The Source
It’s nice to be able to fit another piece into the Rovegate puzzle. This Kos diary by PollyUSA is an excellent rundown of the original source of the Plame information — a classified state department document from 2002 that was then circulated all over Washington after Novak’s column ran. Clearly, most people following the case closely already know this because it’s all in the public record. I hadn’t connected the dots even though I’ve written about this document in a couple of different contexts.
In a nutshell:
There is a leaked classified state department document from 2002 in play in this case. It is widely considered to be the likely source of the information that Plame worked for the CIA.
It says that Valerie Plame recommended her husband for the job.
It was leaked to a bunch of news organizations during 2003 and is a piece of evidence in the Senate commission report.
This is the same document that was on the Africa trip with Colin Powell and the president.
The CIA has publicly disputed the accuracy of the memo, saying that the author of the memo could not have been at the meeting and therefore didn’t know what he was talking about.
PollyUSA rounded up a number of newpaper articles that discussed this document but here are just a couple of them:
An internal government memo addresses some of the mysteries at the center of the White House leak investigation and could help investigators in the search for who disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, according to two people familiar with the memo.
The memo, prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel, details a meeting in early 2002 where CIA officer Valerie Plame and other intelligence officials gathered to brainstorm about how to verify reports that Iraq had sought uranium yellowcake from Niger.
Sources said the CIA is angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets suggesting Plame had a role in arranging her husband’s trip to Africa for the CIA. The document, written by a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), describes a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed, said a senior administration official who has seen it.
It is a crime to leak classified information, so this may well be an element of Fitzgerald’s case. In an interesting sidenote, it was this document that JD Guckert referenced when he interviewed Wilson and it got him a visit from the FBI. (After preening about confidential sources for a while, Guckert eventually said that he’d read about the document in the Wall Street Journal.)His story confirms that the FBI was following up on this document and that means it probably was still classified when Guckert wrote about it in October 2003, however.
I have a couple of thoughts about this.
In order to stay out of legal and political trouble, members of Bush administration simply have to claim that they didn’t know Valerie Plame was undercover. So, if this classified report is the source of the leak and it only says “Wilson’s wife suggested he go on the mission” with no mention of her status, then it appears that not one person who saw that document — whether it was Colin Powell on Air Force One or whether it was Cheney and Libby with the entire Iraq Group holding their hand towels in the mens room —– not one bothered to raise a flag about this CIA “employee’s” status before Rove et al blabbed the story all over town. If they are innocent of purposefully outing a CIA Agent this is what we must believe.
I don’t have a top security clearance and I don’t work in Washington and I am as far out of the war planning for this country as you can get. Yet I know that I would have wondered whether it might be a matter of national security to tell the press that someone was a CIA employee. Anybody who watches “Alias” would know that for gawd’s sake. We are supposed to believe that top presidential advisors took the information from one state department document and ran with it without ever checking the details.
Could be. Nobody ever thought the president would personally authorize the break in of the Democratic National Committee, but he did.
Second, the CIA has disputed the characterization of Plame’s role in getting her husband the assignment. I don’t know or care whether she did or not — it’s a red herring. But nonetheless, it’s worth pointing out that is has been challenged by the CIA from the beginning. From Newsday July 22, 2003:
A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked “alongside” the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. “They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,” he said. “There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,” he said. “I can’t figure out what it could be.”
I think we’ve figured it out.
But what’s interesting about that is that this classified document that people consider the source of the leak was written in 2002. I’m assuming it was part of a report on what Wilson’s findings, although I have no proof of that. And I don’t know who wrote this memo (although it’s certain that some members of the press do, since they’ve seen it) but he or she has been described as an analyst at the INR — the state dept intelligence division. I have to wonder what was the purpose of putting in this little tid-bit about Plame in the first place?
It would be nice to know who wrote it if only to prove or disprove the speculation that Bolton’s cabal was involved. If he was, then this is a whole new ballgame. I would be very tempted to think that Bolton had spiked Wilson’s report from the get. On the other hand, Bolton and his minions apparently have not been called to the Grand Jury so perhaps that’s unlikely. If I had to guess, I’d say this tid-bit about Wilson’s wife was a throw away line that caught Rove and Libby’s attention as a possible way to feminize Wilson.
I’m speculating that when they got wind that Wilson was going to spill the beans they looked for dirt.(Wilson says he was told that when the yellowcake story was falling apart in March the VP’s office ordered a “work-up” on him.)This classified state department document contained the information that Wilson’s wife got him the job. The character assassins decided that this was their weapon — Wilson’s CIA employee wife got him the job for either nepotistic, partisan or treasonous reasons. Maybe something else. (Maybe all three if you ask John Gibson.) And the optics of it were that Wilson was an effeminate loser whose wife had to find work for him (“little wifey got it for him.”) It sure sounds like a Rove special.
And at the end of the day, the simple truth remains: they either knew she was undercover and outed her with malice aforethought or they were so stupid and sloppy that they never bothered to find out what her status was. Which explains why they are so intent upon making people believe that Plame wasn’t undercover. It’s their only decent defense.
I’m also reminded today of Murray Waas’ account of Roves testimony to the FBI:
But Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak’s column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Rove and other White House officials described to the FBI what sources characterized as an aggressive campaign to discredit Wilson through the leaking and disseminating of derogatory information regarding him and his wife to the press, utilizing proxies such as conservative interest groups and the Republican National Committee to achieve those ends, and distributing talking points to allies of the administration on Capitol Hill and elsewhere. Rove is said to have named at least six other administration officials who were involved in the effort to discredit Wilson.
Everytime I read that I’m amazed. If that is true it is a truly damning confession of character assassination by the man who is the president’s most trusted advisor. Regardless of any actual crime being committed, I think that if the American people knew this a large majority would demand that Rove be dismissed. He basically admits that smearing opponents is something he does with the help of the entire Republican infrastructure. We know this stuff exists in politics, some on both sides. But to insist it’s “legitimate” and admit freely that you do it is something else.
But I mention it here because that passage contains something that may or may not be legally problematic for Rove. It depends upon his precise words, which we don’t have:
Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak’s column.
I suppose it depends on what the definition of “circulate” is, if he even used that word at all. But, generally speaking, if he insisted that he hadn’t been talking about Plame before Novak’s column, he lied to the FBI. We know he spoke with Cooper.
And then there’s the classified document being passed around to every wingnut in town.
Rove is in an unpleasant box. He’s claimed that his aggressive smear campaign to to leak and disseminate derogatory information about Bush’s critics through partisan channels was completely legitimate — but that he didn’t know that Plame was undercover or that this document was classified. I hope for his sake that’s not actually his defense. I’ve long said he’s no genius, but nobody will believe he’s that stupid. I doubt Patrick Fitzgerald is that stupid either.
Hat tip to Grand Moff Texan in the comments.
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