It should be the end of it...

But it probably won't be. From late last night:

Richard Armitage appeared on CNN today, discussing Pakistan but also addressing his role as the original leaker in the CIA leak affair. He took the blame for leaking Valerie Plame Wilson's identity, but he also gave us a bit more evidence to show that, from his perspective at least, it was entirely unintentional. But there must be a conspiracy in there somewhere.The segment began with CNN showing a video clip of a recent Valerie Plame Wilson interview:

VALERIE PLAME WILSON: Mr. Armitage did a very foolish thing. He has been around Washington for decades. He should know better. He's a senior government official. Whether he knew where exactly I worked in the CIA, he had no rights to go talking to a reporter about where I worked. That was strictly off-limits.

BLITZER: Those are strong words from Valerie Plame Wilson.

ARMITAGE: They're not words on which I disagree. I think it was extraordinarily foolish of me. There was no ill-intent on my part and I had never seen ever, in 43 years of having a security clearance, a covert operative's name in a memo. The only reason I knew a "Mrs. Wilson," not "Mrs. Plame," worked at the agency was because I saw it in a memo. But I don't disagree with her words to a large measure.

BLITZER: Normally in memos they don't name covert operatives?

ARMITAGE: I have never seen one named.

BLITZER: And so you assumed she was, what, just an analyst over at the CIA?

ARMITAGE: Not only assumed it, that's what the message said, that she was publicly chairing a meeting.

BLITZER: So, when you told Robert Novak that Joe Wilson, the former U.S. ambassador's wife, worked at the CIA, and she was involved somehow in getting him this trip to Africa to look for the enriched uranium, if there were enriched uranium going to Iraq, you simply assumed that she was not a clandestine officer of the CIA.

ARMITAGE: Well, even Mr. Novak has said that he used the word "operative" and misused it. No one ever said "operative." And I not only assumed it, as I say, I've never seen a covered agent's name in a memo. However, that doesn't take away from what Mrs. Plame said, it was foolish, yeah. Sure it was.

BLITZER: So you agree with her on that.

ARMITAGE: Yeah. Absolutely.

Seems clear to me that Novak's initial contention that Val wasn't covert was a perfectly logical assumption.

Freudian or otherwise

A moment that encapsulates all the utter ridiculousness of Plamegate.

This follow-up lands high on the Moronic scale also:

After Joseph Wilson's citation of "I. Libbis Lewey," the only interesting, or at least amusing, portion of the hearing came from wild-card Democratic freshman Rep. Steve Cohen, who wondered whether the Libby pardon should be the stimulus for a constitutional amendment limiting the president's pardon power. Cohen suggested that once the president proposes to pardon someone, the pardon go to the Supreme Court, where if six of the nine justices objected, then the pardon would not be issued. The somewhat surprised witnesses answered that yes, the Constitution could conceivably be amended in many ways, but they politely offered no opinion of Cohen's idea.

Had they been able to harness all that brain-power they might have been able to burn a bulb or two. Maybe.

Libby kisses Sister

It's not the best one could have hoped for, but I'm sure he'll take it. As will I...this never should have come to this.

I guess that Settles It!

Kevin Drum is now convinced that Valerie Plame was in fact covert at the time her name was made public in 2003. All because Patrick Fitzgerald says so:

In a court filing today, Patrick Fitzgerald provides a summary of Valerie Plame Wilson's status with the CIA's Counterproliferation Division at the time she was outed to the press by members of the Bush administration. Guess what? She was covert:

While assigned to CPD, Ms. Wilson engaged in temporary duty (TDY) travel overseas on official business. She traveled at least seven times to more than ten countries. When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity — sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias — but always using cover — whether official or non-official cover (NOC) — with no ostensible relationship to the CIA.

At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson's employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.

So that settles that. I hope the wingosphere can finally stop bleating about how she wasn't "really" covert and there was no harm in what Libby et. al. did.

Right wingosphere Plameologist Tom Maguire begs to differ. He writes, actually in response to the typically snarky Glenn Greenwald, that:

1. As to "Plame's covert status is based upon the CIA's own internal documents which make clear she was covert", I have labored at length to point out that the CIA, in its own vernacular, uses "covert" and "classified" interchangeably without regard to the IIPA. This was emphasized in my discussion of the Waxman hearing (linked above under "noted at the time") and is not a new point. However, I did allude to it in the original post above by saying "Waxman quite clearly danced around the question of whether Ms. Plame was "covert" as defined by the IIPA rather than by the less exacting in-house CIA standard". This semantic point - "covert" is used interchangeably with "classifed" by the CIA but is not consistent with "covert" a sper the relavant [sic] statute - is simply not controversial, subtle, or new.

Perhaps irrelevant in the short-term. Val may very well have been covert as defined under the IIPA and I remain open to the possibility, but seems to me the source for that conclusion ought to be the CIA, not Fitz.

Don't ignore Maguire's point that the CIA still has, presumably, not done the leg-work necessary to clearly, concisely and once-and-for-all put the question to rest: So what was the opinion of CIA Counsel on Ms. Plame's status under the statute? That would not be fully dispositive either, but it would certainly carry some weight. Bob Novak followed up on this with various annoyed Republican Congressman, and wrote this on April 12:

On March 21, Hoekstra [Ranking Republican on the House Intel Committee] again requested the CIA to define Mrs. Wilson's status. A written reply April 5 from Christopher J. Walker, the CIA's director of congressional affairs, said only that "it is taking longer than expected" to reply because of "the considerable legal complexity required for this tasking."

So as of April 2007 the CIA had not yet done the homework to form an opinion.

This of course is all irrevelant in the bigger picture. Sim rightly pointed out in another venue that the narrative on this has already been written. We'll sooner see it fossilized than changed at this point.

What of course is only slightly humorous is that neither Kevin nor Glenn nor any of the usual suspects triumphant over today's revelations have anything to say about the Changing stories of Valerie Plame.

Like I'm surprised.

Plame: Who outed Who?

Cliff May, while commenting on this piece by Byron York, wonders aloud the thing that some others have likewise wondered but that no one seems willing to take head-on:

So I ask again: If Armitage and Novak did not believe Plame was (or had formerly been) undercover, where did that idea come from? The answer: It was first raised in a story by the Nation’s David Corn. And the only source named in that story is Joe Wilson, who had a close relation with Corn and with the Nation.

Does this suggest it was really Wilson who exposed his wife’s covert status and did so, in league with Corn, as a way to damage the White House? If there’s a more logical or likely interpretation of the facts as we now know then, I haven’t heard it.

Valerie Plame goes to Washington!

And makes little sense. The Cornerites offered some play-by-play earlier in the day and several have more thorough reflections.

First, Byron York on the issue of the mysterious recommendation of Joe Wilson:

At her appearance before the House Committee on Government Oversight and Reform, Valerie Plame Wilson flatly denied playing a role in the choice of her husband for a CIA mission to Niger. "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," she said. She also testified that a Senate Intelligence Committee report which concluded she did suggest her husband was wrong.

In particular, Mrs. Wilson said a CIA reports officer who, according to the Senate report, told Senate investigators that she had suggested her husband, "came to me almost with tears in his eyes. He said his words have been twisted and distorted."

Tonight a key senator is disputing Mrs. Wilson's testimony. In response to an inquiry from National Review, Senator Christopher Bond, vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, released the following statement:

I stand by the findings of the Committee’s report on the Niger-Iraq uranium information, including the information regarding Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.

We have checked the transcript of the comments made to the Committee by the former reports officer and I stand by the Committee’s description of his comments. If the reports officer would like to clarify or change his remarks, I’m certain that the Committee would welcome his testimony.

We have also checked the memorandum written by Ms. Wilson suggesting her husband to look into the Niger reporting. I also stand by the Committee’s finding that this memorandum indicates Ms. Wilson did suggest her husband for a Niger inquiry. Because the quote [the portion of the memo quoted in the Senate report] obviously does not represent the entirety of the memorandum, I suggest that the House Government Reform Committee request and examine this memorandum themselves. I am confident that they will come to the same conclusion as our bipartisan membership did.

Having not seen or heard any of the hearing I have no concept if any members of the committee were quick enough to ask the obvious questions about the difference in testimonies and recollections, but they should have.

Moving forward, Former U.S. attorney and NRO contributor Andy McCarthy notes our gal Val's conflation of Rank with Status:

Valerie Plame Wilson said in her testimony that she continued to be "covert" while working at Langley — long after her assignment overseas — because she had been covert while working overseas. Her analogy was to a general in the army. A general, she said, remains a general even if he is rotated from combat overseas to a post in the U.S.

This seems pretty silly to me. It conflates RANK with STATUS. The better analogy, I think, would be to a DEA or FBI undercover agent. When the agent is on the undercover assignment, he/she is "covert"; when the agency ends the U/C assignment and transfers the agent (often to a supervisory position), the agent is no longer covert, even though aspects of the former assignment remain closely guarded.

Obviously, when an undercover agent moves onto new, non-undercover responsibilities, that does not mean all entanglements of the covert assignment are over. If, for example, there were classified aspects of the assignment (e.g., the agent's cover was a sham corporation that the agency is still using for undercover purposes), or if the agent, while covert, reported information that is still regarded as sensitive or classified intelligence, all that remains closely guarded (perhaps even classified). So, to that extent, it can still be said that the agent has "covert" responsibilities.

BUT, that doesn't mean his or her day-to-day responsibilities are any longer covert. The agent, for example, walks in and out of headquarters everyday, like hundreds of other people, because there is no longer any imperative to conceal his/her connection to the agency.

We don't know all the facts necessary to render a definitive judgment, but it sure seems like Mrs. Wilson is using the continuing sensitivity of facts about her formerly covert STATUS to suggest, misleadingly, that she continued to have a covert RANK once she returned back home and was assigned to headquarters — where a zillion people a day saw her walk in and out of CIA and the Agency was obviously not trying to conceal the fact that she worked there.

Friends of Joe and Val have continued to equate the meanings of covert and classified, it seems attempting to use them interchangeably while in the highly sensitive world in which she operated each has a specific meaning and application. All, seemingly, to the end of so confusing the two that CW ossified and it is now somehow beyond questioning that Valerie Plame, super-double-secret agent was ruthlessly outed for political purposes.

Almost the last Plame Post: Memes are like Cockroaches

You can't kill them. That's the conclusion I'm reaching.

The Bush Administration is destined forever to be associated with a political smear campaign that never was anything like what has hardened into Gospel fact. Democratic strategist Jano Cabrera's explanation is plenty succinct on this point:

But Cabrera said if Bush does pardon Libby, “he may not have the last laugh. Pardons, often the last acts of outgoing Presidents, sometimes — fairly or unfairly — end up epitomizing the administrations themselves. Bush pardoning Libby would just serve as a living reminder that in his rush to war, his administration smeared those who would raise questions and placed more of an emphasis on PR than on actually securing the country.”

And no one in the Media is aware enough to counter and the Administration that knows they've gotten the short-end, won't.

Game Over

Dean Barnett offers an observation that is, at best, very unsettling about the conduct of the Libby prosecution. Not anything new on the political right; a lot of people are not enamored of the way Fitzgerald handled himself in this.

Dean's observation is more disturbing because it gets to the heart of the matter in a context that is more discomfiting for the ease with which we can identify with the dynamic. I can't and won't speak for anyone other than myself but I don't want a prosecutor acting-out this way:

And yet there’s something about this case that still strikes me as unsettling and unnerving. For political reasons, the purportedly aggrieved parties of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame got their own private prosecutor whose entire job was to make sure someone went to jail because of the scandal in which the Wilsons were the featured players. Even as the main charges turned out to be unfounded or at the very least un-provable, an undeterred Fitzgerald fought on, determined to get someone, anyone, thrown in jail.

As I watched Fitzgerald give his presser yesterday, I didn’t get the sense that this was a man who thought justice had been done. No, his satisfaction was more akin to the athlete who had just won a big game. And the loser was Libby, even though he had no interest in taking the field.

Preemptive strike

TM promised a preemptive strike yesterday in wake of Media Matters' promise to address "numerous myths and falsehoods," surrounding the Plame matter. Here is Strike One.

My personal favorite:

Let's have one more from Media Matters:

Libby's leak was an effort to set the record straight. Critics of the CIA leak case have repeatedly claimed that the indictment stems from an effort by Libby and Vice President Dick Cheney to rebut a purportedly inaccurate attack on the administration by Wilson. According to these critics, Wilson falsely accused Cheney of having sent him to Niger to investigate reports that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium from the African country. In fact, Wilson, in his July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed, did not say he was sent by Cheney. Rather, Wilson wrote that it was "agency officials" from the CIA who "asked if I would travel to Niger" and "check out" a "particular intelligence report" that "Cheney's office had questions about," so that CIA officials "could provide a response to the vice president's office."

My goodness - did the story really begin with Wilson's July 6 op-ed? They why was Washington buzzing about an anonymous Ambassador in June? Evidently Media Matters' subscription to Google has lapsed, but let me help.

Nick Kristof, May 6, 2003,with an anonymous source later revealed to be Joe Wilson:
I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger.

Nick Kristof, June 13, 2003:
Condoleezza Rice was asked on "Meet the Press" on Sunday about a column of mine from May 6 regarding President Bush's reliance on forged documents to claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. That was not just a case of hyping intelligence, but of asserting something that had already been flatly discredited by an envoy investigating at the behest of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

Summing up Libby the Steyn way

As only Mark Steyn is capable of doing, of course:

The lies about who leaked Mrs Wilson’s name, the lies about what her husband was told in Niger and what he reported back to the CIA and how he got the job in the first place, all these are still out there. And in particular the leaker Armitage – who remained silent as the drip-drip-drip of speculation corroded the Administration’s integrity month in month out – remains a beloved figure on the social scene, full of delightful asides and amusing gossip. Only the peripheral lie about the minor lie arising from major lies is to be punished.

The Bush Administration can be faulted on several grounds for its conduct here, but one of its earliest errors was apologizing for the notorious “16 words” in the SOTU that started this thing:

''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The British government stands by that statement. So does Lord Butler, in his investigation. In stepping back from the statement, the Administration showed an astonishing political ineptness, and in effect legitimized Wilson’s core grievance.

Three years on, meanwhile, MI6, the French and others still know far more about what’s happening on the ground in Africa. The real scandal has always been that the world’s most lavishly endowed intelligence agency’s idea of an investigation is flying in a politically-motivated tourist for a long weekend.

I'm with his NRO colleagues, this never should have happened but it did. And now an Administration notoriously bad at meme-killing and communicating in general will wear this like an albatross, regardless of the fact that there was no conspiracy aimed at punishing poor Joe Wilson.

And as for Richard Armitage and Colin Powell...the less said the better. Their behavior in letting the WH flap in the breeze for years goes beyond disgraceful.

MORNING UPDATE: Joe Wilson--"one of the biggest liars I've ever seen skate across the Washington stage." Joe Scarborough was torqued last night.

Fitz gets his scalp

Scooter Libby found guilty on 4 of 5 counts against him:

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was convicted Tuesday of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.

Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was accused of lying and obstructing the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity to reporters.

Apparently you can do the time when there is no crime.

Plamegate Puke-o-Rama

We've truly reached the point where things have become totally (as opposed to only slightly) surreal:

So there is going to be a movie about Joe and Valerie Wilson? Don't kill me now - I want to feel the stake in my heart at the moment the film is announced as the winner of "Best Picture".

I assume that the verdicts and appeals in the current trial won't affect this movie, or Hollywood's "understanding" of the Wilson case - after all, if Libby is acquited, that will just prove how clever the cover-up was. And if no one can say whether she was covert as per the IIPA, well, that just proves how deeply covert she was.

Oh, well - I can't wait to see how the screenplay treats all those reporters who misunderstood and misreported on the wisdom of Our Man Joe. Wait, what am I saying? Of course I can wait.

Words fail.

I know that Scooter outed Valerie Plame!(Or, Spank me Harder!)

This is what happens when you substitute belief for facts and add a dash of certitude:

I'm not asking you to believe anything in particular, but to back up what you say you believe...

You assert a coordinated effort to out Plame as pushback on Joe...

You conflate discussions within government with those between government officials and members of the press...If you believe every syllable by Grenier, Grossman, Schmall, Harlow and Martin, you're no closer to establishing a effort to leak outside of the admin...You simply deduce "5 government officials talking = 5 government officials coordinating an effort to leak"...Is there one sentence that you can point to where any of these clowns allege this? or anyone else alleges this?

You use phrases like "effort by multiple officials w/i the OVP and various Federal Agencies to disseminate talking points about Joe Wilson." Great coffee shop banter, but what do you have? All of the above testified they were responding to direct requests from OVP for information on Wilson...and there is no testimony that they disseminated anything to anybody else...

If you want to claim that Cheney, Rove, Libby, and Fleischer coordinated, fine...but you're still way short on proof by even the most liberal of standards...

One government official (Ari) testified that Libby told him during lunch, and told him to keep his trap shut. of course you know that was a wink, wink, nod moment, 'cause Scooter knew Ari would blab...

So the plan works and Ari testifies that he told Dickerson and Gregory (they say he didn't) and that he didn't tell Pincus (he says Ari did)...

And the other proactive step? Libby meeting with Miller, whose notes and memory were so convincing that Libby isn't charged with any statements refuted by her...Probably multiple other sources, Valerie "Flame", WINPAC, and Joe's phone number had a little to do with that prosecutorial discretion...(I don't expect you to understand the significance of any of this, BTW)...

And here we are...the smoking guns...Rove (leaving on vacation) and Libby (taking wife and 2 kids on birthday trip aboard AF2 to see the dedication of the USS Ronald Reagan), passing on multiple ops to leak to Novak, Pincus, Russert, etc, waiting for the phone to ring from Matt Cooper and Robert Novak, in hopes that either might ask about Val...

Meanwhile, back in the real world: This is a joke! Summarizing the summaries: This morning the defense signalled a belief that the prosecution would attempt to exceed the boundaries of appropriate rebuttal, and from the often garbled summaries we are reading he appears to. Will the defense be able to use these missteps to get further jury instructions and perhaps even a sur-rebuttal? Maybe.

And this, a personal favorite: I'm pulling my info from second-hand transcripts, and it appears perhaps Walton is going to use the 1.5 hours for jury instructions. I did find this interesting, however...

In the last five minutes he (Fitzgerald) provided work for the appeals courts (should Libby be convicted) for a year or so...

Closing Arguments

Closing statements are scheduled for today in the Libby trial. I wonder if anyone established an over/under on deliberations by the jury? My guess is about 10 minutes but I'm a hyper-partisan digital brown-shirt so I'm probably not seeing things too clearly...

Meanwhile, JustOneMinute will be it's usual useful place for clear-eyed, conservative and most importantly, correct commentary on the legal proceedings of the day.