CIA 'outing' might fall short of crime

USA Today reported The alleged crime at the heart of a controversy that has consumed official Washington — the "outing" of a CIA officer — may not have been a crime at all under federal law, little-noticed details in a book by the agent's husband suggest. In The Politics of Truth, former ambassador Joseph Wilson writes that he and his future wife both returned from overseas assignments in June 1997. Neither spouse, a reading of the book indicates, was again stationed overseas. They appear to have remained in Washington, D.C., where they married and became parents of twins. Six years later, in July 2003, the name of the CIA officer — Valerie Plame — was revealed by columnist Robert Novak. The column's date is important because the law against unmasking the identities of U.S. spies says a "covert agent" must have been on an overseas assignment "within the last five years." The assignment also must be long-term, not a short trip or temporary post, two experts on the law say. Wilson's book makes numerous references to the couple's life in Washington over the six years up to July 2003. "Unless she was really stationed abroad sometime after their marriage," she wasn't a covert agent protected by the law, says Bruce Sanford, an attorney who helped write the 1982 act that protects covert agents' identities.

First Look reports RNC chair Ken Mehlman was in Iowa yesterday and spoke in defense of Rove to the Des Moines Register: "'A leak is when you ask a reporter to write a story. He was discouraging a reporter from writing a false story,'" Mehlman said.

The thing that makes me think there is nothing to this story, is how loud the Dems are yelling now, when the matter is still in the hands of the Grand Jury. They know that once the Grand Jury makes its decision to indite or not, that Carl Rove will not be indited, and they would not be able to scream then, so they are screaming now. They don't really expect to force GWB to fire Rove, but they know that some people are so dense that they will not notice when the Grand Jury reports, and Rove is not indited, but that they will remember the screaming and think something must have been wrong.