Sunday, October 16, 2005
Plamegate
Notwithstanding the 85-day bleating of the Grey Bitch, there is a far more serious "First Amendment" issue here than the jailing of Judith Miller. If Fitzgerald indicts under some theory of mishandling classified information on these facts, he will have elevated prosecutorial silliness to a level unachieved even by Ken Starr. In so doing he may have an even greater impact on our national political culture. The reason, of course, is that such a precedent would create enormous leverage over any future bureaucrat or White House official who speaks to the press about a slightly secret subject (as Plame's occupation or Wilson's trip surely was). Post-Plame, leaked information that damages the opposition politically would -- given our national fetish for consistency and the unending cycle of retribution in our politics -- give rise to demands for prosecution. That strikes me as far more chilling of the press's core function than the occasional pressure to reveal a source. Since everybody knows that federal information is grossly overclassified, we will have defaulted our way into an "official secrets act," of sorts, notwithstanding our long unwillingness to enact such a law.
Presumably the big newspapers (including the New York Times) which demanded that John Ashcroft appoint a special prosecutor will be this year's recipients of the Be Careful What You Wish For award.
6 Comments:
By 
Gordon Smith, at
Sun Oct 16, 08:28:00 PM:
I think what you're saying is that by prosecuting a political maneuver we continue along the lines of the slippery slope set up by the Ken Starr Republicans. You further intimate that government secrets, say the identity of an undercover CIA agent involved in mitigating weapons proliferation among nations known to support terrorism, are too plentiful anyway and this stuff ought to be out in the open? "Grossly overclassified"? The Bush administration has classified more documents than anyone thought possible, and you come out against this. But their "mishandling" the information about their political enemy's wife ended her anti-terror operation. This is exactly the kind of information that must remain classified. Our national security is not a political football.
"leaked information that damages the opposition politically" is not what happened here. Joseph Wilson's wife was given up to intimidate and harm him, and not because he was levelling political charges but because he told the truth about the Niger Yellowcake. This is not the same as leaking that President Bush choked on a pretzel.
The greater danger to our government is not the Mehlman/Orwell "criminalization of politics", it is that arrogant bullies who lie to the nation about Weapons of Mass Destruction can willfully harm our national security interests in an effort to pursue a dangerous international political game.
This one's not defensible, Hawk. Please don't be a part of the culture that doesn't hold its government accountable for the security of the nation and for telling the truth.
By TigerHawk, at
Sun Oct 16, 09:44:00 PM:
Screwy, Screwy, Screwy. Sometimes you're a real load.
1. I'm no fan of the Bush administration. Unlike you, I am not a partisan. The Bushies have done tons of stuff that I don't agree with. I stand by my point, which is that my strong sense is that too much stuff is classified. Of course, not having access to it I can't be sure, but lots of fairly reasonable people make the allegation.
2. The Bush administration did not "lie" about WMD. It made a prediction about their presence based on intelligence estimates not just from the CIA, but from both allies and adversaries (the United Kingdom and Russia, to name two). In retrospect, it made that prediction too confidently, but that is the most that can be said about it.
3. In the very partisan climate that prevailed between, say, the run-up to the Iraq war and the election of 2004, the failure to find actual WMD in Iraq was obviously a huge political problem. Some people -- maybe even most people -- believe that it undermined the entire basis for the war, but as you well know I believe that the war was both necessary and strategically beneficial even in the absence of WMD stockpiles, so I don't care. But I think we can both agree that the absence of WMD was a huge political problem.
4. The post hoc revelation that there were no WMD, and the obviously lame Bush administration response to that fact, is virtually dispositive proof that the Bush administration did not "lie" about WMD. To lie, one must make an untrue statement with intent. Obviously, if the Bush administration had known that no WMD would be found it would have emphasized one of the other many justifications for the war, rather than face the heat after the fact for having "lied." The Bushies were obviously as surprised as everybody else that there were no WMD. You know this, I know this, and to assert otherwise is unfair.
5. When it became clear that WMD were not lying around in big gaseous stockpiles, everybody began pointing fingers. The Bushies started blaming the CIA, and the CIA -- which was not much in favor of the Iraq war to begin with -- began leaking every internal memo that never made it into the national intelligence estimate.
6. We now know a bunch of things about Joe Wilson's trip. The first thing we know is that notwithstanding his claims to the contrary, he was not sent by Dick Cheney. The second thing we know is that he was sufficiently dishonest (perhaps even to the point of lying) that we can safely conclude he was part of the CIA's bureaucratic defensive war. How was he dishonest? He originally denied that Valerie Plame had anything to do with his mission, yet the Senate Intelligence Committee report that came out a year after his fateful op-ed piece contradicted him. Second, he told the press in 2003 (at the time of his op-ed piece) that he had concluded in his report to the CIA that the Niger "yellowcake" intelligence was based on forged documents because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." But the Senate Intelligence Committee report revealed that (i) Wilson had never seen the allegedly forged documents and (ii) in any case they did not fall in to U.S. hands until eight months after he made his fateful trip. Some people would call this a lie (you, apparently, given the standard you apply to the Bush administration). Finally, it looks for all the world as though Wilson mislead the readers of the NYT about the content of his own report to the CIA. Again, a year after the fact the WaPo reported that 'Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."'
Wilson's own report, which only surfaced in July of 2004, actually backed the "sixteen words" in the 2003 State of the Union.
So, Screwy, we know that Joe Wilson was being very deceitful about the reasons for his mission, what he found, and the contents of his report to the CIA. His motivations for being deceitful were probably political and certainly bureaucratic. The entire exercise was bureaucratic.
7. Finally, I think you were so irritated by my comparison of Fitzgerald to Starr that you missed the point of my post, which is that if we open the door to serious prosecutions of officials who mishandle mildly classified material (it was declassified a few weeks later anyway) or leak it to the press (as opposed to enemies), it is going to be a lot harder for reporters to find sources within the government.
8. It is interesting, Screwy, to apply the standard you propose to history. I trust you would have prosecuted Daniel Ellsburg.
By Gordon Smith, at
Mon Oct 17, 09:24:00 AM:
Hawk,
Thanks for taking the time to respond (and to limit your undeniably incisive mind to a lone invective "load")...
1. Is that why I like you so much? I am a partisan, true. I feel that the current administration has buried any hope for the other major party, and I can't get into party building with the Libs or the Greens or the Natural Law gang. So I'm going to go to politics with the party I've got left.
2. When I referred to lying about WMD, I refer to the 16 words in Bush's SOTU about Nigerian Yellowcake. Either they knew that the claim was wrong or that the claim was sufficiently debatable as to preclude claiming it as fact.
3. HUGE political problem, yes.
4. They sure were surprised. Hell, I was too.
5. The CIA...mm hmm...mm hmm...turns out they were right, eh?
6. This is a nice piece of responding right here...I don't like to fact check you because I choose to trust you, so I'm going to work with what you've written here plus a little of my own...
Wilson was sent to Niger.
Wilson is qualified to do his job.
Wilson can make judgments based on second hand information from sources he trusts regarding the documents - this goes to qualified.
Mayaki may have been approached by Iraq for something other than rice and beans.
The Bush administration knew that, though Hussein's Iraq may have talked to someone about maybe getting something, there was no threat from this interaction.
George W. Bush willfully delivered menacing, misleading information to the American people and the Congress of the United States in an effort to ratchet up support for the war.
When Joe Wilson, friend or foe, revealed Bush's choice, a campaign to smear and intimidate him began.
This campaign included outing his wife, who was a covert CIA agent.
Outing a CIA agent is a crime, and it's morally reprehensible to boot.
This is NOT the "mishandl(ing of) mildly classified material", it's terminating an active undercover operation to interrupt and mitigate international trafficking in weapons (including WMD) in order to protect the lie told in the SOTU and to punish a dissenter. It's terrifically terrible, Hawk.
8. The executive branch of government, in order to protect itself (not the american people) outed a lone CIA operative actively engaged in a war they made up the name for.
It hardly qualifies as an Ellsberg style whistleblower situation - in which one man outed an executive branch actively engaged in losing the war they couldn't figure out how to win while lying, lying, lying about it.
Thanks for the back-and-forth. You're normally very patient and even-handed. Though I'm lost when it comes to your willingness to defend the Republicans' criminal activities.
By TigerHawk, at
Mon Oct 17, 10:00:00 AM:
Ah, your point on number 7 reveals our "out trade" (as they say in the commodities pits). I agree that Fitzgerald needs to prosecute the Plame issue -- that is, the "outing" of a clandestine agent. That is unacceptable, and if he has the evidence he should bring the case.
However, my point is that there are rumors and Maguire-esque analysis that suggest that Fitsgerald may go to some lesser offense, perhaps around the mishandling of classified information. The point of my post (which apparently was not very clear) is that a prosecution for the leaking to the press of classified information has huge implications for governmental transparency, because it will tremendously chill the willingness of officials to leak mildly classified information in the future.
By Gordon Smith, at
Mon Oct 17, 10:41:00 AM:
By Cassandra, at
Wed Oct 19, 07:18:00 AM:
Screwy, what you are saying and what TH is saying are miles apart. He is quoting the results of the COMPLETED SSCI investigation (which I have also read in detail). You, on the other hand, are assuming several "facts" not yet established because the pertinent "investigation" has not yet been completed. We're not even out of the grand jury yet.
Wilson was sent to Niger.
Yes, he was.
Wilson is qualified to do his job.
That is debatable. He was sent because he had contacts. A man who goes, reports back one thing to an agency known to pride itself on secrecy, then betrays its trust by blabbing to the NYT and saying the exact opposite of what, in fact, he actually learned there cannot truly said to be either competent or qualified by any standard I am aware of. Would you hire such a man for a sensitive mission?
Wilson can make judgments based on second hand information from sources he trusts regarding the documents - this goes to qualified.
Well apparently his "judgments" were flawed in this case. The SSCI committee concluded that the information he gathered would have "bolstered the case for most analysts" rather than undercutting it. Which rather "undercuts" any claim that he was, in fact, qualified. Ambassadors are political appointees - often rank amateurs. Why think he would make a good investigator? Good God.
Mayaki may have been approached by Iraq for something other than rice and beans.
He in fact stated that he was not
The Bush administration knew that, though Hussein's Iraq may have talked to someone about maybe getting something, there was no threat from this interaction.
Huh? How did they "know" this?
George W. Bush willfully delivered menacing, misleading information to the American people and the Congress of the United States in an effort to ratchet up support for the war.
Actually, according to the SSCI report, the CIA delivered threat assessment info to the White House that was purposely "more pessimisstic" than the actual data warranted and never informed the White House of its own doubts about the intelligence. Furthermore, the CIA repeatedly vetted every single statement made by the White House, so they had no reason to believe they were saying anything untoward. But to you, this is evidence of "lies". Interesting.
When Joe Wilson, friend or foe, revealed Bush's choice, a campaign to smear and intimidate him began.
Assuming facts not yet proved
This campaign included outing his wife, who was a covert CIA agent.
Ditto
Outing a CIA agent is a crime, and it's morally reprehensible to boot.
According to the statute, it must be done with intent and knowledge of her covert status and she must have been stationed outside CONUS during the last 5 years. This fails on those grounds. The authors of this law both agree it does. Have you read the statute?
This is NOT the "mishandl(ing of) mildly classified material", it's terminating an active undercover operation to interrupt and mitigate international trafficking in weapons (including WMD) in order to protect the lie told in the SOTU and to punish a dissenter. It's terrifically terrible, Hawk.
There was no "lie" told in the SOTU address. Wilson's info was never used there, the SSCI report determined there was no improper use of intel in the SOTU report and that the claims that Iraq tried to acquire yellowcake were, in fact, backed by valid intel. So has the Butler Report.
Do the facts matter to you Hoolie, or do you just like to throw terms like "liar" around without bothering to read the source documents?
Your tax dollars paid for these investigations, but you seem to find it more convincing to make claims you don't back up with facts. Why is that?
And by the way, I "trust" TH too, but you really shouldn't "trust" anyone with matters this important. You should be looking the facts up for yourself. I read liberal blogs to check out the other side on the Plame/Wilson matter too - you see a different side of things, even one, sometimes, you don't want to see. And then I cross-check the facts several places.
We all have our political biases, but if we don't take it back to the facts, then we end up living in our own little echo chambers, and that's not healthy.
