Fitzgerald Indicts Two in Plame Scandal
By Blanton Posted in Breaking News — Comments (80) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Lawyers close to the Plame investigation say that Fitzgerald will indict Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson for obstruction of justice and perjury. In addition, Wilson will be indicted for outing his wife, who was a covert CIA agent. Additional charges are being considered against Valerie Plame for her role in selecting her own husband for a government assignment in a concerted political effort to undermine the administration.
Now, that's actually not true. But, given the media's handling of this matter, this post should be treated with the same credibility that the media is presenting statements of "lawyers close to the Plame investigation." In point of fact, there are several lawyers on this site who have kept up with the material and they are probably as close to the investigation as the ones being quoted in the media, which is to say not very close at all.
Something will happen this week. But, we should all tread carefully in making predictions and jumping to conclusions. Likewise, we should refrain from jumping on the "must resign" bandwagon until the facts get out there. Lastly, as Michael Barone said today
Rove and Libby did seek to discredit Joseph Wilson -- as they should well have done. As the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report in July 2004, just about everything Wilson said publicly about his trip to Niger was untrue. He said that he had discredited reports that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Niger. But the CIA people to whom he reported concluded that, if anything, he substantiated such reports. He said that he pointed out that certain other intelligence reports were forged. But the forgeries did not appear until eight months after his trip. He said his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Niger. But it was she who recommended him for the trip. And on and on.
Yes, and had they not tried to discredit Wilson, they would have been negligent in their political duties. Wilson and the left can claim Wilson had some high and noble goals, but he was and is a charlatan attempting to become a living media martyr.
Update [2005-10-24 21:32:37 by Blanton]: Let me add this: I think it is just as plausible that Wilson gets indicted as it is for Rove and Libby to get indicted. Of course, all the Democrats right now bemoaning Fitzgerald getting attacked by Republicans (something that is not happening, by the way, save for Hannity), will do all they can to attack and discredit Fitzgerald.
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After all, wasnt that woman, Valerie Plane, a CIA bureacrat sitting behind a desk....and has been one for the past six or seven years?
No, she wasn't. But even if she was, I guess that would make a crime feel a little better, right?
"But within the C.I.A., the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery. Ms. Plame, a specialist in nonconventional weapons who worked overseas, had `nonofficial cover,' and was what in C.I.A. parlance is called a Noc, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create."
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70C16F939580C768CDDA90994D
B404482
Very well-written and a truly insightful post. Well done.
Not cool. It was as if you started with, "White House withdraws Harriet Miers, nominates Janice Rogers Brown," only to have the rug yanked out...
Don't do that again.
are no indictments, Will MSNBC actually show us Chris Matthews gaint pink head blowing up?
what we'll get instead is a new scandal of the cover-up...the back room conspiracy that put Fitzerald under some death-threat, or some other absurdity to explain away how the media could AGAIN get it wrong. Like with Miller, we need to pray for Rove/Libby-gate to fizzle and DeLay-gate to fizzle, then start turning it all around back on the witch-hunters...
Good job with the spoof Blanton-you had me there for a minute.
all the dems currently telling conservatives to not trash Fitzgerald, will then start in on their own trash fest.
how did the CIA think she'd be able to maintain any real cover? Did they think that any spies who might actually care simply wouldn't notice.
Is that how the CIA thinks things work? Boy---Porter Goss must have his work cut out for him.
If you want an agent to be covered, shouldn't they STAY under cover. It's not enough to simply say someone is "under cover."
Has anyone here ever heard of a federal government contract that did not require practically everything to be in writing?
She was going by Valerie Wilson and she wore sunglasses when she commuted.
Good job with the spoof Blanton-you had me there for a minute.
Ditto - I almost ran to the fridge for a celebratory adult beverage after the 1st paragraph!
I believe the law is "within the last five years", prohibition against identifying an uncover agent that is.
The point of the law is that someone who was under cover might need some time to put the past, and anyone who would come after them in the past. It's a good law in concept and one that most reasonable people would agree on.
But in Ms. Plane's case, I think the 5 year time limit was over, so it was a moot point. On top of which was she an under cover officer, or merely a CIA employee who worked overseas in an overt officer status. I've never seen her bio in print, which would be quite interesting in sorting the truth out here. There is also the issue if she had self identified as an officer of the CIA in public, then her cover was gone I would think.
Conservatives and Plamegate
Liberals and Monicagate.
Oh deny all you want. Whine about the differences. Blah, blah, blah...you're just talking to yourselves...just like the liberals six years ago.
Certainly the overall facts are different. But the behavior of the blind partisans is so amusingly similar. In this regard, the liberals and conservatives have far more in common than either will admit.
Thanks for all the entertainment; it really is fun to come here!
"I guess that would make a crime feel a little better, right?"
Not really given that there would be no crime at all. It isn't a crime to mention that someone works for the CIA, after all.
Our super secret agent scandal is way cooler than your pig in a blanket sex romp. We have all the makings of a super sitcom:
Rove - the evil scheming star chamber head
Miller - dark double agent of the underground media
Cooper - goofy straightman, who might be gay
Scooter - honest hardworking stiff with no luck
Valerie - mother of twins, secret agent, psychotic
Joe - whipped hubby of above, exposes star chamber
Fitz - loving father figure behind the scenes
Come on! Its a guaranteed hit.
was to keep agents from getting their cover blown in situations where people like the KGB would grab, torture, and murder them. Isn't that why it's called the Agee law?
Dude! You shouldn't get me up to 120 MPH and throw me into reverse that way...you just totally blew my transmission and driveline. Reminds me a little of the joke:
Q: What's the last thing that goes through a bug's mind when it hits a car's windshield?
A: Its butt hole.
That was almost as good as the Greatest Practical Joke of 2004. You must have been a great guy to have around in College™.
Spotted owl tastes kind of like a mix between bald eagle and whooping crane.
From Joe's perspective, "The Spy who Shagged Me," fits just about right.
How to spell "Aggie" is the primary third year curriculum. FYI, Agee is the opposite direction of Ahaw
any BBQ is better with mesquite.
I got that sig from a bumper sticker, but didn't have enough characters left to give due credit.
Big 4 door cab long bed 1 ton ford dual rear wheels; diesel of course...perfect
Just now on MSNBC Joe Scarborough had on a couple of people, and said that the leak came straight from the VP.
WOW
FYI: My old id is Politics1. Evidently they did not like what I had to say! :( :(
Unless I'm missing something big, Valerie Plame wasn't in danger of being beheaded in the Lubyanka, Syria, Afghanistan, or any such place by the summer of 2003. Unless the Democrats want us to think the DC snipers were after her butt.
The purported violations of law are peanuts, not worth the trouble to even discuss. But as Howard Dean said in so many words yesterday, the big issue is the "coverup," which (according to him) definitely took place and must be punished electorally even if Fitzgerald indicts no one.
You were banned and came back and outed yourself? Dude, that just ain't smart.
Were they orange? It IS Halloween next week, you know.
Where the heck is Drudge these days? He was all over Monicagate. He seems to be out of the loop.
That talking about anything other then what you people want to here, you get banned.
Well they can ban this and I will just come back.
You can't put the genie back in the bottle, but thank you for pointing out YOUR ignorance.
Where the heck is Drudge these days? He was all over Monicagate (no pun intended). He seems to be out of the loop.
headset. Filters out all "J" words. Darned near starved to death trying to order a Jumbo Jack at a Jack in the Box drivethru.
The guy has been locked in the hurrican tractor beam for months. How many times have you pulled up his site and seen a hurricane radar over the past three months. Before that he had a siren up every time gas prices went up ten cents. He's a little distracted this year.
"As the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a bipartisan report in July 2004, just about everything Wilson said publicly about his trip to Niger was untrue"
I was under the impression that this assertion was made in the appendix of the report because it did not win endorsement from most Senators on that committee. I thought that only three Senators endorsed this statement.
If this is true, it's not a bipartisan conclusion and it is misleading to insist that it is.
Am I mistaken?
I'm at a loss why you would sign up, get banned, sign up again...are you familiar with web hosting technology, and the things that can be found out about a user if they (expletive removed in accordance with posting guidelines) the site admins.?
Why don't you get a new hobby or something...or just go find another sandbox. A lot of energy goes into these sites...why are you wasting it whacking our bee's nest?
there are plenty of liberal leaning posters here at RedState, they may be in the minority, but they manage to play by the rules.
Perhaps you should take some lessons from them.
...not with standing this little charade, I like talking and interacting with other people about there views.
Unlike SOME people, I don't think I know it all, and having other opinions helps to see both sides. However most of the time everybody is "Democratic bad, Republican good". That mentality is based on ignorance. Not fact.
Drudge has gone AWOL on WH politics.
The reason for that may be b/c their aren't paid full-time leakers at the GWB WH like there were at Bubba's.
Drudge seems more intent on winning some award based on meteorological coverage than he does on unraveling Plamegate or SCOTUS nominees.
Be careful of using the Meme "Plame sent Wilson." Based on all of the info available this claim is in dispute.
The INR report that states that "Plame sent Wilson" is disputed by the CIA and was authored by an agent who could not have attended the meeting in 2002 in which Wilson was chosen to go.
Wilson's op-ed claim that the VP's office sent him is not entirely accurate but doesn't appear to be an intentional lie either.
From my extensive reading from many many sources this is my guess as to how it went down. The CIA was tasked by the VP's office to look into the Niger documents. In examining the issue, Wilson's name came up from conversation with Plame (She does not appear to have attended the meeting). When asked she confirmed that Wilson had extensive experience in Niger and the surrounding area. She was not in a position to "send" Wilson. That decision had to be made by the director.
Wilson, being presented with the idea of going was told somethign to the effect of "The VP's office has requested that the CIA look into this matter, would you be interested in going there and examining the issue?"
From that I can see how Wilson would say "The VP's office sent me." Yes, it is not accurate but not a lie either. As well as Plame suggesting to send her husband. Suggesting is not "sending"
This semantic parsing of the issue is problematic for both sides of the isle.
People around here do "tolerate" those of us who bring different viewpoints, as long as we're cordial and we debate, not throw about insults and put our hands over our ears and scream "LALALALALA I can't hear you LALALALALA."
I agree with some things I see here, I don't agree with others. But I respect the opinions of those with whom I don't agree. And you can learn a great deal by sitting down and looking at both sides of an issue.
That's the beauty of our nation. We can disagree and still respect one another.
He's just trying too hard to keep track of Cindy Sheehan.
I followed his "Cindy Sheehan Plans to Tie Herself to White House in Protest..." link
and found this little piece.
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Cindy Sheehan, the military mother who made her son's death in Iraq a rallying point for the anti-war movement, plans to tie herself to the White House fence to protest the milestone of 2,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq."
I guess she hasn't found a job yet and Casey's insurance money hasn't run out, so she's going another round.
Leave it to Drudge to follow this 'developing' story. This is way better than who leaked who first. It ranks right up there w/ body fluids on blue dresses.
hasn't mentioned Rosa Parks.
FWIW-Local radio guy here in Austin said he hoped they DON'T arrest her like she hopes she will be...he reminded us it will be dead of winter in DC(not very "chained-to-fence" friendly weather...
Maybe a little frostbite would do her some good!
:)
There most likely would be numerous other people in those type of places that would have been in danger that way. And again, if she was what they say (and considering it was the CIA that requested this investigation, I'm going to assume they know her status). it isn't peanuts at all.
K. Niger Conclusions
(U) Conclusion 12. Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.
(footnote omitted - subsequent text redacted in original)
(U) Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely or unwilling or able to sell uranium to Iraq.
(subsequent text redacted in original)
(U) Conclusion 14. The Central Intelligence Agency should have told the Vice President and other senior policymakers that it had sent someone to Niger to look into the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal and should have briefed the Vice President on the former ambassador's findings
(subsequent text redacted in original)
(U) Conclusion 15. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Directorate of Operations should have taken precautions not to discuss the credibility of reporting with a potential source when it arranged a meeting with the former ambassador and Intelligence Community analysts.
(subsequent text redacted in original)
(U) Conclusion 16. The language in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" overstated what the Intelligence Community knew about Iraq's possible procurement attempts.
(subsequent text redacted in original)
(Conclusions 17 through 26 omitted in this post)
Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq
Order Reported on July 7, 2004
Select Committee on Intelligence
What Appendix are you talking about?
I look at the Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, Order Reported on July 7, 2004, Select Committee on Intelligence, http://intelligence.senate.gov/iraqreport2.pdf
and I see Appendix A, pp 423 - 428, and Appendix B, pp 429 & 430. Neither Appendix mentions Wilson, Plame (Flame, whatever) or Niger at all.
Lord, this is nerve-wracking.
We can't give in to traitors. Plame and Wilson are traitors - this is well-established. If Fitzgerald comes after anyone within this Administration, he's a traitor too.
And we know how traitors used to be dealt with. Alas, tragically I doubt if there's the will to resort to such methods today.
I think we'd best be studying just what the left did to Ken Starr.
Oh wait I get it.
People who disagree with you are traitors.
Traitors should be executed.
Therefore, people who disagree with you should be executed.
Good point.
Give the guy a break. I think it's called poetic license.
I infer that "they" in your post refers to CIA, not the Democrats, Joe Wilson, the prosecutor, or the media.
CIA obviously has covert assets out there in some pretty frowzy places, and they are covered by the intent of the "Agee Law." Are you suggesting that somehow some or all of those people are in danger because the White House has been speculatively accused of revealing that Valerie Plame works for the CIA?
Or are you suggesting that the White House, or people therein, have been "outing" a lot more people than just Valerie Plame?
That if she was actually working or worked as a NOC, then her being revealed as one (not as Wilson's wife, or as a CIA employee in the general sense, but as a NOC), then all the people she worked with around the world would also be in serious danger by virtue of being linked to her. She wouldn't just be out there doing her thing alone, she would have worked with other people, plenty of whom are in the types of countries you mentioned. Her exposure puts them in danger by indirectly exposing them, it's not just her a disclosure like this would endanger.
Either way, the people that were involved in disclosing that info (again, assuming it's correct) are in serious trouble, and as far as I'm concerned, should be. That goes for the media who actually reported this info, and whoever it is that gave it to them.
Matt is very much under the weather with symptoms that appear to be Nasal Diphtheria. Very nasty stuff.
You mistake juvenile taunts with witty repartee. Be glad I'm not a moderator, I'd ban you and your ISP tout suite.
Read the mission statement. This is not a random politics board, it has a purpose, it has a goal, it has an agenda.
Multiple viewpoints are tolerated, encouraged even, but when you and your ilk show up with pointy sticks and demand to talk about whatever it is that you want to talk about, regardless of the rest of the conversation, you become random noise. There are multiple Democrats or liberals that show up here and debate, discuss, use intellect and reason, and it's fun and enlightening to have them here. You don't seem to be part of that crowd.
I have no idea why you've been banned in the past, nor do I particularly care. But take the hint from your previous banishment and just go away.
I just banned you again. That's the third time. Congratulations: Now we take fumigation measures. Those can be unpleasant.
That's not what I've heard about Scooter. I heard he's a bareknuckles, hold no punches politican that could be even more Maciavellian than Cheney himself. In other words, my type of politician.
tout DE suite. Sorry, my dad's an editor. I can't help it...it's in my blood.
but it still sounds bizarre. Does that mean that it's impossible for covert operatives to ever be promoted into visible management positions? Does CIA have a separate "black" promotion track?
What if Plame had been posted covertly in Russia or the former USSR? Wouldn't it be easy enough for the KGB to notice that Plame now commutes to Langley? They don't need a tipoff from Scooter Libby to go through their files and round up all of her known associates.
blanton starts a thread about how people need to stop making assumptions. People then to fill said thread with a bunch of assumptions.
I would like to know why blanton thinks it is just as likely that Wilson would get indicted as Rove? Has Wilson even been notified that he is a potential target of this investigation?
I'm not saying you are wrong. I simply haven't heard anything to suggest that he is a possible target of indictment.
Yeah, because right wingers have gone so easy on Al Franken's latest comments.
It's called hypocrisy.
"Has Wilson even been notified that he is a potential target of this investigation?"
As I understand it: no one has been notified that they're a target; no one has been notified that they're not a target.
The last session of this grand jury is tomorrow. It'll certainly be interesting to see what happens. Michael Barrone is predicting no indictments.
I believe that your Post may be close to some of the things they are looking into along with the CIA and possibly the State dept. There alot of unhappy people there and have always been politics in all of these org. including the Pentagon.
Anyway I know it is wishful thinking but from what i have read over the years, it is all political and has been done purposely to Pres. Bush. I also have blogged on Newsbusters about this too, so I was hoping when I first read the top of the Post it was True...we'll see that's all we can do. Thanks for the post though I really enjoyed it and am still smiling.
Also waiting to see how much coverage we get from the Cisneros report from Bartlett coming out any day...media will not cover much thats for sure when it's about Clintoon and the goons.
Al Franken is a national figure(a darling of the dems) - lots of people hear him. Francis.... is a nobody - like you and me - how many hear us?
If this isn't a pointy stick, I don't know what is.
And I won't even get into how it asserts all the facts needed to get to its conclusion, and then disallows any debate over it.
You reply to a potential 'moby' by illustrating just how ignorant you are of the facts!
One of the reasons I like Redstate is that, as conservative as its readers are, they are tolerant of other viewpoints. A liberal can post without expecting to be flamed or banned just for expressing a different point of view (Free Republic).
Hi post lowers the level of discourse in what is an otherwise respectable blog.
GARBAGE, and are attempting to make an actual arguement with it! Plame worked in an EMBASY! That is OFFICIAL cover! A NOC does not have any cover, and does not have any diplomatic immunity. If a NOC is discovered as a spy the CIA cuts them loose, and denies any knowledge of who they are, or what they are doing. Now you are not only trying to make her into a spy, but into the most dangerous category of spy! It is stunning how this thing is getting distorted by leftists who have suddenly found patriotism and suddenly become experts in covert operations. You've gone from the Church Commission to Oliver North without passing GO! I suggest that you research and define new vocabulary words and acronyms before you spout off!
Barone:
But the CIA people to whom he reported concluded that, if anything, he substantiated such reports.
Can you back that up, Mike? Nope. Patently false.
By revealing that Porter Goss works for the CIA, you've just made yourself a target of the Fitzgerald investigation.
As a witness to your disclosure, I'm sure that I'll get a subpoena any day now.
I don't get your post. Is that what you are trying to say ... thats it the media's fault?
I don't buy it. You have some of the biggest names in print on this story, and they are referencing sources, true some are not named. However, my guess is the gist of their reporting is on target. Too many, from too many different outlets, are reporting the same things.
The truth will out. This from dailykos blog:
"The issue of whether Iraq sought to buy yellowcake from Niger is and has always been irrelevant. The White House -- Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hadley; the intelligence community -- Tenet and CIA, DOE, and the State Department; Valerie Plame, and Joe Wilson, have all understood this from day one. Plame herself called the idea "crazy."
What has been utterly misunderstood, misrepresented, and lost amid the babble of speculation and intrigue, is that Iraq didn't need yellowcake. They'd had a million pounds of it sitting around "in country" for over a decade, but with no viable means whatsoever of making it into nuclear weapons.
It is all about the cover-up.
Todd Johnston's diary :: ::
The science is what's missing. Understand that and the real fraud will smack you right between the eyes, that someone rammed the Niger/yellowcake 'angle' down the intelligence community's throats. And everyone in the IC knew it, choosing to either toe the line or mutter quietly in the halls.
Except Joe Wilson. He picked the scab that mattered, pointed to the elephant in the room. Niger. God willing, I'll find a way to make these subtle but important distinctions clear. Please bear with me.
Mine and refine
In nature, uranium is an ore much like iron. You dig it out of the ground as a big lump of uranium mixed with crud. The crud has to go, so by one of a few processes the crud is stripped away leaving mostly uranium. BTW, the industry's technical term for "crud" is "other." Crud's funnier.
The so-called "pure" uranium that's left over is very weakly radioactive and not especially dangerous. Also, like cheese in the sun, it doesn't stay "pure" for long because it reacts with the air, sometimes in ways that are unpleasant.
So countries like Niger, who mine and sell uranium force it to react a specific way to make a product that can be safely stored for a long time. They turn it into yellowcake. [1]
Yellowcake is nothing more than uranium right from the ground that has been refined and stabilized. Short of eating it, breathing it, or batter-dipping yourself in it, yellowcake is not all that dangerous either.
*This is really important.*
On a drive from NJ to CA, at the PA state line you are indeed closer to CA. But if you have to pee, I wouldn't recommend holding it.
On the drive to build a nuclear weapon from uranium, "yellowcake" is the PA state line. FYI, should you make to the mid-west, Israel will start launching U.S. cruise missles at you.
Process and enrich
The whole point of a nuclear weapon is making a big "boom." And that is really frickin' hard or a terrorist would have done it a long time ago.
Like everything else in the universe, uranium is made of atoms. And like everything else in the universe, somebody screwed up because 1 out of every 100 uranium atoms is slightly different from the other 99. THAT's the one that goes "boom." So, you have to find that one stinkin' atom out of a hundred, toss away the other 99 (depleted uranium), and do this again and again until you have enough.
Like a bazillion times. Because, as President Bush so clearly illustrated, it takes about a softball-sized chunk of enriched uranium to make a nucular weapon. And there are like a bazillion atoms in a softball. If a few regular old non-booming uranium atoms slip in, that's OK, but 90 out of 100 have to be the 'funny' kind.
A lump of uranium where 90 out of 100 atoms are the dangerous kind is weapons-grade uranium.
Making weapons-grade uranium from yellowcake sucks, and it takes a long time. First you have to turn the yellowcake into a gas, and then that gas into a different gas, etc., etc. and ONLY THEN can you start searching through a gas for the atoms that go "boom." Remember that scene in the Karate Kid, where Mr. Miagi and what's his face are trying to catch flies with chopsticks? Harder than that.
Preparing yellowcake so you can start looking for the right atoms is typically called "processing" and repeatedly separating out that single atom and tossing away the other 99 is called enriching uranium. You are making the uranium "richer" in the kind that go "boom."
Low-enriched uranium (LEU) has more than 1 funky uranium atom per 100, but less than 20.
Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is anything with more than 20 per 100.
Nuclear reactor fuel has 3 or 4 funky uranium atoms per 100.
Weapons grade uranium has more than 90 funky uraniums atom per 100. [2]
OK, breathe. Now that you are officially a nuclear physicist, some historical persepctive is in order:
In 1991, Iraq was discovered to have about 500 metric tons (~1 million lbs.) of yellowcake they'd 'forgotten' to mention. George Herbert Walker Bush, his coalition pals, and the International Atomic Energy Agency were so alarmed that Iraq had yellowcake, they decided to leave it in Iraq. The "prudent" course of action as they saw it: put it drums, seal it up, and check the seals once a year. They knew an entire year was not long enough for Hussein to make anything dangerous out of yellowcake. [3, .pdf]
That yellowcake was inspected and remained untouched until Hussein barred the U.N. inspectors in late 1998. [see 3 above]
On Oct. 6, 2002, the CIA sent a fax to the White House that stated "the procurement [of yellowcake] is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide [yellowcake] in their inventory. [4, para. 7, emphasis added]
During Dec. 9-11, 2002, before Bush's SOTU claim that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Africa, U.N. Inspectors verified that the yellowcake from 1991 was in Iraq, undisturbed, and still sealed. [see 3 above]
I hope you've made it this far. This background is crucial to truly understanding what happened, and what may yet happen, i.e. Iran (with an "n") who is processing uranium, not enriching it yet. Here's the payoff:
Repeated claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, initiated and bolstered solely by the CIA's Directorate of Operations were irrelevant. The idea was never credible, never implied Iraq was re-starting their nuclear programs, and never taken seriously. Iraq had all the yellowcake it needed and 4 years to use it ('99-'02) -- they had no facilities to enrich uranium.
Ask yourself: why would Iraq try to buy 500-550 mT of yellowcake when they already had the same amount, during a period and no one was inspecting it?
Care to guess where Iraq originally bought it's yellowcake back in the late 80's? About 1/2 of it came from Niger, receipts they turned over in the early 90's. Receipts from the 80's for 500-550 mT of yellowcake.
And finally, yes finally, ask yourself who in the Bush administration during '02-'03 didn't understand the unspannable gap between yellowcake and a nuclear bomb:
George W. Bush? Who's father left 500 mT of yellowcake in Hussein's possession?
Dick Cheney? The Secretary of Defense in 1991? The energy mogul with interests in nuclear power?
Condoleeza Rice? The head of NSC who got her undergraduate degree at age 19 and her master's at 20? Who served on the board of Chevron and had a tanker named after her?
George Tenet? Whose agency said buying yellowcake "was not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions?""
So .. when we heard from VP Cheney and Condi about mushroom clouds, etc, they knowlingly were spewing forth spin .. bad. Now we are learning that Steven Hadley (White House aide and neocon)went to Italy and soon after a document (now known to have been forged there several days later and released) was manufactured to add credibility to the Niger uranium claim. Let's stay on point.
My point was that the whole idea of a violation of law in this case is silly. Brillo is trying to say that "outing" Plame is exposing a whole raft of agents to... some kind of danger.
I've never been called a leftist. Some of my friends worry that I might be a Nazi.
My decoder ring must be defective. It won't do that. It keeps telling me that Joe Wilson said: "My good buddies the Nigerians would never sell yellowcake (or cheesecake, or any other kind of cake, for that matter) to my good buddy Saddam. They just wouldn't do such a bad thing. I know they wouldn't."
According to my decoder ring, Joe Wilson never, ever, said, "My good buddy Saddam didn't need to buy yellowcake - he already had it - this is all part of an evil neocon BusHitlerite plot."
What is I gonna do?
oops I guess I did it again.
oh no
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAa
Now we move to level two.
This is gonna get ugly if it goes farther, neighbor. Quit while you're ahead.
well done. For a minute I even thought it was true. Are we ever going to get it over this nonsense? After all, wasnt that woman, Valerie Plane, a CIA bureacrat sitting behind a desk....and has been one for the past six or seven years? Why are they wasting our tax dollars on such nonsense?