Will & Kristol Make False Accusations Against Fitzgerald [View All]

[Me.]

In effort to smear Plame leak prosecutor, Will, Kristol baselessly claimed that investigation was limited to 1982 law


“On October 16, columnist George Will suggested that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has "changed statutes in midstream," overstepping the original mandate granted him by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in his investigation of the CIA leak case. This argument -- also recently advanced by Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen -- rests on the unfounded claim that Fitzgerald's prosecutorial authority was limited to a single statute, the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), which forbids the intentional disclosure of a covert intelligence officer's identity. In fact, Fitzgerald received a broad mandate to investigate the alleged leak of Valerie Plame's identity as a CIA operative by Bush administration officials and is not limited to investigating possible violations under any one specific statute.

Further, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol claimed that the CIA originally referred the leak case to DOJ specifically as a possible violation of the IIPA. But this claim, too, appears to be baseless. “ cont…

“But Will's suggestion that Fitzgerald was initially tasked with investigating "the supposed violation" of the IIPA is false. Fitzgerald's official delegation as special prosecutor, which was reprinted in a 2004 Government Accountability Office decision paper, did not mention the IIPA, nor any other specific statute. Rather, it granted him "all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity."

Moreover, the DOJ official who appointed Fitzgerald as special prosecutor, then-deputy attorney general James Comey, stated in a December 30, 2003, press conference that "Mr. Fitzgerald alone will decide ... what prosecutive decisions to make" and that "he can pursue it wherever he wants to pursue it." Such a mandate would certainly allow Fitzgerald to pursue charges under a range of federal prohibitions, including conspiracy, perjury, obstruction of justice, as well as the disclosure of classified material under the 1917 Espionage Act (which concerns the release of classified information to someone not authorized to receive it).”cont…


http://mediamatters.org/items/200510170015