NuttierThanEver: She was covert because the CIA says she was covert.

And since the CIA apparently can't even bothered to tell their own agents their legal status, Bush, Rove, Libby and the various journalists involved were supposed to know this how?

NuttierThanEver: If she was covert and was exposed then the law was broken, ignorance of the law is not a valid defense in any court in the land.

Errrm.... Am I the only one who has noticed that despite all the screaming and investigations, not only has no one been charged with the "crime" of outing Plame, no one has even demonstrated that a crime occurred at all?

The law they tried to go over the Bushies with simply didn't apply here:

1. The agent in question has to have been covert and offshore within the previous five years.

2. The outer in question has to have known the agent was covert.

3. The outer in question has to be shown to have deliberately outed the agent with malice aforethought.

Not one of these three conditions was demonstrated in the investigation: Plame didn't meet the legal criteria for covert status, no one who mentioned her could be proven to have known her nonexistent status, and none of the people who didn't know about her nonexistent covert status could be proven to have outed her with malice aforethought.

Libby was rightly charged and convicted--of perjury, not of outing Plame.

heap: it isn't as if they didn't have the frigging director of the cia showing up every morning, or anything.

Yeah. Because everyone knows the director of the CIA goes to the Oval Office every morning and reviews their entire list of covert agents with the President, the VP and their entire staff.

POAC: the_gospel_of_thomas: and the people who lied should go to jail.

Either its the senior CIA officals, or it's Valerie Plame because neither pays me to shill for them.

/fixed that for ya!

Uh--before we get too enthusiastic with the pile on, doesn't TGOT have a point?

I mean, everyone's running around screaming that anyone who lied about this matter should be prosecuted. Why exactly should Plame and her husband be immune? The original Senate inquiry showed Wilson was lying through his teeth about almost everything he said he when first started all this ruckus. Any special reason he should be signing a book deal about it while Libby goes to jail?

Sauce for the goose, folks.

heap: if they are in the process of divulging the name of a CIA agent, do you not think asking if this will hamper the CIA is a good thing to do?

How exactly was the CIA damaged by the publication of the name of a former covert agent who had been living in Washington for more than five years, when her own husband did more to put the spotlight on her than anyone else involved?

elchip: Actually, I believe Merv was partially wrong.

It appears that criterion #1 was met. It would appear that #2 and #3 were not met.

Plame moved back to Washington, by her own testimony, more than five years before Novak's article, to raise kids and work in-country for the CIA.

The law Wilson tried to apply here defines a covert agent as someone who worked

1. Covertly
2. Out of country, and
3. Less than five years before the incident in question.

As the article said, this whole thing is a problem with the CIA failing to keep her status current.

heap: huh?

how is it that you don't have any inclination to question whether leaking the name of an agent - and thus compromising not only that agent, but everything she'd touched, her cover company, the agents she worked with, and intel assets - without checking with the agency to see if that would be a bad thing....yet act as if wilson leaked her name when he didn't?

Excuse me--but I did not say Wilson leaked her name. I said Wilson put the spotlight on her in the first place by playing whistleblower over the whole Niger issue.

If someone claims he went on a fact-finding mission that directly contradicted what the President said, is it unfair to closely examine why he went, what he really said in his report, why the CIA appointed him in the first place and whether his report was at all valid?

So Novak does just that and hey presto--turns out Wilson got the job through good old-fashioned DC nepotism. And Wilson angrily claims his wife did no such thing. And it turns out he was lying. And then he puts his wife on the cover of Vanity Fair to, I don't know, keep her nonexistent covert status from being compromised further or something.

Nothing else this idiot has had to say has panned out. Why are we running to the bank with this claim?

dameron: Hint: They're not going to tell you. You'll never have your "proof" of her covert status. They can't tell you.

Ahem. I repeat once again that someone who has been living and operating in-country for more than five years cannot legally be defined as a covert agent.

Plame herself testified that she moved back to the US more than five years before her husband went to Niger.

It does not matter what she was doing for the CIA. She cannot be a covert agent by the government's own definition.

NuttierThanEver: Has there suddenly come to light new information that Saddam really did try to get fissionable mateirial from Niger?

Suddenly? No. But there was plenty of evidence all along.

IIRC the CIA formally denied the results of Wilson's report, saying they thought he was wrong.

At the same time, British and Italian intelligence agencies independently corroborated the reports that Wilson was sent to investigate in the first place: viz., that Iraq had sent representatives to Niger to attempt negotiations for the purchase of yellowcake.

And BTW: One thing that keeps getting lost in all the yelling about Bush's infamous 16 words is that he said Iraq tried to buy yellowcake from Niger. Period.

Not that they actually had succeeded, not that they bought fissionable material, not that they bought weapons-grade plutomium.