No security clearances revoked over Plame (CIA still investigating leak)

[sabra]

http://www.cleveland.com/newsflash/politics/index.ssf?/base/politics-3/1153775976206320.xml&storylist=washington

No security clearances revoked over Plame
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — No one in the Bush administration has been stripped of security clearances over the leak of former CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity to reporters three years ago.

In a letter to Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., the CIA said it had no record of anyone in the administration who is no longer privy to the nation's most sensitive secrets because of the Plame leak.

The CIA also revealed it has not yet completed a formal assessment of the damage to national security that may have been caused by Plame's outing in 2003.

The assessment won't be completed until a criminal investigation of the leak has been concluded, Christopher J. Walker, the CIA's director of congressional affairs, said in the July 19 letter to Lautenberg.

[Master Mahon]

1. Geesh...

The CIA overthrew 3 governments in the same amount of time it's taking them to investigate this thing!! :+

[lovuian]

2. Justice stopped in its tracks

nice Show...

[Biernuts]

3. The reporters didn't have clearance. If you strip Libby, even

though he resigned, then there's appeal grounds since he can't effectively assist in his defense. The same might go for anyone he could call as a witness - when you can't refresh a recollection on the stand by looking at a record because it's classified.

Did that come out right? Who wants to strip Libby? BAD choice of words!!!!

Besides, the only one that they would be able to prove knew (or should have known) her employment was classified was the CIA Official spokesman who confirmed her employment to Novak.

[samsingh]

4. would this mean that the leakers were just following orders?

[Biernuts]

5. I don't think that's what it means. Myriad civil servants do their job

day in, day out without seeking specific orders. We have general policies and procedures that we apply to the situation at hand.

Only someone oblivious to how government works would believe for a second that the CIA spokesman, a career officer as opposed to a political appointee, received a query from Novak and placed a conference call with Cheney, Libby, Rove, Miller, Gilligan and the Skipper to ask for orders.

The reasonable inference is that the spokesman was asked a question, looked her up in the internal locator directory and confirmed her employment to Novak based on where she was working at the time. That tells me that her position at that time - as a Hqs WMD analyst - was not one obviously or automatically linked to covert assignments. If she was in a covert job, the only lawful answer was "we neither confirm not deny" questions regarding employment of individuals. No doubt, he should have called her up and asked if there were anonymity concerns linking her with the CIA, but he did not. Nine times out of ten he would have been right, but this was the exception that produced a bad result. And if it was not intuitively obvious to him that she had been covert, there's no way in hell the Agency would have volunteered her past covert status with political appointees outside the Agency since that gets into "sources and methods and tradecraft" information rather than the intelligence product they were publishing.

He was sloppy and a former covert officer was outed. Poor OPSEC, even if she did not meet the 5-year rule for the Intelligence Officer ID Act to apply. I blame the CIA Director (George "slam-dunk" Tenant) who was well-liked within CIA, but didn't exactly run a tight ship. Tenant had done good work for the Senate Democrats as their Intel Committee before Bill Clinton Appopinted him DCI/CIA Director - but he apparently got complacent.

[Igel]

6. And it's possible that none will.

Likely so, to my mind.

The person who leaked her identity may no longer have a clearance for other reasons. Or the leak may have been of such a nature that revoking his/her clearance isn't appropriate, or it's hard to prove that the person divulged classified information in an inappropriate manner. Or the person's clearance may have been revoked, with a general "divulged classified information" given as the reason in the summary--so there's no record of the clearance being revoked because of Plame. And it's simply possible that they'll look at the situation and decide that even if the regulations were broken, the person still needs clearance. Much as Congressfolk who have leaked classified information keep their clearance, since revoking their clearance would interfere with their jobs as elected officials; this grants a measure of unavoidable immunity.

I'm not sure Libby has much of a clearance since he resigned; it may be partial, applying to materials that he had access to, with permission granted in an ad hoc fashion.