The AP: Plamegate 101
The AP: Plamegate 101
#0The AP: Plamegate 101
Posted: 7/31/05 at 8:15pm
Nicely done, AP!
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Posted on Sun, Jul. 31, 2005
Questions, answers on CIA leak probe
MARK SHERMAN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Prosecutors are investigating who in the Bush administration leaked the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame. Some questions and answers on the case:
Q: What are the origins?
A: In early 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney read an intelligence report that said the African nation of Niger had agreed to deliver 500 tons of yellowcake uranium to Iraq. In response to questions from Cheney's office and the departments of State and Defense, the CIA's Counterproliferation Division discussed ways to obtain additional information, according to a Senate Intelligence Committee report.
Plame, a CIA division employee, suggested her husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, as someone who had good relations with the prime minister and the former minister of mines in Niger. The CIA sent Wilson to Africa, where he was unable to confirm the intelligence report about yellowcake uranium.
More than a year later, with the U.S. government unable to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times, "What I Didn't Find In Africa," and asked the question: "Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion?"
Eight days later, columnist Robert Novak wrote an article in which he disclosed Plame's name and cited as sources two unidentified senior administration officials. Novak wrote that the officials had told him Plame had suggested sending her husband to Niger.
Q: Why would someone in the administration leak Plame's name?
A: Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is trying to determine that. Wilson claims it was retribution for his article and for his criticism of the administration.
Q: Was it a crime for people in the administration to leak Plame's identity?
A: Under the Intelligence Identities and Protection Act, it must be shown that someone intentionally disclosed the identity of a person known to the leaker as having undercover status. Lawyers are divided over whether someone who describes a person but does not actually disclose someone's name could be prosecuted. Fitzgerald has not charged anyone, and it is not clear that he will.
Q. Is Fitzgerald looking solely at whether that law was violated?
A. Some legal experts have said they believe the focus of the investigation may have shifted to whether anyone lied to federal agents, prosecutors or the grand jury, or intentionally obstructed the investigation. They based their opinions on descriptions of grand jury testimony from witnesses and their lawyers.
Q: Judith Miller of The New York Times is in jail even though she did not write about Plame. Why is her testimony so important?
A. That is a mystery. It is known from court rulings that the prosecutor wants Miller to provide documents and testimony related to conversations she had with "a specified government official" in the days between the articles by Wilson and Novak.
Q. How many government officials discussed Plame with reporters?
A. Probably at least three, accounts by those reporters and others familiar with the case suggest. Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were among the sources for Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. Cooper wrote about Plame after publication of Novak's column.
Cooper testified to the grand jury in July, following a legal battle over whether reporters had to reveal their confidential sources. Following his testimony, he disclosed his sources in Time.
Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus wrote that he spoke to a government official who volunteered information about Plame two days before Novak's column appeared. Rove and Libby responded to questions about the topic, Cooper and a person who was briefed on Rove's grand jury testimony have said.
Q. What is the significance of a classified State Department memo that mentions Plame and the dispute over the Iraqi intelligence?
A. The memo has become an important piece of evidence because it could have been the way someone in the White House learned - and then leaked - the information that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and played a role in sending him on the mission.
The document was prepared in June 2003 for Secretary of State Colin Powell so that he would have an account of Wilson's trip, a retired department official has said. It was sent to Air Force One, the president's plane, because Powell was traveling with the president to Africa.
Q. Why has the name of John Bolton, the president's nominee to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, entered into this story?
A. Mainly because Senate Democrats are trying to persuade President Bush not to give Bolton a recess appointment as U.N. ambassador. Bolton did not testify before the grand jury and was not interviewed by prosecutors in the leak case, State Department officials said. He was undersecretary for arms control and international security before the Iraq war.
However, Bolton didn't tell Congress he had been interviewed for a State Department investigation into the prewar intelligence that Iraq was seeking nuclear materials in Africa. A spokesman said Bolton had not remembered the interview when he claimed on a form that he had not been interviewed by investigators in any inquiry over the past five years. The revelation further raised the ire of Senate Democrats.
Bush, unable to get a vote in the Senate on the Bolton nomination, is expected to ignore Democrats and give Bolton a recess appointment. Under the Constitution, the president may bypass the Senate's authority to confirm an appointment if it is made while the Senate is in recess. It lasts only until the next session of Congress. The Senate began its summer recess Friday night.
ON THE NET
The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982:
http://foi.missouri.edu/bushinfopolicies/protection.html
Questions, answers on CIA leak probe
DG
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/2/05
#2re: The AP: Plamegate 101
Posted: 8/30/06 at 12:03amYou mean, with a Fat Gossip Queen taking the rap?
DG
Broadway Legend Joined: 11/2/05
#3re: The AP: Plamegate 101
Posted: 8/30/06 at 12:05amI mean, is that all that it's going to end up doing? If it is, then the Republicans are going to carry on for the next few weeks about wasted taxpayer money and government time.
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