Tom Maguire notes in his newest Plame post that there is an easy way to find out if Plame was indeed covert under the IIPC.
“The term ‘covert agent’ means—
(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency . . .
(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and
(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States.”
Many of us pundits on the right have said this over and over and over again over the years, find out if she served outside the US within the last five years prior to her name being leaked and TA-DA! Question answered.
Well, no so fast. If she had served within the prior five years was it in covert status or not?
Lots of varying shades of grey in this case but I think the most telling part is that NO ONE was charged with the leak. But at least give us the dates she supposedly served overseas.
But, as Tom notes, Patrick Fitzgerald won’t tell us or the defense it seems. Their sentencing summary contains only this brief explanation about any overseas work:
“She traveled at least seven times to more than 10 countries,” the document states. “When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity … At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson’s employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.”
No dates. Just that she traveled seven times during her career. Why would they conceal the dates because they most certainly had access to that information, namely that being her pension file. By law CIA officers are entitled to an upward adjustment in their pension for serving abroad so her file should show this, WITH the dates. So did they have access to the file:
Is it possible that the DoJ investigators did not have access to her file? No, per footnote 2 on page 5 of the sentencing calculations, we are assured that "The investigators were given access to Ms. Wilson’s classified file".
So why no friggin dates?
This smells to high heaven. Clarice Feldman concurs:
Fitzgrald’s "evidence" for this is largely taken from the recent Waxman hearing, which proved no such thing, and an undated summary of her personnel records, which also prove no such thing. He has deliberately conflated the Agency’s terminology with that of the far more restrictive language in the Act and hidden from view the facts necessary to ascertain when her service abroad ended, a necessary factor in such an analysis. (Her husband in his book said she stopped serving abroad in 1997,which, if true, would place her outside the purview of the IIPA.) Certainly the same service records (including pension records) summarized by the Prosecution reveal when her service abroad ended. Why has he not presented these records to the Court and defendant?
Because why should he when it’s obvious there is one set of rules for the left, and a completely different set for the right. The very fact that Fitz tells the judge and the defense that her status isn’t relevant for the trial….but NOW it is during the sentencing speaks volumes.
That is not how our criminal justice system works.
This is not right – our legal system has discovery rules for a reason. IF Ms. Plame’s formal dates for service abroad buttress the prosecution position, that should be disclosed to the defense so that they will not waste time pursuing a false trail, or so that the prosecution can prepare arguments that the CIA formal procedures do not comport with the language and intent of the IIPA. On the other hand, if her formal dates for service abroad support the defense position, that should be disclosed so that the defense can argue that this represents the best established practice and settles the issue.
But it is simply not appropriate for Fitzgerald to unilaterally conceal this from the defense, especially when it is a reasonable guess that it was concealed because it would aid the defense.
Check out a few comments left at Tom’s site:
But, even if everything were released tomorrow and it proved that Val really did qualify under the five year rule, you still have to get around the other provision of taking "affirmative measures" to protect her identity. Harlow’s actions negate that right off the bat and Val’s own actions of openly identifying herself and introducing her husband at the meeting that generated the INR memo just add to the lack of evidence of affirmative measures. Afterall it was her actions that ultimately allowed Armitage to blab about her to a nationally syndicated columnist and her husband’s ego needs vis a vis Who’s Who that verified her name.
Fitz turned that Rumsfeld quote on its head?
You go to trial with the law you want or wish to have, not the law you have.
Becuase, afterall, who’s gonna stop you?
But anyway, I think there is something else being hidden by the "not acknowledged" fandango. Not acknowledged to whom? Take the aluminum tubes in Jordan example. If Plame went to Jordan to debrief a source (one that she recruited while in Europe?) or anywhere where she debriefed a source, then sure, that would be covert and service abroad. But if she went to Jordan and met with Jordanian intelligence officials to discuss the tubes, then she didn’t get in the door unless the CIA vouched for her — i.e. disclosed her CIA affiliation to a foreign government. And there was apparently a WMD "dog and pony show" that went to Canada among other places — sure, Canada is a friendly government, but if the CIA outed Plame to the Canadian government, then, sorry, not covert.
The overseas service is necessary but not sufficient for the IIPA. I’m sure George Tenet travelled a bit overseas and got some pension boosts out of the deal, but it was never against the law to tell anyone that he worked at the CIA. I’m wondering if the "subtle and complicated" thing is whether Plame mixed "covert" stuff in with non-covert stuff, and the CIA lawyers are saying, "Whoa! You can’t have someone be overtly a CIA agent, and then turn around and have them be covert, too. Covertness is like virginity — once it’s gone, you can’t get it back."
Some of our more bizarre resident trolls make barely-coherent accusations that Plame got sources killed. If a monstrously incompetent CIA sent Plame on a couple of "covert" missions to meet with people who were spying on Iraq, Iran, or any other countries for us, and somebody’s intelligence service who knew her from her multiple outings followed her around to see who she was meeting with and then killed them, well, yeah, that would be a nasty complex and subtle legal issue to sort out whether she counts as "covert".
As always, good stuff from JustOneMinute.
This is the rub in all this. Libby gets raked over the coals over this silly case and the leaker of the NSA Wiretap program has not seen one minute in our criminal justice system. A program whose existence to the public did REAL harm to this country and we hear nothing. No outrage from the very same people railing about the Plame leak.
This says it all folks.

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I find it interesting in a negative sort of way that the Justice Department finally got off their duff and are putting the smack on Dollar Bill Jefferson the day before the Libby sentencing hearing.
They should have waited a couple of days after all this time to do Dollar Bill.
The left wing blogs will cry foul to the roof just on the timing.
On the other hand if they waited a couple of days then all you would hear is “Well it’s just payback”.
there are 2 different definitions of covert…
americanthinker.com
June 04, 2007
Prosecution and CIA legerdemain in Libby Case?
Clarice Feldman
[snip]
Or for a more recent example of Fitzgerald’s tactics, consider his recent sentencing memorandum. Isikoff and Hosenball make much of the fact that “Patrick Fitzgerald has finally resolved one of the most disputed issues at the core of the long-running CIA leak controversy: Valerie Plame Wilson, he asserts, was a “covert” CIA officer”.
But the defense response provided a bit of clarification which Fitzgerald had overlooked, or forgotten, or something:
The summary described above was provided to the defense along with a companion summary that defined a “covert” CIA employee as a “CIA employee whose employment is not publicly acknowledged by the CIA or the employee.”4
It is important to bear in mind that the IIPA defines “covert agent” differently.