From the AP article I did not link before:
[quote]Not accused of outing CIA agent
In his charges, Fitzgerald accused Libby of lying about his conversations with reporters, not outing a spy.
[quote=“jdsmith”]
That seems less severe than him outing a spy.[/quote]
Valerie Palme was outed by Aldrich Ames (arrested in 1994) years and years ago.
Libby apparently knew what he was doing and will now have to pay the price. Since Rove was not indicted, I am much more relieved. Libby can go for all I care and if he is guilty of something then he will have to be punished. Case closed. I will note, however, that Rove was not involved or at least not to the degree that would result in an indictment. So a lot of people are going to have to go back and eat their words. Right? Or is the investigation still ongoing with regard to Rove?
[quote=“Comrade Stalin”][quote=“jdsmith”]
That seems less severe than him outing a spy.[/quote]
Valerie Palme was outed by Aldrich Ames (arrested in 1994) years and years ago.
fas.org/irp/congress/1994_rpt/ssci_ames.htm[/quote]
Not that I doubt you CS, but can you give a hint where in the link it says that. It’s long. 
[quote=“damafen”]Well I stayed up and watched the entire press conference last night and I suppose that the transcript must be somewhere online but I will throw in my comments on Fitzgerald
[quote=“Comrade Stalin”][quote=“jdsmith”]
That seems less severe than him outing a spy.[/quote]
Valerie Palme was outed by Aldrich Ames (arrested in 1994) years and years ago.
fas.org/irp/congress/1994_rpt/ssci_ames.htm[/quote]
Then we can look forward to Aldrich Ames or FBI investigators testifying to that effect at Libby’s trial then. 
[quote=“jdsmith”][quote=“Comrade Stalin”][quote=“jdsmith”]
That seems less severe than him outing a spy.[/quote]
Valerie Palme was outed by Aldrich Ames (arrested in 1994) years and years ago.
fas.org/irp/congress/1994_rpt/ssci_ames.htm[/quote]
Not that I doubt you CS, but can you give a hint where in the link it says that. It’s long. [/quote]
He handed over the names of US agents to the Soviets. Here’s more from the NY Times:
[quote]First, the C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson’s name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.
Second, as Mrs. Wilson rose in the agency, she was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from “noc”
[quote=“spook”]
Then we can look forward to Aldrich Ames or FBI investigators testifying to that effect at Libby’s trial then. [/quote]
What makes you think the CIA is going to allow a public trial?
[quote=“Comrade Stalin”][quote=“spook”]
Then we can look forward to Aldrich Ames or FBI investigators testifying to that effect at Libby’s trial then. [/quote]
What makes you think the CIA is going to allow a public trial?[/quote]
If Aldrich Ames outed Valerie Plame then presumably that’s already part of public record somewhere, else how do you know it to be a fact?
[quote=“spook”][quote=“Comrade Stalin”][quote=“spook”]
Then we can look forward to Aldrich Ames or FBI investigators testifying to that effect at Libby’s trial then. 
[/quote]
What makes you think the CIA is going to allow a public trial?[/quote]
If Aldrich Ames outed Valerie Plame then presumably that’s already part of public record somewhere, else how do you know it to be a fact?[/quote]
spook, you don’t know who Ames was or did, do you? He has head of the CIA’s counter intelligence operations against the Soviets. That’s why Palme was reassigned to Langley.
[quote]Ames was a CIA case officer, who spoke Russian and specialized in the Russian intelligence services, including the KGB, the USSR’s foreign intelligence service. His initial overseas assignment was in Ankara, Turkey, where he targeted Russian intelligence officers for recruitment. Later, he worked in New York City and Mexico City, Mexico. On April 16, 1985, while assigned to the CIA’s Soviet/ East European Division at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, he secretly volunteered to KGB officers at the USSR Embassy, Washington, D.C. Shortly thereafter, the KGB paid him $50,000. During the summer of 1985, Ames met several times with a Russian diplomat to whom he passed classified information about CIA and FBI human sources, as well as technical operations targeting the Soviet Union. In December 1985, Ames met with a Moscow-based KGB officer in Bogota, Colombia. In July 1986, Ames was transferred to Rome, Italy.
In Rome, Ames continued his meetings with the KGB, including a Russian diplomat assigned in Rome and a Moscow-based KGB officer. At the conclusion of his assignment in Rome, Ames received instructions from the KGB regarding clandestine contacts in the Washington, D.C. area, where he would next be assigned. In addition, the KGB wrote to Ames that he had been paid $1.88 million by them in the four years since he volunteered.[/quote]
fbi.gov/libref/historic/famc … s/ames.htm
[quote]US officials said there could be no leniency for Ames, known to the KGB by his code name of “Kolokol” (“The Bell”). His actions are thought to have led to the deaths of at least 10 US agents in the former Soviet Union.
The former head of the CIA’s Soviet operations, Ames is the highest-ranking CIA official ever to be exposed as a double-agent. His arrest in February sent shockwaves through the US intelligence community, and the CIA’s director, R James Woolsey, admitted last week that a number of other CIA officials have been placed under investigation.
[b]In an eight-page statement he read to the court, Ames said he began providing the KGB with the names of CIA spies in April 1985, seeking money to pay debts. He received an initial payment of $50,000.
A few months later, he said, he volunteered information to the KGB identifying virtually all the CIA’s spies in the Soviet Union.[/b][/quote]
{quote]His actions are thought to have led to the deaths of at least 10 US agents in the former Soviet Union.[/quote]
Word is, this figure has increased to 12 since KGB records have opened up.
The FBI knows the name of every agent Ames outed, roughly 25. There are many more covert CIA agents than that.
Presumably then, according to your legal theory, it’s perfectly alright for any covert CIA agent’s name who began working for the CIA prior to 1994 to be publicly broadcast by any high U.S. government official.
Links please?
Bullshit. Covert? Seems most of Washington’s “high society” knew what she was. Her idiot husband should have thought about his wife before he decided to publish in the New York Times. In doing so, he brought himself and his wife under the magnifying glass of every intelligence organization in the world.
Links please?
Bullshit. Covert? Seems most of Washington’s “high society” knew what she was. Her idiot husband should have thought about his wife before he decided to publish in the New York Times. In doing so, he brought himself and his wife under the magnifying glass of every intelligence organization in the world.[/quote]
“Following their arrest and guilty pleas, Ames was debriefed by FBI Special Agents, at which time he detailed compromising the identities of CIA and FBI human sources, some of whom were executed by USSR authorities.”
"More than Valerie Plame’s identity was exposed when her name appeared in a syndicated column in the summer of 2003.
A small Boston company listed as her employer suddenly was shown to be a bogus CIA front, and her alma mater in Belgium discovered it was a favored haunt of an American spy. At Langley, officials in the clandestine service quickly began drawing up a list of contacts and friends, cultivated over more than a decade, to triage any immediate damage. . . .
“Cover and tradecraft are the only forms of protection one has and to have that stripped away because of political scheming is the moral equivalent to exposing forward deployed military units," said Arthur Brown, who retired in February as the CIA’s Asian Division chief and is now a senior vice president at the consultancy firm Control Risks Group.”
[quote=“spook”]
“Following their arrest and guilty pleas, Ames was debriefed by FBI Special Agents, at which time he detailed compromising the identities of CIA and FBI human sources, some of whom were executed by USSR authorities.”
fbi.gov/libref/historic/famc … s/ames.htm[/quote]
spook, please get your terminology straight. We’re talking about Ames giving the Soviets the identities of CIA agents. Yes, he also gave the identities of Soviet sources and most were executed …but that’s not who/what we’re talking about, is it?
Valerie Plame is also to blame to a certain extent for this mess. She and her husband gave interviews in their home prior to the publication of this letter and her identity. As a covert operative, she certainly should have been fully aware of the no nos involved in doing such highly public activities. That, however, does not excuse Libby.
Clearly, there was and is no crime here. The prosecutor admitted the same himself. Now, if Libby was stupid enough to lie and obstruct justice about this, then he will deserve whatever punishment they deem fitting for him. I also think that the CIA may wish to terminate Plame’s employment since that would also be fitting.
So let the blame fall where it should on both Libby and Plame and let’s be done with them.
Fred. Links.
Otherwise people are going to think you’re making it up as you go along. :blah:
"The outing has sparked a furor in the intelligence community, with some saying they feel betrayed by their government.
“We feel like the peasants with torches and pitchforks,” said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who was in Plame’s officer training class in 1985-86. “The robber barons aren’t going to be allowed to get away with this.”
"The publication of her name left CIA officers aghast. “All the people who had innocent lunches with her overseas or went shopping or played tennis with her, I’m sure they are having heart attacks right now,” said one classmate of Plame’s who participated in covert operations. “I would be in hiding now if I were them.”
"Friends and neighbors knew Valerie Wilson as a consultant who traveled frequently overseas. They describe her as charming, bright and discreet. “She did not talk politics,” said Victoria Tillotson, 58, who has often socialized with the Wilsons.
“I thought she was a risk assessment person for some international investment company,” said Ralph Wittenberg, a psychiatrist who chairs the nonprofit Family Mental Health Foundation, where Valerie Wilson is a board member. In recent years, he said, Valerie Wilson has been an “unstinting” volunteer, running peer support groups for women who suffered from postpartum depression, as she had.
“I would never have guessed in a million years” that she was a spy, Wittenberg said."
"Valerie Wilson’s parents knew she worked for the CIA and fretted about her trips abroad, but said they never asked for details.
“We didn’t want to know, and she never offered,” Diane Plame, 74, said in an interview. She added that, since high school, her daughter had wanted "to do something of value to others, and she felt she was achieving that in what she’s done in her work. She wanted to be of value to the country and to be patriotic.
“We’ve been very proud of her – no question,” she added. Diane Plame and her husband, who is 83 and a World War II veteran, are “very angry” about the disclosure and fearful for their daughter’s safety."
[quote]January 28, 2003