from leveymg
Let's see. June 3, 2003. That was twenty days before Judy Miller's first recorded meeting with Scooter. She claims the name "Valerie Flame" written in her reporter's notebook was from another source, which she says she did not disclose to Fitzgerald, pursuant to the agreement her lawyer made with the prosecutor to keep Miller's post-release testimony to the substance of her discussions with Libby.
It all fits nicely. Maybe too nicely. This is why. It appears that the whole Plame outing conspiracy was structured to avoid prosecution under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. (IIPA). If Judy can plausibly claim that she learned Plame's identity from Gilon -- a Mossad officer -- rather than from Scooter, that would let Libby off the hook as far as an IIPA conviction is concerned, along with anyone else at the White House she also passed identifying information about Plame to.
That particular law requires the prosecutor prove five things: 1)that the official who leaked the identity had a security clearance and 2) access to a classified document, 3) he intentionally leaked it to 4) a person without a security clearance, and 5) the US gov't was taking active measures to ptotect the covert identity of the agent who was outed.
If Gilon, an agent of a foreign government, was Miller's source for Plame's identity rather than Libby (or another US Gov't official, such as Bolton) the conspirators may have thought they had created a firewall between themselves and violation of the IIPA.
But, here's where this strategy would fail and potentially create enormous leverage for the prosecutor. If Fitzgerald had evidence that Gilon conspired to inform Miller about Plame's identity, that's Espionage and conspiracy. A violation of the section of the Espionage Act dealing with revealing classified documents to foreign powers is a potential capital offense. That's some pretty scary leverage.
I think it's entirely possible that a very powerful agency of the US Government prevailed on the Israelis to convince Gilon to talk to Fitzgerald. If Judy were linked to espionage, she would sing her head off before the Grand Jury about what she knew about Scooter and the others she talked to. And, that's exactly what I believe she has done.
If Miller was the unidentified woman referenced in the the Larry Franklin OSP-AIPAC spy case indictment, she is the key to linking the Bush White House to a foreign espionage ring that illegally funneled forged documents to the Vice President's Office in a plot to involve the US in a war with disasterous results. That is treason. It is potentially fatal to any and all involved, particularly to those officials at the top of the conspiracy.
Another possibility is that Larry Franklin was Judy's source. We know that at some point he was detected by the FBI, which "turned" him into a cooperating witness. Franklin continued to work at Feith's and Wurmser's Office of Special Plans (OSP) at the Pentagon until it was shut down, and he was indicted last summer. For months, the Bureau monitored Frankin and his conversations and meetings as he moved within the OSP and neocon network trading documents alleging Iraq and Iran WMDs back and forth with the Israelis.
If this second scenario holds, that would likely mean the FBI was also monitoring Miller, as she spread the poison pill around the White House.
Either way, OMG.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x166396#166423