Holy Granola!

by hilzoy

It was lunchtime, and I was (and am) at home, since it's spring break, so I made myself lunch and flipped on CSPAN, where, as luck would have it, the House Oversight Committee holding its hearings on Valerie Plame Wilson. Wilson had finished testifying, and the committee was questioning James Knodell, the Director of the White House's security office, and the person in charge of overseeing classified information. Rep. Waxman, in questioning, established that anyone who believed that s/he might have disclosed classified information, advertently or inadvertently, has an affirmative obligation to file a report on that fact with his office, and that no such report was ever filed in connection with the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity. (Knodell seemed very, very uncomfortable; apparently, he was appearing voluntarily, but the White House had not wanted him to appear, and he had showed up under threat of subpoena.)

Then my Congressman, Elijah Cummings, started to question Dr. Knodell, and said that he was shocked that no such report had been filed. Had there been any investigation into this failure? After more discomfort, Knodell said: no. Under further questioning, including some by a completely incredulous Henry Waxman, he said that his office had not, at any time, investigated the leak of Wilson's identity, and that there was an affirmative obligation to do that too.

This really is extraordinary. The point of investigating a leak of classified information is not just to assign blame; it's also to figure out how to fix things so that no similar leaks ever happen again. The best possible spin one could put on this, for the White House, is that they were completely unconcerned with covert agents getting outed. The more likely story, of course, is that they knew perfectly well who had leaked the information, and didn't want it investigated because they knew that the more details found their way onto paper, the worse it would be.

But think about it: a covert agent's identity was leaked. Her networks, front organizations, and so on, as well as any people she might have had entirely innocent contacts with abroad, were put in jeopardy. Agents all over the world had to ask themselves whether they, too, might be outed for purely political reasons.

And the White House never bothered to investigate, even though they had a legal obligation to do so.

Remember how the President kept saying that he wanted to get to the bottom of this? Ha ha ha.

***

UPDATE: Excerpt from Wilson's opening statement below the fold.

"I'm grateful for this opportunity to set the record straight. I served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14, 2003, after a leak by administration officials.

Today, I can tell this committee even more. In the run-up to the war with Iraq I worked in the counter proliferation division of the CIA -- still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified.

I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policymakers on Iraq's presumed weapons of mass destruction programs.

While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.

I loved my career because I love my country. I was proud of the serious responsibilities entrusted to me as a CIA covert operations officer and I was dedicated to this work.

It was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit that everyone knew where I worked.

But all of my efforts on behalf of the national security of the United States -- all of my training, all of the value of my years of service -- were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly. (...)

The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave but I can't provide details beyond that in this public hearing.

But the concept is obvious. Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents who, in turn, risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence.

Lives are literally at stake. Every single one of my former CIA colleagues, from my fellow covert officers to analysts to technical operations officers to even the secretaries, understand the vulnerabilities of our officers and recognize that the travesty of what happened to me could happen to them.

We in the CIA always know that we might be exposed and threatened by foreign enemies.

It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover."

Two more things. First, some of the Republicans on the committee were trying to make the case that no one in the White House knew about Wilson's status. This shouldn't make any difference at all. As I understand it, people who are cleared for classified information have an obligation to find out the status of any information they're uncertain about before disclosing it. Especially in a case like this, involving the disclosure that someone works for the CIA, saying "well, I didn't actually know that she was covert" makes no more sense than saying: well, I didn't know that there were children in that schoolhouse when I decided to unload my AK-47 into it, or: I didn't know that anyone was crossing the street when I decided to drive through the crosswalk with my eyes closed.

Second: all those bloggers who leapt to the conclusion that Valerie Plame Wilson was not a covert operative should just be ashamed of themselves. (Note: I'm not talking about people who entertained doubts, but those people who reached conclusions and talked as though those conclusions were solid.) There are some things that bloggers can establish, and others that we cannot, and it's important that we bear that difference clearly in mind. I would not expect the CIA to confirm that someone was a covert operative. I would not expect the world to be just brimming with evidence of her covert status. Nor would I expect it to be obvious whether, e.g., she had taken trips abroad on behalf of the CIA during the last five years.

We can find out a lot with Google searches and the like, but we should be aware of their limits. Thinking that we have somehow "shown" that someone isn't a covert operative, in the face of a lot of evidence that she was, is just silly.

Comments

[Gromit]

Francis: "Covert" has a specific meaning per the IIPA.

It does, and Tom Maguire has been hammering this point over and over. But doesn't "covert" also have an operational meaning in the intelligence community that doesn't hinge on the particulars of the IIPA? If the question is "was the IIPA violated" then the former definition is critical. If the question is "was a covert operative outed as an act of political intimidation" then is the fulfillment of the requirements of that particular law even an issue?

It seems to me entirely likely that whether Plame was "covert" or the leak of her identity violated the IIPA was not a resolvable question due to Libby's obstruction of justice.

Being neither a Plameologist nor a lawyer, I realize I'm out of my depth here, but how do you figure that whether she was covert was not resolvable? It seems to me that this would be easily resolved by simply asking the CIA. That potential violation of the IIPA would be harder to resolve makes perfect sense, on the other hand.

[Steve]

Being neither a Plameologist nor a lawyer, I realize I'm out of my depth here, but how do you figure that whether she was covert was not resolvable?

You are quite right about this. Libby wouldn't be in a position to obscure her covert (or non-covert) status no matter how hard he tried to obstruct justice.

The tougher issue, as I mention above, is proving that the leaker(s) was aware of Plame's covert status. Maybe, as Maguire postulates, it was all just a big accident. But that wouldn't mean she wasn't covert!

[J Thomas]

It's clear that Plame was covert by the CIA's standards, and Libby couldn't change that. What he could do would be to make it very unclear who knew she was covert. If nobody in the White House knew, then they're negligent in not finding out -- but still they didn't intentionally violate the law.

If somebody knew -- Cheney, say -- and told something that sounded scandalous to a bunch of people who didn't know, and they spread it around then Cheney was highly negligent but nobody else was breaking the law. And Cheney perhaps had the right to decide on the spur of the moment to declassify Plame and burn all her contacts. After all, if they didn't tell him what he wanted to hear, what good were they?

And there's a question who told first, and did they know. All of this could get snarled if Libby lied enough, he could make it completely unclear who learned what from whom, and who learned it first, and who told it first.

It's unclear to me why Fitzgerald didn't go after any of the other liars and perjurers. But his approach with mafia types was to get somebody for perjury and then get them to tell the truth with that leverage. If he tried the same thing here, he didn't actually have much leverage on Libby since Bush can pardon him in December 2008 at the latest. Libby has a whole lot more to gain by staying quiet than he does by singing. There's no witness protection program for him. Fitzgerald's ability to punish or reward him is strictly limited. Bush's ability to punish or reward him hsa far fewer limits.

[Frank]

J Thomas- Republican administrations usually get away with pardoning their criminal acomplices, but that generally means that they have gotten away with criminal conspiracy. Fitzgerald may have more leverage than we think if he is prepared to charge President Bush for a criminal act(after he leaves office) if he pardons Scooter.

[hilzoy]

Having read about 3/4 of the latest document dump, all I can say is: I really wish that they would arrange these things chronologically, and that they'd present just one (1) copy of each email exchange, rather than an email, followed by a reply that says 'sure!' and then quotes the original email, followed by a reply that says 'Great!', then 'sure', then the original email, and so on for what seems like infinitely many emails.

Based on 1-7 pp. 16-18, however, if I were any of a number of people in the DoJ, I'd be firing Kyle Sampson, for drafting a letter that goes out under the signature of the Acting Assistant AG to Harry Reid, which contains flat-out lies (e.g., "The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Griffin." Hahahahaha.)