Talk:Plame affair/Archive 2

message: Are we nearing the finish?:
:Sources close to the investigation into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson have revealed this week that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has not turned over emails to the special prosecutor's office that may incriminate Vice President Dick Cheney, his aides, and other White House officials who allegedly played an active role in unmasking Plame Wilson's identity to reporters.
First they are pulling a Nixon on us (disappearing e-mails) and now they are refusing to cooperate. Nomen Nescio 22:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Cheney to Fitzgerald: "Want to go quail hunting this weekend?"-csloat 22:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Vice President Dick Cheney says he has the power to declassify government secrets, raising the possibility that he authorized his former chief of staff to pass along sensitive prewar data on Iraq to reporters.
Nice to know, it sounds like the Unitary Executive theory, which says that if the President does it it cannot be against the law. Not surprisingly Cheney was involved in the Nixon debacle, and he too used that argument. Nomen Nescio 12:55, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

text: (1) That's not an accurate statement of the unitary executive theory.  (2) It is true that Cheney has the legal authority to declassify information in some circumstances.  That doesn't really help Libby, however, since he's being charged with perjury, not illegal leaking. TheronJ 14:35, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not accurate according to Yoo et al. But there are professors of law that think this is what UET stands for. As with any law, one can discuss how to interpret things, but it will take a court ruling to solidify the meaning through precedent. Nomen Nescio 15:00, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: RonCram here is one more conspiracy theory

message: Evidence is mounting that senior officials in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney and the National Security Council conspired to unmask Plame Wilson's identity to reporters in an effort to stop her husband from publicly criticizing the administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence, according to sources close to the two-year-old probe.
LOL... just saw this too: meanwhile, Scooter has launched a website and started a legal defense fund ... that's right, his lawyers want your charitable contributions to help him defend against the charges of perjury.  What's next, a bumper sticker campaign, "Have you hugged a traitor today?"--csloat 22:03, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: More indictments coming?

message: Interesting:
:Handwritten notes taken by the CIA show Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide knew the name of CIA spy Valerie Plame Wilson a month before her cover was blown.
Oops, I posted it at Valerie Plame. This would be more apt. Nomen Nescio 23:25, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Libby knew CIA spy by name before it was published

message: User:Harmil attempted to deal with the article size problem by removing the lion's share of the 'legal questions' section. While I agree with the desire to cull this article down, this approach seemed to be to the detriment of the reader and to the completeness and readability of the article, and the section. Here's the diff: . Please discuss. -- User:RyanFreisling @ 00:59, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: rv'ed the removal of the 'legal questions' section

message: I did not know where to start with this article, so I removed all redundant material, as much of it was repeated in the article several times. I also removed most of the quotes, summarizing them and leaving the source in. Much of the material is also covered in the timeline, so a good deal of that was removed as well. Ten Dead Chickens 19:17, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You removed lots of material that is not "redundant."  You also removed numerous facts and quotes that you have not explained in your brief summary.  I am reverting.  If you "did not know where to start with this article," let's take things more slowly, a couple changes at a time, rather than just charging through the article like a machete through a cornfield.  You probably have some reasonable changes here but I don't think this is the right approach to "sneak" them in along while deleting massive chunks of the article.--csloat 21:25, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

text: I am going to add that I support TheronJ's proposal above; let's have a separate page discussing the "was she covert" controversy.  There is new information about this that needs to be included, and there will continue to be; rather than putting it here where it will be deleted for brevity and then put back in for POV reasons let's have a separate page that deals with all the information pro- and con- in turn.  Not sure what to call it though....--csloat 21:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Long quotes belong in Wikiquote, not choking the article. Most of the factual information removed, was also reflected in the timeline article. I added very little information to the article, two or three sentences at most, so I was not "sneaking" anything into it. The article is far too long, and the removal of quotes is a good place to start. As far as redundant material, there is no good reason to mention similar information several times in an article whose length already exceeds 100k, Therefore I am reverting.  Ten Dead Chickens 22:04, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: TDC you "snuck" in deletions that have already been discussed here on the talk page; your sudden concern for the article size is being used as a way of avoiding actual discussion of the issues.  Again, let's make small changes here rather than massive deletions, especially when you are deleting material that has been agreed to in talk.  In addition, your latest reversion has also reverted the other changes I made in more recent edits.  Instead of instigating a revert war, how about discussing these changes specifically?  Your blanket assurance that you have only removed "redundant" material is false (e.g., material removed from the section on "Actual damage") and many of your changes are clearly POV.  If you are truly making such changes in good faith, let's have them one by one so they can be disputed. --csloat 23:18, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Recent Edits

message: I'm not sure I agree with the rationale for the last edit by anon ip -- it is true that Cheney may have "authorized" the leak, but it would still be "unauthorized" from the perspective of the CIA, and I think that is what is referred to there.--csloat 06:19, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: unauthorized "allegedly"

message: In my opinion, the Libby defense team is now officially off the reservation (39 pp. PDF) in their high-stakes perjury defense comprised, so far, of discovery requests for sensitive documents.  Libby's attorneys revealed the names of a handful of previously unknown CIA officials who may have communicated Plame Wilson's classified CIA work to Libby:
* Robert Grenier, 51, head of the agency's top counterterrorism office, fired last month because he opposed using torture tactics against al-Qaeda suspects at secret detention facilities abroad, Grenier was station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan on September 11, 2001. Former CIA Director George Tenet promoted Grenier in 2002 to head up the Iraq Issues Group, a position created specifically to prepare for the March 2003 Iraq invasion.
* John McLaughlin, former deputy director of the CIA who resigned in November 2004 over bureaucratic infighting.
* Craig Schmall, CIA/White House liaison/briefer.
* Peter Clement, CIA/White House liaison/briefer, who has worked at the CIA for nearly 30 years. He was the director of intelligence for the agency and has published books on Soviet foreign policy, Russian domestic politics, and politics in Central Asia.
* Matt Barrett, CIA/White House liaison/briefer.
Fitzgerald continues to deny the discovery of red herring sensitive documents:
: "We are trying a perjury case," Fitzgerald said during a February 24 court hearing on issues related to additional evidence Libby's attorneys were trying to obtain from Fitzgerald's probe. "What I am going to say to the jury in opening and closing and rebuttal is that Mr. Libby knowingly lied about what he did. And the issue is whether he knowingly lied or not," Fitzgerald added. "And if there is information about actual damage, whatever was caused or not caused that isn't in his mind, it is not a defense. If she turned out to be a postal driver mistaken for a CIA employee, it's not a defense if you lie in a grand jury under oath about what you said and you told people I didn't know he had a wife. That is what this case is about. It is about perjury...." 
Who doesn't love the American system of justice for those who can afford it, at the expense of everything else?  Someone should add this stuff.  I'm too angry to attempt neutrality at the moment. --James S. 17:07, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps it's because Plame was never covert after all.  If Libby can show that Plame wasn't covert (as all evidence suggests), Fitzgerald should himself be brought up on perjury charges for making that assertion to the Court.  LOL!--Mr j galt 08:44, 2 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Third motion of Libby to compel discovery names names 

message: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/18/AR2006031800908.html Kevin Baastalk 18:15, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Armitage?

message: Feel free to speculate:
:In a late night Friday filing (made available by RAW STORY here,) attorneys for Vice President Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, named key witnesses in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame.
:Included for the first time in formal documents was National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley.
 Nomen Nescio 10:03, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Interesting

message: :Another false claim is that Valerie sent her husband on the mission to Niger. According to the Senate Intelligence Committee Report issued in July 2004, it is clear that the Vice President himself requested that the CIA provide its views on a Defense Intelligence Agency report that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. The Vice President's request was relayed through the CIA bureaucracy to the Director of the Counter Proliferation Division at the CIA. Valerie worked for a branch in that Division. The Senate Intelligence Report is frequently cited by Republican partisans as "proof" that Valerie sent her husband to Niger because she sent a memo describing her husband's qualifications to the Deputy Division Chief. Several news personalities, such as Chris Matthews and Bill O'Reilly continue to repeat this nonsense as proof. What the Senate Intelligence Committee does not include in the report is the fact that Valerie's boss had asked her to write a memo outlining her husband's qualifications for the job. She did what any good employee does; she gave her boss what he asked for.
why is this paragraph indented under the heading "Claim of Plame-Wilson conspiracy" and does anyone else think this particular paragraph needs to be reworded? Anthonymendoza 22:47, 24 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a direct quotation.--csloat 00:43, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: i'm putting it in italics. Anthonymendoza 01:29, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Conspiracy Section