Ex-Clintonite Sidney Blumenthal tells us in Salon that George W. Bush knew all along that poor old Saddam had no WMD. Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister said so, and presumably Baghdad Bob offered precisely the same assurances. Evidently, George Tenet mentioned Sabri’s information once at a White house briefing. Everybody had a good laugh, and went on to more serious matters.

Sidney’s sources include Pouting Spook Tyler Drumheller and two other unnamed VIPS affiliates.

All this is simply old anti-Bush propaganda in a new hit piece.

The MSM is reporting that Valerie Plame’s status as a covert CIA agent has been confirmed (and the left blogosphere is howling in triumph), but all that has really happened is that Patrick Fitzgerald reiterated in his sentencing brief the same leap of logic he has been using all along to justify his meritless prosecution.

The relevant law is the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, which makes it a crime intentionally to reveal the identity of a US covert Intelligence agent.

US CODE TITLE 50 > CHAPTER 15 > SUBCHAPTER IV > § 426 defines the term “covert agent:”

4) The term “covert agent” means—
(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency—
(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and
(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States.

Fitzgerald’s summary says:

While assigned to CPD [Counterproliferation Division], 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.

Fitzgerald is attempting to conflate a business trip abroad with “serving outside the United States,” and conventional casual procedure with “affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.”

Victoria Toensing, who as Deputy Assistant Attorney General at the time helped draft the 1982 Act, has testified before Congress that Valerie Plame was not covert under the definition of the Act.

Pouting Spook Larry Johnson inadvertently reveals the pretext being employed by Fitzgerald:

Valerie Plame was undercover until the day she was identified in Robert Novak’s column. I entered on duty with Valerie in September of 1985. Every single member of our class–which was comprised of Case Officers, Analysts, Scientists, and Admin folks–were undercover.

Everybody employed by the CIA above the rank of janitor is supposed to make modest pro forma efforts to avoid disclosing the identity of his employer and the nature of his employment. That does not make every CIA-employed “Analyst, Scientist, or Administrator” a “covert agent” under the definition of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Nor should routine non-disclosure or pro forma use of cover, on the level of James Bond’s supposed employment at “Universal Export,” be considered to rise to the level of the “affirmative measures” meantioned in the Act.

Patrick Fitzgerald is employing a crucial leap of interpretation to get to where he wants to go, and he wants to go there for partisan political advantage, not for reasons having anything to do with National Security or Justice.

ABC News:

The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

The sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, say President Bush has signed a “nonlethal presidential finding” that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.

How can the publication of this kind of story in time of war not be vigorously prosecuted by the Department of Justice?

You don’t find the MSM reporting on the organized activities of retired and actively serving Intelligence officers, including ABC’s informants on this matter, to mount a covert “black” operation to destabilize the Bush Administration though, do you?

Brian Carney performs a useful postmortem on the Scooter Libby case in this month’s Commentary.

If a lesson about the Bush administration lies buried in this tale, it is close to the opposite of the accepted one. It is a lesson about an administration caught in an uncomfortable position as a result of one State Department official’s indiscreet remark to a skilled columnist, an administration straining to appear to be doing the right thing even at the expense of actually doing anything right. But the real lesson here has nothing to do with the Bush administration, any more than it has to do with prewar intelligence or with the First and Fifth Amendment rights of CIA officers.

The modern American government is a vast and largely self-sustaining bureaucracy. That bureaucracy acts, first and foremost, in its own interest, and not necessarily in the interests of its putative but temporary political bosses. The CIA, its intelligence having been challenged, sold out the White House on the sixteen words—even though that intelligence would later be upheld. The State Department, faced with the knowledge that one of its own was responsible for the Valerie Wilson leak, preferred keeping the White House in the dark to revealing what it knew. The Justice Department did what prosecutors do when ordered to investigate, which is to charge people with crimes.

In other words, the Republican party’s alleged “full control” of government prior to the 2006 midterm elections was more myth than reality. The Bush administration lost control of the Wilson story almost from the beginning, and while on a number of occasions it failed to exercise the control available to it, it was also denied the opportunity to control its fate by entrenched interests that no elected administration can ever fully master without the consent of the bureaucracy that supposedly serves it.

Whole article

Lorie Bird at Wizbang reports that during his interview on 60 Minutes, George Tenet continued his attacks on the Bush Administration for ignoring the Intelligence Community and launching an unnecessary invasion of Iraq.

Dick Cheney and the Neocons were wrong, Tenet asserted. Wiser heads in the Intelligence Community had more correctly estimated that Saddam wouldn’t have nuclear weapons (he could make available to terrorists) until 2007 to 2009!

SCOTT PELLEY, CBS’ “60 MINUTES”: January ’03, the President, again: “imagine those 19 hijackers this time armed by Saddam’s Hussein,” is that what you’re telling the President?

GEORGE TENNET: No.

[narrating voice]

The Vice President up the anty, claiming Saddam had nuclear weapons when the CIA was saying he didn’t.

PELLEY: What’s happening here?

TENNET: I don’t know what’s happening here. The intelligence community’s judgement is he will not have nuclear weapons until the year 2007, 2009.

PELLEY: That’s not what the Vice President is saying.

TENNET: Well I can’t explain it.

video link

Rick Ballard, at YARGB, has some choice words concerning the reptile Paul McNulty, and President’s Bush’s continuing above-the-fray passivity. He’s perfectly right, too.

How does a man as profoundly perfidious as Paul McNulty get appointed Deputy Attorney General? Who vetted this snake to a post where his betrayal could do so much damage? If you don’t recognize the name, you need to read this exclusive account of perfidy, disloyalty and disobedience to understand what type of loathsome viper the President inadvertently invited into his Department of Justice.

McNulty is a product of the same Southern District of New York which produced Comey and Fitzgerald. He exhibits the same fawning servility to Chuck Schumer as do the other two and his allegiance to that snake of a politician is possibly even stronger. As you read the article you can sense the slightest bit of regret by McNulty for carried scorpion (Schumer) across the river. That regret is as phony as the balance of this non mea culpa. McNulty was and is a very willing betrayer angling for a future political plum.

The President is reaping what he himself has sown in this matter. …

The President’s ludicrous instruction to “fully cooperate” with FBI agents running a political operation in the Plame matter while at the same time insisting that a condition of employment by this White House means forfeiture of the Fifth Amendment right has finally reached what should have been its obvious conclusion. AG Gonzales’ counselor, Monica Goodling has appropriately taken a leave of absence and announced her intention to make full use of her right against self incrimination. Apparently she paid close attention to Fitzgerald’s conduct in the Libby matter and decided that allegiance to a President unwilling to stand beside those who stand beside him was of little value.

McNulty’s fawning obsequience to Schumer and his sideshow is another matter. Having never been loyal to anyone other than himself he cannot be characterized as other than a week reed who should never have been entrusted with his office.

The President’s decision to rid himself of the eight US Attorneys who were not carrying out his policies was correct and without need of any justification other than that they did not please him. After all, that’s what “at the pleasure of the President” means. Cobbling up the “poor performance” rationale was shabby cover for the exercise of a legitimate prerogative and the cover was torn aside by McNulty in an attempt to ingratiate himself with Schumer.

The Bush administration has been remarkably clean (especially in comparison to the Clinton administration). The Indian Affairs scandal (Abramoff affair) was largely due to the venality of Congressmen who thought themselves beyond the law. The Plame matter could easily have been a tempest in a teapot if it had not been handled so maladroitly and the current brouhaha about the exercise of legitimate executive power is an entirely self inflicted wound.

It would be nice if the President woke up tomorrow and remembered that he is still only a politician. He isn’t “above” the fray and he is going to be running the Executive by himself if he doesn’t drop the “turn the other cheek” pose and return open blow for open blow. He might start by taking a hard look at his communication staff and a harder look at those closest to him. They are not telling him what he needs to hear if he is to complete his term with any support whatsoever.

Read the whole thing.

Investors Business Daily points out that Valerie Plame Wilson’s recent Congressional testimony is contradicted by the facts, and adds another anecdote demonstrating that Joe Wilson had identified his wife’s job widely months before the appearance of the Novak column.

“I did not recommend him,” Plame claimed before the House panel last Friday. She was referring to her husband, Joseph Wilson, sent to Niger in early 2002 by the CIA to investigate reports that Saddam Hussein sought uranium there. “I did not suggest him,” she added.

But the Senate bipartisan report of July 2004 indicates otherwise:

The reports officer of the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division (CPD), where Plame worked, told committee staff that Plame “offered up his (Wilson’s) name.”

In a memo to the CPD deputy chief dated Feb. 12, 2002, Plame wrote, “My husband has good relations with both the PM (prime minister) and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” That’s not a recommendation?

The day after that memo, Plame’s CPD division sent a cable “requesting concurrence with CPD’s idea to send the former ambassador (Joseph Wilson) to Niger …”

Plame “told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him ‘there’s this crazy report’ on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq.”

A CIA analyst intent on discrediting what she calls a “crazy report” is indicative of a spy agency at war — or at least at odds — with the White House it is supposed to be serving. The actions of both Mr. and Mrs. Wilson suggest that is exactly what is at the heart of the Plame Affair.

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was the first person we know of to reveal Plame’s identity to the press — first to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, then to columnist Robert Novak. He was never indicted. Still, he had some very interesting things to say about Plame and Wilson.

On the tape of his conversation with Woodward, played at the Libby trial and apparently recorded a month before he spoke to Novak, Armitage said of Plame’s job at the CIA, “Everyone knows it,” immediately adding that “Joe Wilson’s been calling everybody.”

Read the whole thing.

Steve Gilbert provides a very illuminating timeline of the Plamegame and explains exactly what Joe Wilson was up to.

June 2003: According to the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward, the following interview with Richard Armitage at the State Department transpired about a month before Robert Novak’s column appeared on July 14, 2003.

Woodward: Well it was Joe Wilson who was sent by the agency, isn’t it?
Armitage: His wife works for the agency.
Woodward: Why doesn’t that come out? Why does that have to be a big secret?
Armitage: (over) Everybody knows it.
Woodward: Everyone knows?
Armitage: Yeah. And they know ’cause Joe Wilson’s been calling everybody. He’s pissed off ’cause he was designated as a low level guy went out to look at it. So he’s all pissed off.
Woodward: But why would they send him?
Armitage: Because his wife’s an analyst at the agency.
Woodward: It’s still weird.
Armitage: He — he’s perfect. She — she, this is what she does. She’s a WMD analyst out there.
Woodward: Oh, she is.
Armitage: (over) Yeah.
Woodward: Oh, I see. I didn’t think…
Armitage: (over) “I know who’ll look at it.” Yeah, see?
Woodward: Oh. She’s the chief WMD…?
Armitage: No. She’s not the…
Woodward: But high enough up that she could say, “oh, yeah, hubby will go.”
Armitage: Yeah. She knows [garbled].
Woodward: Was she out there with him, when he was…?
Armitage: (over) No, not to my knowledge. I don’t know if she was out there. But his wife’s in the agency as a WMD analyst. How about that?

Why would Richard Armitage have been talking about Wilson and Plame in June of 2003? This was still weeks before Joe Wilson wrote his New York Times editorial, and a month before Robert Novak published his column mentioning Valerie Plame.

Armitage brought this up because he is a gossip and it was already common knowledge because Joe Wilson had been calling all of the newspapers trying to get them to run his story about his mission to Niger.

Given the chronology and Mr. Armitage’s remarks, it seems quite obvious Mr. Wilson outed his wife when he spoke to the Senate Democratic Policy Committee and then to the subsequent reporters at the Times, the Post and elsewhere, when he was hawking his story about his trip to Niger.

Wilson’s motivation for bringing up his wife would have been exactly as Armitage suggested to Woodward. Wilson told the panelists and reporters about Plame’s work at the CIA to give his radically new and dangerous story more credibility.

It’s highly probable Wilson used his wife’s position as a WMD analyst at the CIA to bolster his outrageous (and we now know fallacious) claims against a then popular President in a time of war.

July 6, 2003: Frustrated that his trip to Niger story was still not getting enough attention, Mr. Wilson finally stepped out from behind the curtain and wrote his now notorious op-ed piece for the New York Times, What I Didn’t Find in Africa.

Sometime after July 6th and before July 8th 2003 Richard Armitage told Robert Novak about Wilson’s wife working at the CIA. Mr. Novak then published that information in his column on July 14, 2007.

But Valerie Plame’s work at the CIA had almost certainly long since been disclosed to anyone who would listen by Joe Wilson. And he probably disclosed this information to promote himself, his fantasy about his “mission to Niger,” and his new political career.

Remember, there was much talk within the Kerry camp that Joe Wilson might be the new administration’s Secretary Of State. The vainglorious Mr. Wilson surely had his eyes on that prize.

And any concern about the secrecy of his wife’s job at the CIA was a minor consideration compared to that lofty goal.

The disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s CIA employment by the Wilsons to Nicholas Kristof in early May of 2003 was previously reported here.

J. Peter Mulhern suggests that, “more than halfway through his second term,” George W. Bush should give serious though to assuming control of his own government.

Scooter Libby is a convicted perjurer because the United States Department of Justice grossly abused its power and because politics short-circuited all the safeguards that are supposed to prevent such abuses. This is one of the most appalling perversions of a civilized judicial system since France sent Alfred Dreyfus to Devil’s Island because the ruling elite didn’t like Jews.

If the appellate and executive review processes fail as badly as the investigative and trial processes did in Libby’s case, Libby will go to a federal penitentiary because Democrats don’t like Republicans. There is enough shame in this outcome to go around.

Patrick Fitzgerald is a disgrace both to the legal profession and to the human race. His partisan allies, such as Senator Chuck Schumer and certain nameless bureaucrats at the CIA, are beneath contempt. The jury was unfit for its task, because it was apparently both prejudiced and intellectually incapable of noticing that the prosecution had no case. The trial judge lacked either the wit to see a gross miscarriage of justice unfolding before his eyes or the courage to stop it. But ultimate responsibility for Fitzgerald’s outrageous misconduct lies with his boss.

George W. Bush could have stopped Fitzgerald’s farce at any time. He could stop it today. He doesn’t even need to use the pardon power, at least not yet. Fitzgerald serves at the President’s pleasure Mr. Bush has every reason to be severely displeased. The President could simply fire him and, for good measure, order the DOJ to start an investigation into Fitzgerald’s misconduct in the Libby matter. President Bush could then instruct Fitzgerald’s replacement to join Libby’s defense in its motion for a new trial. If the court grants that motion the DOJ could then offer Libby its apologies and withdraw the prosecution. If it doesn’t the DOJ could join in Libby’s appeal. If that fails then the pardon power lies in reserve.

Of course, he won’t. He’ll just let the whole comedy proceed, then (at best) pardon Libby on the morning of Hillary’s inauguration.

Clarice Feldman responds to the appalling Libby verdict with a riff upon this week’s Rome episode:

In this week’s episode of Rome (a superb HBO series which increasingly reminds me of the Nation’s Capital), Servilia, whose son was killed in a power grab, knelt before the door of manipulative Attia, mother of Octavian and lover of Marc Anthony, the two men responsible, calling out in a haunting cry,

“Attia of the Julii, I call for justice.”

She did so because the unavailing legal system was broken, and curses (which were taken seriously in those days) were the one remaining way most people had to redress grave wrongs.

I call for justice for Scooter Libby because he has had none in this ridiculous matter…

This entire process has been an outrage from beginning to end.

How preposterous is it to watch Nancy Pelosi strutting about the forum today-her record filled with appointments like William Jefferson’s to head Homeland Security and John Conyers to head the Judiciary? A Speaker who has the chutzpah to say,

“Today’s guilty verdicts are not solely about the acts of one individual. The testimony unmistakably revealed — at the highest levels of the Bush Administration – a callous disregard in handling sensitive national security information and a disposition to smear critics of the war in Iraq.”

And I explode with laughter at the Cassius-like Kerry who sneered,

“This verdict brings accountability at last for official deception and the politics of smear and fear…. This trial revealed a no-holds barred White House attack machine aimed at anyone who stood in the way of their march to war with Iraq. It is time for President Bush to live up to his own promises and hold accountable anyone else who participated in this smear. It is also well past time for Vice President Cheney, who according to the testimony was protected by Scooter Libby’s lies, to finally acknowledge his role in this sordid episode.”

Sordid the episode is, but not because of anything Libby did. And “a troubling picture” of Washington it is-but not of this Administration. The Bush crowd is guilty only of terminal naiveté and the foolish idea that high standards of probity will ever beat the opposition’s utter unscrupulousness and willingness to misuse the legal system to their own partisan ends, even if it means the ruination of an innocent and capable man and enormous hardship to his family.

The Rome metaphor certainly fits the corruption of the political processes of today’s American Republic, and invites the question: how soon before our own Octavian arrives?

Joe Scarborough accurately describes the Libby verdict.

video

Victoria Toensing, who in 1982 as chief council to the Senate Intelligence Committee played a key role in the drafting of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, believes the law was never violated in the case of Valerie Plame, and suggests a number of persons and entities she considers more worthy of charges in the Plame Affair than Scooter Libby.