Did Karl Rove commit a crime? Plus, Plame "covert" in Vanity Fair?

The left says, "Duhhhhh, he sure did...uh-huh-huh!" A former Assistant Deputy Attorney General says "No." Before anybody tries to say "Of course the Deputy AG says that...she's a political appointee!", ask yourself if you operated off of that belief when Jackbooted Janet Reno was the AG.

Anyway, the law in question is known as the Intelligence Identities Protection Act...a law that was in part drafted by Victoria Toensing (the former Asst. Deputy AG) in 1982. It's safe to say she understands the law as it is written.

Karl Rove is identified in emails from Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper as someone who mentioned that Joseph Wilson's wife worked at the CIA - just days before her name was revealed by columnist Robert Novak. Wilson's wife has since been identified as Valerie Plame.

For Plame's outing to have been illegal, the one-time deputy AG explained, "her status as undercover must be classified." Also, Plame "must have been assigned to duty outside the United States currently or in the past five years."

Since in neither case does Plame meet those criteria, Toensing argued: "There is a serious legal question as to whether she qualifies as 'covert.'"

In order to show that Rove broke the law, you must show the following:

(1) That Rove specifically named Valerie Plame (simply saying "Wilson's wife" doesn't work if the average Joe doesn't know her name. I don't know the name of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's hubby, right?);

(2) That Valerie Plame was actually working undercover for the CIA. (Looks like a desk job to me.)

(3) That Rove knew Valerie Plame was working undercover for the CIA.

(4) That the CIA was actively trying, and that Karl Rove knew that the CIA was actively trying, to protect the identity of Valerie Plame at the time Rove made his statement to the reporter.

New York Times scribe Nicholas Kristof revealed that she abandoned her covert role a full nine years before the Novak column:

"The C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given [Plame's] name [along with those of other spies] to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994," reported Kristof. "So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons."

The Times columnist also noted that Plame had begun making the transition to CIA "management" even before she was outted by Novak, explaining that "she was moving away from 'noc' – which means non-official cover ... to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having 'C.I.A.' stamped on her forehead."

Kristof concluded: "All in all, I think the Democrats are engaging in hyperbole when they describe the White House as having put [Plame's] life in danger and destroyed her career; her days skulking along the back alleys of cities like Beirut and Algiers were already mostly over."

How "covert" was Plame? Her hubby said his wife "will not allow herself to be photographed" on Oct. 5 on Meet the Press. Well, how about the July 2005 edition of Vanity Fair?

Juxtapose the photo with the NYT's laughable "article" about Mr. and Mrs. Joe Wilson-Plame:

Ms. Wilson, 42, whose husband said she has used her married name both at work and in her personal life since their 1998 marriage, declined to speak for this article. She has guarded her privacy, with rare exceptions. She posed with her husband for a Vanity Fair photographer, wearing sunglasses and with a scarf over her blond hair. She drafted an op-ed article to correct what she felt were distortions of her and her husband's actions, but the C.I.A. would not authorize its publication, saying it would "affect the agency's ability to perform its mission."

Those were the only two examples given of Plame's "rare" exceptions to guarding her privacy. Perhaps the Times has not seen the July 2005 issue of Vanity Fair, which contains, in its "Vanities" section, this photograph.

Considering, then, that Plame was NOT a covert CIA agent, then conditions 2, 3, and 4 above could not have been met. Therefore, no crime was committed.

Sorry, libs...try harder.