Perjury

[Boxlicker101]

Once the press had the information they are DUTY-BOUND to report it.

Someone in the administration is talking; prove that the ONLY person they're talking to is 1 reporter.

This ALSO applies to combat deployments; if someone is leaking them to the press then you HAVE TO play the game as if the enemy is also getting the information.

The information should not have been leaked to the press... it was. The reporter cannot and should not play 'games' at that point. They have to do their job and report it.

If they don't report it... someone in the field could be caught with their pants down because I promise you nobody LEAKED to the generals and control officers that 'the secret has been comprimised'.

And no... they can't go 'talking' to administration, FBI or the generals. People have a habit of dismissing, not listening or otherwise covering shit up to protect their job.

Novack and crew just didn't realize what the REAL story was.

That's good... let them report the truth and let other people get the information they need to pursue the conclusions that come from that truth.

Sincerely,
ElSol

How can you sayh the press is DUTY-BOUND to report it? This is not some whistle-blower telling of corruption or bureaucratic SNAFU. This is confidential information that could be a matter of life and death to the woman involved and to others. It should not have been told to Novak and heads ought to roll because of this, but his head should be one of them. Just because you are in possession of highly classified information doesn't mean you have to tell everybody about it.

 

[thebullet]

It appears the Boxlicker and RRichard have become official government apologists. What Novak did was dispicible, no doubt. But don't take the blame away from those that deserve it.

R Richard is now saying that Valery Plame was not a covert agent. This is patently false. He is merely passing on the spin of his right wing sources. Did anyone watch 60 Minutes tonight? This show firmly established that the CIA has not even begun to determine the amount of damage done by the outing of Plame and her cover company. It is the first step in the disolution of a cover that almost certainly hides a number of other agents and foreign contacts.

As stated, this damage wasn't done by North Korea, by Syria, by Fidel Castro. Rather this is damage inflicted on our intelligence community by the highest appointed non-cabinet level officials in the executive branch of our government. And perhaps the highest elected officials in our government as well?

This was treason. Libby lied in his testimony almost certainly because by telling the truth he would have essentially been admitting his own part in that treason.
He was hoping, I suppose, that the reporters he leaked to would keep their mouths shut.

 

[Boxlicker101]

It appears the Boxlicker and RRichard have become official government apologists. What Novak did was dispicible, no doubt. But don't take the blame away from those that deserve it.

R Richard is now saying that Valery Plame was not a covert agent. This is patently false. He is merely passing on the spin of his right wing sources. Did anyone watch 60 Minutes tonight? This show firmly established that the CIA has not even begun to determine the amount of damage done by the outing of Plame and her cover company. It is the first step in the disolution of a cover that almost certainly hides a number of other agents and foreign contacts.

As stated, this damage wasn't done by North Korea, by Syria, by Fidel Castro. Rather this is damage inflicted on our intelligence community by the highest appointed non-cabinet level officials in the executive branch of our government. And perhaps the highest elected officials in our government as well?

This was treason. Libby lied in his testimony almost certainly because by telling the truth he would have essentially been admitting his own part in that treason.
He was hoping, I suppose, that the reporters he leaked to would keep their mouths shut.

NO WAY am I a government apologist! This is what I said in my last posts about the officials to blame:

How can you say the press is DUTY-BOUND to report it? This is not some whistle-blower telling of corruption or bureaucratic SNAFU. This is confidential information that could be a matter of life and death to the woman involved and to others. It should not have been told to Novak and heads ought to roll because of this, but his head should be one of them. Just because you are in possession of highly classified information doesn't mean you have to tell everybody about it.

Actually, this was not my next to last; it was my second from last:

I don't know if Novak broke any law in disclosing the info or not. You are right, though, that he didn't break any law in getting it. It was apparently the government officials who broke the law. I believe that releasing the info was an act of treason and it was committed by all concerned, but it may not have been prosecutable. Those who did not disclose the info were not covering up any wrongdoing; they were refraining from committing treasonous acts.

I'm not old enough to remember WW2 but I have read about it. From time to time, ships carrying thousands of American soldiers would embark from East Coast ports on their way to Europe. The time and place of the departures was known to many persons but those persons did not make the details public knowledge. If some newspaper columnist were to have printed the info, the Axis, who had submarines operating in the Atlantic, would have made every effort to sink the ships and kill the soldiers, inflicting great losses on the US and the Allies, and severely damaging American morale. Therefore, nobody released the details.

This case is something like that would have been, although not as serious. By printing the identity of the covert CIA operative, Novak put her and her contacts and associates at risk. Al Qaida and others inimical to the US would have been very happy to use information like that against the US. Novak can claim "Freedom of the press" and he may be right, but it was still a reprehensible thing for him to do.

Accusing government officials of treason and saying their heads ought to roll (a figure of speech) is hardly being an apologist for anybody.

 

[elsol]

How can you sayh the press is DUTY-BOUND to report it? This is not some whistle-blower telling of corruption or bureaucratic SNAFU. This is confidential information that could be a matter of life and death to the woman involved and to others. It should not have been told to Novak and heads ought to roll because of this, but his head should be one of them. Just because you are in possession of highly classified information doesn't mean you have to tell everybody about it.

Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press

They didn't get that because the founders thought 'hey, this would be a good idea!', they got it because the founders believed keeping us informed was a way of keeping us empowered.

SOMEONE TALKED, therefore Mrs. Wilson's life was already comprimised.
(Maybe this is the part, everyone keeps missing so let me repeat it, SOMEONE TALKED, THEREFORE MRS. WILSON'S LIFE WAS ALREADY COMPRIMISED.)

If anyone here reallly believes her life was in danger, the reporters were DUTY-BOUND to report the information they had.

They just got it wrong... it wasn't that she was a 'spy' that was the story, but that someone was yacking her identity.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[Huckleman2000]

... Did anyone watch 60 Minutes tonight? This show firmly established that the CIA has not even begun to determine the amount of damage done by the outing of Plame and her cover company. It is the first step in the disolution of a cover that almost certainly hides a number of other agents and foreign contacts...

Thanks, Bullet. I just finished watching the 60 MINUTES segment, and I have to say it's sobering. If there's anyone who can claim any equivalence to Clinton's perjury charge in anything other than name, they are taking an absurdly legalistic view of the situation.

The situation with Clinton was: Starr was examining Whitewater, a land deal already over a decade past. Somehow, he expanded his investigation to include the Paula Jones accusations, which were copiously funded by Scaife, a wealthy anti-Clinton zealot who also funded a number of media properties which consistently published false anti-Clinton propaganda. Using illegally-obtained tapes from Linda Tripp, Starr threatened Monica Lewinsky and members of her family with perjury charges if they did not testify about Monica's consentual sex with President Clinton. This provided the testimony to lay a perjury trap against the President, despite the irrelavence of the topic to anything that Starr was supposed to be investigating.

The situation with Libby was: the White House Iraq Group, formed by Vice President Cheney to "market" the case for waging unprovoked war against Iraq, had trumped-up Iraq's alleged efforts to gain nuclear weapons. Joseph Wilson had first-hand knowledge of intelligence and state-department refutations of these repeated public assertions, and went public with his knowledge after the war had already been declared "over" by President Bush. While not proven, at present, it appears the WHIG decided to publicly discredit Wilson by attributing his mission to nepotism from his wife, an undercover CIA operative. To obstruct the verification of this allegation, Cheney's Chief of Staff Scooter Libby has chosen to lie in a particularly blatant fashion about circumstantial events, thus blocking investigation into the underlying plot to mislead lawmakers and the public into a war of choice that has resulted, so far, in over 2000 troops killed, many times that number of innocent Iraqis killed, and a consensus (outside BushCo) foreign policy disaster of unprecedented proportions.

Oh yeah. Perjury is perjury.

 

[Boxlicker101]

Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press

They didn't get that because the founders thought 'hey, this would be a good idea!', they got it because the founders believed keeping us informed was a way of keeping us empowered.

SOMEONE TALKED, therefore Mrs. Wilson's life was already comprimised.
(Maybe this is the part, everyone keeps missing so let me repeat it, SOMEONE TALKED, THEREFORE MRS. WILSON'S LIFE WAS ALREADY COMPRIMISED.)

If anyone here reallly believes her life was in danger, the reporters were DUTY-BOUND to report the information they had.

They just got it wrong... it wasn't that she was a 'spy' that was the story, but that someone was yacking her identity.

Sincerely,
ElSol

I think we are all aware of the reasons for freedom of the press in the first amendment. Another reason was to keep the misdeeds of public figures from being hushed up. However, that is neither here nor there.

It's also common knowledge that the CIA has covert operatives all over the world. We have a right to know that but we don't have a right to know the actual identity of the individual operatives. I can easily accept that when Novak was given the identiry of one of them, he knew that her life was in danger. So, what did he do? He told everybody in the world, thereby putting it in even greater danger. If he had wanted to protect her, he could have contacted the CIA, telling them what he had been told so that they could take steps decrease the danger of the agent and those around her. The CIA is not noted for listening to individual citizens but this was a conservative syndicated columnist who had information that could have been easily confirmed and damage control done. After that, he could have and should have blown the whistle on the informants. Instead, he chose to make a bad situation worse.

 

[elsol]

It's also common knowledge that the CIA has covert operatives all over the world. We have a right to know that but we don't have a right to know the actual identity of the individual operatives. I can easily accept that when Novak was given the identiry of one of them, he knew that her life was in danger. So, what did he do? He told everybody in the world, thereby putting it in even greater danger. If he had wanted to protect her, he could have contacted the CIA, telling them what he had been told so that they could take steps decrease the danger of the agent and those around her. The CIA is not noted for listening to individual citizens but this was a conservative syndicated columnist who had information that could have been easily confirmed and damage control done. After that, he could have and should have blown the whistle on the informants. Instead, he chose to make a bad situation worse.

It isn't a reporter's job to unfuck a situation.

Do you really believe if he'd gone to CIA, this wouldn't have gotten quashed?

I do not.

I believe if Novak had kept his mouth shut and just gone to the 'authorities', we'd be in a the middle of REAL cover-up. By what all the 'liberals' are saying, this was a CAMPAIGN to discredit Mr. Wilson and expose his wife as a CIA assett.

Come on, people! Novak did his fucking job! Whether by accident or intention, he did the best thing for all of us.

He ran with the story he was mouth-fed; the problem was someone got curious about where he got that story.

Good Reporter! Good Reporter!

I still think he's an idiot for giving up the Pulitzer Prize winning story of a political campaign to endanger a woman's life... but at least, he made himself a useful idiot.

Sincerely,
ElSol

 

[Huckleman2000]

Here's Novak's take on it (from MediaMatters.org):

Following the column's July 14 publication, Novak gave Newsday reporters Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce an account of how he learned Plame's identity from the "two senior administration officials" he had cited in the column:
Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me," he said. "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it."
On September 28, 2003, the Justice Department launched an official investigation into the leak case. Noting that the story had "reached the front pages of major newspapers," Novak wrote an October 1, 2003, column in which his depiction of the leak conflicted with the account he had provided to Phelps and Royce months earlier. He stressed that the administration official who disclosed Plame's identity had not come to him with the information but, rather, had in an "offhand" way mentioned her role at the CIA in response to questions regarding Wilson's selection for the mission:

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger.

In an October 5, 2003, interview on NBC's Meet the Press, Novak further emphasized that the official had mentioned Plame's role at the CIA "offhandedly":

NOVAK: So in interviewing a senior administration official on a number of other subjects, I asked him if he could explain why [Wilson was chosen for the mission], and he said, "Well, his wife works in the counterproliferation section at the CIA" and that she suggested his mission. And it was given to me as an offhand manner and by a person who is, as I wrote in the column, not a partisan gunslinger by any means. [...]
I know when somebody's trying to plant a story. This thing -- this came up almost offhandedly in the course of a very long conversation with a senior official about many things, many things, including ambassador Wilson's report.

Whereas Novak's initial description of the leak depicted the administration sources as offering the information independent of his questioning ("I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. ... They thought it was significant"), his later account suggested that the officials had not planned to bring up Plame's CIA employment and would not have mentioned her occupation if not for his questions. Meet the Press host Tim Russert asked Novak to "explain" the discrepancy between the two quotes. But Novak simply said his earlier statement was not "very artfully put" and insisted that there existed "no inconsistency between those two."

So, obviously, Novak's an idiot. In case anyone needed any confirmation.

Still, as ElSol pointed out, he's a useful idiot. Certainly not useful in the way he probably imagined himself to be at the beginning of this imbroglio, but insofar as he's off CNN, I sleep easier.

 

[Boxlicker101]

It isn't a reporter's job to unfuck a situation.

Do you really believe if he'd gone to CIA, this wouldn't have gotten quashed?

I do not.

I believe if Novak had kept his mouth shut and just gone to the 'authorities', we'd be in a the middle of REAL cover-up. By what all the 'liberals' are saying, this was a CAMPAIGN to discredit Mr. Wilson and expose his wife as a CIA assett.

Come on, people! Novak did his fucking job! Whether by accident or intention, he did the best thing for all of us.

He ran with the story he was mouth-fed; the problem was someone got curious about where he got that story.

Good Reporter! Good Reporter!

I still think he's an idiot for giving up the Pulitzer Prize winning story of a political campaign to endanger a woman's life... but at least, he made himself a useful idiot.

Sincerely,
ElSol

I realize it's not a reporter's job to unfuck a situation but it's also not his job to put patriotic Americans and their contacts in dire peril, and that is what he did.

I don't know exactly what would have happened if he had gone to the CIA. I am quite sure the agency would have taken steps to minimize the threat to their operatives but they might or not have looked for the leak. Given the high level of the leakers, they might not have. There might well have been a coverup, not to protect the leakers but to protect the CIA, but at least the damage would have been minimized.

I don't really know what would have happened if Novak had reported the leak to the CIA, and nobody else knows either. She probably would have been extracted and her husband's mission aborted. After that, who knows.

I still don't see how you can say that Novak protecterd Valerie Plame or her cover by exposing it to all the world. Much more likely is that he carried out the wishes of his informants.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Actually, Conservative Douchebag Novak did go to the CIA.

From Wikipedia:

In "The CIA Leak," Novak stated this explanation for the two "senior administration officials" and the "CIA official" referenced in his June 14 article:

"During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counter-proliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.

"At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission." [25]

In other interviews, Novak confirmed that his sources warned him not to mention Plame. His motivation to disregard the warnings is suggested by this comment in "The CIA Leak": "I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment." Just four days before he revealed Plame's name, Novak wrote "Bush's Enemy Within." Therein, Novak excoriates the Bush administration's appointment of Frances Townsend to an important national security post, explaining she could later betray Bush because two of her former superiors were liberal Democrats, and she had served in the US Attorney's office in Manhattan. According to Novak, this office was "notoriously liberal laden." [26]
On February 12, 2004, Murray S. Waas for the American Prospect wrote that two "administration officials" spoke to the FBI and challenged Novak's account about not receiving warnings not to publish Plame's name. According to one of the officials, "At best, he is parsing words... At worst, he is lying to his readers and the public. Journalists should not lie, I would think." [27] Novak has also stated on CNN's Crossfire that "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this." [28]
Others, such as Nicholas Kristof[29] also argue that Plame's identity had already been compromised by the CIA double agent Aldrich Ames.