Apparently the CIA, that knew Plame's status, thought a crime may have been committed. Her CIA employment was classified info, her employer for public record was not the CIA. That equals "covert."
Since Libby's on trial for obstructing the investigation and perjury, the evidence introduced to the trial relates specifically to those charges, not whether or not Plame was covert. Since Libby obstructed the investigation and withheld info, it's that more difficult to bring charges for leaking.
But if we are to rely on court docs, it appears that a court was satisfied that not only was Valerie Wilson's CIA employment was classified, the CIA had made efforts to conceal her CIA identity. The short version:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11179719/site/newsweek%5D%5Bhttp://nationalreview.com/york/york200602060919.asp According to Corn's and Isikoff's book "Hubris," Valerie Wilson worked in the Iraq unit of the Counterproliferation Division and was involved in the search for intel on Iraq's WMD and traveled overseas using assumed identities, not her own, after 9/11/2001:
...in the summer before 9/11, the word came down from the top brass: we're ramping up on Iraq. The CPD's Iraq unit was changed into the Joint Task Force on Iraq. And in the months after September 11, the JTFI grew to include about fifty employees; Valerie Wilson was placed in charge of its operations group...
...The JTFI's primary target was Iraqi scientists. The goal was to make indirect and surreptitious contact with these experts and find out what they knew about unconventional weapons in Iraq...
As the cases piled up, Valerie Wilson traveled overseas under assumed names to monitor walk-in operations and other activities. Members of the unit were putting in long hours. But the results were frustrating. None of the JTFI's operations was generating evidence that Saddam had biological or chemical weapons or a revived nuclear weapons program...Valerie Wilson and other JTFI officers were almose too overhwhelmed to consider the possibility that the small number of operations they were condicting was, in a way, coming up with the right answer: that there was no intelligence to find on Saddm's current chemical and biological stockpiles and nuclear weapons programs because they did not exist.
(I added italics in the above excerpt to the particularly interesting bits.)
As to the appointment of Special Counsel, Vicky manages to avoid the fact that Ashcroft and his office staff had a considerable conflict of interest given his long term relationship to Rove who also was a subject of the investigation. Ashcroft's office was a pipeline to those who had an interest in making sure the investigation was stymied. As one WH senior official even bragged to the Financial Times in Fall 2003, “We have let the earth-movers roll in over this one.” No doubt Vicky is is well aware where Barbara Comstock was formerly employed before she became Libby's paid champion and disinformation agent. (Rove's legal team spokesman, Mark Corallo, was also a former Ashcroft DOJ staffer.)
Interesting that Vicky "charges" Ari, a former WH staffer, but not old Karl who is still a WH staffer. Wouldn't want to remind folks that old Karl leaked classified info, was curiously "forgetful" about his conversations with Cooper, admitted his conversation with Novak and yet still is employed by the WH. Didn't even lose his security clearance. That just doesn't seem fair, does it Vicky? But you don't want to remind folks of that while you rant on about the unfairness of it all.
And Vicky: if Libby knew he hadn't told Judy Miller anything about Valerie Wilson at a time when he claimed that he forgotten that he knew Wilson's wife worked in the CIA, why did he let her spend a year fighting against having to testify? Why did he let her go to jail and stay there for 85 days? Why not tell her right off the bat, go ahead and testify? If he didn't lie to the investigators, why did he need Judy to clam up for so long? And why then when she was in jail did he finally send her the "leading (or an attempt to suborn) the witness" Aspen letter? Did his memory slip again and he "forgot" to mention in the letter their June 23 meeting in his office? Curiously, Judy also "forgot" about the meeting in her grand jury testimony...until Fitzgerald strongly "encouraged" her to refresh her memory and suddenly Judy "discovered" her notes from that June meeting. Strange, that. Libby had nothing to hide, but he let Judy spend a year in litigation and go to jail rather than discuss their innocent conversations with Fitzgerald and the Grand Jury.
And finally from another officer of the court here's an apt response to Vicky's partisan and completely disingenuous disinformation:
FITZGERALD: I'll be blunt.
That talking point won't fly. If you're doing a national security investigation, if you're trying to find out who compromised the identity of a CIA officer and you go before a grand jury and if the charges are proven -- because remember there's a presumption of innocence -- but if it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story about how he learned this information, how he passed it on, and we prove obstruction of justice, perjury and false statements to the FBI, that is a very, very serious matter.
FITZGERALD: And I'd say this: I think people might not understand this. We, as prosecutors and FBI agents, have to deal with false statements, obstruction of justice and perjury all the time. The Department of Justice charges those statutes all the time.
When I was in New York working as a prosecutor, we brought those cases because we realized that the truth is the engine of our judicial system. And if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost.
In Philadelphia, where Jack works, they prosecute false statements and obstruction of justice.
When I got to Chicago, I knew the people before me had prosecuted false statements, obstruction and perjury cases.
FITZGERALD: And we do it all the time. And if a truck driver pays a bribe or someone else does something where they go into a grand jury afterward and lie about it, they get indicted all the time.
Any notion that anyone might have that there's a different standard for a high official, that this is somehow singling out obstruction of justice and perjury, is upside down.
If these facts are true, if we were to walk away from this and not charge obstruction of justice and perjury, we might as well just hand in our jobs. Because our jobs, the criminal justice system, is to make sure people tell us the truth. And when it's a high-level official and a very sensitive investigation, it is a very, very serious matter that no one should take lightly.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801340.html
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