together, and didn't really know who to talk to. So, he once again corroborates that the Italian documents were junk, meanwhile the WH runs with other information that can't be easily discussed. The lines between it all get blurred, and here we are. Once again.

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As near as I can tell, the Italian documents which were a mix of real reports from the late 80's or thereabouts and forgeries were supposedly the basis for Italian reports from SISMI in November of 2001 that Saddam was buying Niger yellow cake. As the story goes, the CIA thought nothing of the information at the time, it just wasn't credible. The US didn't have the doucuments at that time, that happened much later, in October of 2002. The same information got in to the hands of the British, in fact the forged documents that later got so famous also did. That was the basis for Blair making the charge in early 2002. Immediately British intel leaks followed saying it was a crock.

 

Cheney pressed the CIA to take it seriously and that eventually resulted in Wilson's trip in March of 2002. It is believed that at that point the US may have had transcriptions of the forgeries. The British claim that they had a source other than those documents but certainly one of their sources was the forgeries. They have never identified the other source. Wilson came back and said it was a crock which he reported to CIA and he assumed they passed the info on up the chain to Cheney. Then, in Sept. and early Oct. of 2002, the President wanted to make the charge, the same one Blair had kinda sorta maybe made already. Hadley is the guy who really wanted it in the Cinn. speech. It turns out that he met with the head of SISMI on September 9, 2002, precisely when the administration and the CIA were fighting over the veracity of the Niger story, still, 6 months after Wilson's trip. The CIA memo'd the crap out of Hadley that it was a crock and Tenet personally contacted Hadley and so the administration backed off and did not make the claim in Cinn.

 

Suddenly, a reporter from La Parma (I think that is the name), is contacted by a source, a businessman about some documents he thinks she would be interested. She gets the forged documents from him, a guy who has been identified as Rocco Martino, a former SISMI guy, then making a living passing info to the French and top Belgians. The reporter didn't think much of the documents and wanted to go to Niger to check it out but her editor said no way, give them to the Americans which she did. The documents were taken to our Rome embassy so State had the first crack at them and thought it was BS. Same with CIA. Not so that Iraq group or whatever it was called nor with defense. Bang, it gets into the SOTU speech but is carefully worded to refer only to British intelligence. Fact is, the British "evidence" was the same "evidence" we had, the same old forgeries.

 

Anyway, that is the gist of it from what I understand, much of that is based on the reporting of Josh Marshall of TPM who has followed this story like a dog. He has even interviewed Martino, something the FBI didn't bother to do before reaching the conclusions they did on the whole mess. Check Marshall's stories on this, he had two posts: Italian Connection I and Italian Connection II which, as I recall summarize it all up pretty well.

 

Bib, I have not the foggiest, clue of a hald-assed notion that any of this is true. I am simply following the story as it goes on. It is interesting and funny enough to catch my interest even without knowing how much truth there is to it. I think it is interesting that the story is slowy starting to get into the American Press. Hadley was even asked about the September 2002 meeting in a press gaggle the other day. The worst implication was that he solicited Italy's help to drum up some proof of the allegations the Italians had been pedaling since November 2001, any proof, even bogus proof. Sure enough, the proof is delivered to the American Embassy in Rome a month later.

 

That is the story of the freaking year if it is true, that the administration asked the Italians to fabricate some proof for them that got paraded in the SOTU speech just a few months before war. Because we have effective one party rule right now, there can be no real adversarial investigation of any of this. All you have to try and dig out the truth of this, whatever it is, is the press and Fitzgerald. We will see. Even if its all BS, its certainly entertaining.

[finknottle]

:

Wilson went to investigate - another long story, and absolutely the wrong guy for the job - but his focus was on the Italian documents that everyone, including him knew were garbage.

:

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Just curious - why absolutely the wrong guy? (political hindsight aside...)

 

By all accounts he had a strong personal relationship with Niger's president from his Foreign Service stint there, and had served in both Iraq and elsewhere in Africa. In terms of credentials, shouldn't he have been perfect for working with this friendly government to get to the bottom of the affair?

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

Just curious - why absolutely the wrong guy? (political hindsight aside...)

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"...in a large part due to the fact he has NO counterproliferation experience..."

 

That probably has something to do with it. His wife arguably would have been better qualified.

[Ghost of BiB]

Just curious - why absolutely the wrong guy? (political hindsight aside...)

 

By all accounts he had a strong personal relationship with Niger's president from his Foreign Service stint there,  and had served in both Iraq and elsewhere in Africa.  In terms of credentials, shouldn't he have been perfect for working with this friendly government to get to the bottom of the affair?

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Tom's exactly right. Weapons proliferation - the networks, methods, rules, treaties...are really very complicated. Valerie would have been a much better choice, and so would about 1,000 other people. There's more than one fox in the henhouse here, but I doubt it ever makes the news, unless someone wants to look at the entire big picture.

 

It's not so much techical stuff (physics, whatever) as it is knowing where to look, knowing what to ask and knowing when you're being lied to.

[finknottle]

Tom's exactly right. Weapons proliferation - the networks, methods, rules, treaties...are really very complicated. Valerie would have been a much better choice, and so would about 1,000 other people. There's more than one fox in the henhouse here, but I doubt it ever makes the news, unless someone wants to look at the entire big picture.

 

It's not so much techical stuff (physics, whatever) as it is knowing where to look, knowing what to ask and knowing when you're being lied to.

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Well, let me temper this by saying I put very little weight on the credentials of anybody high up... being an ambassador or head of an agency doesn't mean you necessarily know squat what you are running.

 

But having said that, Wilson was on the National Security Council during the 90's, and was the Charge D'Affairs to Iraq in 1990. He is presumably as aquainted with proliferation issues as any other NCS staffer. My understanding was that this was a meeting with officials to investigate concrete allegations, not a roll-up-your-sleeves FBI type investigation of other possible activities, so it sounds to me that he was a perfect choice to visit.

 

(In the grand scheme of things this is an irrelevent point except to those who want to argue that there was something particularly nefarious about choosing him.)

[Ghost of BiB]

Well,  let me temper this by saying I put very little weight on the credentials of anybody high up...  being an ambassador or head of an agency doesn't mean you necessarily know squat what you are running.

 

But having said that,  Wilson was on the National Security Council during the 90's,  and was the Charge D'Affairs to Iraq in 1990.  He is presumably as aquainted with proliferation issues as any other NCS staffer. My understanding was that this was a meeting with officials to investigate concrete allegations,  not a roll-up-your-sleeves FBI type investigation of other possible activities,  so it sounds to me that he was a perfect choice to visit.

 

(In the grand scheme of things this is an irrelevent point except to those who want to argue that there was something particularly nefarious about choosing him.)

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Perhaps so. Once again, the wrong person for the work.

[Wacka]

Tom's exactly right. Weapons proliferation - the networks, methods, rules, treaties...are really very complicated. Valerie would have been a much better choice, and so would about 1,000 other people. There's more than one fox in the henhouse here, but I doubt it ever makes the news, unless someone wants to look at the entire big picture.

 

It's not so much techical stuff (physics, whatever) as it is knowing where to look, knowing what to ask and knowing when you're being lied to.

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And remember who put his name in for sending him there- Valerie.

[pope zimli]

There is a lot more to this story than is being pushed through certain medias. Going to be hard to convince anyone, but it did not take long for everyone involved, including the WH to realize that the documents were poorly done forgeries. The problem is, there was SEPARATE evidence known to British and also German intelligence that somrthing might be going on in so far as a uranium purchase involving Niger. Wilson went to investigate - another long story, and absolutely the wrong guy for the job - but his focus was on the Italian documents that everyone, including him knew were garbage. I don't know, but i don't think he had the full skinny on what else was going on. I'm pretty sure he was given "go forth and do well" types of instructions, and then in a large part due to the fact he has NO counterproliferation experience, didn't put everything together, and didn't really know who to talk to. So, he once again corroborates that the Italian documents were junk, meanwhile the WH runs with other information that can't be easily discussed. The lines between it all get blurred, and here we are. Once again.

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Wow.  The White House picked the wrong guy for the job.  After Brown, Miers, Libby and their ilk, Ican only wonder how THAT happened! 

[GG]

Wow.  The White House picked the wrong guy for the job.  After Brown, Miers, Libby and their ilk, Ican only wonder how THAT happened!  wink.gif

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Could it be that WH never picked the guy in the first place and he really had no business being there?

 

Nice to twist the stories to fit the mindset of 2005, instead of trying to place the thought process of what was known in 2002, and how the intelligence was gathered at that time.

 

So WH was suspicious about the Italian claims and asks confirmation from CIA, CIA sent its expert on WMD (not the wife, but the husband ) to investigate the claims that were widely believed to be false - and that gets turned into the gov't manufacturing evidence?

 

British intelligence stands by its accounts that Saddam was highly inquisitive in nuclear procurement, and not many people (other than the press) relied on the forged Italian documents. You would figure many people could spend a few seconds to do a a fact check search to see that the Italian documents are a smoke screen to a non-story that continues to be peddled as a story.

 

Here's a view that tries to put the story in the perspective of what was and is known, and why none of this makes a lot of sense, other than partisan posturing:

 

Full link (Subs required)

 

COMMENTARY - The Wall Street Journal

November 3, 2005; Page A12

Investigate the CIA

By VICTORIA TOENSING

 

...

 

... Two decades later, the CIA, either purposely or with gross negligence, made a series of decisions that led to Ms. Plame becoming a household name.

 

• First: The CIA sent her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger on a sensitive mission regarding WMD. ....  However, it was Ms. Plame, not Mr. Wilson, who was the WMD expert. Moreover, Mr. Wilson had no intelligence background, was never a senior person in Niger when he was in the State Department, and was opposed to the administration's Iraq policy. The assignment was given, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, at Ms. Plame's suggestion.

 

• Second: Mr. Wilson was not required to sign a confidentiality agreement, a mandatory act for the rest of us who either carry out any similar CIA assignment or who represent CIA clients.

 

• Third: When he returned from Niger, Mr. Wilson was not required to write a report, but rather merely to provide an oral briefing. That information was not sent to the White House. If this mission to Niger were so important, wouldn't a competent intelligence agency want a thoughtful written assessment from the "missionary," if for no other reason than to establish a record to refute any subsequent misrepresentation of that assessment? Because it was the vice president who initially inquired about Niger and the yellowcake (although he had nothing to do with Mr. Wilson being sent), it is curious that neither his office nor the president's were privy to the fruits of Mr. Wilson's oral report.

 

• Fourth: Although Mr. Wilson did not have to write even one word for the agency that sent him on the mission at taxpayer's expense, over a year later he was permitted to tell all about this sensitive assignment in the New York Times. For the rest of us, writing about such an assignment would mean we'd have to bring our proposed op-ed before the CIA's Prepublication Review Board and spend countless hours arguing over every word to be published. Congressional oversight committees should want to know who at the CIA permitted the publication of the article, which, it has been reported, did not jibe with the thrust of Mr. Wilson's oral briefing. For starters, if the piece had been properly vetted at the CIA, someone should have known that the agency never briefed the vice president on the trip, as claimed by Mr. Wilson in his op-ed.

 

• Fifth: More important than the inaccuracies is the fact that, if the CIA truly, truly, truly had wanted Ms. Plame's identity to be secret, it never would have permitted her spouse to write the op-ed. Did no one at Langley think that her identity could be compromised if her spouse wrote a piece discussing a foreign mission about a volatile political issue that focused on her expertise? The obvious question a sophisticated journalist such as Mr. Novak asked after "Why did the CIA send Wilson?" was "Who is Wilson?" After being told by a still-unnamed administration source that Mr. Wilson's "wife" suggested him for the assignment, Mr. Novak went to Who's Who, which reveals "Valerie Plame" as Mr. Wilson's spouse.

 

• Sixth: CIA incompetence did not end there. When Mr. Novak called the agency to verify Ms. Plame's employment, it not only did so, but failed to go beyond the perfunctory request not to publish. Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.

 

• Seventh: Although high-ranking Justice Department officials are prohibited from political activity, the CIA had no problem permitting its deep cover or classified employee from making political contributions under the name "Wilson, Valerie E.," information publicly available at the FEC.

 

...

 

Ms. Toensing, a Washington lawyer, is a former chief counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration.

[TPS]

Seems some people are now questioning the UK's evidence as well.

 

Could it be same strategy that Cheney used with Judy Miller--Feed her false or trumped information for an article, then go on the Sunday talk shows and quote the articles from the NYTimes....?

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politi...ticle325155.ece

[Wacka]

Toensing is the person who WROTE the law in 1983 that the left has said Rove and Libbey violated. She has said the law was not violated and did not pertain in this case.

[GG]

Seems some people are now questioning the UK's evidence as well.

 

Could it be same strategy that Cheney used with Judy Miller--Feed her false or trumped information for an article, then go on the Sunday talk shows and quote the articles from the NYTimes....?

 

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politi...ticle325155.ece

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Please. You use that article as concrete evidence that "some people are now questioning the UK's evidence as well?" I guess the Butler Report and US Congressional investigations aren't enough, the Independent insists that there must be a grand conspiracy theory, because the entire federal government, except for a handful of scrupulous CIA agents, were duped by the wily cabal.

 

Maybe before you hold the Independent up to high journalistic standards, we can play a game of "Find Inaccuracies in Basic Reporting" in this simple passage:

 

The documents were used by the US to make its case for war. President George Bush cited the uranium claim in his State of the Union address in January 2003. But as soon as the US passed the documents to the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, it denounced them as obvious fakes. The ensuing controversy in America has now resulted in charges against a top former White House official, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and a continuing investigation into Karl Rove, Mr Bush's closest aide.

[SilverNRed]

Maybe before you hold the Independent up to high journalistic standards, we can play a game of "Find Inaccuracies in Basic Reporting" in this simple passage:

 

The documents were used by the US to make its case for war. President George Bush cited the uranium claim in his State of the Union address in January 2003. But as soon as the US passed the documents to the UN's nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, it denounced them as obvious fakes. The ensuing controversy in America has now resulted in charges against a top former White House official, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and a continuing investigation into Karl Rove, Mr Bush's closest aide.

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Or something. Whatever.

[Mickey]

Could it be that WH never picked the guy in the first place and he really had no business being there?

 

Nice to twist the stories to fit the mindset of 2005, instead of trying to place the thought process of what was known in 2002, and how the intelligence was gathered at that time. 

 

So WH was suspicious about the Italian claims and asks confirmation from CIA, CIA sent its expert on WMD (not the wife, but the husband  )  to investigate the claims that were widely believed to be false - and that gets turned into the gov't manufacturing evidence? 

 

British intelligence stands by its accounts that Saddam was highly inquisitive in nuclear procurement, and not many people (other than the press) relied on the forged Italian documents.  You would figure many people could spend a few seconds to do a a fact check search to see that the Italian documents are a smoke screen to a non-story that continues to be peddled as a story.

 

Here's a view that tries to put the story in the perspective of what was and is known, and why none of this makes a lot of sense, other than partisan posturing:

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" Seventh: Although high-ranking Justice Department officials are prohibited from political activity, the CIA had no problem permitting its deep cover or classified employee from making political contributions under the name "Wilson, Valerie E.," information publicly available at the FEC."

 

So what? The CIA is not the justice deptartment and apparently had no such rule. How would making a political contribution compromise her identity as a covert CIA operative anyway? I'll bet she signed her name to her checks as well, so freaking what? Its not like she wrote "Wilson, Valerie E., covert CIA agent" on the contribution check. Thanks for the non-fact.

 

"• Fifth: More important than the inaccuracies is the fact that, if the CIA truly, truly, truly had wanted Ms. Plame's identity to be secret, it never would have permitted her spouse to write the op-ed. Did no one at Langley think that her identity could be compromised if her spouse wrote a piece discussing a foreign mission about a volatile political issue that focused on her expertise? The obvious question a sophisticated journalist such as Mr. Novak asked after "Why did the CIA send Wilson?" was "Who is Wilson?" After being told by a still-unnamed administration source that Mr. Wilson's "wife" suggested him for the assignment, Mr. Novak went to Who's Who, which reveals "Valerie Plame" as Mr. Wilson's spouse."

 

Yeah, why should we trust the CIA to decide who is and who is not covert and should remain that way, better to let Bob Novak decide. How would the CIA have prevented Wilson from writing what he wrote? He was not an agent, he was a civilian. I do agree however that the CIA should have known the risks involved as certainly, they had to be fools if they thought that her classified status would stand in the way of Rove, Cheney, Libby and company from mounting their smear campaign. The CIA should have known that they would be willing to violate the law if it served their purposes.

 

"• Fourth: Although Mr. Wilson did not have to write even one word for the agency that sent him on the mission at taxpayer's expense..."

 

Wilson wasn't paid for his work. I have never been to Niger but I am told that Paris it is not. You talk about partisan spin, well, what it this crap about "...at taxpayer expense"??? Isn't that "spin" trying to make it look like Wilson was looking for the government to fund a vactation to beautiful Niger? The CIA asked him to go, who should have paid for it, Aunt Fanny?

 

"• Third: When he returned from Niger, Mr. Wilson was not required to write a report, but rather merely to provide an oral briefing. That information was not sent to the White House. If this mission to Niger were so important, wouldn't a competent intelligence agency want a thoughtful written assessment from the "missionary," if for no other reason than to establish a record to refute any subsequent misrepresentation of that assessment? Because it was the vice president who initially inquired about Niger and the yellowcake (although he had nothing to do with Mr. Wilson being sent), it is curious that neither his office nor the president's were privy to the fruits of Mr. Wilson's oral report"

 

What, is she an expert on CIA debriefing procedures? Is she in a position to tell us what it is that a "competent intelligence agency" would or would not do? Wilson tells the guy what happened and that person writes it all down, yeah that is absolutely unheard of. Not. That information was not forwarded to the WH? I'd like to see some sources on that, in fact, I beleive that point is very much in dispute. Weren't privy to the fruits of that report? Again, I'd like to see a source on that. They were certainly privy to the CIA's position that the story was not reliable. Two e-mails and a phone call from Tenet to Stephen Hadley in October 2002 attest to that.

 

 

I don't have time for the rest. Suffice it to say that this article sheds no new light, it just makes the same conservative talking points on this story that we have heard over and over and over. This is spin from the right and yes, there is plenty on the left as well. Just don't dress this pig up and tell me its anti-pig.

[Mickey]

Well,  let me temper this by saying I put very little weight on the credentials of anybody high up...  being an ambassador or head of an agency doesn't mean you necessarily know squat what you are running.

 

But having said that,  Wilson was on the National Security Council during the 90's,  and was the Charge D'Affairs to Iraq in 1990.  He is presumably as aquainted with proliferation issues as any other NCS staffer.  My understanding was that this was a meeting with officials to investigate concrete allegations,  not a roll-up-your-sleeves FBI type investigation of other possible activities,  so it sounds to me that he was a perfect choice to visit.

 

(In the grand scheme of things this is an irrelevent point except to those who want to argue that there was something particularly nefarious about choosing him.)

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Its a subject changer. Makes little difference one way or the other. The question is whether or not the administration overstated the nuclear charge against Iraq and did so without proof enough to warrant the charge. The Niger story was not reliable and the CIA told Hadley that in October of 2002 with two e-mails and a phone call from George Tenet. Nothing changed on that between then and the State of the Union Address save for the documents turned over by the Italian reporter believed, as reported in La Repubblica, to have originated with Italian intel (SISMI). Those were the Niger forgeries. Thats where all this Italian stuff comes from and it started long before October of 2002.

 

What did Hadley and Nicolo Pollari talk about in their now acknowledged meeting in September of 2002? What was Pollari's involvement with the forgeries traced to former SISMI asset Rocco Martino? Is it mere coincidence that Hadley met with Pollari just when the administration was fighting with the CIA over the veracity of the Niger story and then, a month later, suddenly documents from Italy and allegedly originating from Italian intelligence show up to bolster the administration position on the Niger story?

 

If we had a divided government, this would be getting investigated up the wazooo.

We don't so the only investigation is being done by other sources, mainly the press. Heck, the FBI concluded their investigation without even interviewing Martino. When an Italian news magazine does a more complete investigation of an issue than the FBI, were all in a deep pile of spaghetti.

[Wacka]

Mickey,

Why do you continue to ignore the fact that Plame was NOT covert. Her cover was blown possibly by Aldrich Ames and certainly by the Swiss embassy in the 90s. Therefore the laws that you keep stating do not pertain in this case.

[Mickey]

Mickey,

Why do you continue to ignore the fact that Plame was NOT covert. Her cover was blown possibly by Aldrich Ames and certainly by the Swiss embassy in the 90s.  Therefore the laws that you keep stating do not pertain in this case.

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Covert, classified, whatever. It may sound strange but rather than rely on your opinion on that matter, I am relying on the prosecutor and the CIA. The indictment says that she was classified, ie, covert, ie, crime to knowingly divulge the identity of. That is where Rove and Libby are avoiding getting charged with violating the IIPA, Fitz can't prove that they knowingly divulged the identity of a classified agent. The fact that they divulged her and that she was classified are no longer arguments that hold any water save for those who just can't give up any of the talking points on this issue that they have taken and spread as gospel for the last two plus years.

 

From Libby's indictment:

 

"At all relevant times from January 1, 2002 through July 2003, Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA, and her employment status was classified. Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community."

 

Read that to yourself, slowly, repeatedly until it finally sinks in that she was classified. Now read what the indictment has to say about "classified" CIA personnel:

 

"The responsibilities of certain CIA employees required that their association with the CIA be kept secret; as a result, the fact that these individuals were employed by the CIA was classified. Disclosure of the fact that such individuals were employed by the CIA had the potential to damage the national security in ways that ranged from preventing the future use of those individuals in a covert capacity, to compromising intelligence-gathering methods and operations, and endangering the safety of CIA employees and those who dealt with them."

 

 

Revealing her identity was a big deal, it was bad and why it is that you insist on minimizing it, excusing it, striving to find some way off the hook for your favorite freaks is as tiring as it is revealing. I have company in that opinion, people like William F. Buckley:

 

"We have noticed that Valerie Plame Wilson has lived in Washington since 1997. Where she was before that is not disclosed by research facilities at my disposal. But even if she was safe in Washington when the identity of her employer was given out, it does not mean that her outing was without consequence. We do not know what dealings she might have been engaging in which are now interrupted or even made impossible. We do not know whether the countries in which she worked before 1997 could accost her, if she were to visit any of them, confronting her with signed papers that gave untruthful reasons for her previous stay — that she was there only as tourist, or working for a fictitious U.S. company."

 

Further:

 

"The importance of the law against revealing the true professional identity of an agent is advertised by the draconian punishment, under the federal code, for violating it. In the swirl of the Libby affair, one loses sight of the real offense, and it becomes almost inapprehensible what it is that Cheney/Libby/Rove got themselves into. But the sacredness of the law against betraying a clandestine soldier of the republic cannot be slighted."

 

Well, you know Buckley, just another liberal gone wild.