WorldNetDaily: Joe Wilson fumes over Vallely charges in WND:
"Wilson declared in the column that his trip revealed the Iraq-Niger connection was dubious, but his oral report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence actually corroborated the controversial '16 words' in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address: 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'
Libby's charges pertained only to the investigation itself, not the 1982 act that made it illegal to blow a covert U.S. agent's cover.
The Washington attorney who spearheaded the drafting of that law told WND earlier this year that Plame's circumstances don't meet the statute's criteria.
Victoria Toensing – who worked on the legislation in her role as chief counsel for the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – said Plame most likely was not a covert agent when White House aides mentioned her to reporters.
The federal code says the agent must have operated outside the United States within the previous five years. But Plame gave up her role as a covert agent nine years before the Rove interview, according to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
Kristof said the CIA brought Plame back to Washington in 1994 because the agency suspected her undercover security had been compromised by turncoat spy Aldrich Ames.
Wilson's own book, 'The Politics of Truth,' states he and Plame both returned from overseas assignments in June 1997 and never again were stationed overseas – placing them in Washington at least six years before the 2003 'outing.'
Moreover, asserted Toensing, for the law to be violated, White House aides would have had to intentionally reveal Plame's identity with the knowledge that they were disclosing a covert agent. "
"Wilson declared in the column that his trip revealed the Iraq-Niger connection was dubious, but his oral report to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence actually corroborated the controversial '16 words' in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address: 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'
Libby's charges pertained only to the investigation itself, not the 1982 act that made it illegal to blow a covert U.S. agent's cover.
The Washington attorney who spearheaded the drafting of that law told WND earlier this year that Plame's circumstances don't meet the statute's criteria.
Victoria Toensing – who worked on the legislation in her role as chief counsel for the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence – said Plame most likely was not a covert agent when White House aides mentioned her to reporters.
The federal code says the agent must have operated outside the United States within the previous five years. But Plame gave up her role as a covert agent nine years before the Rove interview, according to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
Kristof said the CIA brought Plame back to Washington in 1994 because the agency suspected her undercover security had been compromised by turncoat spy Aldrich Ames.
Wilson's own book, 'The Politics of Truth,' states he and Plame both returned from overseas assignments in June 1997 and never again were stationed overseas – placing them in Washington at least six years before the 2003 'outing.'
Moreover, asserted Toensing, for the law to be violated, White House aides would have had to intentionally reveal Plame's identity with the knowledge that they were disclosing a covert agent. "
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