Section 1.7 of Executive Order 12333
In a lot of the commentary on the Great Outing that I've been reading lately, the notion keeps coming up that the CIA wouldn't have requested that the Department of Justice investigate the publication of Valerie Plame's name if they hadn't believed that a crime had been committed.

But it's not as simple as that. According to Section 1.7 of Executive Order 12333 (with my emphases),

The heads of departments and agencies with organizations in the Intelligence Community or the heads of such organizations, as appropriate, shall:

(a) Report to the Attorney General possible violations of federal criminal laws by employees and of specified federal criminal laws by any other person as provided in procedures agreed upon by the Attorney General and the head of the department or agency concerned, in a manner consistent with the protection of intelligence sources and methods, as specified in those procedures;

(b) In any case involving serious or continuing breaches of security, recommend to the Attorney General that the case be referred to the FBI for further investigation[...]

With a high-profile prima facie case of a possibly illegal disclosure, what choice did DCI George Tenet have? He was already pissed at being used as a fall guy over the Iraqi WMD issue and may have seen the referral of the case as a means of hitting back. But, better still, he was required by statute to go to the Department of Justice. And he did, although only informally, it seems, just days after Novak's column appeared. It wasn't until a couple of months later that Tenet officially requested an investigation. Which is what's been going on ever since.

Does any of this mean that the CIA really believes that naming Plame was an intelligence disaster? If you look at how they covered Plame, you wouldn't think so. Read this Washington Post report from September 2003:

When Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson's wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name "for security reasons," according to one CIA official. Intelligence officials said they believed Novak understood there were reasons other than Plame's personal security not to use her name, even though the CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover.

Novak said in an interview last night that the request came at the end of a conversation about Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's role in it. "They said it's doubtful she'll ever again have a foreign assignment," he said. "They said if her name was printed, it might be difficult if she was traveling abroad, and they said they would prefer I didn't use her name. It was a very weak request. If it was put on a stronger basis, I would have considered it."

It's kind of hard not to notice that the CIA is itself confirming here that Plame was with the Company ---right down to the details of her future assignments. Maybe Patrick Fitzgerald should look into that, too.

Incidentally, Novak later wrote a column in which he said that Tenet did not request an investigation of the leak, but I don't think that's true. The DCI is apparently obligated to refer such requests to the DOJ. And I very much doubt he had any qualms about doing so.

Bait and Switches
In a New York Times report this morning is the following paragraph (for those scoring at home, it's the eleventh):

After his conversation with Mr. Cooper, The Associated Press reported Friday, Mr. Rove sent an e-mail message to Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, saying he "didn't take the bait" when Mr. Cooper suggested that Mr. Wilson's criticisms had been damaging to the administration.

Huh? What's Rove saying here? That poor old Matt Cooper was trying to elicit an unguarded remark from him about the President's detractors ---and the Architect wouldn't go all the way?

I say Matt Cooper's extraordinary guilt and reluctance to finger Rove without that personal and unambiguous waiver of confidentiality is attributable to his own inability to not spring leaks.

Anyway, what do you think of this report's accompanying graphic? It was originally the link to a pop-up window where you can learn absolutely nothing about the Times' own reporter, Judy Miller. Isn't she a player in this, too? Why don't we see her face in her own paper?

Timeline for the Get Rove Carnival
Courtesy of Professor Reynolds, go see Stephen St. Onge's timeline of this whole thing.

An Inhuman Understanding
This may get a little discursive, so bear with me.

The Bush-haters ---who not-so-secretly envy the President's Architect with a worshipful, asphyxiated shade of green--- are convinced that, when Karl Rove remarked upon Valerie Plame to Bob Novak and Matt Cooper and probably some jailbird somewhere, he did so as a fully automatic chapter-and-verse-spouting legal analyst ---and not as a natural-minded person who responds naturally to the natural flow of human conversation.

Which brings to mind my belief that the Bush-hating Left are essentially children in their understanding of human nature and in their weird certainties of plots and of omniscient and omnipotent enemies. They are also childlike in their sheer ignorance of factual truth.

The Left often fixate on points of legality with hobgoblinish consistency because they do not have the moral imagination to preserve themselves in the long-term by sacrificing what they see as the absolute protections of the law now. For example, we know who our enemies are in this war against the Islamofascist murderers. We know who their sympathizers and enablers are. These people aren't real Americans or real Britons or anything else that we recognize as fellow citizens and allies. These people are outsiders and do not belong. And if the law must be made to work against them, then that is a necessity that cannot be avoided and should not be made into a source of shame. Because it won't always have to be that way. Because we know enough to know what we will stand for, being Americans.

We know who our enemies are. But the childlike Leftists refuse to acknowledge this. They are too ideologically committed to their hatred of this President and of the people who support him to ever confront the problems with Islam. Do you ever hear any of these Leftists and liberals criticize the practices of Islam in any meaningful way? Of course not. That would be culturally incorrect. And if there's anything that a Leftist holds dearer than his adherence to spiritual communism and countercultural arrogance, it's his fashionable correctness. Never mind that he is a poser who holds all people in contempt; the important thing is for you to know he's above judgementalism and other oppressive Christian and conservative habits.

So you don't see these Bush-haters support the fight our troops are in to secure the blessings of democratic and economic reforms in the middle of the Muslim world. That's because they know better. They know of some other way for us to transform our relationship to the Muslims. But they won't tell us because ---underneath it all--- they know that they are the real obstacles to human and civil rights around the world when they refuse to acknowledge the necessity of confronting evil. They know that the sacrifices our military is making every minute of the day is helping to reshape the Muslim Middle East with the liberating ideas that our culture has triumphed by. These Leftists know that they own a stake in this, too, but they want to see how far they can undermine our strengths before the weight of the edifice comes down on them in a great crushing cloud of victimization. They want that validation more than they treasure their own country. That's a fact.

And, so, anything these losers on the Bush-hating Left can do to harm this Administration, they will. Even in the face of inconvenient facts. Even to the extent of blaming this President for everything from the atrocities of 11 September 2001 to the very behavior of a murderous mujahideen plaguing Iraq.

We know who the enemy are. We know who their sympathizers and enablers are. Why pretend any longer?

Call them out and crush them. If we're feeling especially generous, we might give them a museum some day.

What a Nice Group(ing!)
Now Playing: "Valerie" by Steve Winwood

Liz Claman

Rainy Car
Now Playing: "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel
This is the best picture I've seen on the web today. Except for maybe some pictures of large-breasted women I was looking at earlier. Go here for the full explanation.

(Hat tip to NTodd.)

Tarnation!
Mood:  d'oh
This'll wake you up. Cliff May is suggesting that Joe Wilson used David Corn to out his own wife in this entry in Corn's blog at The Nation.

The Nation?

Well, I'll be!

The first reference to Plame being a secret agent appears in The Nation, in an article by David Corn published July 16, 2003, just two days after Novak’s column appeared. It carried this lead: “Did Bush officials blow the cover of a U.S. intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security — and break the law — in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?”

Since Novak did not report that Plame was “working covertly” how did Corn know that’s what she had been doing?

Corn does not tell his readers and he has responded to a query from me only by pointing out that he was asking a question, not making a “statement of fact.” But in the article, he asserts that Novak “outed” Plame “as an undercover CIA officer.” Again, Novak did not do that. Rather, it is Corn who is, apparently for the first time, “outing” Plame’s “undercover” status.

Corn follows that assertion with a quote from Wilson saying, “I will not answer questions about my wife.” Any reporter worth his salt would immediately wonder: Did Wilson indeed answer Corn’s questions about his wife — after Corn agreed not to quote his answers but to use them only on background? Read the rest of Corn’s piece and it’s difficult to believe anything else. Corn names no other sources for the information he provides — and he provides much more information than Novak revealed.

This ought to be fun to watch go down.

Nonsense
Matthew Cooper, in his own words, on Karl Rove:

"This morning, in what can only be described as a stunning set of developments, that person agreed to give me a personal, unambiguous, uncoerced waiver that I could speak to the grand jury."

Cooper wants everyone to believe that he would have gone to jail if Karl Rove hadn't given him a specific waiver of confidentiality. Horseshit. His lawyer should have told him that the waiver that Rove signed back in 2003 was adqeuate, despite Cooper's supposed belief that what Rove signed then was coerced.

I mean, what the hell is going on here?

Have Some More Rope-a-Dope, Bitches
Mood:  hug me
Uh, isn't grand jury testimony supposed to be secret until the person who testifies discloses it? Who is "this person" we keep hearing about?

WASHINGTON — Although Joseph Wilson and many Democrats have spent the last week saying Karl Rove leaked the identity of a CIA operative to journalists, it may have been the other way around, according to sources familiar with grand jury testimony.

Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, testified to a grand jury that he talked with two journalists before they divulged the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, but that he originally learned about her from the news media and not government sources, a person briefed on the testimony told The Associated Press.

The person, who works in the legal profession, told AP that Rove testified last year that he remembered specifically being told by columnist Robert Novak (search) that Plame, who is Wilson's wife, worked for the CIA. Days earlier, Wilson, a former ambassador, had written a harsh critique of the Iraq war that was published in the New York Times.

Not that I'm complaining. I just thought this stuff was supposed to be kept under their hats.

It's probably just Luskin.

The Rope-a-Dope Is Accomplished in Six Stages ---and the Seventh Brings Return
Now Playing: "Chapter 24" by the Pink Floyd
With Wolf Blitzer on CNN yesterday, Joe Wilson, who is a liar, had this exchange:

BLITZER: [...] the other argument that's been made against you is that you've sought to capitalize on this extravaganza, having that photo shoot with your wife, who was a clandestine officer of the CIA, and that you've tried to enrich yourself writing this book and all of that.

What do you make of those accusations, which are serious accusations, as you know, that have been leveled against you?

WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.

BLITZER: But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?

WILSON: That's not anything that I can talk about.

One extremely stupid interpretation of the quote I emphasized above is that Wilson meant that Plame ceased to be a clandestine officer by virtue of Novak's disclosure. If Wilson meant to say that, wouldn't he have said that she ceased to be a clandestine officer or that Novak caused her to not be such an officer anymore?

It's hard to believe that Wilson's telling the truth here since it absolutely cuts the giblets from his [charge], but he is: Valerie Plame had not been an undercover agent posted abroad for some six years by the time of the Great Outing.

Go read the IIPA and see what that means for Karl Rove, you smegma-chewing felch-monkeys.

You're Not the First to Think That, Mickey
Get a load of the Kausfiles from yesterday:

Isn't this an obvious point that hasn't been made about Joseph Wilson and the Rove/Plame controversy: If you accept an assignment to investigate possible WMD-related activity in Niger on behalf of the CIA, and your wife works at the CIA, shouldn't you think before you make your CIA mission the subject of a high-profile New York Times op-ed piece that there might be the eensiest weensiest chance that in the course of the ensuing controversy your wife's CIA connection might come out in public? How could Wilson not have expected his wife's job to become the buzz of Washington in fairly short order? ... However serious her outing was--and there are those eight redacted pages to worry about--doesn't Wilson bear some substantial responsibility for it as well as whoever in the administration eventually "outed" her to reporters? ... You can't have it all, we are often told. When you marry a covert CIA agent, maybe there are some things you have to give up. Like going on Meet the Press to talk about the CIA! .. Update: Alert reader J.B. notes that, at the time of Wilson's op-ed, Plame was apparently identified by name as his wife on at least one Web site. That means anyone who dealt with Plame abroad (or wanted to call into question the loyalty of a foreigner who dealt with her) could Google her name and discover that she had a husband who--Wilson's op-ed revealed--had undertaken an assignment for the CIA. Not exactly great cover, even before the controversy the op-ed generated. ...

Wilson is a media whore who outed his own wife. Why is that so hard for some to understand?

Nauseating
I can't even watch the interview Wilson did for the Today show with that Gangel woman. What an astonishing joke! Did Madame Couric explicitly instruct her to not ask anything of any substance or to challenge him in any way? Outrageously flimsy [journalism].

It's like Big Media is having to introduce the public to this liar and his wife all over again so that they can get up enough human interest to finish porking the Administration. Shouldn't they have gauzed up the cameras some? Maybe put some strings in to heighten the effect? All that's left now is for Plame herself to make her big interview debut and cinch Madame Couric an Emmy.

This is fucking sordid. And I daresay that the consequences of the overreach are going to be of Ratherian proportions.

LOLygagging
I literally laughed out loud when I read this post by Mark Krikorian over at NRO:

ZIONIST GO HOME!

---and take us with you! The Washington Times had a story today on Bedouins suing the Israeli government to let them move from Gaza to Israel proper after the impending pullout. And Daniel Pipes’ column in the Sun last week was on “Palestinians Who Cling to Israel.” Apparently, when Barak suggested turning the Arab-majority portions of Jerusalem over to the Palestinian Authority in 2000, a survey found that 70 percent of the Arabs in question preferred the Zionist Entity. Conclusion: if the descendants of Palestinian Arab refugees ever got their “right of return,” they really would erase the Jewish state, but not because of politics, but rather for the same reasons Mexicans want to come here – rule of law and economic opportunity.

Obviously, the Jews are so crafty that they've actually managed to trick the Car Swarm People into liking them enough so that when these surveys are done, it will politically embarrass the PA.

A Question for Bush-Haters
Is there now any point at which the President might announce his nominee to the Supreme Court that won't cause you to immediately accuse him of trying to distract the public from the Get Rove Carnival?

Lucy Ramirez, You Got Some 'Splaining to Do
Mood:  on fire
With thanks to Justin Levine, check out this story and this one, too, to get a handle on le who might have supplied the forged documents that the morons on the Left still think were the basis for believing that the Saddamites were in the market for yellowcake.

Those forgeries were not the basis for the British claims.

Lying by the Numbers
Here's a list of Joe Wilson's biggest lies from the RNC's website.

I guess it's on, eh?

Lie Number One is "Wilson Insisted That The Vice President’s Office Sent Him To Niger"

Why is that important? Because, along with Lie Number Two, one can clearly see that Wilson's intent was to inflate the importance of his assignment and to lay it all in Dick Cheney's lap. That way, he could cry later about how he had warned the Administration against going to war over the WMD issue, but that they had ignored him.

Loser.

Absurdity
Now Playing: "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" by the Beatles
Did you happen to see Time magazine's international editor Michael Elliott on Charlie Rose's show a couple nights ago? I can't remember how it went, exactly, but the idea came up that the bomb materials used in London last week may have come from Iraq.

Got that? If we're looking for this afternoon's reason to undermine the War for Iraq, why don't we insinuate ---mere days after the atrocities were committed and without any plausible or serious reason for it to even occur to someone to think it--- that those explosives may have been spirited out of Iraq? You know: from one of those ammo dumps that our forces allowed to be looted because they either failed to gain instantaneous omniscience of all dangers everywhere in a war zone or because things were so much safer for the world when Saddam Hussein was in power and this is what we got coming to us.

My contempt for shit thinking is insurpassable.

Googling for Accuracy
The image you see is a screenshot I took this morning from the Google news page, featuring a Washington Post story about the infamous liar Joe Wilson demanding that Karl Rove be fired.

Who knew Wilson is also a CIA agent?

Can we get Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate this treasonous outing of a great American?

Eschatological
Courtesy of the floor of Eschaton's stables, get a load of this nutty...uh, brown...goodness from some Leftist clown named Steve Simels:

As optimistic as I am about what's [sic] Fitzgerald's doing -- and in this week's sea change in media coverage -- all of that can easily be trumped if there's a big terror attack at home.

Did I say if?

Jesus, Simels. Shouldn't you be wearing a tinfoil hat? You think that this President would stage a terrorist attack on his own country to distract the media and the public from a manufactured scandal over what Karl Rove said in a phone call a couple years ago?

Don't think that Black won't ban you, too. Daily Kos and the Democratic Underground are known to have recently purged such paranaoiac crap from their own little stalls. I'd be more careful to keep your insanity in check.

(Oh, and now Big Media is okay by you? What a fickle little rodent you are.)