CIA Laws and Definitions

Interesting research on the Law Rove is said to have broken. Note the part I have highlighted!

CIA Laws and Definitions: "CIA Laws and Definitions

50 U.S.C. � 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources

(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity of covert agents as result of having access to classified information Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identify of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States, discloses any information that identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such individual’s classified intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

(d) Imposition of consecutive sentences. A term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be consecutive to any other sentence of imprisonment.

source:

Cornell Law School

It really doesn't look good for Rove!

The Washington Monthly

Kevin Drum reminds us why the Whitehouse attacked Joe Wilson!

The Washington Monthly: "One of the advantages of living in Orange County is that I have plenty of centrist and conservative acquaintances, and one thing I've learned from them is that even among Bush's own supporters it was the possibility of Saddam getting hold of nukes that really scared them. Chemical and biological weapons were a bit of a yawn. Without nukes, even Bush sympathizers were skeptical about the whole Iraq adventure.

Since Karl Rove has much more sophisticated means of gauging public opinion than my occasional lunches with friends, he obviously knew this full well. And that means that he was hellbent on making a case in the SOTU that Saddam had an active nuke program. The problem is that even after sifting through every available rumor, analysis, and unconfirmed report, they were only able to come up with two meager pieces of evidence:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.

That's it. Uranium from Africa and aluminum tubes. It was pretty thin stuff.

But it turned out to be even thinner. Although conservatives insist with bilious disdain that the CIA was staffed by do-nothing bureaucrats afraid to follow the Iraqi WMD evidence where it led, the exact opposite was true. Although it's unclear how much of this was due to CIA culture and how much to White House pressure, the reality is that the CIA was far more bullish about Saddam's WMD programs than it should have been. They continued to report the uranium connection long after State Department analysts had made it clear that it was based on forged documents, and they continued to insist that the aluminum tubes were designed for centrifuges long after Department of Energy experts had conclusively debunked it."

Joe Wilson outed them on this claim so he had to be smeared.

An Empty Apology - New York Times

Bob Herbert makes some very interesting observations on GOP chairman Ken Mehlman's apology for the “Southern Strategy”.

An Empty Apology - New York Times: "'Some Republicans gave up on winning the African-American vote, looking the other way or trying to benefit politically from racial polarization,' said Mr. Mehlman. 'I am here today as the Republican chairman to tell you we were wrong.'"...........

The Southern strategy meant much, much more than some members of the G.O.P. simply giving up on African-American votes. Put into play by Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon in the mid- to late 1960's, it fed like a starving beast on the resentment of whites who were scornful of blacks and furious about the demise of segregation and other civil rights advances. The idea was to snatch the white racist vote away from the Democratic Party, which had committed such unpardonable sins as enacting the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts and enforcing desegregation statutes....................

The important thing to keep in mind was how deliberate and pernicious the strategy was. Last month a jury in Philadelphia, Miss., convicted an 80-year-old man, Edgar Ray Killen, of manslaughter in the slaying of three civil rights workers - Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney - in the summer of 1964. It was a crime that made much of the nation tremble, and revolted anyone with a true sense of justice.....

So what did Ronald Reagan do in his first run for the presidency, 16 years after the murder, in the summer of 1980? He chose the site of the murders, Philadelphia, Miss., as the perfect place to send an important symbolic message. Mr. Reagan kicked off his general election campaign at the Neshoba County Fair in Philadelphia, an annual gathering that was famous for its diatribes by segregationist politicians. His message: "I believe in states' rights.".....

And in both of Mr. Bush's presidential campaigns, his supporters, especially his brother Jeb, the governor of Florida, have gone out of their way to prevent or discourage blacks from voting. In a particularly vile episode last year, Florida state troopers conducted a criminal investigation that zeroed in on black voter turnout efforts in Orlando. A number of people were indicted, including the mayor, Buddy Dyer, a Democrat who was then suspended from office.....

The “Southern Strategy” is a GOP effort began in the 1960s by Republican politicians like Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, to try and attract disaffected whites to the Republican party, by taking advantage of their anger and the "Civil Rights" movement. It was largely successful in the South. The South was known as the Solid South because it voted Democratic all in lockstep every Presidential election from the Reconstruction onward. This was largely because of a reactionary pro-Segregation Wing of Democrats known formally as the Dixiecrats.

Senator Strom Thurmond, challenged the Presidential candidacy of Harry Truman as a Dixiecrat in 1948. He ran under the banner “Segregation Now! Segregation Tomorrow! Segregation Forever!” He also used the n-word many times in his speeches.

"I wanna tell you, ladies and gentlemen, that there's not enough troops in the army to force the Southern people to break down segregation and admit the nigger race into our theaters, into our swimming pools, into our homes, and into our churches."

MP3 of quote

Later it turned out Thurmond had fathered a black child, as a teenager in the 1920s. The amnesiac press failed to make note of this in his obituaries. He had lead one of the longest filibusters in Senate history to prevent the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957". In the 1960s he resigned from the Democratic Party and joined the Republicans in protest of Lyndon Johnson's support of “The Civil Rights Act of 1964". This is when. Goldwater and Nixon started openly courting the Dixiecrats, and it has been a Republican tradition up to this very day. Now it is the Solid South because it votes Republican. This is largely because of the “Southern Strategy”

Daily Kos: The CIA's Plame/Brewster Jennings Damage Assessment Report

Interesting observation on the damage the White House Leakers might have caused to Plame's CIA front Brewster Jennings and Associates.

Daily Kos: The CIA's Plame/Brewster Jennings Damage Assessment Report:

"Whenever there is a major intelligence f*ck-up, such as Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen, the CIA performs an exhaustive, meticulous damage assessment of the harm inflicted on our intelligence operations and national security.

Let's remind ourselves of the 18 month-long damage assessment the CIA conducted after catching Aldrich Ames:

"For the past year and a half, an independent team of Intelligence Community analysts and operations officers has conducted a Damage Assessment of the actions of Aldrich Ames, who, while a CIA Directorate of Operations officer from 1985 to 1994, committed espionage for Soviet (and later Russian) intelligence. This Damage Assessment, commissioned by my predecessor, is now complete.

[snip]

The damage which Aldrich Ames did to his country can be summarized in three categories:

-- By revealing to the Soviet Union the identities of many assets who were providing information to the United States, he not only caused their executions, but also made it much more difficult to understand what was going on in the Soviet Union at a crucial time in its history;

-- By revealing to the Soviet Union the way in which the United States sought intelligence and handled assets, he made it much more difficult for this country to gather vital information in other countries as well;

-- By revealing to the Soviet Union identities of assets and American methods of espionage, he put the Soviet Union in the position to pass carefully selected 'feed' material to this country through controlled assets;

The damage done by Aldrich Ames is documented in the Damage Assessment Report which I have submitted to the intelligence committees. I endorse the Report. I have also made this painstaking work of many months available to other agencies of government so that damage control actions can be taken."

You can bet your bottom dollar that the CIA has conducted a painstaking, meticulous damage assessment of the harm caused by Rove and his co-conspirators, which led to the loss not just of Valerie Plame as an agent, but of Brewster-Jennings as a front company and the use of any agent ever who worked for that Brewster Jennings front.

This damage assessment report is presumably still classified. But you can bet Fitzgerald hauled its authors into the grand jury room, and whatever harm was done to our national security because of Rove's malignancy -- Fitzgerald knows about it."

Congressman Apologizes for Hitler Remark - Yahoo! News

Congressman Apologizes for Hitler Remark - Yahoo! News: "

The New Jersey Republican made the remark on a radio talk show this past week, describing his recent visit to the Naval Base in Cuba. Muslim terrorists, he said, were more evil than Hitler.

'Hitler, in his philosophy, was, you know, he hated Jews, he was murdering Jews, and there were some people he liked. But he never went to the level that these people are going to,' LoBiondo said.

A caller objected to the statement only a few minutes later.

'You're right. You're right. I was wrong. I should not have used that and I apologize,' LoBiondo responded."

Sounds like excessive use of the word Nazi, wasn't the only, or most important reason this statement was stupid. He clearly doesn't believe in the concept of "innocent until proven guilty". He just states outright that the suspects are terrorists. It has already been shown numerous times that many of the detainees at Guantanamo were found innocent and released. It has been shown in numerous articles that many of the current detainees are probably innocent, but they are not being given trials, let alone fair trials. Torture can make people confess to things they didn't do. This is why the constitution guarantees the right to a fair and speedy trial, and the right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. In Congressmen LoBiondo's head such Constitutional principles are unimportant when we are dealing with Arabs! Excessive metaphor usage, is not that league!

NO QUARTER: Niger Mischief

Pat Lang on the reason Joe Wilson was smeared by the Bush administration. It is called the Niger Document! This is what Wilson wrote about in The New York Times article, that got Rove and co in a big snit!

NO QUARTER: Niger Mischief: "Among the various items brought to mind by present history is the question of the Niger Document. This was the paper which turned up in the hands of Italian intelligence which purports to establish saddens drive to buy semi-refined Uranium ore in Niger. This document seems to be well established as a forgery planted on the Italians. Was the US government involved? I know of nothing at this point that would demonstrate that.

The newsmedia have worked on this story for years now and several have well documented the result. A major TV news magazine hired me last year to help them look for those who knew the truth in this matter. They succeeded. A national wire service did the same thing without my help and has the result. The same is true of two other national news publications.

It is very clear now that this document was forged by a couple of the shadowy ex-government characters who dwell in the environs of Washington and was planted in Italy on the basis of the personal contacts of one of them with the intention of influencing the debate over Iraq in this country. How do I know that? Well, I just do in the way that intelligence officers learn things. Good sources, multiple sources, first person accounts, probabilities, that is how one learns things. Could I swear to it in court? No. Intelligence conclusions are not things that can be sworn to in court."

If she is correct, that means this story is going to get much bigger, before it is over!

Rove was first source on CIA agent - Time reporter - Yahoo! News

What Mathew Cooper said to the Grand Jury" according to Time as relayed by Yahoo News!

"Rove was first source on CIA agent - Time reporter - Yahoo! News: "So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No. Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the 'agency' on 'WMD'? Yes,' Cooper wrote in Time's current edition.

'When he said things would be declassified soon, was that itself impermissible? I don't know. Is any of this a crime? Beats me,' Cooper wrote.

He also wrote that he was not certain what Rove meant by commenting he had already said too much."