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Banned
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Originally Posted by Lebell
Poppinjay, Yakk,
I did see her bio and noted especially that she worked for Reagan. I also note that her piece is likely a partisan piece as well as an op ed.
But I found her arguments that the intent of the law (of which she should be considered an authority on) did not match this case to be persuasive.
Contrary to what some apparently think, I haven't formed a concrete opinion on this whole mess and it may very well be that some folks end up serving some time for perjury. But I also don't like the partisan crap that is obviously mixed up in it.
If someone truly did out her maliciously (sp?) and it is a crime under the intent of the act, then I support prosecuting said individual. Otherwise, it is the same political bs that we deal with all too frequently.
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Lebell, I find your response to Poppinjay and Yakk even more curious than your assertion, when you reposted the link to Toensing's rabid repub disinformation "column", that
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The nice thing about this is that I don't have to argue a thing.
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I assume, by your defense, that you either did not read the two posts that I put up in response to your assertion, or....if you did....you minimize the reaction by our fellow members to the following points....
Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...602069_pf.html
Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net
White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail
By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 27, 2005; A01
...........Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.
Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.
In a column published Oct. 1, 2003, Novak wrote that the CIA official he spoke to "asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause 'difficulties' if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name."
Harlow was also involved in the larger internal administration battle over who would be held responsible for Bush using the disputed charge about the Iraq-Niger connection as part of the war argument. Based on the questions they have been asked, people involved in the case believe that Fitzgerald looked into this bureaucratic fight because the effort to discredit Wilson was part of the larger campaign to distance Bush from the Niger controversy.............
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<b>Almost nothing that Toensing has emphasized in her year long, partisan media blitz is accurate. The spectacle of this well orchestrated, Bush regime driven disinformation, epecially in wartime, is a crime in itself.</b>
Toensing wants you to believe that Fitzgerald has improperly enlarged his investigative "mandate". The truth is that he was given wider leeway and the unprecedented authority previously restricted to the attorney general himself, so that he could keep the progress of his investigation secret even from the DOJ, in reaction to the potential conflicts of interest of the investigation's targets in the executive branch, which the DOJ answers to.
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http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/d...doj-pconf.html
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE PRESS CONFERENCE
WASHINGTON, D.C.
......Q: You mentioned that the -- you felt that Fitzgerald will have a broader -- actually a broader mandate, broader abilities than an outside counsel. Can you expand on that a little bit? In what respect will he have a --
MR. COMEY: Yes. An outside counsel has a -- the regulations prescribe a number of ways in which they're very similar to a U.S. attorney. For example, they have to follow all Department of Justice policies regarding approvals. So that means if they want to subpoena a member of the media, if they want to grant immunity, if they want to subpoena a lawyer -- all the things that we as U.S. attorneys have to get approval for, an outside counsel has to come back to the Department of Justice. An outside counsel also only gets the jurisdiction that is assigned to him and no other. The regulations provide that if he or she wants to expand that jurisdiction, they have to come back to the attorney general and get permission.
Fitzgerald has been told, as I said to you: Follow the facts; do the right thing. He can pursue it wherever he wants to pursue it.......
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Quote:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...uple022798.htm
The Power Couple at Scandal's Vortex
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 27, 1998; Page D1 .................
...........A classic Washington power couple, diGenova, 53, and Toensing, 56, occupy a strange, symbiotic nexus between the media and the law that boosts their stock in both worlds. They are clearly players, which gives them access to juicy information, which gets them on television, which generates legal business......
...."Dozens of Washington lawyers are trying to get on these shows," diGenova says. "I think it's very healthy. We can destroy myths and shoot down misunderstandings." Toensing sees televised debate as a good way of sharpening the old legal skills. "It's something that gets the body juices going," she says.....
.....<b>The two law partners not only talk about the Monica Lewinsky investigation -- they've been quoted or on the tube more than 300 times in the month since the story broke</b>........
..........Their television advocacy is hardly a state secret. <h4>As former prosecutors, both diGenova and Toensing have largely defended the aggressive tactics of independent counsel Kenneth Starr and repeatedly challenged the president's veracity.</h4>................
..........."They've become a public spectacle, which means they can't be impartial" in the Teamsters probe, says Missouri Rep. William Clay, the committee's ranking Democrat. "It's a payoff from Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party to both Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova. . . . They have been on television over 200 times and not once have they been talking about an issue we're paying them $25,000 a month to handle for the Congress. It's a hell of a part-time job."
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Quote:
http://www.slate.com/id/2304
.....Though both diGenova and Toensing are Republicans who are hostile to Clinton and supportive of Kenneth Starr, they usually argue against the independent-counsel law in general......
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Quote:
http://www.yuricareport.com/Corrupti...veCIALeak.html
"We made it exceedingly difficult to violate," Victoria Toensing, who was chief counsel to the Senate intelligence committee when the law was enacted, said of the law........
.............Based on the e-mail message, Mr. Rove's disclosures are not criminal, said Bruce S. Sanford, a Washington lawyer who helped write the law and submitted a brief on behalf of several news organizations concerning it to the appeals court hearing the case of Mr. Cooper and Judith Miller, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
"It is clear that Karl Rove's conversation with Matt Cooper does not fall into that category" of criminal conduct, Mr. Sanford said. "That's not 'knowing.' It doesn't even come close."
There has been some dispute, moreover, about just how secret a secret agent Ms. Wilson was.
"She had a desk job in Langley," said Ms. Toensing, who also signed the supporting brief in the appeals court, referring to the C.I.A.'s headquarters. "When you want someone in deep cover, they don't go back and forth to Langley."
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Toensing did not disclose in the Jan. 2005 WaPo op-ed column, where she makes a point of defending her friend, Robert Novak, that she is his friend. Toensing has appeared on TV frequently since, and is documented as failing to disclose her relationship with Novak. This seems misleading and unethical.
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http://mediamatters.org/items/200501140005
Press sightings of social interactions between Toensing, her husband, Joseph E. diGenova, and Novak abound:
* An October 1, 2004, <a href="http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/10/01/novak/index_np.html">article on Salon.com</a> reported that Novak was a guest along with Toensing and diGenova at a September 21, 2004, party in Washington to celebrate the success of the book Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry (Regnery, 2004).
* According to an October 17, 2001, "Reliable Source" column in The Washington Post, Novak was among "70 friends" hosted by diGenova to celebrate Toensing's 60th birthday at the Palm restaurant.
* A February 27, 1998, profile of Toensing and diGenova in The Washington Post reported that "[t]he couple retreat on weekends to their Fenwick Island, Del., beach house, hanging with such pals as Robert Novak and Bill Regardie." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv...uple022798.htm
Novak has also defended or praised his friends Toensing and diGenova on at least three occasions in his nationally syndicated column:
* "DiGenova, a conservative Republican, would introduce something new at the IRB [Teamsters union Internal Review Board]. He might recommend that it is time to end the monitoring that has cost the union more than $75 million. [Federal prosecutor Mary Jo] White did her best to obstruct the 1998 congressional investigation of the Teamsters conducted by diGenova and his law partner-wife, Victoria Toensing. Nor is diGenova an admirer of Mary Jo White's glacial pursuit of the pre-Hoffa conspiracy between the Teamsters, the AFL-CIO and the Democratic National Committee as the statute of limitations is about to block further prosecution." <a href="http://www.townhall.com/opinion/columns/robertnovak/2001/08/01/165366.html">[8/1/2001]</a>
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I rarely post here at TFP lately because I find the resistance to in depth reading at a political forum, replaced with criticism that "long posts don't cut it", is an indication that my "contribution" will be better received elsewhere.
Consider that all of the thugs like the ones Mr. Fitzgerald is about to indict, have to do to insure success, is to make their illegal "Op" complicated enough that it won't compartmentalize in a "Mac News", USA Today style snippet, or into a Foxnews sound bite, and the perps are home free.
Consider that in a time of war, president Bush continues to allow high level aids who have admitted intentionally leaking classified information concerning confidential CIA business and personnel, to keep their security clearances and their high level positions in his government. Consider that Bush is the chief law enforcement officer of the U.S. and that he chose to retain a criminal defense attorney, Jim Sharp, to represent him when Fitzgerald interviewed him last year. Why would Bush not be leading the investigation, instead of defending himself from it? |