Bush to commute Libby sentence

[bdk3clash]

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The obvious reason was that she wasn't covert. If she was a covert agent then Fitzgerald would have charged Armitage.

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Its the obvious reason, but its not the only reason. I recall reading at the time that the reason no one was charged with leaking Plame's name was that Fitzgerald couldn't prove that Armitage or Libby knew that Plame was covert. That was a necessary element of the crime.

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Why don't you post a link to the law your referring to so we can all read it. To be honest, I think it's high time we had a look at it and if you guys don't have any context as to what law was allegedly violated in revealing the covert agents status I'm not sure why we're discussing this.

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"What's this 'we', white man?"

Earlier in this thread I stated:

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Specifically, in the original indictment, prosecutors contended that Libby had potentially violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by disclosing Plame's covert status to New York Times reporter Judy Miller on at least three occassions.

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The fact that you apparently haven't bothered to familiarize yourself what laws were considered to be relevant to the case is telling, if not particularly surprising given what you've written in this thread.
Here's a Wikipedia entry on it, here's the text of the act itself.

The Wikipedia article states:
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The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (Pub.L. 97-200, 50 U.S.C. § 421-426) is a United States federal law that makes it a federal crime to intentionally reveal the identity of an agent whom one knows to be in or recently in certain covert roles with a U.S. intelligence agency.

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[bdk3clash]

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Read at least three different posts I made about [the claim that Plame was no covert]. One was a link to Chicago Tribune article showing that the info on Plame's CIA status was available on the internet.

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I read the Tribune article you linked to earlier. It most assuredly does not "show...that the info on Plame's CIA status was available on the internet [before the publication of Novak's column.]" In that article (from 2006!), the only references to Plame come from this passage:
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The problem, Goodman said, is that transforming a CIA officer who has worked under "diplomatic cover" into a "non-official cover" operator, or NOC--as was attempted with Valerie Plame--creates vulnerabilities that are not difficult to spot later on....
In Plame's case, online computer searches would have turned up her tenure as a junior diplomat in the U.S. Embassy in Athens even after she began passing herself off as a privately employed "energy consultant."

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The fact that "online computer searches would have turned up [Plame's] tenure as a junior diplomat in the U.S. Embassy" in Athens does not "show...that the info on Plame's [covert] CIA status was available on the internet."

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One was some comments from Al Gore's lawyer.

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Gore's former lawyer stated (from your own post!)
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Whether or not she was covert...

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And at least one (I'm sure more) indicated that Armitage was never charged with leaking the name of a covert CIA agent by Fitzgerald. The obvious reason was that she wasn't covert. If she was a covert agent then Fitzgerald would have charged Armitage.

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This analysis is incorrect. The fact of Plame being covert is not sufficient to charge Armitage with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. See my previous post for a brief synopsis of that law.

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Again the only person charged with a crime was Scooter Libby and it was for obstructing justice and perjury. Nobody was charged with leaking the name of a covert CIA agent i.e. classified information because nobody did.

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"[L]eaking the name of a covert CIA agent i.e. classified information" is not against the law per se. It really comes across like you are kind of winging it here. There are actual standards of proof at stake. For an analysis of the perceived difficulties of prosecuting under the IIPA, see this TomDispatch article from 2005 by Elizabeth De la Vega, former federal prosecutor and Chief of the San Jose Branch of the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California. She wrote:

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A defendant must:

(1) have authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent;

(2) "intentionally disclose" the information;

(3) disclose it to one not authorized to receive classified information;

(4) know the information he is disclosing identifies the covert agent; and

(5) know that the U.S. is taking affirmative measures to conceal the covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States.

Proof of these five elements -- and no others -- is what's required under the 1982 legislation.

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If you have any specific indications of all five of these qualifications having been met by Armitage (and/or Libby, who a zealous prosecutor surely would have indicted on any charge he could in a partisan frenzy), please support your assertion.

Please be careful not to mischaracterize any information you come across, as you did for the Tribune article you linked to and the interview with Gore's former lawyer you quoted.

Again, it's absolutely mind-boggling to me that you could still assert that Plame was not covert. There's really no shame in admitting that you were wrong.

[bkholdem]

what did this libby guy do anyway?

[iron81]

Lewis "Scooter" Libby was Cheney's Chief of Staff: the most senior official officially reporting to Cheney. Libby among at least one other person gave the name of Valerie Plame to reporter Robert Novak (long story). Valerie Plame was a covert agent, which made his action borderline illegal. Libby then went on to lie about his involvement, which is what the federal prosecutor eventually got him for.

[bkholdem]

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Lewis "Scooter" Libby was Cheney's Chief of Staff: the most senior official officially reporting to Cheney. Libby among at least one other person gave the name of Valerie Plame to reporter Robert Novak (long story). Valerie Plame was a covert agent, which made his action borderline illegal. Libby then went on to lie about his involvement, which is what the federal prosecutor eventually got him for.

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ty iron

[tehox]

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Again, it's absolutely mind-boggling to me that you could still assert that Plame was not covert. There's really no shame in admitting that you were wrong.

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I agree, if she was not covert, there would have been no investigation to begin with. The CIA, or the White House, or the FBI, or the Justice Department, would have said "she's not covert, thus nothing criminal happened, there will be no investigation".

[tehox]

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A defendant must:

(1) have authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent;

(2) "intentionally disclose" the information;

(3) disclose it to one not authorized to receive classified information;

(4) know the information he is disclosing identifies the covert agent; and

(5) know that the U.S. is taking affirmative measures to conceal the covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States.

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Wait, where is the part that explains why the person that leaked to Novak is the only person that could potentially have broke the law?

[adios]

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I read the Tribune article you linked to earlier. It most assuredly does not "show...that the info on Plame's CIA status was available on the internet [before the publication of Novak's column.]"

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Although finding and repairing the vulnerabilities in the CIA's cover system was not a priority under Goss' predecessor, George Tenet, one senior U.S. official observed that "the Internet age didn't get here in 2004," the year Goss took over at the CIA.

The implication is clear that this info has been available a long time before 2003.

As to what Boies stated:

DAVID BOIES, FORMER GORE COUNSEL: Whether or not she was covert, I think that's an open question. But I think the prosecutor did understand early on that there was not an underlying crime here. From the outside, that's the way it looks.


And of course I can find an attorney that disagrees with analysis you posted:

Trial in Error

[adios]

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The obvious reason was that she wasn't covert. If she was a covert agent then Fitzgerald would have charged Armitage.

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Its the obvious reason, but its not the only reason. I recall reading at the time that the reason no one was charged with leaking Plame's name was that Fitzgerald couldn't prove that Armitage or Libby knew that Plame was covert. That was a necessary element of the crime.

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Why don't you post a link to the law your referring to so we can all read it. To be honest, I think it's high time we had a look at it and if you guys don't have any context as to what law was allegedly violated in revealing the covert agents status I'm not sure why we're discussing this.

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"What's this 'we', white man?"

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And what's this supposed to mean???


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Earlier in this thread I stated:

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Specifically, in the original indictment, prosecutors contended that Libby had potentially violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by disclosing Plame's covert status to New York Times reporter Judy Miller on at least three occassions.

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The fact that you apparently haven't bothered to familiarize yourself what laws were considered to be relevant to the case is telling, if not particularly surprising given what you've written in this thread.
Here's a Wikipedia entry on it, here's the text of the act itself.

The Wikipedia article states:
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The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (Pub.L. 97-200, 50 U.S.C. § 421-426) is a United States federal law that makes it a federal crime to intentionally reveal the identity of an agent whom one knows to be in or recently in certain covert roles with a U.S. intelligence agency.

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So??????????? Armitage did leak the name intentionally. Where is your link to the law? I have my doubts whether or not you've read it. I have a link to the law and I've read it. I've read various opinions as well. The bottom line is that if Fitzgerald thought he had a case for violation of the law in question he'd have certainly prosecuted. He didn't and that's as obvious as something can be. The idea that Armitage isn't responsible and accountable is completely ludicrus. That's more or less what you're arguing when you and iron81 state that Armitage wasn't prosecuted because he didn't know that Plame was a covert agent. It's clear from reading material on this that Plame's covert status is as Boies put it an "open question" at the very least. Since Fitzgerald had the resources he had at his disposal and the motivation to indict and prosecute a possible crime it's clear to me that he had no evidence to back it up, at least not enough evidence to try and convince a jury. The law is complicated and I think it's fair to say that because the law is complicated making a case for violating the law is something that Fitzgerald was in the best position to do. He would first have to convince a jury that Plame was covert which again I think at the very least is as Boies put it "an open question." You guys are apparently asserting that she was covert without a doubt and I don't think you can make that claim with any degree of certainty. If Fitzgerald believed he could have convinced a jury that she was covert he would have prosecuted someone violating the law and that person would have been Armitage.

[adios]

There's also another article from Toensing arguing why Plame wasn't covert that I'll post a link to tomorrow if I can find it. I can post many more links to credible arguments as well. Your claim that there isn't a credible argument against her covert status is just silly.

Here's a reference to Toensing in a column Novak did about her covert status:

That decision left the field last Friday to such partisan Democrats as Rep. Chris Van Hollen, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Rep. Diane Watson, Waxman's fellow Californian, mimicked the chairman's inquisitorial style. She repeatedly interrupted lawyer Victoria Toensing, the lone rebuttal witness granted the Republicans by Waxman.

Toensing testified that Plame was not a covert operative as defined by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (which she had helped draft as a Senate staffer in 1982) if only because she was not stationed overseas for the CIA the past five years. Waxman hectored Toensing, menacingly warning that her sworn testimony would be scrutinized for misstatements.

Was Valerie Covert?