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By: Noodle on March 06, 2007 at 04:33pm.
Makes sense to me. Cheney resigns, Bush replaces him with Condoleeza Rice, she wins the 2008 republican nomination for president, thus guaranteeing that Hillary Clinton wins the election.

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On July 19, 2004, it was revealed that the U.S. Justice Department was investigating Berger for unlawfully mishandling classified documents in October 2003, by removing them from a National Archives reading room prior to testifying before the 9/11 Commission. The documents were commissioned from Richard Clarke covering internal assessments of the Clinton administration's handling of the unsuccessful 2000 millennium attack plots.

When initially questioned by reporters, Berger claimed that the removal of top-secret documents in his attache-case and handwritten notes in his jacket and pants pockets was accidental. He later, in a guilty plea, admitted to deliberately removing materials and then cutting them up with scissors.[13]

Berger eventually pled guilty to a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified material on April 1, 2005. Under a plea agreement, U.S. attorneys recommended a fine of $10,000 and a loss of security clearance for three years. However, on September 8, U.S. Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson increased the fine to $50,000 at Berger's sentencing. Robinson stated, "The court finds the fine [recommended by government prosecutors] is inadequate because it doesn't reflect the seriousness of the offense."[14] Berger was also ordered to serve two years of probation and to perform 100 hours of community service.[15]

Critics believe Berger's motives were more sinister than a mere mishandling of classified documents. They suggest he destroyed primary evidence revealing anti-terrorism policies and actions, and that his motive was to permanently erase Clinton administration pre-9/11 mistakes from the public record. Public statements to this effect have been made by talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh,[16] former Clinton campaign advisor Dick Morris,[17] USA Today reporter Jack Kelley,[18] multiple times by Fox News correspondent John Gibson (the last as recently as December 2006[19]), and former House Speaker Dennis Hastert (Republican-Illinois), who said: "What information could be so embarrassing that a man with decades of experience in handling classified documents would risk being caught pilfering our nation's most sensitive secrets?"[20]

After a long investigation, the lead prosecutor Noel Hillman, chief of the Justice Department's public integrity section, stated that Berger only removed classified copies of data stored on hard drives stored in the National Archives, and that no original material was destroyed.[21] His and the FBI's opinion of the case initially led The Wall Street Journal to editorialize against the allegations, stating in part:

“ Justice says the picture that emerged is of a man who knowingly and recklessly violated the law in handling classified documents, but who was not trying to hide any evidence. Prosecutors believe Mr. Berger genuinely wanted to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission but felt he was somehow above having to spend numerous hours in the Archives as the rules required, and that he didn't exactly know how to return the documents once he'd taken them out... We called Justice Department Public Integrity chief prosecutor Noel Hillman, who assured us that Mr. Berger did not deny any documents to history. 'There is no evidence that he intended to destroy originals,' said Mr. Hillman. 'There is no evidence that he did destroy originals. We have objectively and affirmatively confirmed that the contents of all the five documents at issue exist today and were made available to the 9/11 Commission.'[22] ”

Despite prosecutors' statements, some critics continued to make unsubstantiated allegations. This led The Wall Street Journal to reiterate its position, stating "Some people won't let a bad conspiracy theory go". The paper went on to say: "The confusion seems to stem from the mistaken idea that there were handwritten notes by various Clinton Administration officials in the margins of these documents, which Mr. Berger may have been able to destroy. But that's simply an 'urban myth,' prosecutor Hillman tells us, based on a leak last July that was 'so inaccurate as to be laughable.' In fact, the five iterations of the anti-terror 'after-action' report at issue in the case were printed out from a hard drive at the Archives and have no notations at all."[23]

On December 20, 2006, more than a year after Berger plead guilty and was sentenced, a report issued by the archives inspector detailed how Berger had perpetrated the crime. Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that Berger took a break to go outside without an escort. "In total, during this visit, he removed four documents ... Mr. Berger said he placed the documents under a trailer in an accessible construction area outside Archives 1 (the main Archives building)." Berger acknowledged that he later retrieved the documents from the construction area and returned with them to his office.[24][25]

The report also stated "There were not any handwritten notes on the documents Mr. Berger removed from the archives. Mr. Berger did not believe there was unique information in the three documents he destroyed. Mr. Berger never made any copies of these documents." In the end, according to the report, "[Mr. Berger] substituted his sense of sensitivity instead of thinking of classification" in deciding to remove the documents.[26]

In January 2007, departing Republican staff of The United States House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform released a report titled Sandy Berger's Theft of Classified Documents: Unanswered Questions. It states that the FBI or the Department of Justice never questioned Berger about two earlier visits he made on May 30, 2002 and July 18 2003, when he reviewed White House working papers not yet inventoried by the National Archives, and speculates that, had Berger previously been entirely successful in actions at which he was later caught, "nobody would know they were gone." It also contains the FBI's statement as to why they concluded there was no exposure on those dates: "Berger was under constant supervision".[27][15] Despite senior Bush Administration officials giving the report's authors highly unusual access to internal information about an ongoing DOJ investigation,[28] the report contains no new facts that the career prosecutors handling the case overlooked.

The report did, however, cause the Wall Street Journal to, in January 2007, retract their initial opinion of the case, saying there are substantial questions concerning the truth of Berger's statements and that other documents may have been removed. They now argue that Berger's taking of multiple copies of the same document contradict his statement that he took them only for his personal research, since they note that he could have simply kept his copy. However neither they, nor the committee report, detail an alternate theory in which multiple thefts of the same document are key.[29][30] Mr. Berger continues to insist that he took the copies of the same document for personal convenience, and thought them overclassified (i.e. the information they contained was not actually sensitive to national security).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Berger#Convicted_of_mishandling_classified_terror_documents

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Some people won't let a bad conspiracy theory go. We're referring to those who loudly assert that former NSC adviser Sandy Berger was trying to protect the Clinton Administration when he illegally removed copies of sensitive documents from the National Archives in late 2003.

On Wednesday, we quoted Justice Department prosecutor Noel Hillman that no original documents were destroyed, and that the contents of all five at issue still exist and were made available to the 9/11 Commission. But that point didn't register with some readers, who continue to suggest a vast, well, apparently a vast left- and right-wing conspiracy. The Washington Times, the Rocky Mountain News and former Clintonite Dick Morris have also been peddling dark suspicions based on misinformation.

The confusion seems to stem from the mistaken idea that there were handwritten notes by various Clinton Administration officials in the margins of these documents, which Mr. Berger may have been able to destroy. But that's simply an "urban myth," prosecutor Hillman tells us, based on a leak last July that was "so inaccurate as to be laughable." In fact, the five iterations of the anti-terror "after-action" report at issue in the case were printed out from a hard drive at the Archives and have no notations at all.

--conservatives don't do themselves any credit when they are as impervious to facts as the loony left.
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006534

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I was wondering where you all have been during the recent threads on Pelosi, Hillary and the like.

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and writes an Op-Ed citing Cheney as the one who sent him, when it was his wife

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Most reporters in DC worth their salt knew who that was. So Wilson, Plame and the Anti-War crowd cry Foul! and immediately implicate the White House, even though Armitage worked for the State Department.

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[This message has been edited by Ron (03-08-2007 05:42 PM).]

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You may not have written this as a partisan thread but the fact remains.....had Berger been a Republican, he would have been crucified. Had Libby been a Democrat he would have skated......such is life in the 5th Estate....and occasionally in Alleys.  

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Well, of course you would say that. True, she hyperbolized it a bit but where is it inacurate?

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Lewis Libby has now been found guilty of perjury and obstruction of justice for lies that had absolutely no legal consequence.

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Of course she had been. Do you really think that's important in the Libby case?

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It's the whole thing here that troubles me in that it appears to me that the war in Iraq was premised on faulty or manufactured intelligence and when the Plames would not cooperate with producing what was desired, Valerie was outted.

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Sorry but what was the central crime involving Libby and what crime was he convicted of? Lying to a grand jury or something, wasn't it? About what crime? Or was it lying to a grand jury about a non-crime? Has anyone been accused of an actual crime here? Will the real criminal please stand up...or, at least, the real crime?

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1999
June: (According to a 2002 conversation between Joseph C. Wilson and former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Assane Mayaki) An Iraqi businessman approached Mayaki and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between the Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein and Niger. Mayaki interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales, but steered the conversation away from trade because of UN sanctions against Iraq.[5] In a 2004 conversation with Wilson, Wilson's "Nigerien source" (presumably, Mayaki), told Wilson that the "Iraqi businessman" he had met in June 1999 was Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the former Iraqi Information Minster, sometimes referred to in the U.S. press as "Baghdad Bob."[6]

[edit] 2001
New Years 2001: Over the holiday, a gang of burglars break into the Nigerian embassy in Rome and steal some letterhead and official stamps.[7]

[edit] Late 2001 - Early 2002
According to CIA Director George Tenet: "There was fragmentary intelligence gathered in late 2001 and early 2002 on the allegations of Saddam's efforts to obtain additional raw uranium from Africa, beyond the 550 metric tons already in Iraq. In an effort to inquire about certain reports involving Niger, CIA's counter-proliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region to make a visit to see what he could learn. He reported back to us that one of the former Nigerien officials he met stated that he was unaware of any contract being signed between Niger and rogue states for the sale of uranium during his tenure in office."[8]

[edit] February 2002
12 February 2002: Valerie E. Wilson (aka Valerie Plame), a C.I.A. analyst working in its Counterproliferation Division, sends a memo to the deputy chief of the C.I.A.'s Directorate of Operations stating that her husband has good contact with the former Prime Minister and Director of Mines in Niger as well as other contacts who might prove useful in shedding light on the supposed Niger-Iraq uranium contract.[9]
13 February 2002: An operations official cables an overseas officer seeking approval of Joe Wilson investigation.[10]
26 February 2002: Joseph C. Wilson travels to Niger at the request of the CIA. Joe Wilson meets with the former minister of mines, Mai Manga, who said he knew of no sales of uranium between Niger and rogue states. He states the mines are closely monitored from mining to transport loading making it at least very difficult if not impossible for a rogue state to obtain uranium through this channel.[11]
Joe Wilson indicates that in his conversation with former Niger Primer Minister, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, the pm indicated that he was not aware of any sales contract with Iraq but that in June of 1999 he was approached by a businessman, asking that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss expanding commercial relations. (Note: Niger's two largest exports are uranium and livestock [182]). Wilson indicated he thought the meeting took place but that Mayaki, who was aware of the illegality of such activities, let the matter drop due to the sanctions on Iraq.[12]

According to the report of the U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee, (July 2004, pages 43-46), former Nigerien prime minister Mayaki told Wilson in Niger that Mayaki interpreted the June 1999 proposal of a businessman for "expanding commercial relations" as an offer to buy uranium yellowcake. However, this was only an interpretation. The Iraqi did not mention the word "uranium" or "yellowcake."
The Senate report's exact words on Mayaki's suspicions of Iraq's interest in uranium:
Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999, [A few words blacked out] businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations' between Niger and Iraq. The [CIA] intelligence report [on Wilson's trip] said that Mayaki interpreted 'expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the U.N. sanctions on Iraq."

The United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence faulted the C.I.A. for not fully investigating Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Niger, citing reports from both a foreign service and the United States Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin, a country located between Niger and Togo.

[edit] March 2002
5 March 2002:Wilson is debriefed by two C.I.A. officials at his home. He never files a written report.[13]
Wilson says he reported to the CIA that Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium from Niger are unlikely. Any deal about uranium could not possibly have taken place. Nobody at the State Department African Bureau had ever believed in the Niger story. Two other reports supported his views. Some CIA officials told the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Wilson's information was neutral, others said Wilson's information lent support to the contention Iraqi sought uranium from Niger.

[edit] September 2002
9 September 2002: According to Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the head of Italy's military intelligence agency (SISMI), Nicolo Pollari, meets secretly with Stephen Hadley, then Bush's Deputy National Security Adviser; the purpose of the meeting, as reported by La Repubblica, was to bypass a skeptical CIA and get documents purporting to detail an Iraqi attempt to purchase Niger uranium directly to the White House.[14] Hadley and others who attended this meeting say they have little memory of the details of what was discussed, and in a press conference Hadley characterized the meeting as a "courtesy call" that lasted less than 15 minutes.[15] According to the Italian Prime Minister's office, the meeting was between the then National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and Nicolo Pollari, in the presence of an Italian and US delegation that included Stephen Hadley.[16]

[edit] October 2002
6 October 2002: The National Security Council sent a sixth draft of a speech President Bush was to give in Cincinnati to the CIA. The draft contained the statement about Iraq "having been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide.[17] Tenet and other CIA officials directed the text be removed from the speech as the certainty regarding the accuracy of the claim was weak.[citation needed]
7 October 2002: George W. Bush gives a speech in Cincinnati in which he, for the first time, lays out in detail the case for disarming Iraq. In that speech he asserts, "If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year."[18] It is later revealed (in July 2003) that George Tenet had intervened to remove language from that speech referencing Iraq's alleged pursuit of Niger uranium. More specifically, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was reported to be a main target of Tenet's entreaties.[19]
9 October 2002: Elisabetta Burba, an Italian journalist for Panorama magazine, part of the media empire of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, contacts the U.S. Embassy in Rome, requesting authentication of some documents of interest that she has. These documents allegedly represent a contract by Iraq to purchase uranium "yellowcake" from Niger. The owner, not Elisabetta Burba, reportedly wants 15,000 euros for them. Panorama refuses to pay that amount unless they are first verified as authentic.[20]
15 October 2002: The embassy in Rome faxes the documents to the State Department's Bureau of Nonproliferation in Washington which in turn provided copies to the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). The INR's nuclear analyst will later decide they are a hoax in January 2003.
During an inter-agency meeting the next day, analysts from the Defense Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Security Agency, and the CIA all obtain copies of the documents. None of the four CIA analysts in attendance remembers taking a copy which later would show up in a CIA vault during a postmortem search.[21]

[edit] December 2002
19 December 2002: By this date the uranium claim, which George Tenet had removed from Bush's speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, in October 2002, had found its way back into a State Department "fact sheet." Following that, the Pentagon requests an authoritative judgement from the National Intelligence Council as to whether or not Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.[22]

[edit] January 2003
January 2003: The National Intelligence Council, responding to the Pentagon's request, drafts a memo addressing the Niger uranium story in which they conclude the story is baseless. The memo arrives at the White House prior to the State of the Union address given later that month.[23]
6 January 2003: The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) asks the United States for any information related to the claim that Iraq had purchased yellowcake uranium from Niger.[24]
13 January 2003: The INR's nuclear analyst sends email to colleagues providing rationale on why the Yellowcake document is a hoax. The CIA's nuclear analyst does not have the documents in question and requests a copy.[25]
16 January 2003: CIA received copies of the original foreign language documents on the Niger-Iraq contract.[26]
27 January 2003: During a National Security Council meeting at the White House, someone hands George Tenet a hardcopy of President Bush's State of the Union address. Tenet is too busy to read it and hands it to an aide who passes it to a top official in the CIA intelligence directorate who was also too busy to read it.[27]
28 January 2003: President George W. Bush gives his State of the Union speech. Toward the end Bush states, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."[28] The sentence becomes known as the "16 words." In his State of the Union speech, Bush also declares, "The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb."

[edit] February 2003
4 February 2003: The United States provides electronic copy of the Niger documents to Jacques Bute, then head of IAEA's Iraq Nuclear Verification Office, who was in New York, and sends a copy to the IAEA offices in Vienna as well.[29]

[edit] March 2003
3 March 2003: The IAEA tells the U.S. Mission in Vienna the Niger documents were obvious fakes.[30] Among errors reportedly identified in the documents is a reference to a Nigerian constitution in 1965.[citation needed]

[edit] June 2003
12 June 2003: During a telephone call, Cheney told Libby that Wilson's wife worked in Counter Proliferation.[31]

[edit] July 2003
6 July 2003: Joe Wilson's Opinion Editorial "What I Didn't Find in Africa" is published in The New York Times.[32]

7 July 2003: Colin Powell receives a copy of a 10 June memo naming Valerie Wilson as Joe Wilson's wife and as a CIA officer, taking it with him on a trip on Air Force One with President Bush. The paragraph identifying Mrs. Wilson is marked "(S-NF)," signfying its information is classified "Secret, Noforn."[33] Noforn is a code word indicating that the information is not to be shared with foreign nationals.[34] Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Ari Fleischer, Walter H. Kansteiner, III, and Andrew Card are on the trip, among others.
Sometime before 8 July 2003 Robert Novak has a conversation with Richard Armitage (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State). In that conversation he is told for the first time that Wilson's wife works for the C.I.A. [Armitage didn't tell Novak her name; subsequently, after his August 2006 public disclosure that he was the "inadvertent" leak, Armitage has asserted that he did not know her name at the time.] Novak uses an edition of Joseph C. Wilson's biography in Who's Who to identify by her maiden name Valerie Plame. According to the reporters Isikoff and Corn, Armitage's leak was "inadvertent, and the Intelligence Identities Act hadn't been violated."[35]

8 July 2003: Robert Novak has a phone conversation with Karl Rove in which C.I.A. agent Plame is discussed, according to an unnamed source who had been told not to talk about the case. Novak is reported to have told Rove the name of the agent as "Valerie Plame" and her role in Wilson's mission to Africa. Rove is reported to have told Novak something to the effect of, "I heard that, too." or "Oh, so you already know about it." Rove reportedly told the grand jury that at this time he had already heard about Wilson's wife working for the CIA from another journalist, but is unable to remember who that was.[36]
8 July 2003: Lewis Libby meets with Judith Miller and tells her about Plame's work at the CIA. According to Libby's later grand jury testimony, he told Miller at this meeting that the Niger uranium claim had been a "key judgement" of the October 2002 NIE (still classified at that time), and that Cheney had instructed him to do so. This was false; the Niger claim was not in fact one of the "key judgements" headlined, bolded, and bulleted in the first pages of the intelligence estimate.[37] Later, after testifying to a Federal grand jury in October 2005, Miller will write in the New York Times that on this date (and four days later, on 12 July 2003), Libby "played down the importance of Mr. Wilson's mission and questioned his performance."[citation needed]
circa 10 July 2003-11 July 2003: Novak called Bill Harlow, then CIA spokesman, to confirm information regarding Plame and Wilson. According to Novak, Harlow denied that Plame "suggested" that Wilson be selected for the trip, and Harlow stated instead that CIA "counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him."[38] According to Harlow, he "warned Novak in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information," that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if Novak did write about it, her name should not be revealed. Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. According to Harlow, however, he did not tell Novak directly that Plame was undercover because that information was classified.[39] According to Novak, not only did Harlow not tell Novak that Plame was undercover, he actually told Novak that "she probably never again would be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause 'difficulties.'" Novak states that if he had been told that disclosure of Plame's name would endanger her or anyone else, he would not have disclosed the name.[40]

11 July 2003: According to one source, Novak's regular syndicated column was allegedly distributed by Creators Syndicate on the newswire AP on this date.[41]

11 July 2003: Matt Cooper's internal Time e-mail message bearing the time 11:07 a.m. is sent to his bureau chief, stating: "Spoke to Rove on double super secret background for about two mins before he went on vacation. . . ." Cooper writes that Rove offered him a "big warning" not to "get too far out on Wilson." According to Cooper, Rove told Cooper that Wilson's trip had not been authorized by "DCI"—CIA Director George Tenet—or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, "it was, KR said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD issues who authorized the trip." Rove also told Cooper that, "there's still plenty to implicate Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger".[42] Cooper would later tell the investigating grand jury that Rove concluded the conversation by saying "I've already said too much."[43]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair_timeline

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(1) The term “classified information” means information or material designated and clearly marked or clearly represented, pursuant to the provisions of a statute or Executive order (or a regulation or order issued pursuant to a statute or Executive order), as requiring a specific degree of protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security.
(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; or
(B) a United States citizen whose intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information, and—
(i) who resides and acts outside the United States as an agent of, or informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency, or
(ii) who is at the time of the disclosure acting as an agent of, or informant to, the foreign counterintelligence or foreign counterterrorism components of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; or
(C) an individual, other than a United States citizen, whose past or present intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information and who is a present or former agent of, or a present or former informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Intelligence_Identities_Protection_Act

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Much of the media attention has focused on whether one or more senior officials violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (50 USC 421-426). (See Intelligence Identities Protection Act for the full text of this act.) However, proving a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act involves several elements which may be difficult to establish in this case. Some legal pundits felt that Rove was unlikely to have been in violation of the narrowly-worded Intelligence Identities Protection Act &mdash.

In order to violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, one must expose the identity of a "covert agent." A covert agent is one who is "serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States" (§ 426[4][a][ii]).[4] Whereas, prior to July 14, 2003, when Novak's column outing her as a "CIA operative" was published, Plame had not been posted or stationed overseas in the preceding five years, during that period, she had '"served" overseas.

Further information: Valerie Plame#Career
In his book The Politics of Truth, Joseph C. Wilson states that he and Valerie Plame, then his future wife, both returned from their respective overseas assignments in June 1997, and that, after June 1997, neither he nor Plame was stationed overseas. But this information still allows the possibility that Mrs. Wilson served overseas after June 1997, which she did when she traveled on behalf of the CIA to investigate matters relating to weapons of mass destruction. After the publication of Novak's column, neither Wilson nor his wife has commented on any details pertaining to her CIA service, but Wilson responded to a reporter's question that "the CIA obviously believes there was reason to believe a crime had been committed" because it referred the case to the Justice Department.[5] That action implies that she may have traveled overseas undercover.

On July 14, 2005, in an interview with Wolf Blitzer, broadcast on CNN, Wilson stated:

“ My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.[6]
”

When Blitzer asked, "But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?", Wilson responded:

“ That's not anything that I can talk about. And, indeed, I'll go back to what I said earlier, the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and that's why they referred it to the Justice Department.
”

Wilson later claimed to the Associated Press what he had meant was something different than the way the comment was later covered in the press:

“ In an interview Friday, Wilson said his comment was meant to reflect that his wife lost her ability to be a covert agent because of the leak, not that she had stopped working for the CIA beforehand. His wife's 'ability to do the job she's been doing for close to 20 years ceased from the minute Novak's article appeared; she ceased being a clandestine officer,' he said.[7]
”

In December 2004, over a year after Novak blew her cover, pictures of Joe Wilson and his wife appeared in Vanity Fair.

Further information: Joseph C. Wilson
Further information: Valerie Plame
Many former CIA agents and other former government officials argue that regardless of whether she went overseas in the required time period, her "outing" as an intelligence official did harm national security by compromising her front company and every other CIA employee using that front.[citations needed] Moreover, the disclosure sends a message to potential CIA agents and assets around the globe that the CIA could not guarantee that their identity would be protected if they chose to work undercover for the Agency or in cooperation with it.[citations needed]

In order for one to be protected by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, it must be a fact that the U.S. government "is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States."[citation needed] In debating this issue, some spokespeople for the Republican Party argue that if Plame worked at CIA's headquarters it could show that the CIA was not taking the required "affirmative measures."[citations needed] Yet, in their letter presented to the U.S. Senate investigating the Plame affair, former CIA officer Larry C. Johnson, joined by ten other former CIA and DIA officers and analysts, strongly disagree:

“ These comments reveal an astonishing ignorance of the intelligence community and the role of cover. The fact is that there are thousands of U.S. intelligence officers who 'work at a desk' in the Washington, D.C. area every day who are undercover. Some have official cover, and some have non-official cover. Both classes of cover must and should be protected."[8]
”

From their perspective, the fact that Plame worked for a CIA front corporation created and maintained at taxpayer's expense constitutes an affirmative measure to conceal her covert employment.

Johnson argues further that the debate over the legality of the leak functions as a red herring, distracting the public from the direct harms to national security caused by the leak:

“ What is so despicable about all of this is that the conservative movement is now serving as apologists for political operatives who have destroyed an intelligence network and at least one case officer's distinguished career. The new standard for the Republican National Committee--Karl Rove didn't commit a crime. Boy, there's a slogan to run on, "At Least I Wasn't Indicted."[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair_legal_questions

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There are some major legal issues surrounding the allegations of illegality by administration officials in the Plame affair, including the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the Espionage Act, Title 18 Section 641, conspiracy to impede or injure officers, the Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, other laws and precedents, perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and compelling the media to testify.

Possible consequences of the public disclosure of Plame's CIA identity
There has been debate over what kinds of damage may have resulted from the public disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative in Novak's column and its fallout, how far and into what areas of national security and foreign intelligence that damage might extend, particularly vis-à-vis Plame's work with her cover company, Brewster Jennings & Associates, and also how the Plame affair and Plamegate may have affected the power, privileges, and functioning of the press media in America.

On October 3, 2004 The Washington Post quotes a former diplomat predicting immediate damage:

“ . . . [E]very foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities. . . . That's why the agency is so sensitive about just publishing her name.[100]
”

In contrast, in an October 27, 2005 appearance on Larry King Live, Bob Woodward commented:

“ They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that [former ambassador] Joe Wilson's wife [Plame] was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone, and there was just some embarrassment.[101]
”

In an appearance the next night, October 28, 2005, on Hardball, Andrea Mitchell was quoted as saying:

“ I happen to have been told that the actual damage assessment as to whether people were put in jeopardy on this case did not indicate that there was real damage in this specific instance.[102]
”

Following Mitchell's appearance on Hardball, on October 29, 2006, The Washington Post's Dafna Linzer reported that no formal damage assessment had yet been conducted by the CIA "as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted." Linzer writes:

“ There is no indication, according to current and former intelligence officials, that the most dire of consequences –– the risk of anyone's life –– resulted from her outing. But after Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's column, the CIA informed the Justice Department in a simple questionnaire that the damage was serious enough to warrant an investigation, officials said.[103]
”

Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March 2005 reportedly told Linzer:

“ You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources.
”

Another intelligence official who spoke anonymously to Linzer cited the CIA's interest in protecting the agency and its work:

“ You'll never get a straight answer [from the Agency] about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were.[103]
”

In August 2005, Newsweek journalist Michael Isikoff reported that a "former government official who requested anonymity because of the confidential material involved" told him that the CIA's initial "crimes report" to the Justice Department requesting the leak probe never mentioned the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.[104]

On October 28, 2005, the Office of Special Counsel issued a press release regarding Libby's indictment. The following is stated regarding Plame:

“ Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson’s employment status was classified. Prior to that date, her affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community. Disclosure of classified information about an individual’s employment by the CIA has the potential to damage the national security in ways that range from preventing that individual’s future use in a covert capacity, to compromising intelligence-gathering methods and operations, and endangering the safety of CIA employees and those who deal with them, the indictment states.[105]
”

In a November 3, 2005 online live discussion, in response to a question about the Fitzgerald investigation, The Washington Post's Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize- winning journalist specializing in matters of national security, opined:

“ I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position."[106]
”

In a January 9, 2006 letter addressed to "Scooter" Libby's defense team, Patrick Fitzgerald responded to a discovery request by Libby's lawyers for both classified and unclassified documents. In the letter, Fitzgerald writes:

“ A formal assessment has not been done of the damage caused by the disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s status as a CIA employee, and thus we possess no such document. (Italics added).
”

He continues:

“ In any event, we would not view an assessment of the damage caused by the disclosure as relevant to the issue of whether or not Mr. Libby intentionally lied when he made the statements and gave the grand jury testimony which the grand jury alleged was false.[107]
”

During Libby's trial, Judge Reggie Walton told the jury "No evidence will be presented to you with regard to Valerie Plame Wilson’s status. That is because what her actual status was, or whether any damage would result from disclosure of her status, are totally irrelevant to your decision of guilt or innocence. You must not consider these matters in your deliberations or speculate or guess about them." During court proceedings, when the jury wasn't present, Walton told the court "I don’t know, based on what has been presented to me in this case, what her status was...It’s totally irrelevant to this case...I to this day don’t know what her actual status was."[108]

Larisa Alexandrovna of The Raw Story reports that three intelligence officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told her that

“ While Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss has not submitted a formal damage assessment to Congressional oversight committees, the CIA's Directorate of Operations did conduct a serious and aggressive investigation. ”

According to her sources,

“ the damage assessment . . . called a "counter intelligence assessment to agency operations" was conducted on the orders of the CIA's then-Deputy Director of the Directorate of Operations, James Pavitt. . . . [and showed] "significant damage to operational equities."
”

Alexandrovna also reports that while Plame was undercover she was involved in an operation identifying and tracking weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran, suggesting that her outing "significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation." Her sources also stated that the outing of Plame also compromised the identity of other covert operatives who had been working, like Plame, under non-official cover status. These anonymous officials said that in their judgement, the CIA's work on WMDs has been set back "ten years" as a result of the compromise.[109]

MSNBC correspondent David Shuster reported on Hardball later, on May 1, 2006, that MSNBC had learned "new information" about the potential consequences of the leaks:

“ Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the Administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well. The White House considers Iran to be one of America's biggest threats.[110]
”

On September 6, 2006, David Corn published an article for The Nation entitled "What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA" in which Corn reports that Plame was placed in charge of the operations group within the Joint Task Force on Iraq in the spring of 2001 and that, "when the Novak column ran," in July 2003:

“ Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator--to rise up a notch or two--and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again.[111]
”

According to Vanity Fair:

“ In fact, in the spring [of 2003], Plame was in the process of moving from NOC status to State Department cover. [Joe] Wilson speculates that "if more people knew than should have, then somebody over at the White House talked earlier than they should have been talking."[112]
”

In July 2006, according to CNN, Valerie E. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson

“ filed a civil lawsuit alleging a conspiracy that "was motivated by an invidiously discriminatory animus towards those who had publicly criticized the administration's stated justifications for going to war with Iraq" and culminated with the disclosure that Plame worked at the CIA. This revelation destroyed Plame's career with the agency, according to the suit.


The scenario described by the sources familiar with Armitage's role, however, appears to contradict those arguments.
But the Wilsons' attorney, Melanie Sloan of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the revelation that Armitage was the original source for the leak did not undercut the charge that Vice President Dick Cheney, Cheney's former chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and White House adviser Karl Rove acted to retaliate against Wilson by engaging in a "whispering campaign" about his wife.
The couple plans to proceed with the lawsuit, Sloan said.


"Mr. Armitage's conduct does not change the facts of what Libby, Cheney and Rove did," Sloan told CNN. "The case is about the abuse of government power."[113] ”

On September 13, 2006, Joseph and Valerie Wilson amended their original lawsuit, adding Armitage as a fourth defendant.[114] Unlike their charges against Rove, Cheney, and Libby, "claiming that they had violated her constitutional rights and discredited her by disclosing that she was an undercover CIA operative," the Wilsons are suing Armitage "for violating the 'Wilsons' constitutional right to privacy, Mrs. Wilson's constitutional right to property, and for committing the tort of publication of private facts.'"[115]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair#Legal_issues_relating_to_the_Plame_affair

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[edit] Selected press commentary and Wilson's responses
Susan Schmidt opens her article on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report in the Washington Post by stating that it challenges some of the statements made by Wilson and suggests that Wilson's wife was more involved in his selection for the mission than Wilson has repeatedly asserted:

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly."[37]

This introduction does not, however, take into account wide differences of interpretation relating to Wilson's comments on the matter both in print and in media interviews that she reports throughout the body of her article. Schmidt highlights the following:

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her 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." The next day, according to the report, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson.[37]

But high-ranking CIA officials told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that they disputed the claim that Plame was involved in the final decision to send Wilson and indicated that the operations official who made it was not present at the meeting where Wilson was chosen. As reported by Knut Royce and Tim Phelps in Newsday on 22 July 2003:

A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They (the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story) were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can’t figure out what it could be." "We paid his (Wilson’s) airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you’d have to pay big bucks to go there," the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses.[38]

Wilson states in "Sixteen Words," the first chapter of The Politics of Truth:

Apart from being the conduit of a message from a colleague in her office asking if I would be willing to have a conversation about Niger's uranium industry, Valerie had had nothing to do with the matter. Though she worked on weapons of mass destruction issues, she was not at the meeting I attended where the subject of Niger's uranium was discussed, when the possibility of my actually traveling to the country was broached. She definitely had not proposed that I make this trip. (5)[39]

Schmidt renders the quotation from Wilson in a misleading way, however, omitting any sign of her editorial ellipsis:

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger. "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year [The Politics of Truth (2004)]. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday [July 9, 2003], saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo [of Feb. 12, 2002 sent to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the (Nigerian) 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"], he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."[37]

Wilson's responses to this article, published in The Politics of Truth, point out significant errors of fact and interpretation in Susan Schmidt's account of the Committee's report:

Her article was replete with factual errors that could have been avoided had she bothered to read the text of the report or even done some basic research, such as looking up the CIA statement made the previous year in the Newsday article about Valerie's lack of involvement in the trip. But she did not. Indeed, her reporting was so sloppy that from the lead sentence she conflated what the three Republican senators––and not even a majority of their own party's representation on the committee––asserted with what the actual report concluded. She even confused Iraq with Iran, a significant error of fact. She also quoted a phrase from this book that Valerie "had nothing to do with the matter" without the qualifying phrase in the beginning of the sentence: "other than serve as a conduit." Schmidt asserted that my report, rather than debunking intelligence about the purported uranium sales to Iraq, had bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. She went further, noting that "contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address."

Both of these assertions were patently false, and even a cursory reading of the body of the report dedicated to the Niger case would have borne that out. (lix)

Wilson's reply particularly to Senators Roberts, Bond, and Hatch was published online as "Joseph Wilson's Letter to the Senate": "The Former Ambassador Responds to Allegations by Republican Members of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report Challenging His Credibility" on AlterNet on July 19, 2004.[40]

In a "statement [submitted] to the Congress," former CIA officer Larry C. Johnson further refutes the "allegation" cited most often in the media:

Another false claim is that Valerie sent her husband on the mission to Niger. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report issued in July 2004, it is clear that the Vice President himself requested that the CIA provide its views on a Defense Intelligence Agency report that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. The Vice President's request was relayed through the CIA bureaucracy to the Director of the Counter Proliferation Division at the CIA. Valerie worked for a branch in that Division. The Senate Intelligence Report is frequently cited by Republican partisans as "proof" that Valerie sent her husband to Niger because she sent a memo describing her husband's qualifications to the Deputy Division Chief. Several news personalities, such as Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly, continue to repeat this nonsense as proof. What the Senate Intelligence Committee does not include in the report is the fact that Valerie's boss had asked her to write a memo outlining her husband's qualifications for the job. She did what any good employee does; she gave her boss what he asked for.[41]

Accounts of Valerie Plame's involvement in her husband's selection appear to differ markedly, but the main difference may be semantic. Wilson claims that his wife simply contacted him on the agency's behalf at its behest, responded to her supervisor's request for information, and escorted her husband to the meeting before leaving it, prior to any decision being made; whereas some press accounts whose reliability does appear at times indeed questionable claim that Plame may also have "recommended" her husband by virtue of her writing a summary of his qualifications when he was already being considered. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report, "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [ Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip" (italics added).[42] Nevertheless, as Schmidt clearly states, "Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger," and the Senate Intelligence Committee Report in no way contradicts or even counters that assertion (italics added).

Schmidt states in her July 10, 2003 article in the Washington Post: that the Senate Intelligence Committee Report points to inconsistencies in Wilson's retrospective accounts of his trip to Niger (which Wilson disputes):

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.[37]

Nevertheless, Schmidt concludes:

Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.

The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has "not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa."[37]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson#Selected_press_commentary_and_Wilson.27s_responses

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Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the Espionage Act, Title 18 Section 641, conspiracy to impede or injure officers, the Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, other laws and precedents, perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice,

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Espionage Act
There is precedent for prosecuting a leak under the Espionage Act. In United States v. Morison, Samuel Loring Morison was convicted of espionage for leaking classified surveillance photos of a Soviet aircraft carrier to Jane's Defense Weekly. The court specifically found that there is no need under this law to show any "evil purpose." Morison unsuccessfully argued that he was trying to help the media avoid incorrect reporting on an alleged Soviet military buildup.[12]

In 2003, Sandy Berger, former Clinton administration National Security Advisor, removed classified documents from a National Archives reading room to prepare for his testimony before the 9/11 Commission.[citations needed] Even though no classified information leaked as a result, he pled guilty to violating the Espionage Act in mishandling the documents and his security clearance was suspended for 3 years.[citations needed]

Title 18 of the United States Code, 18 USC 794 states:

“ Whoever, in time of war, with intent that the same shall be communicated to the enemy, collects, records, publishes, or communicates, or attempts to elicit any information with respect to the movement, numbers, description, condition, or disposition of any of the Armed Forces, ships, aircraft, or war materials of the United States, or with respect to the plans or conduct, or supposed plans or conduct of any naval or military operations, or with respect to any works or measures undertaken for or connected with, or intended for the fortification or defense of any place, or any other information relating to the public defense, which might be useful to the enemy, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.[13]
”

On October 28, 2005, Lewis Libby resigned from his position in the White House. This followed immediately after he was indicted on five criminal felony charges including obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald indicated that he considered the charges grave, as they represented a fundamental attack on the legal system. Also mentioned in the indictment, but not charged was "Libby was obligated by applicable laws and regulations, including Title 18, United States Code, Section 793," which is the Espionage Act.[14][15]

In his news conference on the indictiment of Lewis Libby, Fitzgerald further emphasized the presumption of Libby's innocence pending his (January 2007) court trial and explained the parameters of the Grand Jury investigation into the leak:

“ FITZGERALD: I will say this: Mr. Libby is presumed innocent. He would not be guilty unless and until a jury of 12 people came back and returned a verdict saying so.
But if what we allege in the indictment is true, then what is charged is a very, very serious crime that will vindicate the public interest in finding out what happened here.

QUESTION: Mr. Fitzgerald, do you have evidence that the vice president of the United States, one of Mr. Libby's original sources for this information, encouraged him to leak it or encouraged him to lie about leaking?

FITZGERALD: I'm not making allegations about anyone not charged in the indictment.

Now, let me back up, because I know what that sounds like to people if they're sitting at home.

We don't talk about people that are not charged with a crime in the indictment.

FITZGERALD: I would say that about anyone in this room who has nothing to do with the offenses.

We make no allegation that the vice president committed any criminal act. We make no allegation that any other people who provided or discussed with Mr. Libby committed any criminal act.

But as to any person you asked me a question about other than Mr. Libby, I'm not going to comment on anything.

Please don't take that as any indication that someone has done something wrong. That's a standard practice. If you followed me in Chicago, I say that a thousand times a year. And we just don't comment on people because we could start telling, "Well, this person did nothing wrong, this person did nothing wrong," and then if we stop commenting, then you'll start jumping to conclusions. So please take no more.

QUESTION: For all the sand thrown in your eyes, it sounds like you do know the identity of the leaker. There's a reference to a senior official at the White House, Official A [later (in Sept. 2006) revealed publicly as Richard Armitage, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State] who had a discussion with Robert Novak about Joe Wilson's wife.

QUESTION: Can you explain why that official was not charged?

FITZGERALD: I'll explain this: I know that people want to know whatever it is that we know, and they're probably sitting at home with the TV thinking, "[I want] to jump through the TV, grab him by his collar and tell him to tell us everything they figured out over the last two years."

We just can't do that. It's not because we enjoy holding back information from you; that's the law.

And one of the things we do with a grand jury is we gather information. And the explicit requirement is if we're not going to charge someone with a crime; if we decide that a person did not commit a crime, we cannot prove a crime, doesn't merit prosecution, we do not stand up and say, "We gathered all this information on the commitment that we're going to follow the rules of grand jury secrecy, which say we don't talk about people not charged with a crime, and then at the end say, well, it's a little inconvenient not to give answers out, so I'll give it out anyway."

FITZGERALD: I can't give you answers on what we know and don't know, other than what's charged in the indictment.

It's not because I enjoy being in that position. It's because the law is that way. I actually think the law should be that way.
We can't talk about information not contained in the four corners of the indictment. (Italics added)[16]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair_legal_questions

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Fitzgerald was named by Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey on December 30, 2003 to conduct the investigation into the Plame affair after then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case due to conflicts of interest.[11] Fitzgerald was granted the full plenary power of the Attorney General in the Libby case, as clarified by Comey in letters of February 6, 2004, and August 12, 2005.[12][13]

Verdict
The jury rendered its verdict at noon on March 6, 2007.[42] It convicted Libby on four of the five counts against him—two counts of perjury, one count of obstructing justice in a grand jury investigation, and one of the two counts of making false statements to federal investigators—and acquitted him on one count of making false statements.[43] Given current federal sentencing guidelines, which are not mandatory, the convictions could result in a sentence ranging from no imprisonment to imprisonment of up to 25 years and a fine of one million US dollars.[2] Given those non-binding guidelines, according to lawyer, author, New Yorker staff writer, and CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Anderson Cooper 360°, such a sentence could likely be between "one and a half to three years."[44] Sentencing is scheduled to occur in June 2007.[43][45] News media reported that his lawyers have announced their intention to appeal Libby's conviction.[2][4]


[edit] Comment on the verdict by a juror
As reported in CNN Newsroom, and subsequently on Larry King Live on CNN and by various other television networks, including MSNBC (on Scarborough Country), one juror––"Denis Collins, a Washington resident and self-described registered Democrat," who is a former reporter for The Washington Post and author of a book on espionage––"said he and fellow jurors found that passing judgment on Libby was 'unpleasant.' But in the final analysis, he said jurors found Libby's story just too hard to believe.... 'We're not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of, but it seemed like ... he was the fall guy'.... Collins said the jury believed Libby was 'tasked by the vice president to go and talk to reporters.'"[2][46][47][48] Collins offers a day-by-day account of his experience as Juror #9 at the Libby trial in an "Exclusive" at The Huffington Post.[49]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Libby#Verdict

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Regardless, the 'spokesman' for the jury sums it up nicely.  They didn't think Libby was guilty but convicted him anyhow.  How marvelous.

And for some reason, you seem quite content to leave off the murmuring of the jury in this particular case lamenting Rove or Cheney not being the defendant.  And yet you give forth the premise that this entire judicial farce was apolitical.  Astounding.

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Comment on the verdict by a juror
As reported in CNN Newsroom, and subsequently on Larry King Live on CNN and by various other television networks, including MSNBC (on Scarborough Country), one juror––"Denis Collins, a Washington resident and self-described registered Democrat," who is a former reporter for The Washington Post and author of a book on espionage––"said he and fellow jurors found that passing judgment on Libby was 'unpleasant.' But in the final analysis, he said jurors found Libby's story just too hard to believe.... 'We're not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of, but it seemed like ... he was the fall guy'.... Collins said the jury believed Libby was 'tasked by the vice president to go and talk to reporters.'"[2][46][47][48] Collins offers a day-by-day account of his experience as Juror #9 at the Libby trial in an "Exclusive" at The Huffington Post.[49]
/pip/Forum6/HTML/001502-2.html#43

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I was a juror a few months ago in a drunk driving case, and am allowed to discuss.  Didn't like the defendant, thought he was guilty of public intoxication and drunk driving, but the proof and evidence offered was insufficient to proove he was guilty of the crimes listed.  It boils down to proof the jurors are allowed to see/hear.

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421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources
(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent
Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of covert agents as result of having access to classified information
Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identify of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents
Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States, discloses any information that identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such individual’s classified intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Intelligence_Identities_Protection_Act

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And yet you give forth the premise that this entire judicial farce was apolitical.  Astounding.

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By the authority vested in the Attorney General by law, including 28 U. S .C. §§ 509, 510, and 515, and in my capacity as Acting Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 508, I hereby delegate to you all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity, and I direct you to exercise that authority as Special Counsel independent of the supervision or control of any officer of the Department.

/s/ James B. Comey

James B. Comey


Acting Attorney General http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Letter_of_Deputy_Attorney_General_a   ppointing_Patrick_Fitzgerald_Special_Counsel

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That seems to be a deliberate curve-ball answer, L.R. You know that Pete was talking about the disparate treatment of politicians accused of wrong doing depending upon their party affiliation. Why do the majority of Democrats skate for more serious accusations, even when caught red-handed ($90,000. in a freezer in Tupeprware containers, for instance) while the majority of Republicans are nailed to the wall for less serious accusations? You must see that happening.

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The Intelligence Identities Protection Act deals with current overseas covert agents, which Valerie Plame was not for at least 5 years preceding the disclosure by Armitage, therefore the Act was not violated by him or anybody else.  Given that, what crime was purported to have been committed prior to the launch of the investigation? The perjury was alleged to have taken place during the investigation. If it were not for the unwarranted investigation no alleged perjury could have taken place. So what crimes were committed that necessitated the investigation in the first place?

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Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny.

How can this have been happening without a national uproar? The authors explain: "We believe that this tremendous disparity is politically motivated and it occurs because the local (non-statewide and non-Congressional) investigations occur under the radar of a diligent national press. Each instance is treated by a local beat reporter as an isolated case that is only of local interest."

And let's not forget that Karl Rove's candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed federal investigations. Last year Molly Ivins reminded her readers of a curious pattern during Mr. Rove's time in Texas: 'In election years, there always seemed to be an F.B.I. investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press. After the election was over, the allegations often vanished.'

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In September 2003, the CIA requested that the Justice Department investigate the possible unauthorized disclosure of a CIA officer’s classified identity. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself and named Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, to be "acting attorney general" for the case. Comey in turn named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald to the case on December 30, 2003.[21] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_leak_grand_jury_investigation
/pip/Forum6/HTML/001502-2.html#42

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Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the Espionage Act, Title 18 Section 641, conspiracy to impede or injure officers, the Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement, other laws and precedents, perjury, conspiracy, obstruction of justice,
/pip/Forum6/HTML/001502-2.html#37

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Although he left the CIA in 1993, Larry C. Johnson attempted to clear up the confusion surrounding Plame's status in a column responding to Boot: "The law actually requires that a covered person 'served' overseas in the last five years. Served does not mean lived. In the case of Valerie Wilson, energy consultant for Brewster-Jennings, she traveled overseas in 2003, 2002, and 2001, as part of her cover job. She met with folks who worked in the nuclear industry, cultivated sources, and managed spies. She was a national security asset until exposed by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby."[28]

Plame worked for the CIA for 20 years, and her status, according to the New York Times, was "non-official cover." (5 October 2003). U.S. intelligence officials confirmed that Plame was working undercover shortly after it had been revealed by Robert Novak.[29] Senator Charles Schumer asked the FBI to investigate the leak because the CIA had identified Plame's status as covert.[30] John Crewdson of the Chicago Tribune interviewed several unnamed former and current CIA employees who doubt that Plame had NOC status in the CIA at the time her cover was blown by Novak.[31]

A variety of arguments regarding Ms. Plame's status as "covert" have arisen as a result of Special Counsel Fitzgerald's investigation. In the Grand Jury indictment of Libby and his press conference on the Libby indictment, broadcast on October 28, 2005, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald would not state explicitly whether or not Plame was "covert."[32].

Nevertheless, in a 5 February 2005 concurring opinion, Circuit Judge David S. Tatel made two references to Plame's covert status: (1) on page 28 of the opinion, Judge Tatel refers to Plame as an "alleged covert agent"; (2) on page 38, Judge Tatel states that because Fitzgerald had allegedly referred to Plame as a CIA agent "who had carried out covert work overseas within the last 5 years," in footnote 15 of a recent affidavit, Judge Tatel inferred that Mr. Fitzgerald must have at least "some support" for that conclusion.[33] Judge Tatel appears to have inferred from Special Counsel Fitzgerald's affidavit, which says that he is investigating whether or not Libby could have "intentionally" and "willfully" exposed the identity of "a covert agent" (italics added),[34] that Fitzgerald had already concluded that Plame was an agent who had carried out covert work within the last five years.[35][36] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_theories_regarding_the_Plame_affair
/pip/Forum6/HTML/001502-2.html#38

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In September 2003, the CIA requested that the Justice Department investigate the possible unauthorized disclosure of a CIA officer’s classified identity. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself and named Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey, to be "acting attorney general" for the case. Comey in turn named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald to the case on December 30, 2003.[21] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_leak_grand_jury_investigation

(above)

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Jefferson has been under investigation by the FBI for suspected corruption since March 2005. Since that time, he has been named in the guilty pleas of two associates. On 15 May 2006, Jefferson called a press conference at which he announced that he did not intend to resign, despite expecting to be indicted on corruption charges. On 20 May 2006, Jefferson's Congressional offices were searched by the FBI, "believed to be the first-ever FBI raid on a Congressional office,"[5] raising concerns that it could "set a dangerous precedent that could be used by future administrations to intimidate or harass a supposedly coequal branch of the government."[6] See below.

An investigation of Jefferson by various agencies began in mid-2005, after an investor came to authorities. Jefferson is alleged to have received over $400,000 in bribes through a company maintained in the name of his spouse and children. The money came from a tech company named iGate, Inc. of Louisville, Kentucky, and in return, it is alleged, Jefferson would help iGate's business. Jefferson was to persuade the U.S. Army to test iGate's broadband two-way technology and other iGate products; use his efforts to influence, possibly through bribery, high-ranking officials in Nigeria, Ghana, and Cameroon; and meet with personnel of the Export-Import Bank of the United States, in order to facilitate potential financing for iGate business deals in those countries.[7]


[edit] FBI investigation of bribery and fraud
On 30 July 2005, Jefferson was videotaped by the FBI receiving $100,000 worth of $100 bills in a leather briefcase at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Arlington, Virginia.[8] Jefferson told an investor, Lori Mody, who was wearing a wire, that he would need to give Nigerian Vice President Atiku Abubakar $500,000 "as a motivating factor" to make sure they obtained contracts for iGate and Mody's company in Nigeria.[9] A few days later, on 3 August 2005, FBI agents raided Jefferson's home in Northeast Washington and, as noted in an 83-page affidavit filed to support a subsequent raid on his Congressional office, "found $90,000 of the cash in the freezer, in $10,000 increments wrapped in aluminum foil and stuffed inside frozen-food containers." Serial numbers found on the currency in the freezer matched serial numbers of funds given by the FBI to their informant.

Late in the night of 20 May 2006, FBI agents executed a search warrant[10] at Jefferson's office in the Rayburn House Office Building.

The affidavit used to support these raids included, among other allegations:

The FBI videotaped Jefferson receiving a stock certificate from Mody for a company set up in Nigeria to promote iGate's technology. Jefferson predicted the deal would generate $200 million annually after five years.
Jefferson told Mody that he wanted a similar financial stake in the business in Ghana.
Jefferson sought $10 million in financing from Mody to take over iGate and install "confidants" on the new board. In two payments, Mody wired $89,225 to the ANJ Group LLC, a company controlled by Jefferson's family.
Jefferson lent $4,800 of the money Mody gave him to an unnamed congressional aide. Another $4,900 was given back to the FBI by one of Jefferson's attorneys.
The FBI claims it has uncovered "at least seven other schemes in which Jefferson sought things of value in return for his official acts."[11]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._Jefferson

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I see. So we expected to see videotapes of  bribe-taking and cash in the freezer and VIOLA! There they were! Amazing how that works, no? If you want to speak of things out of context, your example given sets the bar.

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Did anything come out of the Democrat investigation of gitmo?

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I will email the author of the article, L.R., to inform him of his error that no other media source folliowed up on the enriched uranium removal story other than WND. I don't see that that error negates the story though.

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[This message has been edited by iliana (03-18-2007 06:47 PM).]

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[quote]
L.R., Jack said to google "1.77 tons" and see how woefully lacking follow-up coverage was by the MSM.

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May 19, 2003 issue - From the very start, one of the top U.S. priorities in Iraq has been the search for weapons of mass destruction. Weren¡¯t WMDs supposed to be what the war was about? Even so, no one has yet produced conclusive evidence that Iraq was maintaining a nuclear, biological or chemical (NBC) arsenal.

Two very suspicious trailer rigs turned up last week in Mosul. The Pentagon called them mobile bio-labs. Maybe, but although they ¡°looked like a duck and walked like a duck,¡± as one U.S. officer put it, they didn¡¯t quack. The first of the huge, truck-drawn labs, intercepted at a roadblock, had been swabbed clean. The other, discovered Friday, was stripped by looters before U.S. troops found it. So far there¡¯s a lot more belli than casus.

Looters outran the WMD hunters almost every time. ¡°Once a site has been hit with a 2,000-pound bomb, then looted, there¡¯s not a lot left,¡± says Maj. Paul Haldeman, the 101st Airborne Division¡¯s top NBC officer. In the rush to Baghdad, Coalition forces raced past most suspected WMD sites, and looters took over. After Saddam¡¯s fall, there were too few U.S. troops to secure the facilities. Roughly 900 possible WMD sites appeared on the initial target lists. So far, V Corps officers say, fewer than 150 have been searched. ¡°There aren¡¯t enough troops in the whole Army,¡± says Col. Tim Madere, the overseer of V Corps¡¯s sensitive-site teams. ¡°There just aren¡¯t enough experts to do everything.¡±

¡®THIS SITE IS OUT OF CONTROL¡¯

Some of the lapses are frightening. The well-known Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, about 12 miles south of Baghdad, had nearly two tons of partially enriched uranium, along with significant quantities of highly radioactive medical and industrial isotopes, when International Atomic Energy Agency officials made their last visit in January. By the time U.S. troops arrived in early April, armed guards were holding off looters¡ªbut the Americans only disarmed the guards, Al Tuwaitha department heads told NEWSWEEK. ¡°We told them, ¡®This site is out of control. You have to take care of it¡¯,¡± says Munther Ibrahim, Al Tuwaitha¡¯s head of plasma physics. ¡°The soldiers said, ¡®We are a small group. We cannot take control of this site¡¯.¡± As soon as the Americans left, looters broke in. The staff fled; when they returned, the containment vaults¡¯ seals had been broken, and radioactive material was everywhere.

U.S. officers say the center had already been ransacked before their troops arrived. They didn¡¯t try to stop the looting, says Colonel Madere, because ¡°there was no directive that said do not allow anyone in and out of this place.¡± Last week American troops finally went back to secure the site. Al Tuwaitha¡¯s scientists still can¡¯t fully assess the damage; some areas are too badly contaminated to inspect. ¡°I saw empty uranium-oxide barrels lying around, and children playing with them,¡± says Fadil Mohsen Abed, head of the medical-isotopes department. Stainless-steel uranium canisters had been stolen. Some were later found in local markets and in villagers¡¯ homes. ¡°We saw people using them for milking cows and carrying drinking water,¡± says Ibrahim. The looted materials could not make a nuclear bomb, but IAEA officials worry that terrorists could build plenty of dirty bombs with some of the isotopes that may have gone missing. Last week NEWSWEEK visited a total of eight sites on U.N. weapons-inspection lists. Two were guarded by U.S. troops. Armed looters were swarming through two others. Another was evidently destroyed many years ago. American forces had not yet searched the remaining three.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3068560/

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BAGHDAD, 21 September 2004 (IRIN) - While the Coalition has not found any weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has lots of radioactive pollution, especially at a known nuclear research site, a new survey conducted by the Ministry of Environment shows.

Tuwaitha, some 18 km south of the capital, Baghdad, is a site of previous nuclear weapons research and experiments. It appears to have the highest ambient radiation in the country, Bushra Ali Ahmed, author of the radiation survey, told IRIN.

Residents of the area looted containers holding radioactive materials in the days immediately following the US-led invasion of Iraq in April 2003. They dumped the radioactive contents on the ground at the site and used the containers to carry water, milk and other household materials and foodstuffs.

US troops and nuclear organisation workers paid about 4,500 dinars (US $3) per container to buy them back in May. Officials at the time said they were not sure they had managed to get all of the containers back.

"This site was polluted by looting and destroying research materials," Ahmed wrote in the survey. "We found a number of containers which had traces of radiation. We also found it in houses and villages nearby."

At least four surrounding villages are contaminated, the report said. Ministry officials took 190 samples at Tuwaitha: 70 for soil, 50 for water, 50 for dairy milk and 20 for other environmental items.
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=23936

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Dr. Al-Bahli: "I have been working at the Nuclear Authority since 1968, when the doors opened to the use of atomic [energy] for peaceful purposes in Iraq. We activated the first atomic reactor in Iraq in 1968, and within four days we transferred radioactive isotopes to hospitals to treat various illnesses. Since then, and up to 1990, we continued this type of work which was absolutely for peaceful and humanitarian purposes..."

"As for nuclear weapons, Al-Tawitha, the main area that we will be talking about, is free of weapons of mass destruction and as far as I know, nothing was done there in this respect..."

"What happened in Iraq did not happen before anywhere else in the whole world, and I hope will never happen again; there was anarchy. After hearing that radioactive components were stolen, the employees of the Nuclear Authority started informing people that the materials that were stolen were indeed radioactive and should be returned. A person who has dirty radioactive components is in danger. How is he going to behave? He may behave in a way that would harm Iraq¡¯s ecology and even [cause harm] outside Iraq..."

"Tons of uranium known as yellow cakes were stored in barrels. This was a phase in the production of uranium from crude components. There were also other by-products from processing these materials. There were tens of tons of radioactive waste. They were stored in barrels and their radioactivity was not high as long as they were under supervision."

"When order was disrupted, simple citizens - sorry to say - did not have containers to store drinking water, so they stole those barrels, each one containing 400 kilos of radioactive uranium. Some of them dumped the powder on the ground in very large quantities, and others took the contaminated barrels to their homes, and the barrels appeared in various areas. They stored water in them, and had every intention of drinking from them or [using] the barrels to sell milk."

"I visited some homes and measured radioactivity; I saw with my own eyes in one of the homes a contaminated barrel used to store tomatoes for eating. In other barrels they stored cooking utensils and other household utensils for everyday use, not knowing that some of them were contaminated. When they realized that these components were radioactive, they dumped some of them in the river or the sewer system. We found radioactive materials in homes, in beds, and in clothing. I saw a ten-year old girl, who had a yellow cake [disc] hanging from the button of her shirt."
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3275.htm

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U.S. transferred uranium from Iraq without U.N. authorization
UNITED NATIONS (AP) ¡ª The United States didn't have authorization from the U.N. nuclear watchdog when it secretly shipped from Iraq uranium and highly radioactive material that could be used in so-called "dirty bombs," U.N. officials said Wednesday.
The nearly 2 tons of low-enriched uranium and approximately 1,000 highly radioactive items transferred from Iraq to the United States last month had been placed under seal by the International Atomic Energy Agency at the sprawling Tuwaitha nuclear complex, 12 miles south of Baghdad, the officials said.

"The American authorities just informed us of their intention to remove the materials, but they never sought authorization from us," said Gustavo Zlauvinen, head of the IAEA's New York office.

U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham disclosed the secret airlift from Iraq on Tuesday as "a major achievement" in an attempt to "keep potentially dangerous nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists." The material was taken to an undisclosed U.S. Energy Department laboratory for further analysis.

The airlift ended on June 23, five days before the United States transferred sovereignty to Iraq's new interim government.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in a letter to the Security Council circulated Wednesday that Washington informed the agency on June 19 that "due to security concerns" it intended to transfer some nuclear material stored at Tuwaitha to the United States.

The agency took note of the U.S. intention to remove the nuclear material "from agency verification," he said.

According to the letter, the United States informed the IAEA on June 30 that approximately 1.8 tons of uranium, enriched to a level of 2.6%, another 6.6 pounds of low-enriched uranium, and approximately 1,000 highly radioactive sources had been transferred on June 23.

A U.N. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said there was some concern about the legality of the U.S. transfer because the nuclear material belonged to Iraq and was under the control and supervision of the IAEA.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-07-07-iraq-uranium_x.htm

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What happened to looted Iraqi nuclear material?
By Brett Wagner
The release Thursday of chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay's report detailing America's six-month search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has reinflamed the debate over whether anyone will ever uncover that country's alleged stockpiles of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
A great irony, however, seems to have gotten lost in that debate: As a direct result of President Bush's decision to invade Iraq without sufficient forces to secure and protect its nuclear research and storage facilities from rampant looting, enough radioactive material to build scores of dirty bombs now is missing and may be on its way to the international black market.

It didn't have to turn out this way. In the weeks before the invasion, the U.S. military repeatedly warned the White House that its war plans did not include sufficient ground forces, air and naval operations and logistical support to guarantee a successful mission. Those warnings were discounted ¡ª even mocked ¡ª by administration officials who professed to know more about war fighting than the war fighters themselves
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2003-10-05-wagner_x.htm

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BAGHDAD, Iraq -- A small team of U.N. nuclear experts returned to Baghdad to check the safety of Iraq's largest nuclear site, which was looted by villagers after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

The team of scientists from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was allowed to travel to the badly damaged Al Tuwaitha nuclear plant by the United States Friday.

But the experts' operation is limited to the nuclear site and does not include work on the search for weapons of mass destruction. The Pentagon has also limited the team to seven members and given it only two weeks to carry out its work.

Thousands of villagers raided the nuclear site, which contains low-grade or natural uranium, immediately after the fall of Saddam's regime.

Local scientists warn the site, outside Baghdad, is badly damaged, with looters having spilled radioactive material and leaving behind piles of uranium, The Associated Press said.

The uranium was concreted over to prevent leakage or further exposure to people living in the area.

Team leader Brian Rens told AP the IAEA's mission is to "determine what has been lost and any other material which is in an unsafe condition, to repack it to the extent possible, secure it, verify it and seal the building."

Villagers were able to raid the plant after it was left unguarded by U.S. troops following its abandonment by Iraqi guards in the early days of the war.

No reports have been recorded of anyone falling ill after being exposed to the material, which is highly toxic if ingested but gives off only low levels of radioactivity.

Washington tried to keep the IAEA out of post-war Iraq despite pressure from the arms-control community. But after three months on the ground, U.S. military commanders acknowledged they were unequipped to handle the nuclear site.

Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, told AP: "I know the Tuwaitha facility is larger than the assets we have in the country now to deal with it."

CNN's Jane Arraf said the materials in the plant, although radioactive, were not enough to make a bomb. But experts say it could make a "dirty bomb." The locals wanted the barrels to store water in, she added.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/06/06/iaea.iraq.tuwaitha/index.html

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On the broad question of WMDs in Iraq, one need go no further than the Administration¡¯s own more recent comments. On 10/7/2004, President Bush said ¡°Iraq did not have the weapons that our intelligence believed were there.¡± (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/10/20041007-6.html) Bush has affirmed the findings of both the Kay and Duelfer reports that Saddam did not have an active WMD program at the time of the invasion.

As to some of the specific questions, basically, it sounds as if this guy basically read the misleading, right-wing book ¡°Disinformation¡± and sent these reports to Ford asking him to dispute them. Well, OK!

From Amazon.com Review of David Miniter¡¯s Book ¡®Disinformation¡¯: OK book, but major correction is necessary, December 14, 2005

This wasn¡¯t a bad book by any means, and parts concerning the history of Bin Laden were quite informative.

However, I was surprised Miniter mentioned that WMD¡¯s had actually been found in Iraq, and had largely gone unreported. In fact, he is quite incorrect, and is (hopefully unintentionally) being quite misleading. Since I know a bit about this, I thought I¡¯d clear this up for Mr. Miniter, and anyone reading this who would be otherwise quite misinformed.

Miniter claims that in Iraq we:

- Found: 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium
- Found: 1,500 gallons of chemical weapons
- Found: Roadside bomb loaded with sarin gas
- Found: 1,000 radioactive materials¨Cideal for radioactive dirty bombs
- Found: 17 chemical warheads¨Csome containing cyclosarin, a nerve agent five times more powerful than sarin

Now for the facts:

The 1.77 Tons of Enriched Uranium
The Energy Department announced in July 2004 that it had removed from Iraq ¡°radiological and nuclear materials that could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program.¡± This included the ¡°1.77 metric tons of LOW-enriched uranium.¡± The reason the Administration is not now touting this as evidence of WMD is because they would be laughed at by anyone with more expertise than David Miniter. Low-enriched uranium cannot be used in an atomic weapon-only as reactor fuel, a purpose which Iraq was entirely free to pursue under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and UN-imposed WMD restrictions.

The 1000 Radioactive Materials
Pointing to the applicability of nuclear materials in a ¡°radiological dispersal device¡± is utterly disingenuous-these materials exist, legally, in nearly every country on earth. One might as well point to cutlery in someone¡¯s kitchen to ¡°prove¡± he is plotting murder. In fact, the hideous irony is that in the chaos of the 2003 invasion, nuclear facilities were plundered and much nuclear material was indiscriminately released-resulting in a real radiological hazard for local Iraqis (as we reported at the time). Leave it to Bush to actually create the very danger he uses to justify his military adventure.

The 1500 Gallons of Chemical Weapons
Then, there¡¯s the supposed ¡°chemical weapons.¡± Oops! Turns out when you actually read the original source (Washington Post, Aug. 14, 2005) it wasn¡¯t ¡°1,500 gallons of chemical weapons,¡± but just ¡°1,500 gallons of chemicals.¡± These were potential ¡°precursor agents¡± for chemical weapons, the Pentagon boasted upon the discovery-but the fact that the Administration is no longer touting these claims is evidence the supposed weapons program didn¡¯t get very far, if it existed at all.

The Roadside Sarin Bomb
The two roadside sarin shells were of an ancient vintage, dating from the 1980¡¯s, prior to the first Gulf War. It is of particular note that other than the two isolated shells found, no more have turned up, leading to the obvious conclusion that these two stragglers were simply the last rusting vestiges of a long-abandoned program. We KNOW that Saddam had a chemical program prior to the first Gulf War, but we can also safely conclude that he had nothing after the Gulf War. This was confirmed by the Bush-appointed Duelfer Report.

The 17 Chemical Warheads
Even Fox News had to admit that the cyclosarin warheads found by Polish troops in July 2004 ¡°date back to Saddam Hussein¡¯s war with Iran in the 1980s.¡± The BBC added that ¡°the US military said the agent was so deteriorated it posed no threat.¡±

I hope that Mr. Miniter corrects future editions of this book so as not to mislead his readers. I assume that his misunderstanding of these issues was merely ignorance, and not willful disinformation.

As to the assertion that ¡°vast quantities of WMDs that the coalition was ¡®expecting¡¯ to find had been moved to Syria in the run-up to Operation Iraqi Freedom¡±, that is just an editorialist assertion given by a single Iraqi war general. Even Bush won¡¯t touch that one ¨C there¡¯s no facts to back it up, no sources, nothing.

May 2004 ¨C Roadside bomb containing sarin found in Iraq
Even the Fox News story admits that this ¡°bomb¡± (filled with gas that had been noted by a weapons search team to be ¡°ineffective¡±) pre-dated the 1991 Gulf War, therefore not lending any credence to the Administration¡¯s justification for going to war based on Saddam¡¯s supposed stockpile of WMDs. Also, two former weapons inspectors ¡ª Hans Blix and David Kay ¡ª said the shell was likely a stray weapon that had been scavenged by militants and did not signify that Iraq had large stockpiles of such weapons (see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4997808/).

1.77 Tons of uranium removed from Iraq
Richard Miniter claims that the U.S. ¡°discovered¡± 1.77 metric tons of enriched uranium in Iraq. Richard Miniter is wrong. Those things were already tagged and under seal by UN inspectors.

See:

¡°A joint Pentagon-Energy Department operation has removed 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium from a former nuclear research site in Iraq. The material had been sealed off after the Gulf War.¡± ¨C CBS NEWS 7/7/04

¡°Several tons of uranium have been under seal at al-Tuwaitha since the previous round of inspections ended in 1998.¡± - U.N. inspects new Iraqi military factory CNN 12/12/02

¡°A second diplomatic official expressed puzzlement as to why the United States was considering moving the material, after the material has been presumably secured and resealed. Except for the incident immediately after the invasion, the official said, ¡°this stuff has been there, secure, quiet, not a problem to anyone, since 1991.¡± - U.S. Announces It Intends to Move Tons of Uranium From Baghdad NYT 5/22/04 (from http://www.americandaughter.com/index.html?http://frontpage.americandaughter.com/?p=42)

The Energy Department announced in July 2004 that it had removed from Iraq ¡°radiological and nuclear materials that could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program.‿ This included the ¡°1.77 metric tons of LOW-enriched uranium.‿ The reason the Administration never touted this as evidence of WMD is because they would be laughed at by anyone with a passing expertise. Low-enriched uranium cannot be used in an atomic weapon-only as reactor fuel, a purpose which Iraq was entirely free to pursue under the Non-Proliferation Treaty and UN-imposed WMD restrictions.

Further, ¡°The International Atomic Energy Agency kept Iraq¡¯s uranium under seal in storage facilities for more than a decade before the U.S. invasion in March, 2003.‿ (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35404-2004Jul7.html)

It¡¯s been locked and monitored since 1991, and it was largely useless anyway.
That 1.77 tons of enriched uranium ¡°had been under IAEA seal since 1991. It was last visited by IAEA inspectors in February 2003¡å.

¡°It was Low-enriched uranium¡± and uranium¡¯s, ¡°extremely low radioactivity is harmless compared with high-radiation materials¡±. Peter Zimmerman, ¡°co-author of an expert analysis of dirty bombs for the U.S. National Defense University¡± said ¡°you cannot make a radiological dispersal device with uranium. There is just no significant radiation hazard.¡± (from http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=2955)
http://www.startribune.com/blogs/bigquestion/?page_id=38

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And I believe his point was that by comparing Wilson's first op-ed piece with his latest is where you will find the measure of the man.

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Mr. Wilson said he so respects the former president's international approach to foreign policy that when he wrote his first article questioning the current administration's developing Iraq strategy, which was published in The San Jose Mercury News in October 2002, he sent a copy to the former president. The senior Mr. Bush wrote him a brief reply, Mr. Wilson said. He refused to share the contents but said Mr. Bush's note had been "very positive."
http://www.nytimes.com/2 003/10/05/national/05WILS.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5007&ex=1380686400&en=508c529421889625&partner=USERLAND

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So what I will say for the time being is with seeming contradictions such as this, it shouldn't surprise the White House why many want these particular individuals under oath ...

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I can say holding a gun to a terrorist's head and threatening to blow it off (as a bluff) would be "poorly done" but if it got information which averted an attack on an American soldier camp, would this be condoned? Ron has claimed no.....and he is not alone.

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... and yet these same people and organizations go after the Republican Attorney General with such vigor and publicity, armed with glaring headlines and brass bands, one has the right to ask "What's going on here?", too.

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There is no "..doing for the good of the country' noble cause here.

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They do when they have a Democrat in the oval office ...

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Interesting comparison, Ron....drug dealing and grand theft auto used.

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Why were they notoriously not outsoken when Reno did the same dirty deed, times ten?

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Republicans in Congress do not trust their president to protect them. That alone is sufficient reason to withhold statements of support for Gonzales, because such a gesture could be quickly followed by his resignation under pressure. Rep. Adam Putnam (Fla.), the highly regarded young chairman of the House Republican Conference, praised Donald Rumsfeld in November only to see him sacked shortly thereafter.

But not many Republican lawmakers would speak up for Gonzales even if they were sure Bush would stick with him. He is the least popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill, even more disliked than Rumsfeld was. The word most often used by Republicans to describe the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent."

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The saving grace that some Republicans find in the dispute over U.S. attorneys is that, at least temporarily, it draws attention away from debate over an unpopular war. But the overriding feeling in the Republican cloakroom is that the Justice Department and the White House could not have been more inept in dealing with the president's unquestioned right to appoint -- and replace -- federal prosecutors.

The I-word (incompetence) is also used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to cited a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the USA Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. "We always have claimed that we were the party of better management," one House leader told me. "How can we claim that anymore?"

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