The Valerie Plame case has been the talk of the week. A
case that has seem to sit somewhat stagnant by the way of news media had a new
found life after an email from Matt Cooper identifying one of his sources as
Karl Rove was published in the New York Times last weekend. Since then we have
seen White House Press Secretary Scott McLellan get eaten alive during press
briefings, and a feud has erupted on capital hill.
Republicans are going out of their way the defend Rove over
this leak of information. They are saying that he never leaked her name and she
was not covered under covert status because of her inactive duty. Sadly, an
issue which addresses an important issue of our nation security has turned into
the hottest partisan game of the summer.
I have always said that Karl Rove should at minimum be
placed on a paid administrative leave and his security clearance suspended
pending the outcome of the federal grand jury. If he is indicted in this hearing
then continue those actions pending the outcome of the trial. This is not an
over reaction to the case, but rather something that is practiced every day
around the country. When ever you hear about a police officer being
investigated, the same action is done to him. The fact that the White House
would not follow the same stringent standards that local law enforcement follows
to enforce integrity is alarming to say the least.
Now while no one in the world knows what is being planned
with this grand jury, except for prosecutor Fritzgerald, the speculation storm
has started. The RNC has put out their typical “talking points†which more aim
at character assassination of Joe Wilson. I even went through each of these
points and discredited them in an earlier post.
One argument I have heard and firmly believe in is “what
would happen if this was a Democrat in the White House� That is a valid
argument and even the right somewhat concur that it would be a witch hunt to the
end. So let me take it down one step.
Say you got an individual that works for a government
agency like the DEA. He is investigating money laundering and notices a name in
there that never gets any attention. Well this suspect is a major political
contributor to the conservative party in the UK and also a major supporter of
our own conservative party AKA the RNC. This DEA analyst gets frustrated at the
lack of investigation so he decides to leak the information to a reporter in
order to hurt this suspect’s reputation. Would this merit a trial or even jail
time? After all the persons name he leaked was not a government official, but he
did leak it from a classified file.
The answer to that might alarm you. In fact this is an
actual case that was prosecuted by the Department of Justice under Secretary
Ashcroft. The DEA agent is John Randel and the conservative is Lord Michael
Ashcroft. In fact Randel was charged under a less talked about law in the United
States Code (Title 18, Section 641), which prohibits theft (or conversation for
one’s use) of government records and information. Randel could of faced up to
580 years in prison for all his charges but ended up making a deal and being
sentenced to only one year.
The fact is a precedent has now been set in our federal
courts for leaking information that is “sensitiveâ€ÂÂ. Karl Rove can easily say he
did not know that he was releasing “classified†information, but it would be a
lot easier to prove he was leaking “sensitive†information. Even his defense
that Novak told him who Valerie Plame was is not a good argument now, because we
know he still forwarded the information to Cooper and also confirmed it to
Novak.
So there are still dark roads ahead for Karl Rove. The
grand jury is out to see if a crime could have been committed. They are being
presented evidence by a very thorough and competent prosecutor who would not
have gone through all this trouble if there was nothing there. The fact is there
is something there. If there wasn’t Judith Miller would not be in jail right now
and the Supreme Court would not have ever been involved in this case. Now we
have learned that the investigation is focusing on a classified memo the State
Department had identifying Plame and her status. This is very similar to the
Randel case, as matter of fact the only difference is it was a Republican
leaking information about a “possible†Democrat this time.
Read an article writtne by John Dean on this same case at Find Law