Funmurphys: the Blog

More of the Same

Somebody finally found a link that lays out the responsibility for people to protect classified information even after it has been disclosed:

Question 19: If information that a signer of the SF 312 knows to have been classified appears in a public source, for example, in a newspaper article, may the signer assume that the information has been declassified and disseminate it elsewhere?

Answer: No. Information remains classified until it has been officially declassified. Its disclosure in a public source does not declassify the information. Of course, merely quoting the public source in the abstract is not a second unauthorized disclosure. However, before disseminating the information elsewhere or confirming the accuracy of what appears in the public source, the signer of the SF 312 must confirm through an authorized official that the information has, in fact, been declassified. If it has not, further dissemination of the information or confirmation of its accuracy is also an unauthorized disclosure.

The bold portion doesn't say should have known was classified, or could have known if he'd checked into it, but it says knows.

As for Rove, the question(s) are was her employement at the CIA classified, and if so, did Rove know that. We're assuming her status was because of the referrel, but I don't know if we've actually seen the referrel. But let's answer yes (and this is a hypothetical since I don't actually know), in which case for Rove to have committed a crime, he had to know that her status was classified. If Rove knew, then it doesn't matter if a reporter mentioned it to him first. If he didn't know, it doesn't matter if Rove mentioned it to a reporter first. Now if Rove was accurate in saying her learned her status from a reporter, and had no official source, then he didn't do anything illegal, because he didn't know it was classified. You might think it sleazy, I might think that he should have asked the White House security people about it before commenting, but that doesn't mean it was illegal.

And that brings us to Joe Wilson. He knew of his wife's covert status, and that it was classified. He told reporter David Corn all about his wife covert, classified activities:

So he [Wilson] will neither confirm nor deny that his wife--who is the mother of three-year-old twins--works for the CIA. But let's assume she does. That would seem to mean that the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it.

The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be "two senior administration officials." If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person--and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her--her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames." If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good.

This is far more than Novaks "CIA operative", and make it crystal clear that she was covert. If you read the article, it's pretty clear that Mr. Wilson was the source, and so Cliff May decided to ask Corn that very question.

From an email Corn sent to Cliff May:

All I can say again is, nice try. When I spoke to Joe Wilson after the Novak leak, he would not tell me whether or not his wife worked at the CIA. He spoke only in hypotheticals. He said, imagine if she did, what would this leak mean, AND imagine if she did not, what would this leak mean. So I do deny that he told me because he did not. That's the truth, the absolute truth. No spin. No parsing. No stonewalling. If you find any wiggle room in this response, let me know and I will unwiggle it. And you can believe it or not.

If you watch Jeopardy, you know the answers are phrased in the form of a question. Joe Wilson wasn't asking questions, because he knew the answer. He was providing the answer in the form of a question. If I were on a jury that heard this case, I'd convict. (oops, there goes my chances).

This is what really gaps my ax, is that Joe Wilson has been leaking leaking, no make that spewing classified info - about his trip, about his wife, about WMD intellegence, maybe even about the sweet tea -- he's lied more times than I can count, and yet where are the calls for him to be frog marched out of his home, let alone indicted? No where. Instead, attention is focused on maybe Karl Rove leaked a subset of that information.

It's a crazy, mixed up world which we live in.

Posted by Kevin Murphy at July 19, 2005 12:05 PM | Current Events