Legal Experts Call Law Poor Fit for Leak Prosecutions (Rove not covered?)

NOTE: This article is accompanied by a photo of Rove (which I was unable to post), with the caption, "No law appears to cover the type of leak Karl Rove is alleged to have committed."

WP:
Legal Experts Call Current Law A Poor Fit for Leak Prosecutions
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, September 7, 2005; Page A23

Convictions for leaking sensitive government information to the media are almost as rare as sightings of the ivory-billed woodpecker.

Only twice have government employees gone to prison for such misdeeds. And legal experts say prosecutors will have a hard time putting away anyone in the administration for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act in the revelation of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003.

There is, however, another statute that federal officials have used to go after government leakers. Some legal experts say it is not out of the question that prosecutors in the Plame case could bring it out again -- although it, too, seems a long shot.

The provision, Section 641 in Title 18 of the U.S. Code, nominally deals with prohibitions on the embezzlement of public money, property or records for private use. It typically would be used to go after a federal employee who, say, absconds with government laptops.

Prosecutors used the statute -- somewhat creatively, legal experts say -- to help build successful cases against Samuel L. Morison, a former Navy intelligence analyst who was sentenced to two years in prison in 1985 after being convicted of espionage and theft in leaking secret U.S. spy satellite photographs to a British magazine, and Jonathan Randel, a former Drug Enforcement Agency intelligence research specialist who in 2003 was sentenced to a year in prison for selling restricted information....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/06/AR2005090601582.html

..since no law exists (supposedly) which covers Rove's 'crime' - in a legal sense, no crime has been committed?

all the effort to pass out the documents stating that reveiling a CIA orperative was a crime.. just before he quit..??

I wish the MSM would do its job and investigate that, just maybe, there are pre-existing statutes that make the leaking of confidential information a crime.

And it's not like 18 USC 794 hasn't been used before...

Edit to provide link.

exactly the link I was going to provide. Outing an operative in a time of war is punishable by the death penalty. Same law covers novak too.

if i did my job so poorly i would starve.

its not like any business i ever saw, there is no accountability nor punishment for mispresenting the real facts and makinf shit up.

this stuff makes jayson blair's stories look like god's own truth.

Victoria Toensing, a Washington lawyer who helped write the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, said prosecutors would "absolutely never" try to use the embezzlement statute in the Plame case.

Dean "is trying to put the stepsister's foot in Cinderella's shoe," she said. "What was converted? . . . Where is the 'value' given to Karl Rove? . . . The story shouldn't even be written, because it's so off the wall to give it any credence."

She asks what the "value" was to karl :eyes:

Thats just stupid.

edited for typo

legal arguments. However, there are four people who have reviewed the evidence and legal arguments and who then have written about the case. Here is some of what they wrote.

Chief Judge Hogan of the D.C. district court wrote:

In his ex parte affidavit, Special Counsel outlines in great detail the developments in this
case and the investigation as a whole. The ex parte affidavit establishes that the government’s focus has shifted as it has acquired additional information during the course of the investigation. Special Counsel now needs to pursue different avenues in order to complete its investigation. Through the ex parte affidavit, the Court has determined that the subpoenas were not issued in an attempt to harass the movants, but rather stem from legitimate needs due to an unanticipated shift in the grand jury’s investigation.

http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/04-ms-460.pdf

It is obvious from Judge Hogan's opinion that Fitzgerald is investigating crimes other than just the leak of Plame's identity.

And Judge Tatel of the Court of Appeals wrote this:

Were the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security or more vital to public debate, or had the special counsel failed to demonstrate the grand jury’s need for the reporters’ evidence, I might have supported the motion to quash. Because identifying appellants’ sources instead appears essential to remedying a serious breach of public trust, I join in affirming the district court’s orders compelling their testimony. . . .

Indeed, Cooper’s own Time.com article illustrates this point. True, his story revealed a suspicious confluence of leaks, contributing to the outcry that led to this investigation. Yet the article had that effect precisely because the leaked information—Plame’s covert status—lacked significant news value. In essence, seeking protection for sources whose nefariousness he himself exposed, Cooper asks us to protect criminal leaks so that he can write about the crime. The greater public interest lies in preventing the leak to begin with. Had Cooper based his report on leaks about the leaks—say, from a whistleblower who revealed the plot against Wilson—the situation would be different. Because in that case the source would not have revealed the name of a covert agent, but instead revealed the fact that others had done so, the balance of news value and harm would shift in favor of protecting the whistleblower. Yet it appears Cooper relied on the Plame leaks themselves, drawing the inference of sinister motive on his own. Accordingly, his story itself makes the case for punishing the leakers. While requiring Cooper to testify may discourage future leaks, discouraging leaks of this kind is precisely what the public interest requires.

. . .

Were the leak at issue in this case less harmful to national security or more vital to public debate, or had the special counsel failed to demonstrate the grand jury’s need for the reporters’ evidence, I might have supported the motion to quash. Because identifying appellants’ sources instead appears essential to remedying a serious breach of public trust, I join in affirming the district court’s orders compelling their testimony.

http://pacer.cadc.uscourts.gov/docs/common/opinions/200502/04-3138a.pdf

This portion of Judge Tatel's opinion followed several pages of redacted material which contained Fitzgerald's arguments and supporting evidence. Fitzgerals seems to have convinced Judge Tatel that crimes were committed.

I was particularly intrigued by Judge Tatel's reference to "the plot against Wilson." Sounds like a conspiracy to me.

I think I'll start calling you "the spin buster !"

:toast:

There are a number of crimes that may be involved, not just those involving the leak itself. I'll bet there could be several conspiracy crimes that have been committed.

do you think someone else thinks Fitzgerald is about to hand down an indictment or six and is doing some pre-emptive spinning?

The cabal seems to be escaping accountability for a complete failure of governance in a national crisis, a humanitarian tragedy. It looks like the only thing they might not be able to escape is a jail cell.

:mad: