(S)ecret

Well, one contention of those Rove defenders out there has been laid to rest: It appears that Valerie Plame's identity, contrary to all protestations, was most definitely secret. In this Washington Post article today, a classified memo circulated by the State Department marked information about Valerie Plame with an (s), for "secret."

The WaPo is one of those annoyingly proliferating "registration-restricted" papers (seems like more and more papers are doing so: this is one reason why I often link to the San Francisco Chronicle), so I'm also including a link to this site, which has the same article. If you happen to be deaf-impaired, here's a link to NPR, where you can listen to the reporters discuss their article. For once, the Post has placed an article that concerns a serious issue in which our gummint might not be so aboveboard on the front page. Since I don't subscribe to the Post's print edition, I have no idea whether it was above or below the fold. But it's on A1.

The pertinent information to look for is this portion of the article, at the bottom of the third paragraph: "The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials." No wonder they requested an investigation into the matter. Her identity *was* covert. Probably why Christian never bothered responding to me in our debate. Poof. There goes one of his points-- that whoever is to be held responsible had no way of knowing whether or not she was a covert agent. Rove claims he didn't see the memo until after the fact, but I find that a little hard to swallow. In any event, she was definitely a covert agent-- none of this "but she was behind a desk at Langley" crap.

In the same article, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's Chief of Staff, is identified as another person who talked with Matt Cooper, of Time magazine. It's very possible that he's the second source Novak referred to, and as Chief of Staff, Libby could very well have seen the memo in question, even if Rove truthfully hadn't.

So it comes down to this: Rove revealed Plame's identity to Cooper and Novak-- even if he didn't know Plame was undercover, it was still ethically and morally wrong, and he should suffer the consequences. If Libby shared any information about Plame with Rove or Cooper, he's definitely in trouble. No wonder Bush is trying to cover everyone's ass. Novak's butt should be hung out to dry too; why it hasn't yet been done so is a mystery to me.

For those of you at home trying to follow all of this, there's an excellent legal analysis of the Identities Protection Act titled "Roving Justice" over at www.salon.com, which is a website I really like. It's a susbscription journal, but if you're not a member and you have a few minutes to kill, all you need to do is watch an ad, and then you'll have access for a day to Salon content.

At the end of the Salon interview, Professor Robert Turner concludes by stating, "Maybe the prosecution has a lot of information I don't know about, but from what I've seen there is no reason to assume that Rove knew Plame was in a CIA position which the agency was trying to hide. Without that knowledge, he's innocent."

I'd love to know what Turner's assessment of Rove's position is now: a little more precarious, perhaps?