Dan Simpson – 1/31/07

This page was last updated on February 5, 2007.

Of spies and cesspools; Dan Simpson; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; January 31, 2007.

According to the PG, “Dan Simpson, a retired U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor.”

When you read this column, I believe you’ll come to the same conclusion as I. When you check Mr. Simpson’s allegations vs. the facts, I believe the column is nothing but one lie or misrepresentation after another. You’ll read what I mean below. As allegedly said by the late U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY), “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

As I noted in a previous editorial critique, the PG demonstrates it is in denial. The PG had visions of Watergate and those dreams are dashed for now. If you recall, the PG published a bunch of Plamegate editorials dating back to 2003. I wrote critiques on only a few of the more recent pieces. They were “Dump Rove,” “Above the law,” “Civil justice,” and “Another twist.” Most of what you’ll read below came from those critiques.

Finally, as you read this column consider the following. A search of the PG website found Mr. Simpson wrote no columns about Clinton administration National Security Adviser Sandy Berger stealing classified documents from the National Archives and destroying them.

There was an editorial about Mr. Berger’s pilfering, but it tried to soft-pedal the issue as best it could. The editorial opined, Mr. Berger “wanted to have the documents in hand to make certain that his testimony before the commission, which finally took place in March, was accurate. He was, after all, testifying under oath about events that occurred at least three years before.” Of course, the editorial failed to note Mr. Berger hid the documents under a construction trailer and – after retrieving them – destroyed them. I’m not sure how destroying classified documents helps “make certain that his testimony before the commission … was accurate.”

Further, the editorial even tried to muddy the water by speculating “The timing of the release of the news may have had something to do with damage control for the Bush administration on the report of the Sept. 11 commission.”

Below is a detailed critique of the subject column.

“The trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr., which began in a Washington, D.C., federal court earlier this month, is the latest chapter in what so far is a 3-1/2 year espionage, legal and political saga.

“It began in July 2003 when columnist Robert D. Novak outed CIA agent Valerie Plame in The Washington Post. The CIA reacted with its normal fury when one of its agents is taken off the board. Such an agent can no longer be used in clandestine roles and, worse, all of that agent’s contacts overseas become, at best, tainted and, at worst, in danger.”

[RWC] According to a 2003 New York Times article, “The CIA suspected that Aldrich Ames had given [Plame’s] name [along with those of other spies] to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.”

“The CIA referred the matter to the Department of Justice in quest of prosecution for a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Despite the fact that many senior U.S. government officials have since been shown to have revealed Ms. Plame’s CIA employment to many reporters, no one has yet been charged with a violation of this act.”

[RWC] The law in question (1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act) sets specific conditions that must occur for the law to be violated. Nothing reported to date indicates even one of those conditions has been met. For example, the agent in question must have been in foreign service within the past five years. As noted by the NYT article, Ms. Plame hadn’t been in foreign service since the mid-1990s.

“Those who have been unmasked as having talked to the press about Ms. Plame’s identity have included former Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage, White House political adviser Karl Rove and Mr. Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff. There is every reason to believe that President Bush and Mr. Cheney also knew what was occurring, given that Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have worked so closely with them.”

[RWC] It’s not an innocent oversight that Mr. Simpson failed to note Mr. Armitage was the one who told Mr. Novak about Ms. Plame.

“One could be kind and assume that none of them has been prosecuted under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act because each would argue that he was not aware that Ms. Plame was a clandestine agent, or that he wasn’t aware that to reveal her identity was a felony. The former contention is possible; the latter is very weak: Anyone familiar with intelligence practices knows that to blow the cover of a CIA agent is a very serious matter, indeed, as well as highly illegal.”

[RWC] As noted above, at least one of the requirements for violating the law was not met. At least one reporter is on the record as saying Mrs. Wilson’s CIA employment was an open secret. Though she later claimed to have misspoken, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell stated, “It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the Foreign Service community was the envoy to Niger.”

“What happened after the CIA referred the matter to the Justice Department shows just how broken the U.S. system of justice has become under the Bush administration. The protection of clandestine agents should be particularly sacrosanct if the administration is as serious about security and intelligence as it claims to be. In this case, it wasn’t.

“Ms. Plame’s identity was revealed because she is married to a former U.S. ambassador who wrote a New York Times article that showed Bush administration intelligence on Iraq and weapons of mass destruction either was defective or falsified. What followed came from that fact.”

[RWC] As noted in my critique of “Another twist,” most of what Mr. Wilson wrote was shown to be a lie. Does anyone care to guess why Mr. Simpson failed to note that fact?

Consider the following excerpts from the September 1^st Washington Post editorial entitled “End of an affair.”

“Mr. Armitage was one of the Bush administration officials who supported the invasion of Iraq only reluctantly. He was a political rival of the White House and Pentagon officials who championed the war and whom Mr. Wilson accused of twisting intelligence about Iraq and then plotting to destroy him. … It follows that one of the most sensational charges leveled against the Bush White House -- that it orchestrated the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity to ruin her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson -- is untrue. …

“Nevertheless, it now appears that the person most responsible for the end of Ms. Plame’s CIA career is Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson chose to go public with an explosive charge, claiming -- falsely, as it turned out -- that he had debunked reports of Iraqi uranium-shopping in Niger and that his report had circulated to senior administration officials. He ought to have expected that both those officials and journalists such as Mr. Novak would ask why a retired ambassador would have been sent on such a mission and that the answer would point to his wife. He diverted responsibility from himself and his false charges by claiming that President Bush’s closest aides had engaged in an illegal conspiracy. It’s unfortunate that so many people took him seriously.”

“Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case. The public has yet to learn why. In his place, Mr. Bush appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a Justice Department employee touted as a tough guy, to serve as special prosecutor. How tough he was -- and how politically savvy he is -- is illustrated by the fact that he took three years to prepare his case. It took him until after the 2004 presidential elections and the 2006 congressional elections before anyone -- Mr. Libby -- was brought to trial, on perjury and obstruction-of-justice charges.”

[RWC] “The public has yet to learn why … [t]hen-Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the case?” Is Mr. Simpson serious? The press and Democrats were speculating Mr. Ashcroft might not pursue the investigation vigorously because of his close working relationship with very people under investigation. Given Mr. Ashcroft worked closely with most senior White House officials, and senior WH officials were to be investigated, Mr. Ashcroft – and I assume the President – felt it made sense to remove any possibility of conflict of interest. That’s why Mr. Ashcroft assigned Mr. Fitzgerald to the case.

“The trial finally started 42 months after Ms. Plame’s CIA cover was destroyed. It is already turning into a circus, or, more precisely, a Washington version of Sara Cone Bryant’s ‘The Little Red Hen.’ (‘Not I,’ said the Duck. ‘Not I,’ said the Cat. ‘Not I,’ said the Dog.’) But it isn’t as innocent as that.”

[RWC] As noted above, Ms. Plame was not an undercover agent. When Mr. Novak contacted the CIA before publishing his column in 2003, the CIA public information officer (Bill Harlow) never claimed Ms. Plame’s employment was classified or that disclosing her identity would endanger anyone. According to Novak, Mr. Harlow said Ms. Plame “would likely never have another assignment abroad,” but “it might be embarrassing if her CIA connection was written about.”

“The deal that appears to be shaping up now is that Mr. Libby’s lawyers are claiming that he was set up by the White House -- Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney -- to take the fall for the more distasteful Mr. Rove, who was needed for the 2006 Republican political campaign. The line will then run, ‘Poor Scooter shouldn’t have to go to jail for what Karl Rove did.’ So find Scooter not guilty.”

[RWC] “[T]o take the fall for the more distasteful Mr. Rove?” That makes no sense based on what we know. Mr. Armitage was the guy who told Bob Novak about Mrs. Wilson.

“If that occurs, the end result will be that everybody ‘walks,’ and nobody is prosecuted, let alone found guilty, of having committed the original crime -- a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Never mind Ms. Plame’s career. Never mind whatever asset she represented to the CIA. Never mind what agents she had run in the past whose identities as CIA informers were revealed by her ‘outing.’

“The media have not covered themselves with glory in the Valerie Plame affair, either. They have ratted on each other cheerfully, positioning themselves not to look too bad as the thing works itself out. Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter, probably was the biggest loser, having spent some 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal who told her about Ms. Plame. Even though the fame or notoriety that went with that pleasure may increase sales of her book, the spectacle of other members of the media falling all over themselves to say what a bad reporter she was did not become her journalistic colleagues.”

[RWC] I still don’t know why Ms. Miller chose to spend time in jail. It’s been documented she had Mr. Libby’s “explicit permission” to discuss their conversations long before Ms. Miller went to jail.

“It is also probably the case that another big loser in the Valerie Plame affair was respect for journalist-source confidentiality. At one time the idea that a journalist would give up a source to the feds was close to unthinkable, especially after confidentiality had made possible critical revelatory stories such as those about Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. Now, like so much these days, that relationship of confidence has become more one of expediency: ‘I will protect you, depending on circumstances.’ That approach prompts the response: ‘I don’t have any confidence that you will protect me once the heat gets turned up. Therefore I will tell you little of value.’”

[RWC] Translation: Journalists are above the law.

“Big loss. Too bad. America needs a free, incisive, insightful press, particularly in this day and age of tapped phones, read e-mails and opened mail.

“We’ll see. The Libby trial is still in progress. But the real crime, the clearly illegal destruction of Valerie Plame’s cover by the Bush administration to punish her husband for having said they were misguided or liars, is likely to remain unpunished. Too bad for all of us.”

[RWC] Did you note Mr. Simpson didn’t list specific provisions for violating the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act and how each was violated by anyone?

Finally, Mr. Simpson failed to note Mr. Fitzgerald knew the “leaker” was Mr. Armitage the day he took over the investigation. You see, from news reports from August/September 2006 we learned Mr. Armitage in 2003 told the FBI he was the “leaker” after he read a second Novak column about the Wilson affair and realized he (Armitage) was Mr. Novak’s source. This all happened before Mr. Fitzgerald took over. As a result, based on what we know now, no crime took place before the investigation began. Mr. Libby was not charged with leaking Mrs. Wilson’s name. The question I have is, since Mr. Fitzgerald knew the identity of the “leaker” from the beginning, why did he pursue a lengthy and costly investigation, and now prosecution?