Amb. Wilson not gonna back down - thinks he knows who outed his wife

[dkf]

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/08/10/Perspective/Blown_cover.shtml

Blown cover
Did the Bush administration identify a CIA operative because it was mad at her husband?
By DAVID BALLINGRUD, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published August 10, 2003

"I can be a tough son of a b--," former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson said last week.

snip

"I don't cower, I can't be intimidated . . . I faced down Saddam Hussein for seven months," said Wilson, a career foreign service officer and, in 1990, charge d'affaires for the first President Bush in Baghdad.

snip

Wilson will not confirm that his wife was or is a CIA operative, though Newsday has reported that a senior intelligence official confirmed it. Specifically, Plame was reported to be a Directorate of Operations undercover officer. (The New York Times reported Friday that Plame is "known to friends as an energy industry analyst.")

"But," Wilson said, "hypothetically, I will say that if what Novak asserts is true, then laws were broken. And if it's true, they (the administration) took off the board an important national security asset (Plame) in order to protect some yo-yo's political concerns."

He said he believes that political operatives in the White House gave his wife's name to Novak, and he thinks he knows who they are. But he's "not ready, yet" to name them. He hopes an investigation - by the FBI, Congress or both - will take care of that.

[caledesi]

1. We want names! n/t

[OldCurmudgeon]

11. Names? You want names?!

I want bodies hanging from lampposts, twisting slowly, slowly in the wind.

[Cha]

2. I saw Ambassador Wilson speak on the internet stream and

he didn't seem the type "to back down"! He seems the type to win!

the bushwa messed with the wrong man this time!

edit: add a letter and write the last sentence.

[Philosophy]

3. Indict Novak

Until he can prove otherwise by naming who gave him the info, he is the one that broke the law.

[DinahMoeHum]

7. Methinks a "third degree" is more in line for Novak. . .

until he coughs up the names of the two "officials"

:skull:

[w4rma]

8. Wilson … said … would be a violation … by the officials, not the columnist

A White House smear

Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security—and break the law—in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?

It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted.
…
The sources for Novak’s assertion about Wilson’s wife appear to be “two senior administration officials.” If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what’s known as “nonofficial cover” and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson’s wife is such a person—and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her—her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, “Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames.” If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good.

This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in prison. Journalists are protected from prosecution, unless they engage in a “pattern of activities” to name agents in order to impair US intelligence activities. So Novak need not worry.

Novak tells me that he was indeed tipped off by government officials about Wilson’s wife and had no reluctance about naming her. “I figured if they gave it to me,” he says. “They’d give it to others....I’m a reporter. Somebody gives me information and it’s accurate. I generally use it.” And Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials.
…
http://thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=823
http://www.arbiteronline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/07/23/3f1f5fa79c206
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=18072&mesg_id=18072&page=
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=108&topic_id=5913&mesg_id=5913&page=

…
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."

Wilson and others said such a disclosure would be a violation of the law by the officials, not the columnist.

Novak reported that his "two senior administration officials" told him that it was Plame who suggested sending her husband, Wilson, to Niger.
…
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uscia0722,0,2346857.story?coll=ny-top-headlines
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=2326&mesg_id=2326&page=

A War on Wilson?
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,465270,00.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=18113&mesg_id=18113&page=

White House striking back?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/942095.asp?0cv=CA01

Schumer Urges FBI Probe Into Iraq Leaks
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030724/ap_on_go_ot/schumer_agent_1

Probes Expected in ID of CIA Officer
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uscia233384176jul23,0,5461415.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-print

[RainDog]

9. Novak did not break the law

the law that exists now states that a journalist is not guilty of treason or eligible for the jail time and fine for exposing an agent unless that journalist has shown a pattern of exposing agents, in which case, the exemption no longer applies.

[JackSwift]

4. Bush, Cheney and Rove

green lighted it.

[madrchsod]

5. when he was on stewart

you could tell he`s got the whitehouse by the balls. i think he`s playing them. him and his wife better not travel together...

[Fovea]

6. I expect a full presidential pardon

preceeded by discrete resignations.

[RainDog]

10. this is also getting coverage in the Asia Times

...and, rightly, the reporter connects this situation to other questionable Iran-Contra and Iraqgate players who are up to their same dirty (and illegal) tricks.