In Rove case, one outing got another
- Vicki Haddock, Insight Staff Writer
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Renegade ex-CIA agent Philip Agee spent years ripping the masks off fellow secret spies -- hundreds of them.
Troubled by U.S. covert activities in Latin America, in the 1970s he wrote an expose and launched the bimonthly "Covert Action Information Bulletin, " a Who's Who of CIA operatives with detailed biographies. By Agee's estimate, the Agency had 5,000 officers experienced in clandestine operations, and he gleefully predicted "it should be possible to identify almost all of those who have worked under diplomatic cover."
The CIA was flabbergasted to discover no law against this. But it had a powerful friend in the next U.S. vice president, a former CIA director. George H. W. Bush made it his mission to get legislation making it a felony to out a covert agent. "I don't care how long I live, I will never forgive Philip Agee and those like him who wantonly sacrificed the lives of intelligence officers, " he said.
Even wife Barbara Bush, in her autobiography, said Agee's "traitorous" book blew the cover of the Athens CIA station chief, Richard Welch, causing his assassination (a charge stricken after Agee sued for libel, claiming Welch was outed by Counter Spy Magazine.)
So in 1982 came the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Its drafters describe it as difficult to violate -- a "dart gun" law nicknamed the "Get Agee Act." (For his part, Agee quit his publication, hopscotched Europe, and opened a Cuba tourism site on the Internet.) In 23 years, the law has ensnared one person -- a former CIA clerk who disclosed names of U.S. agents to a boyfriend in Ghana.
It's a safe bet the Bushes never envisioned the law they championed would one day threaten their son's political consigliere -- the man President George W. Bush refers to as "Turd Blossom" but the public knows as Karl Rove.
A federal grand jury continues probing whether anyone broke the law by leaking, to discredit Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent. Despite earlier White House denials, an e-mail from Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper to his bureau chief suggests that on July 11, 2003, Rove outed Valerie Plame Wilson. Here's the key excerpt, which Cooper said Rove gave him on super secret background: "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip." The trip refers to Wilson's journey to Niger to see if Iraq was trying to purchase yellowcake uranium.
The testimony of others remains secret, so our looking glass is opaque. Legal analysts, including those who drafted the law, said the e-mail isn't enough to convict Rove.
Among his defenses:
Rove didn't say her name. The e-mail doesn't make that clear, although Rove himself earlier told reporters that he didn't know her name and didn't name her. If this sound like Rove is lying, that would depend on what your definition of "is" is. By calling her "Wilsons's wife," he identified her.
Valerie Plame wasn't really under cover. But the CIA didn't hesitate to forward the leak allegation to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. She operated a front company based in Boston and sometimes traveled overseas posing as a private energy analyst, yet she also had a desk at CIA's Langley headquarters. Some fellow agents who knew her as Val P. in training recall her proficiency with foreign languages and an AK-47, but she said her work as a spy was unknown to friends and neighbors.
Rove didn't know she was a covert agent and thus had no intent to out her. This may be the key. Note that Cooper's e-mail quotes Rove saying she "apparently" works for the agency. Prosecutors would have to prove that Rove knew her status. It's not even clear where Rove learned about her -- from classified material or from another reporter.
So where does this leave us? What evidence lies in eight blank pages contained in an earlier ruling in the case, a ruling in which judges decided the alleged crime was sufficiently serious to jail reporters who refused to testify about it?
It's starting to look like Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could be pursuing something more than a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Political inquiries often lead to wrongs that occurred after the impetus -- perjury, say, or obstruction of justice.
Is Rove in the clear for now? Stay tuned.
E-mail Vicki Haddock at vhaddock@sfchronicle.com.
Page B - 3
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/07/17/ING17DNJT81.DTL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, July 17, 2005
Renegade ex-CIA agent Philip Agee spent years ripping the masks off fellow secret spies -- hundreds of them.
Troubled by U.S. covert activities in Latin America, in the 1970s he wrote an expose and launched the bimonthly "Covert Action Information Bulletin, " a Who's Who of CIA operatives with detailed biographies. By Agee's estimate, the Agency had 5,000 officers experienced in clandestine operations, and he gleefully predicted "it should be possible to identify almost all of those who have worked under diplomatic cover."
The CIA was flabbergasted to discover no law against this. But it had a powerful friend in the next U.S. vice president, a former CIA director. George H. W. Bush made it his mission to get legislation making it a felony to out a covert agent. "I don't care how long I live, I will never forgive Philip Agee and those like him who wantonly sacrificed the lives of intelligence officers, " he said.
Even wife Barbara Bush, in her autobiography, said Agee's "traitorous" book blew the cover of the Athens CIA station chief, Richard Welch, causing his assassination (a charge stricken after Agee sued for libel, claiming Welch was outed by Counter Spy Magazine.)
So in 1982 came the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Its drafters describe it as difficult to violate -- a "dart gun" law nicknamed the "Get Agee Act." (For his part, Agee quit his publication, hopscotched Europe, and opened a Cuba tourism site on the Internet.) In 23 years, the law has ensnared one person -- a former CIA clerk who disclosed names of U.S. agents to a boyfriend in Ghana.
It's a safe bet the Bushes never envisioned the law they championed would one day threaten their son's political consigliere -- the man President George W. Bush refers to as "Turd Blossom" but the public knows as Karl Rove.
A federal grand jury continues probing whether anyone broke the law by leaking, to discredit Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent. Despite earlier White House denials, an e-mail from Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper to his bureau chief suggests that on July 11, 2003, Rove outed Valerie Plame Wilson. Here's the key excerpt, which Cooper said Rove gave him on super secret background: "it was, KR said, wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd issues who authorized the trip." The trip refers to Wilson's journey to Niger to see if Iraq was trying to purchase yellowcake uranium.
The testimony of others remains secret, so our looking glass is opaque. Legal analysts, including those who drafted the law, said the e-mail isn't enough to convict Rove.
Among his defenses:
Rove didn't say her name. The e-mail doesn't make that clear, although Rove himself earlier told reporters that he didn't know her name and didn't name her. If this sound like Rove is lying, that would depend on what your definition of "is" is. By calling her "Wilsons's wife," he identified her.
Valerie Plame wasn't really under cover. But the CIA didn't hesitate to forward the leak allegation to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. She operated a front company based in Boston and sometimes traveled overseas posing as a private energy analyst, yet she also had a desk at CIA's Langley headquarters. Some fellow agents who knew her as Val P. in training recall her proficiency with foreign languages and an AK-47, but she said her work as a spy was unknown to friends and neighbors.
Rove didn't know she was a covert agent and thus had no intent to out her. This may be the key. Note that Cooper's e-mail quotes Rove saying she "apparently" works for the agency. Prosecutors would have to prove that Rove knew her status. It's not even clear where Rove learned about her -- from classified material or from another reporter.
So where does this leave us? What evidence lies in eight blank pages contained in an earlier ruling in the case, a ruling in which judges decided the alleged crime was sufficiently serious to jail reporters who refused to testify about it?
It's starting to look like Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could be pursuing something more than a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. Political inquiries often lead to wrongs that occurred after the impetus -- perjury, say, or obstruction of justice.
Is Rove in the clear for now? Stay tuned.
E-mail Vicki Haddock at vhaddock@sfchronicle.com.
Page B - 3
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/07/17/ING17DNJT81.DTL
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
©2005 San Francisco Chronicle
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