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| Lawyer who wrote law to protect agents says Plame charge doesn't meet standard |
| 2005-07-14 |
| Democrat leaders and editorialists accusing Karl Rove of treason for referring to CIA agent Valerie Plame in an off-the-record interview are ignorant of the law, according to the Washington attorney who spearheaded the legislation at the center of the controversy. Plame's circumstances don't meet several of the criteria spelled out in a 1982 statute designed not only to protect the identity of intelligence agents but to maintain the media's ability to hold government accountable, Victoria Toensing told WorldNetDaily. Toensing – who drafted the legislation in her role as chief counsel for the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – says the Beltway frenzy surrounding Plame's alleged "outing" as a covert agent is a story arising out of the capital's "silly season." "The hurricane season started early and so did the August silly stories," Toensing said. "What is it that qualifies as a story here?" Democrat leaders are accusing Rove of exposing Plame's identity as an act of retribution against her husband Joe Wilson, who returned from a CIA assignment to Niger with a report disputing the administration's suspicion that Iraq wanted to acquire uranium from the African nation. Toensing, now a private attorney in Washington, says Plame most likely was not a covert agent when Rove referred to her in a 2003 interview with Time magazine's Matt Cooper. The federal code says the agent must have operated outside the United States within the previous five years. But Plame gave up her role as a covert agent nine years before the Rove interview, according to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Kristof said the CIA brought Plame back to Washington in 1994 because the agency suspected her undercover security had been compromised by turncoat spy Aldrich Ames. Moreover, asserts Toensing, for the law to be violated, Rove would have had to intentionally reveal Plame's identity with the knowledge that he was disclosing a covert agent. Toensing believes Rove's waiver allowing reporters testifying before the grand jury to reveal him as a source – signed more than 18 months ago – shows the Bush strategist did not believe he was violating the law. Rove, according to Cooper's notes, apparently was trying to warn the reporter not to give credence to Wilson's investigation, because he had no expertise in nuclear weapons and was sent to Africa on the recommendation of his wife. Wilson had claimed he was sent by Vice President Cheney. Another element necessary for applying the law is that the government had to be taking affirmative measures to conceal the agent's identity. Toensing says that on the contrary, the CIA gave Plame a desk job in which she publicly went to and from work, allowed her spouse to do a mission in Africa without signing a confidentiality agreement and didn't object to his writing an op-ed piece in the New York Times about his trip. Columnist Robert Novak, who first published Plame's name, also apparently didn't think it was a big deal, Toensing said, or he would have put it in the first paragraph. Novak's aim was to expose the incompetence of the CIA, she argued. "These are the kinds of stories we wanted to still be put out there when we passed the law," she said. "We only wanted to stop the methodical exposing of CIA personnel for the purpose of assassination." |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |
| #1 "The hurricane season started early and so did the August silly stories," Toensing said. "What is it that qualifies as a story here?" The DNC daily talking point faxes, of course. Once the NYT has them, the rest of the press follows course. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-07-14 20:06 |