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.

Tags: Wilsongate

Yesterday I speculated (and it is just that, speculation) that Valerie Plame Wilson was a source for Judith Miller on WMD.  Lot’s of people have speculated that Judith Miller was the source and the possible start of “everybody knew” Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA.  Today Cliff May speculates that Joe Wilson was the source for Valerie Plame Wilson being covert agent for the CIA in an article for David Corn – which amazingly enough Corn confirms. If you think the Wilson’s hypotheticals weren’t a confirmation, remember that Joe Wilson wasn’t speculating, he knew. Simply working for the CIA isn’t classified information. Being a covert agent is. (That’s the covert part.)

So now we know who actually outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert CIA operative – her husband, Joe Wilson. Not Bob Novak, not Karl Rove, but Joe Wilson. Novak didn’t have access to her status as a covert agent, nor did he identify her as such. Karl Rove didn’t have access to her status as a covert agent, let alone her name until a reporter told him, nor did he identify her as such. Joe Wilson knew her status as a (prior) covert agent, and he did identify her as such.

Tags: Wilsongate

I’m finding the entire Plame Wilson Novak Rove mess to be pretty much awful from start to finish. Nobody looks good in this, and I mean nobody as a person or institution — except Tom Maguire, who’s been all over this story since day one and is the only person, Ambassador Wilson included, who can keep track of all the different stories Joe Wilson has told and who he told them to. But back to the story,as I wrote back when this first broke:

Joe Wilson served our country ably and courageously during the Gulf War as acting ambassador to Iraq for which he got zero public notice; Valerie Plame served our country ably and courageously for years for which she got (understandably) zero public notice. What they are recognized for now has been on his part a willingness to criticize President Bush beyond any factual basis (the more strident the criticism, the greater the recognition); and on her part simple victimization. This is crazy. Talk about your perverse incentives.

The CIA looks bad for several reasons. First, they send somebody out on a super secret mission who’s investigative technique is to talk to old friends, and since he apparently has done this sort of thing for them in the past and he is currently married to the person who recommended him they pretty much know this is what he will do. Now it isn’t a bad technique in itself, but when he does report his findings, they are deemed inconclusive in part because: “We also had to consider that the former Nigerien officials knew that what they were saying would reach the U.S. government and that this might have influenced what they said.” So what was the point of sending somebody to talk to former Nigerien officials if we weren’t going to believe what they told to our investigator because they knew he was on a super secret mission from the US government? 

Second, they seem to have real troubles with opsec. In addition to having had a string of former bosses caught with classified material in their possession when it shouldn’t have been, you have somebody go on this mission and then blab all about it when he gets back. Ambassador Wilson filed a classified report, and then turn around and leaked it and eventually wrote not just an oped on the subject, but a book. No attempt was made to stop him (and please don’t cite the first amendment – if he has a security clearance, he signed an agreement not to disclose classified info). Yeah, I know his defense would be that nothing he said afterward had any resemblence to what was in his report (or the truth) as he lied about everything, who sent him, why he was sent, what he reported, and who saw his report. 

Third, they seem to be a little cavalier with the identities of their covert operatives. How the heck did Karl Rove find out about Valerie Plame? 

There are two possibilities – one is that the CIA told the White House. I imagine when Joe Wilson’s op ed hit the fan, the White House asked the CIA who the heck is this guy and what’s he doing going on CIA missions. And they (meaning Tenet or whoever answers the phone when the White House calls) could have told them that he was married to a CIA analyst who got him the job – no name mentioned – which squares with Rove told Cooper. Of course, in the words of Joe Biden, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who Joe Wilson’s wife is, especially since Ambassador Wilson included it in his web bio. 

Now perhaps her identity as a covert operator was so well guarded that the person passing along this info from the CIA didn’t know that under that mild mannered analyst cover was a covert operative. Which then raises the question, is it really a good idea to have covert operatives go to work as regular CIA employees? And there’s another question – did the CIA impress upon the White House the need for secrecy in regards to Ms. Plame’s identity?

I’ll get to the other possibility in a moment because there are two loose ends. One is Novak himself. We know Rove was Cooper’s source, but who was Novak’s? I don’t think it was Rove for several reasons – one is that Novak said the person wasn’t a political operator, which Rove is; Novak seems to have already given up his source before Cooper was forced to, and if it were Rove, Cooper wouldn’t have held out let alone have pressure applied; and Rove told Cooper she was an analyst, but Novak said operative – two very different things; and I think Rove denied being a source of the leak because he wasn’t Novak’s source and didn’t think any one else (i.e. Cooper) would ever be forced to.

Now we come to the question, raised by Bryan Preston at Junkyard Blog, of why Judith Miller is still in jail. If Rove were her source, she could get out of jail. So I doubt he is. And if not Rove, than who? Well, Ms. Miller wrote a lot of articles about WMD before the war in Iraq. Where’d she get her info? Could some have come from CIA sources? Perhaps from a WMD analyst? Perhaps from a co-worker who outed Ms. Plame? Perhaps from Valerie Plame herself? I don’t know, but it’s interesting that Ms. Miller is going to the mat on protecting her source when apparently all others have been given up.

She has the key to unravel the whole mystery, and yet she chooses silence. I’m supposed to be happy that a journalist is refusing to tell what she knows? I’m supposed to be informed by her silence? That’s the craziest part of this whole sordid mess.

Tags: Wilsongate