White House Leak To Destroy Joseph C. Wilson

May 25, 2006

This is a big topic for America. Things don't look good for vice president Cheney. Be happy you have free speech. :rolleyes:

*********************************

TONI LOCY

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Vice-President Dick Cheney could be called to testify in the perjury case against his former chief of staff, a special prosecutor said in a court filing Wednesday.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald suggested Mr. Cheney would be a logical government witness because he could authenticate notes he jotted on a July 6, 2003, New York Times opinion piece by a former U.S. ambassador critical of the Iraq war.

Mr. Fitzgerald said Mr. Cheney's “state of mind” is “directly relevant” to whether I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the vice president's former top aide, lied to FBI agents and a federal grand jury about how he learned about CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity and what he subsequently told reporters.

Mr. Libby “shared the interests of his superior and was subject to his direction,” the prosecutor wrote. “Therefore, the state of mind of the vice president as communicated to (the) defendant is directly relevant to the issue of whether (the) defendant knowingly made false statements to federal agents and the grand jury regarding when and how he learned about (Ms. Plame's) employment and what he said to reporters regarding this issue.”

In the Times article, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war. In 2002, the CIA sent Mr. Wilson to Niger to determine whether Iraq tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon. Mr. Wilson discounted the reports. But the allegation wound up in U.S. President George W. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

Mr. Cheney wrote on the article, “Have they done this sort of thing before? Send an ambassador to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?”

Mr. Libby told the agents and the grand jury that he believed he had learned from reporters that Ms. Plame is married to Mr. Wilson and had forgotten that Mr. Cheney had told him that in the weeks before Wilson's article was published.

In his grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby said Mr. Cheney was so upset about Mr. Wilson's allegations that they discussed them daily after the article appeared. “He was very keen to get the truth out,” Mr. Libby testified, quoting Mr. Cheney as saying, “Let's get everything out.”

Mr. Cheney viewed Mr. Wilson's allegations as a personal attack because the article suggested that the vice president knew that Wilson had discounted old reports that Iraq had tried to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger to build a nuclear weapon.

Eight days after Mr. Wilson's article, conservative syndicated columnist Robert Novak identified Ms. Plame and suggested that she had played a role in the CIA's decision to send Mr. Wilson to Niger.

June 14, 2006

Boy I wish I had the time to search these boards and drag out the names of all the left wing commenters on who we're posting a wishful conspiracy that Karl Rove would be indicted. Any normal posters out there please find the letter that Fitzgerald announced that he would NOT indict Mr. Rove.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on his way back from Baghdad, President Bush told reporters: "It's a chapter that has ended. Fitzgerald is a very thorough person. I think he's conducted his investigation in a dignified way. And he's ended his investigation."

The tides are a changing.... So many good things are happening this month.

Al-Zarqawi is killed, Iraq has a government, and now Karl Rove is free. The Democrats are going to fall on their faces.

July 18, 2006

Valerie and Joseph Wilson filed a lawsuit against Cheney, Libby and Karl Rove. So your boy is not out of the woods yet.

September 23, 2006

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/07/...in1981433.shtml

In an exclusive interview with CBS News national security correspondent David Martin, Richard Armitage, once the No. 2 diplomat at the State Department, couldn't be any blunter.

"Oh I feel terrible. Every day, I think I let down the president. I let down the Secretary of State. I let down my department, my family and I also let down Mr. and Mrs. Wilson," he says.

When asked if he feels he owes the Wilsons an apology, he says, "I think I've just done it."

In July 2003, Armitage told columnist Robert Novak that Ambassador Wilson's wife worked for the CIA, and Novak mentioned it in a column. It's a crime to knowingly reveal the identity of an undercover CIA officer. But Armitage didn't yet realize what he had done.

So, what exactly did he tell Novak?

"At the end of a wide-ranging interview he asked me, 'Why did the CIA send Ambassador (Wilson) to Africa?' I said I didn't know, but that she worked out at the agency," Armitage says.

Armitage says he told Novak because it was "just an offhand question." "I didn't put any big import on it and I just answered and it was the last question we had," he says.

Armitage adds that while the document was classified, "it doesn't mean that every sentence in the document is classified.

"I had never seen a covered agent's name in any memo in, I think, 28 years of government," he says.

He adds that he thinks he referred to Wilson's wife as such, or possibly as "Mrs. Wilson." He never referred to her as Valerie Plame, he adds.

"I didn't know the woman's name was Plame. I didn't know she was an operative," he says.

He says he was reading Novak's newspaper column again, on Oct. 1, 2003, and "he said he was told by a non-partisan gun slinger."

"I almost immediately called Secretary Powell and said, 'I'm sure that was me,'" Armitage says.

Armitage immediately met with FBI agents investigating the leak.

"I told them that I was the inadvertent leak," Armitage says. He didn't get a lawyer, however.

"First of all, I felt so terrible about what I'd done that I felt I deserved whatever was coming to me. And secondarily, I didn't need an attorney to tell me to tell the truth. I as already doing that," Armitage explains. "I was not intentionally outing anybody. As I say, I have tremendous respect for Ambassador. Wilson's African credentials. I didn't know anything about his wife and made an offhand comment. I didn't try to out anybody."

That was nearly three years ago, but the political firestorm over who leaked Valerie Plame's identity continued to burn as Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald began hauling White House officials and journalists before a grand jury.

Armitage says he didn't come forward because "the special counsel, once he was appointed, asked me not to discuss this and I honored his request."

"I thought every day about how I'd screwed up," he adds.

Armitage never did tell the president, but he's talking now because Fitzgerald told him he could.

September 23, 2006

Either Bush knew about this all along and stayed silent or Richard Armitage has been a complete liar and let his peers take the heat. Either way the man is a complete traitor to our country and should be thrown into jail immediately. Why is he still in office?

September 23, 2006

In a column posted in TownHall.com on 14 September 2006, Novak disputed details of Armitage's recent media accounts of their conversations, offering a politically-charged reinterpretation of their past and present contexts:

When Richard Armitage finally acknowledged last week he was my source three years ago in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee, the former deputy secretary of state's interviews obscured what he really did. I want to set the record straight based on firsthand knowledge.

First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he "thought" might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson. Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.

An accurate depiction of what Armitage actually said deepens the irony of him being my source. He was a foremost internal skeptic of the administration's war policy, and I long had opposed military intervention in Iraq. Zealous foes of George W. Bush transformed me improbably into the president's lapdog. But they cannot fit Armitage into the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson. The news that he and not Karl Rove was the leaker was devastating news for the Left.

September 23, 2006

Roberto,

Just to clarify your statement. Richard Armitage is not serving in public office position. On May 10, 2006, Armitage was elected to the board of directors of the ConocoPhillips oil company.

http://www.conocophillips.com/newsroom/new...ing+Results.htm

HOUSTON, May 10, 2006 --- ConocoPhillips [NYSE:COP] today held its Annual Stockholders’ Meeting, where owners of the company’s stock voted on the election of board members, the appointment of an independent auditor, and five additional proposals. The preliminary results, reported upon by the Inspector of Elections, were as follows:

Approximately 98 percent of stockholders who cast votes elected six directors: Richard L. Armitage, Richard H. Auchinleck, Harald J. Norvik, William K. Reilly, Victoria J. Tschinkel and Kathryn C. Turner. In addition, stockholders approved the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as independent auditor for 2006, with about 98 percent of votes cast.

ConocoPhillips stockholders voted against a proposal to require shareholder approval of future extraordinary retirement benefits for senior executives and against a proposal asking the company to change the voting standard for electing directors to the board. These proposals were defeated by approximately 61 percent and 57 percent of votes cast, respectively.

A proposal in regard to drilling in protected or sensitive areas was defeated by approximately 66 percent of votes cast. A proposal regarding environmental accountability to communities was defeated by about 80 percent of votes cast. Final results will be reported in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

ConocoPhillips is an integrated petroleum company with interests around the world

Luke_Wilbur · September 25, 2006

Its interesting how the media is so focused on the past that they pass on current events. There was very little buzz about this story. I was suprised that ConocoPhillips has not issued a press release in support of Armitage. I was looking at what ConocoPhillips owns and their holdings quite interesting, but not out of the ordinary.

362084 Alberta Inc.

Located in Alberta

100% Conoco Canada Limited

Abode Merchant Marketing Joint Venture

50% Raptor Natural Plains Marketing LLC

50% Raptor Industrial Sales Corporation

Administrador Petrolera Guanare S.A.

Located in Venezuela

32.5% Conoco Venezuela C.A.

Agroforestal Anzoategui, C.A.

Venezuela

100% Petrozuata C.A.

AO Arkhangelskgeoldobycha

Located in the Soviet Union

15.667% Conoco International Petroleum Company

Associated Petroleum Terminals (Immingham)

Located in England

33.33% Conoco Limited

Britannia Operator Limited

Located in England

50% Conoco (U.K.) Limited

Ceska Rafinerska, a.s.

Czech Republic

16.33% Conoco Central and Eastern European Holdings BV

CGP Servicios Energeticos de Altamira, S.

Mexico

100% Conoco Global Power de Mexico, S. de R.L. de C.V.

Clearwater Ltd.

Bermuda

100% Danube Insurance Ltd.

Cliffe Storage Limited

England

100% Conoco (U.K.) Limited

Luke_Wilbur · September 25, 2006

This is even more interesting. Watch for a new "conspiracy" to take down the President and his cabinet. Armitage failed in his duty to tell President Bush. Who stopped Fitzgerald from revealing the Armitage?

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In an article shamelessly ignoring its role in the Wilson hoax and solicitous of the leaker, the New York Times, on a holiday weekend Saturday, mentions that Richard Armitage was the source of the leak of Plame's identity.* It focuses on whether Fitzgerald was right to continue the prosecution after he knew Novak didn't learn about Plame from Rove or Libby, the people the paper railed against from the moment Nicholas Kristof megaphoned Ambassador Munchausen's fabulous tale of his Mission to Niger more three years ago:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 An enduring mystery of the C.I.A. leak case has been solved in recent days, but with a new twist: Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, knew the identity of the leaker from his very first day in the special counsel's chair, but kept the inquiry open for nearly two more years before indicting I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, on obstruction charges.

Now, the question of whether Mr. Fitzgerald properly exercised his prosecutorial discretion in continuing to pursue possible wrongdoing in the case has become the subject of rich debate on editorial pages and in legal and political circles.

To me, its an enduring mystery how the paper which was the first to print as truth Wilson's lies and which trumpeted them for three years, can write this self-protecting bilge with a straight face.

Still, if you still believe anything they publish, there are two eyeopeners in this article:

He turned over his calendars, datebooks and even his wife's computer in the course of the inquiry, those associates said. But Mr. Armitage kept his actions secret, not even telling President Bush because the prosecutor asked him not to divulge it, the people said.

Of course, the President had, from the day a leak was claimed, asked everyone in his Administration to tell him if they had leaked. He certainly would not have agreed to an investigation nor demanded his people cooperate with it, even signing waivers of press confidentiality, had he known who the leaker was. He would have just fired him or kept him on with the explanation which no one much questions that it was inadvertent, regretful and had not in any way harmed national security.

Had Armitage followed his boss orders, the Administration would not have been kept in the dark and frequently pummeled for three years in the NYT for outing Plame, punishing a whistleblower and damaging national security (ironically even as the paper itself deliberately leaked critical national security secrets which the Administration and a bipartisan Congressional delegation begged the paper not to publish). Another question is the identity of this prosecutor who, by the Times account,

asked him not to divulge it, the people said.

Fitzgerald wasn't appointed until months after Armitage's miraculous memory recovery about Novak. No one in the DOJ could have asked him not to tell the President.

And, if Armitage had turned over his calendars, why did the prosecutor apparently fail to ask him about the meeting with Woodward on June 12? This failure to ask about notations of conversations with other reporters looks to me like even more evidence of the skewed nature of this probe. Kind of like Durham, NC DA Mike Nifong’s using a photo identification which showed only the faces of the Duke Lacrosse team when asking the alleged victim to identify her attackers. (Hey, pick a fish out of only this barrel for me to prosecute.)

Mr. Armitage had prepared a resignation letter, his associates said. But he stayed on the job because State Department officials advised that his sudden departure could lead to the disclosure of his role in the leak, the people aware of his actions said.

Better to have left Libby and Rove dangling than tip them off to the truth? Got it. Prince of a fellow. And boy, those unnamed State department officials are paragons of loyalty and virtue. Real statesmen.

The Washington Post called Wilson a liar and dubbed the denouement of his fable End of an Affair. I'd call this new series of disclosures Dangerous Liaisons because at the moment a lot of people in the Capitol remind me of the Marquise de Merteuil after her schemings have been discovered. As for the New York Times, I have to say its continuing reportage on this matter is to me simply indescribable. In the meantime, even the Washington Post's volte face is deficient in a number of respects. And it is a volte face. Tom Maguire notes, because he is so fair, a number of occasions where several of the Post's writers, Woodward, Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, downplayed the incident.

Still, other writers at the Post did continue the Wilson fable, which Pincus began, and the paper waited two and one-half years to correct those lies, even after the SenateSelectCommission on Intelligence and the Butler and Robb-Silverman Commissions established that the claims made by Wilson were fabrications. But the Post piece insinuates that even if the prosecution was based on a false premise that is no excuse for lying or obstructing it, giving more weight to the actual claims in the indictment than they merit. In fact, this adds insult to injury. The charges in the indictment are as warped as the rest of the investigation and prosecution. Tom Maguire has some fun with this:

With Cooper, it is clear (to some) that after Karl Rove learned from Novak that a column about Wilson and Plame was imminent, Rove ruthlessly sat by the phone and waited for Matt Cooper to call him and ask about Niger.

Then when Cooper interviewed Libby the next day, Libby was so brutal and crafty that he never raised the subject of Ms. Plame, but offered something like I heard that, too when Cooper asked him about her.

But it's worse than that. In pretrial disovery the judge found that the documents in Time's possession showed that however Cooper testified, his testimony would be impeachable at trial. Let me clarify what this means. It means Time has had in its possession from the outset evidence that Cooper said one thing in the newsroom and another to the grand jury. What else can this mean?

As to Miller, Tom observes mordantly,

“And the Judy Miller leak? Libby was so intent on besmirching Wilson with the nepotism charge that he forgot to tell Judy that Ms. Plame had a role in arranging her husband’s trip to Niger.

And Special Counsel Fitzgerald still can't prove that Libby was aware of Ms. Plame's classified status back when he was conspiring to punish Joe by outing hs wife. (Too bad Libby didn't use his psychic powers to get the truth about Saddam's WMDs). Oh well, Fitzgerald only had two years to look into this. The truth will emerge any day now, or at least, within the next 24 business hours.

As to Miller, the Judge has held that documentation in the New York Times possession MAY impeach her testimony depending on how she testifies. After she testifies Libby will get to see and use it. In any event (even by her reports of her testimony) it was so unintelligible, the variations in her and Libby's testimony is only a factor in an obstruction charge, not an independent perjury or false tesimony charge.

I wonder if Armitage's calendar shows notations of conversations with Miller? If so, I wonder whether the prosecutor ignored those as he apparently did the notations respecting Woodward? Her notes, after all, showed she had Wilson's name and phone number and numerous references to VictoriaWilson/Plame /Flame? which she said were not references to her conversations with Libby, and by agreement with the Prosecutor those sources were not revealed.

This leaves, the Russert/Libby conversation .As I've detailed more fully:

Libby testified that on July 10 or 11, 2003 he had a conversation with Tim Russert of NBC. According to Libby's grand jury statement, Russert asked him if he (Libby) was aware that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and told Libby “all the reporters knew it.

According to the indictment Libby and Russert did not discuss this at all.

Since Woodward has come forward, he has said he might well have approached Libby about that time about Wilson and Plame, right after his conversation with Armitage on June 12, 2003. His notes indicate he intended to ask Libby about Wilson and Plame and may well have. He does not believe Libby responded to this because he has no notation that he did.

So, it is entirely possible, assuming Russert's testimony is credible, that he never discussed this at all with Libby, Libby may have confused his conversation with Russert at about the very same time with the one he had with Woodward.Woodward unsuccessfully tried twice in 2004 to get a waiver from Armitage so that he could tell the Prosecutor about his conversation with Armitage. He has said,

And my sworn testimony is that [this conversation with Libby is] possible. I simply don't recall it, and he certainly said nothing. But after long interviews and you have long lists of questions, you can't really say, "Gee, did I ask that or that." At least, two years later, I can't. Maybe the next day I might have been able to.

If Armitage had given Woodward the early waiver he sought, and Fitzgerald then asked Woodward about any conversations with Libby, this might have finally concluded the matter, for it is patent that Libby might well have believed that having had two conversations on the same day one with Cheney and one with Woodward that he confused who told him first. And absent any notes of the chance meeting in the hall with Woodward, he may have well confused the discussions with the two reporters,attributing the remark to Russert.

And Libby is the man charged with obstruction?

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=5819

Luke_Wilbur · September 26, 2006

Here is Senator Kerry's response on Richard Armitage.

“No matter who leaked what in the Plame scandal, this administration's handling of it was a disgrace. Don't take my word for it. Former CIA case officer Jim Marcinkowski argued the Valerie Plame leak hurt "the credibility of our case officers when they try to convince an overseas contact that their safety is of primary importance." Former CIA agent Larry Johnson, a registered Republican, said it "speaks volumes" that President Bush held no one accountable for the leak of an agent's identity. It seems like a whole lot of people pretty quickly forgot President George H.W. Bush's admonition that those who expose our agents are "the most insidious of traitors." Where's the accountability? What happened to the days when a president and administration would come clean with Americans and tell the truth?” – John Kerry

I left a message with Senator Hillary Clinton's Press Office. They responded that they have been swamped and will get back with me.

September 26, 2006

Two huge stories - the post-9/11 War plan in Afghanistan and the intelligence leading to the war in Iraq - and Armitage is smack dab in the middle of both. And his ‘take’ does not fit the memory of anyone else.

Curious, isn’t it?

Either he is right and everyone else is wrong or mistaken - or he indeed is a dissembler of the first degree.

I have dealt with Armitage on the POW issue in Vietnam and Laos. He is one of the most devious, duplicitous and dishonest people I have ever met.

September 26, 2006

I think its great Armitage was the one...that was just PAYBACK for they way the Whore House and Cheney destroyed Powell's reputation after his UN speach justifying invading Iraq turned out to be a whole lotta

bullcrap selectively culled together by Cheney and Scooter.

As usual...

ROFLMAO!

....Let the Purge Begin.

September 27, 2006

It's people like you that make it harder for Republicans like myself to try to reach out to your group.

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Two huge stories - the post-9/11 War plan in Afghanistan and the intelligence leading to the war in Iraq - and Armitage is smack dab in the middle of both. And his ‘take’ does not fit the memory of anyone else.

Curious, isn’t it?

Either he is right and everyone else is wrong or mistaken - or he indeed is a dissembler of the first degree.

I have dealt with Armitage on the POW issue in Vietnam and Laos. He is one of the most devious, duplicitous and dishonest people I have ever met.

BlingBling · October 19, 2006

This says it all folks.

http://www.nysun.com/pics/31062_1.php

Before every paragraph, at the top and bottom of every page and every attachment, are reminders as obvious as neon lights saying everything in the memo is secret and classified. Taken together, all those warnings - I counted 17 - are hard to forget.

Under the law, Armitage has no leeway to presume something is not classified "if he reason to believe" otherwise. His leaks are textbook violations of the Espionage Act . Under 18 United States Code Sec. 793(d):

Whoever, lawfully having possession of... any document... or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, ... to any person not entitled to receive it, ...Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

Armitage's roots have been thoroughly intertwined with the likes of CIA veteran Ted Shackley, Richard Secord, Heine Aderholt, Elliot Abrams, Dewey Clarridge, Edwin Wilson and Tom Clines. All of these men have been directly linked to CIA covert operations, the drug trade, the abandonment of U.S. prisoners of War after Vietnam and/or Iran-Contra. Armitage has also been routinely discussed in FTW as a Bush-era covert functionary who has been linked to covert operations, drug smuggling and the expansion of organized crime operations in Russia, Central Asia and the Far East.

Looks like the Republicans have no problem reaching over to destroy our freedom.

Looks like the Republican have no problems profiting from it either.

Can I get an AMEN!!!

Edited October 19, 2006 by BlingBling

January 17, 2007

Cheney’s Notes

As Cheney read Wilson’s article, a perturbed Vice President scribbled down questions he wanted pursued.

“Have they [CIA officials] done this sort of thing before?” Cheney wrote. “Send an Amb[assador] to answer a question? Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us? Or did his wife send him on a junket?”

Though Cheney did not write down Plame’s name, his questions indicated that he was aware that she worked for the CIA and was in a position (dealing with WMD issues) to have a hand in her husband’s assignment to check out the Niger reports.

“Those annotations support the proposition that publication of the Wilson Op-Ed acutely focused the attention of the Vice President and the defendant – his chief of staff [Libby] – on Mr. Wilson, on the assertions made in his article, and on responding to these assertions,” special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later wrote in a court filing.

That same eventful day – July 6, 2003 – Armitage called Carl W. Ford Jr., the assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, at home and asked him to send a copy of Grossman’s memo to Secretary of State Colin Powell, according to a former department official interviewed by the New York Times.

Since Powell was preparing to leave with Bush on a state visit to Africa, Ford forwarded Grossman’s memo to the White House for delivery to Powell, the former official told the Times. [NYT, July 16, 2005]

The next day, July 7, 2003, Bush left for Africa with Powell and other senior officials. But administration officials who stayed behind in Washington stepped up their efforts to counteract Wilson's Op-Ed.

On July 8, 2003, Libby gave Judith Miller more details about the Wilsons. Libby said Wilson’s wife worked at a CIA unit responsible for weapons intelligence and non-proliferation. Miller wrote down the words “Valerie Flame,” an apparent misspelling of Mrs. Wilson’s maiden name. [NYT, Oct. 16, 2005]

That same day, Novak had his interview with Armitage. Novak later recalled that Armitage divulged Plame’s identity toward the end of an hour-long interview.

Armitage “told me unequivocally that Mrs. Wilson worked in the CIA’s Counter-proliferation Division and that she had suggested her husband’s mission,” Novak wrote, adding that Armitage seemed to want the information published.

Armitage “noted that the story of Mrs. Wilson’s role fit the style of the old Evans-Novak column – implying to me that it [the column] continued reporting Washington inside information,” Novak wrote. [Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2006]

Feeling encouraged by Armitage to disclose the Plame connection to Wilson’s trip, Novak contacted Bush’s chief political adviser Karl Rove, who confirmed the story as Novak’s second source.

“I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me,” Novak later told Newsday, adding that Bush administration officials “thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.” [Newsday, July 22, 2003]

January 17, 2007

Armitage-Rove Connection

But these major news outlets had missed another key fact. They assumed that Armitage – as Colin Powell’s well-liked deputy – had no significant connection to the White House political machinations.

That was not the reality, according to a well-placed conservative source who spoke with me. An early supporter of George W. Bush who knew both Armitage and Rove, the source told me that Armitage and Rove were much closer than many Washington insiders knew.

Armitage and Rove developed a friendship and a close working relationship when Bush was lining up Powell to be his Secretary of State, the source said. In those negotiations, Armitage stood in for Powell and Rove represented Bush – and after that, the two men provided a back channel for sensitive information to pass between the White House and the State Department, the source said.

The significance of this detail is that it undermines the current “conventional wisdom” among Washington pundits that Armitage acted alone – and innocently – in July 2003 when he disclosed Plame’s covert identity to Novak, who then turned to Rove as a secondary source confirming the information from Armitage.

The revelation from the conservative source as well as Novak’s version of how he got the story – “I didn’t dig it out, it was given to me” – suggest that Armitage and Rove were collaborating on the anti-Wilson operation, not simply operating on parallel tracks without knowing what the other was doing.

The mainstream media’s assumption that Armitage “inadvertently” let Plame’s identity slip out almost as gossip also was challenged by my conservative source. When I asked him about that scenario, he laughed and said, “Armitage isn’t a gossip, but he is a leaker. There’s a difference.”

Also forgotten in the mainstream news coverage was the fact that in 1998, Armitage was one of the 18 signatories to a seminal letter from the neoconservative Project for the New American Century urging President Bill Clinton to oust Saddam Hussein by military force if necessary.

Armitage joined a host of neoconservative icons, such as Elliott Abrams, John Bolton, William Kristol, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz. Many of the signers, including Donald Rumsfeld, would become architects of Bush’s Iraq War policy five years later.

Nevertheless, the Armitage-as-innocent-gossip version of events was embraced by leading Washington pundits as the final proof that Rove and the White House had gotten a bum rap on the Plame affair.

In a Sept. 7, 2006, article, entitled “One Leak and a Flood of Silliness,” veteran Washington Post columnist David Broder wrote that publications which had made allegations about White House wrongdoing “owe Karl Rove an apology. And all of journalism needs to relearn the lesson: Can the conspiracy theories and stick to the facts.”

But David Broder, Fred Hiatt and the other see-no-evil pundits appear to be the ones ignoring facts in favor of a more pleasant “conventional wisdom” about well-meaning Bush aides who would never think about smearing some Iraq War critic.

As the Libby case finally gets underway, the trial will offer another opportunity for the major news media to climb back into that time machine and travel back to the happier era when everyone who mattered in Washington just knew that George W. Bush was always right and anyone who thought otherwise must be a “conspiracy theorist.”

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq, can be ordered at secrecyandprivilege.com. It's also available at Amazon.com, as is his 1999 book, Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & 'Project Truth.'

March 8, 2007

First, Valerie and Joseph Wilson would like to express their appreciation to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and the entire team of federal prosecutors for their professionalism and hard work. Their prosecution of a senior White House official illustrates that we are a nation of laws and that no man is above the law. The Wilsons respect the jury’s verdict and thank the jurors for their service. The entire Wilson team is pleased by today’s verdict and believes that justice has been served in this case.

The Wilsons will continue to pursue the civil case against Vice President Cheney, Mr. Libby, Mr. Rove and Mr. Armitage because it hinges on additional and different facts from those underlying the criminal case. The criminal trial was about whether or not Mr. Libby obstructed justice and committed perjury by lying to FBI agents and the grand jury about the fact that he had disclosed to reporters that Valerie Wilson worked for the CIA. The civil suit, on the other hand, hinges on whether or not the defendants violated the constitutional rights of Valerie and Joe Wilson by making those disclosures in a concerted effort to retaliate against Joe Wilson for revealing the falsity of the president’s rationale for the Iraq war.

Disturbing facts emerged from the criminal trial that are highly relevant to the civil case. For example, the American public learned details of how Vice President Cheney orchestrated the concerted White House effort to discredit and retaliate against Joe Wilson. Towards that end, the vice president enlisted the aid of other senior administration officials including former press secretary Ari Fleischer, vice presidential assistant Cathie Martin and presidential advisor Karl Rove. Testimony in the criminal case also confirmed that Mr. Libby spoke to numerous reporters in an effort to persuade at least one of them to publicly reveal Mrs. Wilson’s covert status.

Melanie Sloan, CREW’s executive director and counsel to the Wilsons, stated, “The civil case may provide the American public with its only opportunity to hear directly from Vice President Cheney, Mr. Libby, Mr. Rove and Mr. Armitage about what really took place behind the scenes after Joe Wilson exposed the truth about the administration’s justification for the Iraq war.”

March 8, 2007

Fred Hiatt’s Washington Post editorial page and George W. Bush’s presidency have a lot in common – most notably an arrogance of power so extreme that they believe their very words can alter reality.

With Bush, that record has been well established, from asserting that Saddam Hussein never let the U.N. inspectors in to hyping progress in the Iraq War. But editorial page editor Hiatt – in league with Post publisher Donald Graham – is not far behind.

After the conviction of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby for lying about and covering up the Bush administration's outing of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, the Post’s lead editorial continues to manufacture a false history of the case, again slamming Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

The real reality of the case is that in 2003, a hubristic administration sought to damage a critic, Wilson, who had offended Vice President Dick Cheney by accusing the White House of having "twisted" Iraq War intelligence. The anti-Wilson operation ended up exposing Wilson’s CIA wife. Then, recognizing the potential criminality – not to mention the political dangers – the White House launched a cover-up.

But that is not what the Post’s editorial page wants you to understand. It pins much of the blame for the scandal on Joe Wilson, whom the Post says “will be remembered as a blowhard.” The Post also distorts Wilson’s statements in a way that parrots long-discredited White House talking points.

“Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had ‘twisted,’ if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq,” the Post editorial states.

“He claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.

“A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false – and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife.

“When this fact, along with Ms. Plame’s name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson. …

“The [Libby] trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity – and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.” [Washington Post, March 7, 2007]

Editorial Lies

Astonishingly, everything in this Post attack on Wilson is either a gross distortion or a lie.

Contrary to the Post’s account, Wilson did debunk suspicions that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. He was dispatched by the CIA because of questions asked by Cheney. (Wilson never said Cheney personally sent him.) His information did reach the highest levels of the administration, explaining why the CIA kept deleting references to the Niger claims from speeches.

The full Senate Intelligence Committee did not conclude that “all [Wilson’s] claims were false.” That assertion was pulled from “additional views” submitted by three right-wing Republicans – Sens. Pat Roberts, Orrin Hatch and Christopher Bond – who carried the White House’s water in claiming that Wilson’s statements “had no basis in fact.”

As for the CIA selection of Wilson, the Post editorial-page editors know that Wilson was chosen by senior CIA officials in the office of counter-proliferation – not by Valerie Plame – and that Wilson was well qualified for the assignment since he had served in embassies in Iraq and Niger. He also took on this task pro bono, with the CIA only paying for his expenses.

The Post knows, too, that Valerie Plame indeed was a covert CIA officer, despite the endless lying on this topic by right-wing operatives. Plus, Wilson was right again when he alleged that the White House was punishing him for his Iraq War criticism.

Indeed, the Washington Post’s own reporters have described this reality in the news pages. For instance, on Sept. 28, 2003, a Post news article reported that a White House official disclosed that the administration had informed at least six reporters about Plame and did so “purely and simply out of revenge” against Wilson.

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald made the same point in a court filing in the Libby case, stating that the investigation had uncovered a “concerted” effort by the White House to “discredit, punish or seek revenge against” Wilson because of his criticism of the administration. Hiatt can look it up. It was on the Post's front page. [Washington Post, April 9, 2006]

As for the lack of evidence at trial about Plame’s covert status, the Post editorial leaves out the context: Libby’s defense attorneys argued against admission of that evidence on the grounds that it would prejudice jurors who might be enflamed by the idea of exposing a covert CIA officer and her spy network. In addition, Plame’s undercover work was not considered essential to a case narrowly constructed about Libby’s lying.

So, what can be said about a newspaper’s editorial board that willfully lies to its readers and slanders an American citizen, Joe Wilson, who took on a difficult assignment for his government at no pay and who later tried to blow the whistle on a White House misleading the public on an issue as important as war?

In a normal world, a newspaper would praise Wilson for his dedication and patriotism. But the Post editorial board can’t seem to get past its own gullibility in buying into the administration’s bogus WMD claims in 2002-03.

Rather than apologize for enabling Bush and Cheney to lead the nation into a disastrous war, Hiatt and Graham apparently have judged that they have the power to continue smearing Joe Wilson and other American citizens who had the foresight and courage to get the facts right.

BlingBling · March 17, 2007

Hearing Examines Exposure of Covert CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson's Identity

The Oversight Committee held a hearing on whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. At the hearing, the Committee received testimony from Ms. Wilson and other experts regarding the disclosure and internal White House security procedures for protecting her identity from disclosure and responding to the leak after it occurred.

In addition, the Committee sent a letter to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald commending him for his investigation and requesting a meeting to discuss testimony by Mr. Fitzgerald before the Committee.

Here is a Letter from Henry Waxman to Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald

The Honorable Patrick J. Fitzgerald

Special Counsel

Office of Special Counsel

Bond Federal Building

1400 New York Avenue NW

Ninth Floor

Washington, DC 20530

Dear Mr. Fitzgerald:

I commend you on your professional and thorough investigation into the disclosure of Valerie Plame'Wilson's identity as a covert CIA agent. It is apparent that you followed the facts where they led and served the interests ofjustice and the American people. By necessity, your investigation had a narrow legal focus: 'Were any federal criminal statutes violated by White House officials? Your investigation, however, has raised broader questions of national significance. I am writing to invite you to meet to discuss how the

Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which is the principal oversight committee in the U.S. House of Representatives, can become informed of your views about these broader issues.

The identity of undercover CIA operatives is supposed to be one of the most closely guarded national security secrets. There are a host of adminishative requirements designed to safeguard this type of information from disclosure. Yet the trial proceedings raise questions about whether senior White House officials, including the Vice President and Senior Advisor to the President Karl Rove, complied with the requirements governing the handling of classified information. They also raise questions about whether the White House took appropriate remedial action following the leak and whether the existing requirements are sufficient to protect against future leaks. Your perspective on these matters is important. After the verdict was announced yesterday, one juror expressed the view that former Chief of Staff to the Vice President Lewis "Scooter" Libby was only a"fall gtly." This juror's views encapsulated questions that many in Congress and the public have about whether the ultimate responsibility for the outing of Ms. Wilson rests with more senior officials in the White House. This is another area where you have a unique perspective.

I recognize that as a federal prosecutor, you are constrained by the rules of grand jury secrecy. But you undoubtedly recognize that Congress has a responsibility to examine the policy and accountability questions that your investigation has raised. As a result of your investigation, you have a singular understanding of the facts and their implications that bear directly on the issues before Congress. I respectfully request that you meet with me and the Committee's Ranking Member, Tom Davis, to discuss the possibility of testifying before the Committee and other means by which you can inform the Committee about your views and the insights you obtained during the course of your investigation. I look forward to the opportunity to speak with you.

Sincerely,

Henry A. Waxman

Chairman

cc: Tom Davis

Ranking Minority Member

Edited March 17, 2007 by BlingBling

Luke_Wilbur · March 17, 2007

Here is the transcript of Valerie Plame's testimony

REP. WAXMAN: (Sounds gavel.) The meeting of the committee will come to order.

Today the committee is holding a hearing to examine how the White House handles highly classified information. In June and July 2003, one of the nation's most carefully guarded secrets -- the identity of a covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame Wilson -- was repeatedly revealed by White House officials to members of the media. This was an extraordinarily serious breach of our national security. President George W. Bush's father, the former President Bush, said, and I quote, "I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who expose the names of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious of traitors," end quote.

Today we'll be asking three questions: One, how did such a serious violation of our national security occur?; two, did the White House take the appropriate investigative and disciplinary steps after the breach occurred?; and three, what changes in White House procedures are necessary to prevent future violations of national security from occurring?

For more than three years, a special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been investigating the leak for its criminal implications. By definition, Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation had an extremely narrow, criminal focus. It did not answer the broader policy questions raised by the release of Ms. Wilson's identity, nor did it seek to ascribe responsibility outside of the narrow confines of the criminal law.

As the chief investigative committee of the House of Representatives, our role is fundamentally different than Mr. Fitzgerald's. It's not our job to determine criminal culpability, but it is our job to understand what went wrong and to insist on accountability and to make recommendations for future -- to avoid future abuses. And we begin that process today.

This hearing is being conducted in open session. This is appropriate, but it is also challenging. Ms. Wilson was a covert employee of the CIA. We cannot discuss all of the details of her CIA employment in open session. I have met with -- personally with General Hayden, the head of the CIA, to discuss what I can and cannot say about Ms. Wilson's service. And I want to thank him for his cooperation and help in guiding us along these lines.

My staff has also worked with the agency to assure these remarks do not contain classified information. I have been advised by the CIA, and that even now -- after all that has happened -- I cannot disclose the full nature, scope and character of Ms. Wilson's service to our nation without causing serious damage to our national security interests. But General Hayden and the CIA have cleared these following comments for today's hearing.

During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was undercover. Her employment status with the CIA was classified information, prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958. At the time of the publication of Robert Novak's column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson's CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information. Ms. Wilson served in senior management positions at the CIA in which she oversaw the work for other CIA employees and she attained the level of GS-14 -- Step Six under the federal pay scale. Ms. Wilson worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA. Ms. Wilson served at various times overseas for the CIA.

Without discussing the specifics of Ms. Wilson's classified work, it is accurate to say that she worked on the prevention of the development and use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States. In her various positions at the CIA, Ms. Wilson faced significant risks to her personal safety and her life. She took on serious risks on behalf of our country. Ms. Wilson's work in many situations had consequence for the security of her colleagues, and maintaining her cover was critical to protecting the safety of both colleagues and others.

The disclosure of Ms. Wilson's employment with the CIA had several serious affects. First, it terminated her covert job opportunities with the CIA. Second, it placed her professional contacts at greater risk. And third, it undermined the trust and confidence with which future CIA employees and sources hold the United States. This disclosure of Ms. Wilson's classified employment status with the CIA was so detrimental that the CIA filed a crimes report with the Department of Justice.

As I mentioned, Ms. Wilson's work was so sensitive that even now she is still prohibited from discussing many details of her work in public because of the continuing risks to CIA officials and assets in the field, and to the CIA's ongoing work. Some have suggested that Ms. Wilson did not have a sensitive position with the CIA or a position of unusual risk. As a CIA employee, Ms. Wilson has taken a lifelong oath to protect classified information, even after her CIA employment has ended. As a result, she cannot respond to most of the statements made about her.

I want to make clear, however, that any characterization that minimizes the personal risk of Ms. Wilson that she accepted in her assignments is flatly wrong. There should be no confusion on this point. Ms. Wilson has provided great service to our nation and has fulfilled her obligation to protect classified information admirably and we're confident she will uphold it again today.

Well, that concludes the characterizations that the CIA is permitting us to make today. But to these comments, I want to add a personal note. For many in politics, praising the troops and those who defend our freedom is second nature. Sometimes it's done in sincerity and sometimes it's done with cynicism, but almost always we don't really know who the people are. We don't know they're out -- we don't know who those people are that are out there. They are our abstract heroes whether they're serving in the armed services or whether they're serving in the CIA.

Two weeks ago this committee met some real heroes face to face when we went to visit Walter Reed. Every member was appalled at what we learned. Our treatment of the troops didn't match our rhetoric. Thankfully, Mrs. Wilson hasn't suffered physical harm and faces much more favorable circumstances now than some of the troops -- some of the soldiers that we met last week. But she too has been one of those people fighting to protect our freedom. And she, like thousands of others, were serving our country bravely and anonymously. She didn't ask that her identity be revealed, but it was, repeatedly, and that was an inexcusable breach of the responsibilities our country owes to her. Once again, our actions did not match our rhetoric.

I want to thank Mrs. Wilson for the tremendous service she gave to our country and recognize the remarkable personal sacrifices she and countless others have made to protect our national security. You and your colleagues perform truly heroic work and what happened to you not only should never have happened, but we should all work to make sure it never happens again. Thank you very much.

I want to yield to Mr. Davis, the ranking member of our committee. And in doing so, I want to thank him for his cooperation in this hearing. This has been a complicated hearing.

It's much more complicated than most of our hearings. We've had to decide what we could and what we couldn't say, what we could and couldn't ask, whether we're going to be an open session of closed session, et cetera and I want to thank Mr. Davis for the tremendous cooperation he's given us, and to recognize him at this time.

REP. TOM DAVIS (R-VA): Thank you, Chairman Waxman. I want to first start by congratulating you on the passage of important reform legislation this week. We adopted bipartisan bills crafted in this committee to strengthen the Freedom of Information Act, disclose donors to presidential libraries, expand access to presidential records and to fortify whistle-blower protections.

Given those accomplishments, it's ironic that we, on Sunshine Week -- the annual observance of open government -- with a more partisan hearing on how to best keep secrets. Let me state at the outset that the outing of Mrs. Wilson's identity was wrong, and we have every right to look at this and investigate it. But I have to confess I'm not sure what we're trying to accomplish today, given all the limitations that the chairman has just described that have put on us by the CIA. Ostensibly called to examine White House procedures for handling and protecting classified information, the hearing's lead witness never worked at the White House. If she knows about security practices there, she can't say much about them in a public forum. We do know that she worked at the CIA. That now-well-known fact raises some very different questions about how critical but difficult it is to protect the identity of individuals with covert status. But again, those are questions we probably can't say much about in a public forum without violating the very security safeguards the majority claims to be worried about at the White House.

Under these circumstances, perhaps, a hypothetical case is the best way to describe the futility of trying to enforce the Intelligence Identity Protection Act in this decidedly non-judicial venue. Let's say, for example, a member of a committee staff is told to identify a CIA witness for a hearing on security practices. He or she calls the agency and asks to speak with Official A. Official A's not in, so the call's routed to Official B, who identifies him or herself by name and title and answers the staffer's question. Thinking Official B would be a fine witness, the staff member then calls the Congressional Research Service or a friend at another committee to find out more about Official B. But Official B happens to be a covert agent. In passing the name, title and CIA affiliation around, has the staff member violated the law against disclosure? Probably not, but you'd have to be looking through a pretty thick political prism to see an unintentional unauthorized disclosure in that context.

And that happened. In the case of Mrs. Wilson, the majority stresses the fact the disclosure of her status triggered a crimes report by the CIA and the Justice Department. Allegations against White House officials and reporters were thoroughly vetted. But after spending six months and millions of dollars, the Special Council charged no one with the violations of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. The lack of prosecution under the act shows those disclosures probably occurred in a similarly non-intentional context, lacking the requisite knowledge of covert status or the intention to disclose that status without authorization. No process can be adopted to protect classified information that no one knows is classified, just as no one can be prosecuted for unauthorized disclosure of information that no one ever said was protected.

So this looks to me more like a CIA problem than a White House problem. If the agency doesn't take sufficient precautions to protect the identity of those who engaged in covert work, no one else can do it for them. The same law meant to protect secret identities also requires an annual report to Congress on the steps taken to protect the highly sensitive information. But we're told few, if any, such reports exist from the CIA. Who knows what information needs to be protected and how they are told? Is there a list officials can check against? Do CIA briefers know when material given to executive branch officials references a covert agent, or are they cautioned not to repeat the name? How is it made known and to whom when the five-year protection period for a formerly covert agent has elapsed? Those are the questions that need to be asked about the safeguards on classified information. But we won't hear from the CIA today because this is an open forum.

Given all of that, I suspect we're going to probably waste some time talking about things we can't talk about, and that's unfortunate. Unfortunate an individual, possibly still under covert status, was publicly identified. Unfortunate executive branch officials got anywhere near this media maelstrom rather than focus on more serious problems. That's a disappointment to me. And unfortunate that this has become so politicized. On this side, we're not here to defend or attack anyone. In an open session, we hope to shed some sunshine on the workings of government. I have to say again I'm not sure that's going to happen today, but I thank our witnesses for trying.

Thank you.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Davis.

Our first witness is Ms. Valerie Plame Wilson. She's a former covert CIA employee whose service to this country included work involving the prevention of the development and use of weapons of mass destruction against our nation. Her employment status was publicly disclosed in July 2003, effectively terminating her covert job opportunities within the CIA.

(The witness is sworn in.)

Before we begin the questioning period, I want to underscore to members of the committee that while it is important that Ms. Wilson have the opportunity to provide testimony that will help us understand the significance of the disclosure of her CIA employment status, we should not be seeking classified information from Ms. Wilson in this forum and we need to respect that she may, in some cases, have to decline to respond on the grounds that doing so would risk disclosure of sensitive information.

Ms. Wilson, we're pleased to have you here. Thank you very much for coming to our committee today, and I want to recognize you for an opening statement. There's a button on the base of the mike. Be sure to press it in and pull it closely enough to you so you can be heard.

MS. PLAME WILSON: Here we go.

REP. WAXMAN: Pull it a little closer.

MS. PLAME WILSON: Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee.

My name is Valerie Plame Wilson, and I am honored to have been invited to testify under oath before the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on the critical issue of safeguarding classified information. I'm grateful for this opportunity to set the record straight.

I served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14th, 2003, after a leak by administration officials. Today I can tell this committee even more.

In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified. I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policy makers on Iraq's presumed weapons of mass destruction program. While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence. I loved my career because I love my country. I was proud of the serious responsibilities entrusted to me as a CIA covert operations officer, and I was dedicated to this work.

It was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit that everyone knew where I worked. But all of my efforts on behalf of the national security of the United States, all of my training, all of the value of my years of service were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly. In the course of the trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, I was shocked by the evidence that emerged. My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department. All of them understood that I worked for the CIA, and having signed oaths to protect national security secrets, they should have been diligent in protecting me and every CIA officer.

The CIA goes to great lengths to protect all of its employees, providing at significant taxpayers' expense painstakingly devised and creative covers for its most sensitive staffers. The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave, but I can't provide details beyond that in this public hearing. But the concept is obvious.

Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence. Lives are literally at stake.

Every single one of my former CIA colleagues -- from my fellow covert officers, to analysts, to technology operations officers, to even the secretaries -- understand the vulnerabilities of our officers, and recognize that the travesty of what happened to me could happen to them.

We in the CIA always know that we might be exposed and threatened by foreign enemies. It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover. Furthermore, testimony in the criminal trial of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, who has now been convicted of serious crimes, indicates that my exposure arose from purely political motives.

Within the CIA, it is essential that all intelligence be evaluated on the basis of its merits and actual credibility. National security depends upon it. The tradecraft of intelligence is not a product of speculation. I feel passionately, as an intelligence professional, about the creeping, insidious politicizing of our intelligence process. All intelligence professionals are dedicated to the idea that they would rather be fired on the spot than distort the facts to fit a political view -- any political view or any ideology.

As our intelligence agencies go through reorganizations and experience the painful aspects of change, and our country faces profound challenges, injecting partisanship or ideology into the equation makes effective and accurate intelligence that much more difficult to develop. Politics and ideology must be stripped completely from our intelligence services or the consequences will be even more severe than they have been, and our country placed in even greater danger.

It is imperative for any president to be able to make decisions based on intelligence that is unbiased. The Libby trial and the events leading to the Iraq war highlight the urgent need to restore the highest professional standards of intelligence collection and analysis, and the protection of our officers and operations. The Congress has a constitutional duty to defend our national security, and that includes safeguarding our intelligence.

That is why I'm grateful for this opportunity to appear before this committee today and to assist in its important work. Thank you. And I welcome any questions.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you very much Ms. Wilson. We'll now proceed with 10 minutes on each side, managed by the chair and the ranking member of the committee. For our first round, I want to yield five minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky, Mr. Yarmuth, to begin the questioning.

REP. JOHN YARMUTH (D-KY): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for being here today, Mrs. Wilson. Our country owes you a great debt of gratitude for your service, and I think you're continuing that service today by appearing.

I'd like to start by asking you about July 14, 2003, the day that Robert Novak wrote the column in the Chicago Sun Times identifying you as an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Quote -- but before I get to that, I want to ask you about the day before, July 13th, my understanding is that on that date, you were covert. Is that correct?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I was a covert officer, correct.

REP. YARMUTH: Without destroying - or disclosing classified information, what does covert mean?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the CIA is taking affirmative steps to ensure that there is no links between the operations officer and the Central Intelligence Agency -- I mean, that's simple.

REP. YARMUTH: And you -- as you said -- and my understanding is that your work was classified for purposes of many of the regulations of the laws that we're talking about, your work was classified on that day, July 13th?

MS. PLAME WILSON: That's correct.

REP. YARMUTH: Did the July 14th column destroy your covert position and your classified status?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes it did. I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly trained. I could no longer travel overseas or do the work for which -- my career, which I loved. It was done.

REP. YARMUTH: And my -- this may be a simplistic question, but the information that was disclosed in Robert Novak's column -- is it correct to say that that is information that you would not have disclosed yourself?

MS. PLAME WILSON: That is correct.

REP. YARMUTH: How did you react when you learned that your identity had been disclosed?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I found out very early in the morning when my husband came in and dropped the newspaper on the bed and said, "He did it." And I quickly turned and read the article and I felt like I had been hit in the gut. I -- it was over in an instant, and I immediately thought of my family's safety, the agents, the networks that I had worked with -- and everything goes through your mind in an instant.

REP. YARMUTH: What effect did the leak have on you professionally?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Professionally? Well, I could no longer do the work which I had been trained to do. There was -- after that, there was no way that you can serve overseas in a covert capacity, and so that career path was terminated.

REP. YARMUTH: Did the leak make you feel that your entire career had been thrown out the window, essentially -- to have been wasted at all?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Not wasted, but certainly terminated prematurely.

REP. YARMUTH: You've talked a little bit about your concern about the effect of the leak on your professional contacts. Did you have any contact with those people who were -- expressed their concern about the effect on their professional career?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No, I did not. But I do know the Agency did a damage assessment. They did not share it with me, but I know that certainly puts the people and the contacts I had all in jeopardy, even if they were completely innocent in nature.

REP. YARMUTH: And what effect do you think it had at the broadest level -- I'm talking about, you know, for future CIA employees and future sources?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I think it was -- it had a very negative effect. If our government cannot even protect my identity, future foreign agents who might consider working with the Central Intelligence Agency in providing needed intelligence would think twice, "Well, they can't even protect one of their own, how are they going to protect me?" As well as, the Agency is working very hard to attract highly talented young people into its ranks because we do have profound challenges facing our country today. And I can't think that that helped those efforts.

REP. YARMUTH: I can't see the clock, Mr. Chairman, I don't know whether my time is expired or not.

REP. WAXMAN: You have nine seconds.

REP. YARMUTH: Nine seconds. (Laughter.) Well, I'll yield back the balance of my seconds, Mr. Chairman, thank you. Thank you, Mrs. Wilson.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you, Mr. Yarmuth. The chair would now like to yield time to Mr. Hodes, the gentleman from New Hampshire.

REP. PAUL HODES (D-N.H.): Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mrs. Wilson, thank you for coming today.

What happened to you is deadly serious. You were the victim of a national security breach. If this was a law enforcement context, something I'm familiar with, it would be equivalent to disclosing the identity of an undercover police officer who has put his life on the line, and the lives of all those who help that officer.

Our job on this committee is to find out how the breach happened. Now, I'd like to show you a chart that we prepared on the committee -- you'll see it up on the screens, and we're putting it up here on paper. That chart is a graphic depiction of all the ways that your classified CIA employment was disclosed to White House officials and then to the press.

Every colored block on that chart is an individual, and every arrow shows a disclosure of classified information. That classified information was your CIA employment status. And the arrows are based on the testimony in Mr. Libby's criminal case and press reports. This chart shows over 20 different disclosures about your employment. Let me ask you, looking at this chart, are you surprised that so many people had access to the classified information about your CIA employment?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, I am, Congressman. And I'm also surprised at how carelessly they used it.

REP. HODES: What was your expectation about how the government would handle the classified information about your work and status?

MS. PLAME WILSON: My expectation, Congressman, was that as of all CIA operations officers -- every officer serving undercover -- that senior government officials would protect our identity. We all take oaths to protect classified information and national security. So --

REP. HODES: Prior to the time that you learned that your status had been disclosed, you never authorized anyone to disclose your status, did you?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Absolutely not.

REP. HODES: And no one ever approached you and asked for permission to disclose any classified information about you.

MS. PLAME WILSON: No.

REP. HODES: Vice President Cheney never approached you and asked if he had your permission to disclose your status, did he?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No.

REP. HODES: Karl Rove never approached you and asked whether he had your permission to disclose your status, did he?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No.

REP. HODES: Now, this isn't even a complete picture because, as you can see on this chart, we don't know, for example, who told Karl Rove your status. There's a black box up there, and it says unknown. And there are two arrows from that, one pointing to Vice President Cheney and one pointing to Karl Rove. So, that's an unanswered question right now.

Now, I can imagine that you followed the proceedings in the press pretty closely over the past few years, have you not?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes.

REP. HODES: Do you have any theories about who told Karl Rove about your status?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No, I do not. There was much evidence introduced in the Libby trial that provides quite a bit, but I have no -- it would just be guesses.

REP. HODES: Well, that's what this committee's investigation is all about, following all the links in the chain from their sources to their destination. And it's been reported that Mr. Rove had a discussion with Chris Matthews about you, and the report was that Mr. Rove told Mr. Matthews, "Valerie Plame is fair game." Do you recall that?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, I do.

REP. HODES: I'd like to ask you to forget for a moment that he was talking about you. Imagine that he was talking about another undercover agent working on sensitive issues. And that undercover agent's life was on the line. Do you have a reaction to that?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Absolutely. This happened to me, but I like to think I would feel just as passionately had it happened to any of my former colleagues of the CIA.

REP. HODES: One final question -- is there any circumstance that you can think of that would justify leaking the name of an undercover agent?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No, Congressman.

REP. HODES: Thank you very much. I yield back.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you, Mr. Hodes.

Before we yield our time, we have a long list of people that seem to have either intentionally or inadvertently passed on your status and your name as a CIA agent, and that included the president, vice president, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer just to name a few. Did any of those people -- the president, the vice president, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Ari Fleischer -- did any of them ever call you and apologize to you?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No, Chairman.

REP. WAXMAN: None of them ever called you to express regrets.

MS. PLAME WILSON: No.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you.

Mr. Davis.

REP. DAVIS: Thank you.

Thank you, Mrs. Plame.

It's clear that the administration officials knew you worked for the CIA, but did they know that your status was that of a covert agent?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I have no way of knowing, but I can say I worked for the Counterproliferation Division of the Directorate of Operations. And while not all, many of the employees of that division are, in fact, in covert status.

REP. DAVIS: But you don't -- I mean, I think one of the issues here was not that you worked for the CIA, because that was obviously why they'd know you in the administration, but for the crime to have been committed, I understand they had to have known that you were covert. And you don't have any direct linkage that they knew that you were covert at that point.

MS. PLAME WILSON: Again, Congressman, I'm not a lawyer, but as I said at my --

REP. DAVIS: You don't have any direct knowledge that --

MS. PLAME WILSON: No.

REP. DAVIS: Okay.

MS. PLAME WILSON: But as I said in my opening comments, the fact that they knew that I worked for the CIA, that alone should have increased their level of diligence.

REP. DAVIS: I think -- look, we all agree that everybody needs to protect national security and protect the identities of undercover and covert agents. But should the CIA have done more to adequately protect people as well and say these are covert agents, shouldn't be outed? Does the CIA have a responsibility here as well?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I think that Congress might think about reviewing the Intelligence Identities Protection Act and seeing what went wrong and where it needs to be perhaps rewritten.

REP. DAVIS: I mean, it looked -- they're supposed to -- the CIA is supposed to report to Congress each year on the steps taken to protect this highly sensitive information. And I'm told few, if any, reports are even filed. So, I think there's a responsibility from the CIA. And I think what's missing, and I think -- at least from a criminal perspective -- not from a policy, but from a criminal perspective -- that the special prosecutor in this case looked at that and found that the people who may have been saying this didn't know that you were covert. And you don't have any evidence to the contrary.

MS. PLAME WILSON: That, I think, is a question better put to the special prosecutor, Congressman.

REP. DAVIS: Shouldn't the CIA have made sure that anyone who knew your name and your work be told of your status? Would that have been helpful in this case? That would have made it very clear if anybody leaked it at that point they were violating the law, at least.

MS. PLAME WILSON: The CIA does go to great lengths to create and protect all kinds of covers for its officers. There's a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot of energy that goes into that. And the onus also, the burden, falls on the officer himself or herself to live that cover, but it's not a perfect world.

REP. DAVIS: The Intelligence Identities Protection Act makes it a crime to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert agent, which has a specific definition under the act. Did anyone ever tell you that you were so designated?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I'm not a lawyer.

REP. DAVIS: That's why I asked if they told you. I'm not asking for your interpretation.

MS. PLAME WILSON: No, no. But I was covert. I did travel overseas on secret missions within the last five years.

REP. DAVIS: I'm not arguing with that. What I'm asking is, for purposes of the act -- and maybe this just never occurred to you or anybody else at the time -- but did anybody say that you were so designated under the act? Or was this just after it came to fact?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No, no one told me that. And that --

REP. DAVIS: How about after the disclosure?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Pardon me?

REP. DAVIS: How about after the disclosure, did anyone then say gee, you were designated under the act, this should not have happened? Did anybody in the CIA tell you at that point?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No.

REP. DAVIS: Okay. Since the disclosure of your identity, have you been offered other positions within the CIA?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes. I went on to other jobs with commensurate responsibility.

REP. DAVIS: No demotion or anything.

MS. PLAME WILSON: Pardon me?

REP. DAVIS: No, you didn't experience any demotion.

MS. PLAME WILSON: No.

REP. DAVIS: Did anyone at the CIA tell you your career path was damaged by the disclosure?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes.

REP. DAVIS: Now, you were a senior manager, GS-14 Step 6, eligible for GS-15 at the time. Did anyone ever tell you that you could not advance in a normal career path after this exposure?

MS. PLAME WILSON: It was very clear that I could not advance as a covert operations officer.

REP. DAVIS: And would that then -- your upward career path in terms of getting a GS-15 and then was impaired in your opinion?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No, but that was the career for which I had been trained, which I wanted to do.

My husband and I, after our children were born, discussed going overseas again when they were a little bit older. And all of that came to abrupt end, obviously.

REP. DAVIS: Do you know if any of the CIA colleagues -- like Robert Grenier, who testified at the Libby trial that he told administration officials that you were involved in sending your husband to Niger -- do you know if he ever told any of these officials you were undercover?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I have no idea, other than what he testified.

REP. DAVIS: Okay.

When you introduced yourself and your husband to the group of IC analysts at a February 19th, 2002 meeting at CIA headquarters, did you tell anybody present then you were undercover?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No, I did not. I was in CIA headquarters; I introduced them and left the meeting, Congressman.

REP. DAVIS: Okay.

Would they have known that you were -- would they have had any reason to know you were undercover, or --

MS. PLAME WILSON: I believe that they would have assumed as such.

REP. DAVIS: We're limited in what we can ask, so we're trying to stay within the confines that the CIA has --

MS. PLAME WILSON: I understand.

(Pause.)

REP. DAVIS: Let me just ask, try to put some -- some of the press speculation to rest and give you an opportunity to answer. In January 2004, Vanity Fair published an article -- not always known for great accuracy -- touching on your role in the Niger uranium affair. It said -- this was what they said -- "In early May, Wilson and Plame attended a conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee at which Wilson spoke about Iraq. One of the other panelists was New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Over breakfast the next morning with Kristof and his wife, Wilson told about his trip to Niger and said Kristof could write about it but not name him." Is that account accurate?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I think it is. I had nothing -- I was not speaking to Mr. Kristof. And I think my husband did say that he had undertaken this trip, but not to be named as a source.

REP. DAVIS: Okay.

Just to be clear, when your -- the article says that -- says your husband "met for breakfast with Kristof and his wife." Just to be clear, were you at the breakfast?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Briefly, yes, Congressman.

REP. DAVIS: Okay.

On June 13th, Kristof wrote a column about the Niger uranium matter. He wrote that he was piecing the story together from two people directly involved and three others who were briefed on it. Do you know if you were one of those people he was referring to?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I can't imagine that I would be. I did not speak to him about it.

REP. DAVIS: Okay.

What about your husband? Would he have been one of the sources, probably?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I think he was speaking to Mr. Kristof at that point.

REP. DAVIS: Okay.

Was any of that information classified, to your knowledge?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Not that I'm aware of.

REP. DAVIS: I yield back at this point.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you very much.

Mr. Cummings, for five minutes.

REP. ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS (D-MD): Thank you very much.

Ms. Wilson, first of all, thank you for your service.

Ms. Wilson, even today your work for the CIA is so highly classified that we're not permitted to discuss the details, but we can clarify one crucial point: whether you worked undercover for the CIA. You said that your position was covert, but I've heard others say that you were not covert. In fact, one of the witnesses who will testify a little bit later, Victoria Toensing, is making that same argument. In an op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post on February 18th, she says it quite bluntly. She says, quote, "Plame was not covert. She worked at CIA headquarters and had not been stationed abroad within five years." End of quote. I know there are restrictions on what you can say today, but is Ms. Toensing's statement correct?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Congressman, thank you for the opportunity. I know I'm here under oath and I'm here to say that I was a covert officer of the Central Intelligence Agency. Just like a general is a general whether he is in the field in Iraq or Afghanistan, when he comes back to the Pentagon, he's still a general. In the same way, covert operations officers who are serving in the field, when they rotate back for a temporary assignment in Washington, they, too, are still covert.

REP. CUMMINGS: Is it possible that Ms. Toensing had more information than you do about your work or had access to secret documents that you don't?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I would find that highly unlikely, Congressman, because much of that information about my career is still classified.

REP. CUMMINGS: On Wednesday night, I know that Mr. Waxman, our chair, and Congressman Reyes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, spoke personally with General Hayden, the head of the CIA. And Chairman Waxman told me that General Hayden said clearly and directly, quote, "Ms. Wilson was covert," end of quote. There was no doubt about it. And by the way, the CIA has authorized us to be able to say that.

In addition, I understand that Chairman Waxman sent his opening statement over to the CIA to be cleared and to make sure that it was accurate. In it he said, quote, "Ms. Wilson was a covert employee of the CIA," end of quote. Quote, "Ms. Wilson was undercover," end of quote. The CIA cleared these statements. I emphasize all of this because I know that there are people who are still trying to suggest that -- that what seems absolutely clear isn't really true, and that you weren't covert. And I think one of the things we need to do in this hearing is make sure there isn't any ambiguity on this point.

Just three more questions. Do you hold this covert status at the time of the leak -- did you -- the covert status at the time of the leak?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, I did, Congressman. Yes.

REP. CUMMINGS: Number two, the Identities Protection Act refers to travel outside the United States within the last five years. Let me ask you this question -- again, we don't want classified information, dates, locations or any other details -- during the past five years, Ms. Plame, from today, did you conduct secret missions overseas?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, I did, Congressman.

REP. CUMMINGS: Finally, so as to be clear for the record, you were a covert CIA employee and within the past five years from today you went on secret missions outside the United States, is that correct?

MS. PLAME WILSON: That is correct, Congressman.

REP. CUMMINGS: I want to thank you, and I hope this committee now has cleared up the issue of covert -- of whether Ms. Plame was a covert agent, and I yield back.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Cummings.

Dr. Westmoreland.

REP. LYNN A. WESTMORELAND (R-GA): Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

And I'm glad Mr. Cummings asked those questions because I was going to ask them too.

I've -- Ms. Wilson, I want to thank you for your service to our country. If I seem a little nervous, I've never questioned a spy before, and so I was going to ask you --

MS. PLAME WILSON: I've never testified -- (laughter) -- before.

REP. WESTMORELAND: I'm sorry?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I've never testified under oath before.

REP. WESTMORELAND: And I was here during the steroid hearings, too, and I don't think any of those baseball stars got this kind of media attention that you're getting today.

But when the chairman had his opening statements, he used three different terms -- "covert," "undercover" and "classified." Were you one of those in particular, or all of them? Or -- three different terms to categorize, I guess, your service to the country.

MS. PLAME WILSON: For those of us that were undercover in the CIA, we tended to use "covert" or "undercover" interchangeably. I'm not -- we typically would not say of ourselves we were in a "classified" position. You're kind of undercover or overt employees.

REP. WESTMORELAND: Now, did you just discuss this among yourself, if you were classified or covert? Because I'm assuming that you couldn't discuss it with anybody outside the agency, so was it kind of like you all sat around in a back room and said, "I'm covert," or "I'm classified," or if I was going to tell somebody what I would tell somebody?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, within your colleagues, either in the field or at headquarters here in Washington, if you were working on a project, sometimes you did need to know, "Are you undercover or are you overt? Let me know so I --" and then you know how to treat them accordingly in the sense of how careful to be in your association and so forth.

REP. WESTMORELAND: Right. So your fellow CIA employees would have known that you were covert or classified or whatever?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.

REP. WESTMORELAND: Did you ever tell anyone that you worked for the CIA? Or was that commonly known that you worked for the CIA and -- or did you tell them that you were something else, or --

MS. PLAME WILSON: No.

Congressman, I could count on one hand the number of people who knew where my true employer was the day that I was -- my name was -- and true affiliation was exposed in July 2003.

REP. WESTMORELAND: Okay. And I'm assuming one of those was your husband.

MS. PLAME WILSON: That's -- yes. (Laughter.) He did know.

REP. WESTMORELAND: Did he know if you were covert or classified or --

MS. PLAME WILSON: He did understand. As a former ambassador and having held security clearances and worked with many agency employees, he understood that world to a certain point. And he certainly understood that I was undercover, and he protected that diligently.

REP. WESTMORELAND: Okay. If -- and this is the -- one last -- we're going to have another round of questions, Mr. Waxman, you think, or --

REP. WAXMAN: We do have some other panels. I guess if members wish them, we'll accommodate them.

REP. WESTMORELAND: Okay. I mean, do we have --

REP. WAXMAN: You have a minute and 48 seconds.

REP. WESTMORELAND: Okay. Ms. Plame, on October the 5th, 2003, while being interviewed on "Meet the Press," your husband stated that, "my wife will not allow ourselves to be photographed." In response to the picture you took for Vanity Fair, your husband was quoted in The Washington Post, "the pictures should not be able to identify her and are not supposed to. She is still employed by the CIA and has obligations to her employer. Was -- so I guess this was after the incident where everybody knew that you worked for the CIA that this was done?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, Congressman. At the time that picture came out, I was -- my covert status was long gone. And I will say this: having lived most of my life very much under the radar, my learning curve was steep, and it was more trouble than it was worth.

REP. WESTMORELAND: But when the photograph was actually taken in Vanity Fair, nobody -- that was not -- that was not public knowledge? I mean, all of this was not out then? Or --

MS. PLAME WILSON: Oh -- Congressman, the picture came out in late 2003. My covert status was blown.

REP. WESTMORELAND: Okay. If your status was either covert or classified, and if you, in fact, meet with Senate Democratic Policy Committee, Mr. Kristoff, did you view it as part of your covert or classified work to meet with political groups and a columnist for The New York Times to discuss matters within your purview at the CIA? My -- you know, I don't know if you saw the list of things that we could or could not ask you. Did this Democratic Policy Committee and the columnist for The New York Times have these same rules that they could or could not ask you? Or did you volunteer other information?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Congressman, I attended that conference simply as a spouse of my husband who was invited to speak. He had been invited to speak because he had quite a bit of experience on Iraq, having served the first President Bush as the charge d'affair at our embassy in Baghdad during the first Gulf War, and negotiated the release of the hostages with Saddam Hussein and so forth.

And he was asked to attend in that capacity. I had no discussions other than purely social in nature.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you, Mr. Westmoreland. Time has expired. Mr. Kucinich.

REP. DENIIS KUCINICH (D-OH): Thank you very much, Ms. Wilson, and thank you for your service to our country. Briefly, I want to pick up on my colleague, Mr. Hodes' questions. When you look at this chart, and you see the extraordinary efforts that were made to disclose your identity, when -- and most of this information came out of the Libby trial. What were you thinking when you saw the effort, this wasn't just a leak, was it? I mean, in your estimation. Was this just a simple leak of an ID?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Quite a bit of evidence came out in the course of the Libby trial, and I really was deeply dismayed. Because it just showed a recklessness and a political path that is very, very unfortunate.

REP. KUCINICH: In your judgment, when you look at the chart, does it show a fairly organized approach to disclose your identity?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Well, it's certainly wide-reaching.

REP. KUCINICH: Because Mr. Chairman, it's -- do leaks occur of agents' identity -- does it -- it does happen?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I'm sorry, Congressman.

REP. KUCINICH: Is it -- have there been in the past leaks of an agent's identity?

MS. PLAME WILSON: None that I'm aware of by their very own government.

REP. KUCINICH: And you have never, in your experience as an agent, seen this kind of a coordinated effort by one's own government, in this case our government, to disclose the identity of an agent.

MS. PLAME WILSON: No, Congressman, I'm not aware of any.

REP. KUCINICH: What -- to what extent does the agency go to, to protect the identities of its agents?

MS. PLAME WILSON: It's significant effort. And again, taxpayers' money, particularly in this day and age of Google and Internet, the efforts have to be even more vigilant and evermore creative, because it is extremely easy to find out a lot of information about someone if you really want to.

So, we are -- the CIA constantly needs to be one step ahead to protect their operations officers.

REP. KUCINICH: So, when there's an extraordinary effort made to disclose the identity of an agent, it is a -- it's destructive of the agency and it's destructive of the taxpayers' investment in the Central Intelligence Agency, is that not correct?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Absolutely.

REP. KUCINICH: And, one of the things that keeps running through my mind is why. Why did this happen to you? Was it an unintentional mistake? Or is it part of a larger pattern? In recent weeks, we've learned that U.S. attorneys in all parts of the country were fired, despite exemplary service. And several of these attorneys testified to Congress that they were being pressured to pursue cases against Democratic officials. Others believe that they were fired because they were pursuing cases against Republican officials.

Have you followed this issue?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes I have, Congressman.

REP. KUCINICH: And when I think about what happened to these attorneys, I can't help but think of your case, because these could be isolated instances, but they seem to be part of a larger pattern. Do you know what happened, for example, to the former Treasury Secretary, Mr. O'Neill, when he wrote his book, "The Price of Loyalty?"

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, I'm aware of that.

REP. KUCINICH: And after Secretary O'Neill that the Bush administration was planning to overthrow Saddam Hussein in a much earlier timeframe than anyone knew, Secretary O'Neill was falsely accused of leaking classified information. Did you know that Secretary O'Neill was investigated by the Treasury Department for a groundless accusation?

MS. PLAME WILSON: I believe I've read that, yes, sir.

REP. KUCINICH: Now, in another instance, General Shinseki warned that the United States would need several hundred thousand troops in Iraq. Ms. Wilson, do you remember what happened to General Shinseki?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, I do, Congressman.

REP. KUCINICH: Well, he was dismissed.

MS. PLAME WILSON: He was asked --

REP. KUCINICH: I'm also reminded of the case of Richard Foster, the government's chief Medicare actuary. He was actually told he'd be fired if he told Congress the truth about how much the administration's proposed drug benefit would cost. Were you aware of that, Ms. Wilson?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, I was.

REP. KUCINICH: Now, again, these could all be isolated instances, but they seem to be part of a larger pattern. And I'm struck by what your husband, Joe Wilson, was quoted as saying in the book, "Hubris." Now according to the book, here's a quote, "Joe Wilson was upset, and said he regarded the leak as a warning to others. Stories like this are not intended to intimate me, since I've already told my story. But it's pretty clearly intended to intimidate others who might come forward. You need only look at the stories of intelligent analysts who say they've been pressured. They may have kids in college. They may be vulnerable to these types of smears."

Is this what you think was going on here?

MS. PLAME WILSON: When you look at -- and I will speak only to the realm of intelligence and you have the politicizing of that. Certainly Vice President Cheney's unprecedented number of visits to CIA headquarters in the run up to the war might be one example.

REP. KUCINICH: That's exactly the point. What happens when someone's working at the agency level that people are working at when the vice president visits? The vice president of the United States comes over and starts looking over their shoulder. Is that intimidating?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, it is.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you, Mr. Kucinich. Your time has expired.

REP. KUCINICH: Thank you very much.

REP. WAXMAN: Ms. Watson.

REP. DIANE WATSON (D-CA): Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for this hearing. It shows our determination to bring out in the open the malfeasance in office.

I am an ambassador. I've gone through the training. I've been blindfolded, put on a C-130, taken to a site, taken into a room with my colleagues -- just like "Galactica 3000" -- handed a red folder highly classified with a general standing over my shoulder. "Read it and give it back to me." Any information that came out of that folder and was made public had to come from two sources: The general or myself. I was the only woman in the room. The men, if their wives asked them, said, "I can tell you, but I have to kill you." So I'm very sensitive to how it works and I am furious that your classified information was -- and Robert Novak of all people!

Now, I'm going to ask you some questions. They might appear repetitive, but you're sworn and I want this for the record. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that at the time of Robert Novak's July 14th, 2003 column, your employment status was classified and that your affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community. The CIA has confirmed to this committee that at the time of Mr. Novak's article, your employment status was covert and that information was classified. But some people are still trying to minimize your service by suggesting you really weren't at risk and that your position was not classified because you worked at a desk job at the CIA headquarters at Langley, Virginia.

Let me give you an actual example: Representative Roy Blunt said on the television program "Face the Nation," "You know, this was a job that the ambassador's wife had that she went to every day. It was a desk job. I think many people in Washington understood that her employment was at the CIA and she went to that office every day."

Mrs. Wilson, is it fair to say that, based on your service for our government, you are well versed in the rules governing the handling of classified information?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Absolutely, Congresswoman. And I'd just like to add that when an operations officer -- whether they are posted in the field or back at headquarters -- we are given training to understand surveillance detection training so that we understand very carefully that we are not being followed and that we feel very comfortable that our status can be protected.

REP. WATSON: That is the reason why I started off with my own scenario.

Is it your understanding that the executive order governing the safeguarding of classified information prohibits the disclosure of classified information to persons who are not authorized to receive this information?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes.

REP. WATSON: Yes is the answer?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes. Yes, Congresswoman.

REP. WATSON: And is it your understanding that when an employee at the CIA is undercover, that individual's employment status at the CIA is considered classified information?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Yes, it is.

REP. WATSON: Are you aware of any "desk job" exception to the rules prohibiting the release of classified information on the employment status of a CIA employee?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No, Congresswoman.

REP. WATSON: All right. So I think your testimony underscores that efforts to minimize the significance of the disclosure of your employment status are in effect minimizing the importance of the classified information -- rules designed to protect our national security. And I am infuriated to continue to hear, "well, she just had a desk job," because I understand. I've been there, I've been -- I've had the training. And I want to thank you sincerely for the work that you have done in regards to the protection, homeland security and showing the love for this country.

Thank you very much.

MS. PLAME WILSON: Thank you, Congresswoman.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you, Ms. Watson.

Mr. Lynch.

REP. STEPHEN LYNCH (D-MA): Thank you.

First of all, I want to thank you, Ms. Plame, for coming before this committee and helping us with our work and for your service to our country.

I have to say this hearing has been a long time in coming. The chairman and I and the members of this committee have signed five or six requests over the last four years to try to get you before us and to get to the bottom of this.

What has happened to you needs to be taken in a wider context, however. The two issues -- two of the major issues here: One, the process by which Congress receives information relative to national security. And as you know, your outing, if you will -- or the disclosure of your covert status -- was, I think, a deliberate attempt to discount the statements of your husband with respect to the supposed attempts by Saddam Hussein to purchase uranium or plutonium through Niger. And evidently from this chart, there were 20 occasions in which people deliberately, I think, attempted to destroy your credibility and also to destroy your effectiveness within the organization, within the CIA.

And I know you've been very careful with your words. Once or twice might be a careless disclosure. Five or six times might be reckless, but 20 times -- I'll say it -- 20 times is a deliberate attempt to destroy your status as a covert agent. And the only other major case in which we've had the outing of CIA agents -- the Supreme Court in Hague versus Agee said, "It is obvious and inarguable that no governmental interest is more compelling that the security of the nation."

And going to those couple of issues. First of all, the integrity of the process by which we get our information was affected greatly, I think, in terms of other agents may have been very disheartened and troubled by what happened to you. And in an effort to discount your husband's credibility, the question was raised -- and it's been continually raised -- of whether you were involved in the decision by the CIA to actually send your husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger in February of 2002 to obtain information on the allegations that Iraq sought uranium from Niger. They sort of said, "Oh, his wife sent him," like my wife sends me out to put out the trash. You know, try to discount the import of that -- at least I admit it.

Now, I want to ask you, the suggestion that you were involved in sending your husband seemed to drive the leaks in an effort to discount his credibility. I want to ask you now under oath: Did you make the decision to send Ambassador Wilson to Niger?

MS. PLAME WILSON: No. I did not recommend him, I did not suggest him, there was no nepotism involved -- I didn't have the authority. And Congressman, if you'll allow me briefly to just lay of the sequence of events -- (cross talk) --

REP. LYNCH: That was my next question, if you would. You know, I sort of doubted this. If I was going to send my wife somewhere, it wouldn't be Niger, but -- (laughter) -- nothing against Niger, but -- you know.

Please, if you could lay out -- walk us through everything you did that may have been related around the time of the decision to send Ambassador Wilson to Niger.

MS. PLAME WILSON: Thank you, Congressman. I'm delighted as well that I am under oath as I reply to you.

In February of 2002, a young junior officer who worked for me -- came to me very upset. She had just received a telephone call on her desk from someone -- I don't know who -- in the office of the vice- president asking about this report of this alleged sale of yellow cake uranium from Niger to Iraq. She came to me, and as she was telling me this -- what had just happened, someone passed by -- another officer heard this. He knew that Joe had already -- my husband -- had already gone on some CIA mission previously do deal with other nuclear matters. And he suggested, "Well why don't we send Joe?" He knew that Joe had many years of experience on the African continent. He also knew that he had served -- and served well and heroically in the Baghdad Embassy -- our embassy in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. And I will be honest. I had -- was somewhat ambivalent at the time. We had 2-year-old twins as home, and all I could envision was me by myself at bedtime with a couple of 2-year-olds. So I wasn't overjoyed with this idea. Nevertheless --

REP. LYNCH: I get it

MS. PLAME WILSON: We went to my branch chief, or supervisor. My colleague suggested this idea, and my supervisor turned to me and said, "Well, when you go home this evening, would you be willing to speak to your husband, ask him to come into headquarters next week and we'll discuss the options? See if this -- what we could do" Of course. And as I was leaving, he asked me to draft a quick e-mail to the chief of our Counterproliferation Division, letting him know that this was -- might happen. I said, "Of course," and it was that e- mail, Congressman, that was taken out of context and -- a portion of which you see in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report of July 2004 that makes it seem as though I had suggested or recommended him.

REP. WAXMAN: Thank you, Mr. --

REP. LYNCH: Mr. Chairman, if I could just follow up, because -- it'll just -- 30 seconds.

REP. WAXMAN: Without objection.

REP. LYNCH: Thank you. And I want to go back to that Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. There were three Republican senators who included a more definitive statement which -- now this is a quote. It said, "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee." What is your reaction to that statement in the Senate report about the genesis of your husband's trip to Niger in 2002?

MS. PLAME WILSON: Congressman, it's incorrect. It's been borne out in the testimony during the Libby trial, and I can tell you that it just doesn't square with the facts.

REP. LYNCH: Okay.

MS. PLAME WILSON: Those additional views were written exclusively by three Republican senators.

NelsonJacobsen · March 22, 2007

Boy I wish I had the time to search these boards and drag out the names of all the left wing commenters on who we're posting a wishful conspiracy that Karl Rove would be indicted. Any normal posters out there please find the letter that Fitzgerald announced that he would NOT indict Mr. Rove.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on his way back from Baghdad, President Bush told reporters: "It's a chapter that has ended. Fitzgerald is a very thorough person. I think he's conducted his investigation in a dignified way. And he's ended his investigation."

The tides are a changing.... So many good things are happening this month.

Al-Zarqawi is killed, Iraq has a government, and now Karl Rove is free. The Democrats are going to fall on their faces.

Look no further than right here, it is not a matter of if it is when for Rove. You are keep drinking the koolaid and thinking everything is all right. But if you want a leftwinger I am close. Yet I am an American with a Galactic mindset.

Here is the funny thing about a tree falling in the forest.

If you did not know, I will give you the good new that I found after I finished doing some of the research for a DC Institute. One of the gems we found is that the projections on our population replacement puts us in a 3 way tie for last place in the world in nonsustaining population growth within 5 years..

So you do the math if your not there with kids there is not future for the GOP seeing how it and it's ilk make themselves repulsive to their own race, to the point of falling behind the population replace ration of 2.1. That leaves everyone else to make up for the lost of growth.

As a lefty I have produced two girls and guess that is 1.3 percentage points higher that the existing average. I even go further -- I bet if you take a look 8 years out from both the Clinton/Gore and Bush/Cheney Administration that it will be oblivious which one is winning the breading war. I worked for CG

As these kidless GOPers do solve a interesting problem! For a population pool that is declining at the same rate as their parents/soon to be housemates seem to me to just be a good deal to have them both together withering away in their homes. All heffed up on phamareligousolgy/fox wondering what happened to the rapture.

While the rest of the mulit cultural world goes out for Jumpfest/carnavel/adamsmorganday and with all this the world is getting more colorful per baby. See my girls are Columbian on grandpa's side and that is something to behold. If you have not done so visit a school sometime us crackers -- are fewer and fewer every baby.

That felt good. Hope no one's feeling are going to get hurt.

BlingBling · March 23, 2007

Good for you Nelson. Now, if we can just get Americans off their fat butts and be a little more proactive in their decision making. I think the higher ups of both parties goal is dumbify everyone, so they can exploit everything they see. I asked a friend of mind if she knew who Joseph Wilson was. "Don't tell me, he was our President right?"

May 29, 2008

As the Plame-gate CIA-leak investigation zeroed in on White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby in 2005, the two men got together for an unusual private meeting, ex-White House press secretary Scott McClellan reveals in his new memoir.

Calling the scene “one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” McClellan writes in his new memoir that “in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, [the meeting] sticks vividly in my mind. …

“Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.”

More...

http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaf...k=9781586485566

May 29, 2008

As the Plame-gate CIA-leak investigation zeroed in on White House aides Karl Rove and Lewis Libby in 2005, the two men got together for an unusual private meeting, ex-White House press secretary Scott McClellan reveals in his new memoir.

Calling the scene “one moment during the leak episode that I am reluctant to discuss,” McClellan writes in his new memoir that “in 2005, during a time when attention was focusing on Rove and Libby, [the meeting] sticks vividly in my mind. …

“Following [a meeting in Chief of Staff Andy Card’s office], Scooter Libby was walking to the entryway as he prepared to depart when Karl turned to get his attention. ‘You have time to visit?’ Karl asked. ‘Yeah,’ replied Libby.”

More...

http://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/publicaf...k=9781586485566

Now the Democrat rumor mill is getting started again before elections. Mr. McCellan has flipped his lid. He has been poisened or bought out by Liberal media.

Here is a transcript from "Hannity & Colmes," May 27, 2008.

Karl Rove : I will say this. It's a little irresponsible as he — if this is accurate depiction of what's in the book. He says that following a meeting Scooter and I visited in 2005. Well, Scooter and I visited all the time. I don't really know what the particular meeting in question was about. I know what it wasn't about, which was it was not about Plame and Wilson.

Both of our attorneys told us not to talk to anybody else in the White House about anything connected with that and so we didn't. But look, Scooter and I, you know, came into contact every day or every other day on things like the selection of judges or a particular policy issue or the vice-president's travel schedule or, you know, certain — a draft of a presidential speech that we were commenting on.

So you know, he was the White — he was the vice president's chief of staff, and as a result we had a lot of business, and I think it's frankly maybe a sign of irresponsibility for Scott to sort of suggest that because he saw the two of us meet and he didn't happen to be in the meeting he somehow knows what the meeting was about.

There is more you can read

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,359023,00.html

I am not going to buy his book.

June 3, 2008

New Questions about Vice President Cheney’s Role in CIA Leak

Chairman Waxman urges Attorney General Mukasey to turn over the FBI interviews of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, citing new information from the FBI interview of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and the recent disclosures by Scott McClellan.

The Honorable Michael B. Mukasey

Attorney General

U.S. Department of Justice

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20530

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

On December 3,2007, I wrote to request that you arrange for the production of documents relating to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the leak of the covert identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson, including copies of FBI interview reports of White House officials. I appreciate that you have since made redacted versions of the interview reports of Karl Rove, 1. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and other senior White House officials available to the Committee.

I am writing now to renew the Committee's request for the interview reports with President Bush and Vice President Cheney and to request unredacted versions of the interviews with Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, and Cathie Martin. I also request that the Department provide all other responsive documents that were approved for release to the Committee by Mr. Fitzgerald.

In his interview with the FBI, Mr. Libby stated that it was "possible" that Vice President Cheney instructed him to disseminate information about Ambassador Wilson's wife to the press. 1 This is a significant revelation and, if true, a serious matter. It cannot be responsibly investigated without access to the Vice President's FBI interview.

The interviews with senior White House officials also raise other questions about the involvement of the Vice President. It appears from the interview reports that Vice President Cheney personally may have been the source of the information that Ms. Wilson worked for the CIA. Mr. Libby specifically identified the Vice President as the source of his information about Ms. Wilson. None of the other White House officials could remember how they learned this information.

New revelations by fonner White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan raise additional questions about the actions of the President and the Vice President. Mr. McClellan has stated that "[t]he President and Vice President directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby." He has also asserted that "the top White House officials who knew the truth including Rove, Libby, and possibly Vice President Cheney - allowed me, even encouraged me, to repeat a lie." It would be a major breach of trust if the Vice President personally directed Mr. McClellan to mislead the public.

In his FBI interview, Mr. McClellan told the FBI about discussions he had with the President and the Vice President. These passages, however, were redacted from the copies made available to the Committee. Similar passages were also redacted from other interviews. There are no sound reasons for you to withhold the interviews with the President and the Vice President from the Committee or to redact passages like Mr. McClellan's discussions with the President and the Vice President. Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation is closed and he has indicated that it would be appropriate to share these records with the Committee. There has been no assertion of executive privilege.

Moreover, withholding these documents would create an unfortunate double standard. During the Clinton Administration, the Committee requested the records of FBI interviews with President Clinton and Vice President Gore in 1997 and 1998 as part of the Committee's campaign finance investigation. These records were turned over to the Committee by the Justice Department without any consultation with the White House.

The Committee is conducting an important investigation to answer questions that Mr. Fitzgerald's criminal inquiry did not address. As I explained at the Committee's hearing last year, the purpose of the Committee's investigation is to examine:

( 1 ) How did such a serious violation of our national security occur? ( 2 ) Did the White House take appropriate investigative and disciplinary steps after the breach occurred? And ( 3 ) what changes in White House security procedures are necessary to prevent future violations of our national security from occurring?

The infonnation that you are withholding may hold answers to these questions. The FBI interview reports that you have shared with the Committee raise the possibility that Vice President Cheney may be implicated in the release of Ms. Wilson's identity. Mr. McClellan's recent disclosures indicate that both President Bush and Vice President Cheney played a role in directing the White House response. The Committee cannot complete its inquiry into these matters without receiving the reports of their FBI interviews.

I therefore urge you to follow Justice Department precedents and provide the records of the FBI interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney to the Committee by June 10. I also ask that you provide to the Committee, at the same time, the unredacted interviews with Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Scott McClellan, and Cathie Martin, as well as the other responsive records requested by the Committee.

Sincerely,

Henry A. Waxman

Chairman

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