by
Larry C Johnson (bio/blog)

Sorry to again beat what some of you may believe is a dead horse, but a reporter from a major news organization told me today that they are still arguing in his/her newsroom about whether Valerie Plame was covert.  The journalist who told me this is a talented, smart person but is still confused about the terms "covert", "cover", and "non-official cover".  So here's my gift to confused journalists.

Scooter Libby is not on trial for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.  He faces a jury because he lied about his role in giving out Valerie's name and obstructed the investigation into the leak.  Can you leak the name of an overt employee?  No.

A rather off-the-beaten-path web paper has just released a report that claims several former and current Administration Officials have now come forward to state that the outing of Valerie Plame's identity was part of a coordinated effort by Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Stephan Hadley to discredit Joseph Wilson and his OP-ed on Niger.

Update: Truthout.org also has had the story posted as of Feb 9th, apparently this is the original source. Details over the flip.

With the Republicans girding for indictments on such "trivial" matters as perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to investigators, let's be clear on what is at the heart of Fitzgerald's investigation:  The violation of one or more federal statutes concerning the naming of covert CIA agents and/or their NOC companies.

While there are many interesting facets of this case, what started it all, and the most important element, are the real-world consequences of outing covert agents.

This from Wikipedia:

An anonymous star was added to the wall between named stars that can be dated to deaths on February 5, 2003 and October 25, 2003. The anonymous star thus fits the timing of the Plame leak. Wayne Madsen, a reporter and former NSA employee, has claimed, "CIA sources report that at least one anonymous star placed on the CIA's Wall of Honor at its Langley, Virginia headquarters is a clandestine agent who was executed in a hostile foreign nation as a direct result of the White House leak."

So, for all those out there who think this is just politics, think about the person behind that anonymous star.

Somebody needs to dissect Cohen's dumbass column in detail, so here goes.

The best thing Patrick Fitzgerald could do for his country is get out of Washington, return to Chicago and prosecute some real criminals.

Perhaps if by for his country Cohen actually means for George W. Bush and the GOP this sentence makes sense.  There are plenty of people - well, freepers mostly - who think in this pre-rational manner.  I thought that perhaps if I made that small substitution, the rest of the column  might make some kind of wacked-out sense.

I was wrong.  It only gets stupider.

As it is, all he has done so far is send Judith Miller of the New York Times to jail and repeatedly haul this or that administration high official before a grand jury, investigating a crime that probably wasn't one in the first place...

Probably wasn't a crime? Oh, I can feel a good rant comin' on already.  But I'll save that one for last.  Let's let Dick finish his sentence, shall we?