Second, the law states that the White House will conduct an Administrative investigation any such activity (leaking classified info), yet according to the testimony, there was NO Administrative investigation.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/16/white-house-plame-leak/trackback/WAXMAN: Will the gentleman yield to me…

CUMMINGS: Of course.

WAXMAN: … because I just want to pin this point down? Do you know whether there was an investigation at the White House after the leaks came out?

KNODELL: I don’t have any knowledge of an investigation within my office.

WAXMAN: Ever?

KNODELL: I do not.

WAXMAN: Because the president said he was investigating this matter and was going to get the bottom of it. You’re not aware that any investigation took place?

KNODELL: Not within my office, sir.

Second, the law states that the White House will conduct an Administrative investigation any such activity (leaking classified info), yet according to the testimony, there was NO Administrative investigation.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/16/white-house-plame-leak/trackback/WAXMAN: Will the gentleman yield to me…

CUMMINGS: Of course.

WAXMAN: … because I just want to pin this point down? Do you know whether there was an investigation at the White House after the leaks came out?

KNODELL: I don’t have any knowledge of an investigation within my office.

WAXMAN: Ever?

KNODELL: I do not.

WAXMAN: Because the president said he was investigating this matter and was going to get the bottom of it. You’re not aware that any investigation took place?

KNODELL: Not within my office, sir.

Also, it is not always a crime to lie.I am not sure that Libby did lie, and if he did, I don’t understand why.However:

PLAME AND WILSON HAVE MADE A CAREER OUT OF CALLING BUSH A LIAR, AND THEY HAVE NOT PROVED A SINGLE CHARGE AGAINST BUSH! WHY SHOULDNT WILSON AND PLAME BE HELD TO THE SAME HIGH STANDARDS OF HONESTY THEY EXPECT FROM EVERYONE ELSE?

Plame and Wilson have lied.You know full well that they have lied.Wilsons NYT article is public record, it is full of lies.Plames testimony conflicts with Wilsons testimony.Both Conflict with several other people’s testimony.Come on, these folks are toast where credibility is concerned!

Read the FEB 12 FACT CHECK:

“February 12, 2002 – The Defense Intelligence Agency writes a report concluding “Iraq is probably searching abroad for natural uranium to assist in its nuclear weapons program.” Vice President Cheney reads this report and asks for the CIA’s analysis. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 38-39, July 2004).

Responding to inquiries from Cheney’s office, the State Department, and the Defense Department, the CIA’s Directorate of Operations’ Counterproliferation Division (CPD) look for more information. They consider having Wilson return to Niger to investigate. In the process, Valerie Wilson writes a memo to a superior saying, “My husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” One of Valerie Wilson’s colleagues later tells Senate investigators she “offered up his name” for the trip. Wilson says that her agency made the decision and she only later approached her husband on the CIA’s behalf. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 39, July 2004).

February 19, 2002 – Joseph Wilson meets with officials from CIA and the State Department. According to a State Department intelligence analyst’s notes, the meeting was convened by Valerie Wilson. She later testifies that she left the meeting after introducing her husband. (Senate Intelligence Cmte., Iraq 40, July 2004). ”

http://www.factcheck.org/article337.html

“Wilson stated emphatically that Plame had ‘nothing to do” with the 2nd Niger trip.”

Do you want to give an authoritative, non-Fox News “fair and balanced” PARAPHRASE of what he said?

Like a viewable video quote, or a direct quote, written verbatim by a credible news outlet’s reporter who has an aural tape of the statement?

Plame, in testimony televised three times on C-SPAN, stated under oath that she was asked to ask her hubsband if he would be willing to go to Niger. She claims she was merely a messenger, under credible circumstances.

As she testified, she had no power to SEND her husband to Niger. That is completely credible, given that she was not a deputy/assistant secretary in the State Department.

Please recall, that the White House leaks portrayed her as “sending” her husband to Niger, i.e. giving him the assignment. You probably read this account and said to yourself, “Oh, that explains things,” without doing critical thinking: how could a sub-executive CIA covert operator ASSIGN an ambassador to go to Niger?

Plame’s testimony shows the absurdity of this false-planted story, concocted at the White House.

Some bubble-brain who thought he was a genius decided that Wilson’s Times opinion piece could be discredited by concocting a phony story that Plame committed nepotism, in giving her husband an assignment.

Of course, at the time of this chicanery, Preznit Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union claim that Saddam was trying to build nuclear weapons–and remember Connie Rice’s “mushroom cloud” propaganda?–was totally false. Now we know that Wilson’s claim that the White House corrupted CIA analysis, and that Saddam was NOT trying to build nuclear weapons was and is true.

We now know that the White House’s leaked rumor that Plame-Wilson “sent” her husband to Niger is totally false. Because she has claimed, under penalty of perjury, that it was totally false. She’s suing three White House officials in civil court, and will prevail, and the GNP will pay the damages.

Plame and Wilson haven’t been convicted for perjury. Only Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Scooter Libby has been convicted of three felonies for lying to federal investigators and obstructing justice. The jury felt that he was the “fall guy”, but get real, he’s got a golden parachute of some kind, and he’ll be pardoned before Bush leaves office. But a presidential pardon doesn’t erase a felony conviction, only its punishment. Libby will always be a convicted felon. But the trial testimony and material evidence indicated he was only a lackey for Cheney, which is why the jury felt sympathy for him.

If anything, you need to ask yourself, WHY DID LIBBY LIE TO FEDERAL INVESTIGATORS?

Yesterday’s hearings included one Republican congressman’s opinion, and that of Vicky Toensing, that the CIA was to blame for the outing, due to an information officer’s not doing his homework to determine that Valerie Plame was covert/undercover, and his revealing that Plame was married to Ambassador Wilson. (Also, note, Wilson worked in Baghdad after Gulf War I, so, get real: he was an expert in Iraq who had the credentials to investigate its potential purchase of uranium.)

It’s a safe bet that the so-called careless CIA information officer will be testifying under subpoena to explain what REALLY happened.

For example, if he revealed that Plame was married to Wilson to a White House officer who had top-level security clearance, but not to the press, then someone in the White House besides Libby is going to be subjected to some real difficulties, such as impeachment by the House, and a trial by the Senate to remove him from office. It’s going to make Clinton’s lying about sex look trivial in comparison.

Cheney has openly said that he felt the Nixon debacle stripped too much power from the presidency and gave it to the congress, and that he felt a duty to restore presidential power.

Maybe Cheney is on a misguided track. Have you considered this possibility, such as that maybe to accomplish this requires too much deception of the American people, as well as abusing them too much by running up ruinous deficits to capture a major Middle Eastern oil dominion, to be feasible, in the long run?

Wilson lied about Iraq, when he said Iraq was not trying to get “yellow cake” from Niger. He lied in his letter in the NYT. He actually told the truth, to the CIA, in an oral, not written, report. (Another lie!)Wilson lied when he claimed to uncover “forged documents.” Wilson admitted in a Senate hearing that he “misspoke” on that one, since he never once saw the documents in question, and since those fake documents surfaced after he came back from Africa, and since the Administration, from the start, dismissed those fake documents.Wilson and Plame BOTH lied on the subject of Plame recommending Wilson for the 2nd Niger trip!

Now, I will admit, Plame’s lie on this one is not as obvious as Wilsons, but they both lied.Wilson stated emphatically that Plame had “Nothing to do” with the 2nd Niger trip.That is false!

So much love and equality of treatment towards all – NOT.

The list is getting much bigger now.

Maybe we can accuse custodial workers at Oakwood Elementary as complicit in the “outting crime” as well. :)

The new Congress will re-examine that report, and subpoena witnesses who, according to Plame, have told her that their testimony wasn’t what the report summarized.

She testified, under oath, that she had been both covert (= undercover, according to Republican lawyer Victoria Toensing who co-drafted the Intelligence Identities Protection Act 1982) and did work overseas as a covert agent less than 5 years before she was outed by Bush administration officials.

How likely is is that Plame-Wilson committed perjury on this claim? She has zero to gain, except a prison sentence. Toensing claimed that Plame-Wilson was NOT covert, nor did Plame-Wilson work covertly overseas, within 5 years of her outing, and thus IIPA. But at the time Toensing was a private-practice attorney and we recall, a frequent paid-commentator on Fox news during the Clinton scandal. Toensing had ZERO access to CIA files on Ms. Plame. Did Toensing commit perjury? Probably not. It is much more likely that somebody fed her false information, using her as a tool.

Furthermore, even if IIPA did not apply, as Toensing claimed, she admitted that administrative action, under Bush’s own executive order, would be another matter.

But Bush, who has the Article II power to issue executive orders, does not have the power to exercise them or ignore them, according to caprice. An executive order applies to the president’s friends every bit as much as it applies to people he doesn’t like.

The committee yesterday had Republican members. They could have skewered Plame, if she were lying. They didn’t.

That was as telling as anything. If they were baiting her, acting nice, to later entrap her for perjury, well we’ll just see if that happens in the future. But as things stood yesterday, this administration is looking more and more like it has entrapped itself in Nixonian behavior. No small surprise because Cheney (and ousted Rumsfeld) cut their eye teeth as Nixon’s assistants.

;)

Democrats will try to rake it through the mud for as long as possible.

I can’t speak for Bush or his Administration nor can I defend their actions.

I think this is the best thing that could have happened to the Wilsons. They will get filthy rich and tons of fame from this from Democrats for quite a few years. I say! More power to them. Hope they become rich multi-millionaires.

Hardly anybody (outside the hard core politicos) will even remember the Libby or Plame scandle when it comes time for 2008.

Big yawn fest.

Re: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2007/03/something_for_l.html#comment-63491104

Your proof, credible link(s), on those dates.

Your proof, that the VP’s office did not PHONE her office, as she testified under oath today?

ONCE AGAIN… Plame’s supervisor REQUESTED that she document her husband’s qualifications.

Republican: “BTW, emails are easily forged with dates and manipulating dates is not a problem on a computer. :) ”

Emails show the date/time they’re received at the email server(s). Those are NOT easy to “manipulate”.

All you libs

My major point is that the law on “outing” wasnt broken because NO ONE was convicted or even charged with “outing” Plame!You have turned that arguement on its head, claiming that Plame and Wilson arent lying unless THEY are convicted of lying — yet Plame and Wilson’s entire public life has been consumed with saying OTHER people lied, without any proof for the claims of EITHER Plame or Wilson.Wilsons entire case against Bush is a FRAUD.Now, Plame and Wilson have given contraditory testimony.

And I am right on the law on this one: The AG CANT prosecute for “lying to Congress” without the consent and cooperation of Congress!