Leaker Revealed, Nobody Vindicated

Lots of gloating in the conservosphere over the revelation that Richard Armitage, former deputy Secretary of State under Colin Powell, was the original leaker to Robert Novak's story which outed Valerie Plame's occupation as a covert CIA operative. I'm not seeing why.

Step down to paragraphs four and five of this article with me, will you?

In the accounts by the lawyer and associates, Mr. Armitage disclosed casually to Mr. Novak that Ms. Wilson worked for the C.I.A. at the end of an interview in his State Department office. Mr. Armitage knew that, the accounts continue, because he had seen a written memorandum by Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman.

Mr. Grossman had taken up the task of finding out about Ms. Wilson after an inquiry from I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Mr. Libby’s inquiry was prompted by an Op-Ed article on May 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Nicholas D. Kristof and an article on June 12, 2003, in The Washington Post by Walter Pincus.

Scooter Libby is on trial for obstructing justice. That has nothing to do with this revelation. Scooter Libby initially dug out the opposition research on Plame, in direct response to Joe Wilson's criticisms of the Administration's run-up to war. This article confirms that. Karl Rove was the second source for Novak and a source for Matt Cooper. This article says nothing about that. Rove said to Chris Matthews that Plame, a covert operative working on WMD proliferation in Iran (think we need that now?), was "fair game." This article takes no position on that.

In other words, Armitage deserves to be held accountable for his mistake, but the central issue of the CIA leak, that a group in the White House deliberately pushed disclosure as a form of political payback, remains the central issue regardless of Armitage's admission, and in fact is bolstered by it.

When I want information on this investigation, I turn to Firedoglake and emptywheel. Here's the first:

And there is a lesson buried in the midst of the NYTimes story that I want to emphasize for a moment, as a former prosecutor: Armitage realized he was the source of the initial leak, and he immediately went to the State Department’s offices of legal and intelligence affairs, owned up to what had occurred, and discusssed his errors with the FBI before Patrick Fitzgerald was even appointed as Special Prosecutor [...]

But as a prosecutor, I can honestly tell you that when you have a genuinely contrite person in front of you, who has owned up to all their activity, put everything out on the table, and you have all the facts to look at — both the prosecutor and the criminal investigators are more likely to work with that person in terms of using them as a witness against others, cutting a deal, everything.

It does not in any way excuse the behavior, but acceptance of responsibility and willingness to work with authorities can go a long, long way sometimes. Something that Scooter Libby failed to do from the get go — big mistake. Never lie to investigative officers, repeatedly, becuse if you do, you will have to deal with the legal consequences of your behavior. Period. Karl Rove may only have come around to honesty in some form by his fifth attempt at Grand Jury testimony, but it’s tough to tell from the outside. I do hope that, at some point, we get to the backstory on all of this during the Libby trial…there are way too many holes remaining for my legal brain to be comfortable [...]

But the second thing is this: no matter how much of a "decent guy" Richard Armitage may have been considered by colleagues (and reports from a number of people are that he’s a "good guy," fun at work, considerate of colleagues, tough when he needs to be, he and his wife have taken in hundreds of foster kids through the years, etc., etc.), he opened his yap and outed a covert CIA operative through careless gossip. On multiple occasions.

Shameful. Wrong. Deadly careless [...]

Richard Armitage gossiped about a member of the CIA to journalists. He violated the first principle of national security clearances — disclose information on a "need to know" basis only. I do not care how valuable his knowledge may be, he should never, ever have a high level security clearance again, because he is not to be trusted. (And while we are at it, why does Karl Rove still have his? Given his admission to discussing Valerie with journalists as well, he should be held to the same standard. He is also not to be trusted.)

National security is not some game. I don’t care about the "everybody does it" argument that Washington, D.C., is one big pit of gossip about who does what portfolio in intel or covert ops — this is not a game. And anyone who has ever known an officer who put their life on the line in a covert operation knows that for a fact.

And emptywheel, in a very well-researched piece, discusses how the Bush Administration widened the scope of the investigation, not the so-called "runaway prosecutor" Patrick Fitzgerald (who was so out of control that he indicted exactly one person and displayed a very strict interpretation of the law, despite all indications that Rove could have easily been indicted):

Richard Armitage revealed his role on October 1, 2003. He was interviewed on October 2, 2003. Robert Novak was interviewed on October 7, 2003.

Now at this point, if the Armitage to Novak leak really explained everything the CIA had reported in their complaint, you'd think they would have gone no further, right? You'd think they would have either thrown Armitage into jail, or they'd have made an announcement, "um, sorry, nothing to see here folks. It was all a misunderstanding."

Particularly since a bunch of Bush cronies and RNC hacks were overseeing the investigation.

John Ashcroft, then Attorney General, had paid Rove over $700,000 to help him win three different elections. Robert McCallum, Associate Attorney General and then-acting Deputy Attorney General, knew Bush from their days in Skull and Bones at Yale. David Israelite, Deputy Chief of Staff to Ashcroft, had served as the RNC's political director. Barbara Comstock, then Ashcroft's Director of Public Affairs, had run the RNC's opposition research. Mark Corallo, transitioning into Comstock's role, had also worked for the RNC.

Yet in spite of the fact that the folks at the top of this investigation must have been more interested in helping Dick Cheney and George Bush avoid embarrassment than Patrick Fitzgerald later was, they continued to pursue the investigation, even after they had spoken to Armitage and Novak. Either something in the CIA referral, something reported in the popular press, or something they learned in the very first days of the investigation convinced them to continue pursuing the case. And by the time Fitzgerald was appointed at the end of December, FBI investigators already had reason to believe Libby and Rove were lying to them.

The Bush Administration made their own bed on this one. Scooter Libby will lie in it. And Richard Armitage, while he performed a shameful act, does not have any bearing on the central conspiracy at work here.