Judge Reggie B. Walton, who sentenced I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to 30 months in prison last week for lying to federal investigators about his role in the leak of a CIA officer's identity, received 373 pages of letters about the high-profile convict whose fate he had to decide. Many argued for leniency on behalf of Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, whom former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld called a "dedicated public servant" and "strong family man." But some less famous writers were outraged about the example Libby set; one letter from "An Angry Citizen" demanded the longest prison term possible...
..Libby's allies argued that the beans he spilled weren't that important to begin with. In fact, many of the officials who knew about her classified CIA status kept mum, which let Libby's pals jump to assert that she wasn't an undercover operative at the time of the leak.
But a CIA "unclassified summary" of Plame's career, released in court filings before Libby's June 5 sentencing, puts this one to rest: The CIA considered her covert at the time her identity was leaked to the media. The CIA report said that Plame had worked overseas in the previous five years and that the agency had been taking "affirmative measures" to conceal her CIA employment. That echoes the language used in the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which makes it a crime to reveal the identities of covert CIA officers...
..series of missing White House e-mails, supposedly containing marching orders from President Bush's top political adviser in which Rove told his troops to out Plame and punish her husband, former ambassador Joseph I. Wilson IV, for having poured cold water over reports that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium in Africa...
..After all, did you hear Cathie Martin describe at trial what it was like to be the vice president's communications director during the spring and summer of 2003? Twice, Cheney dictated talking points for her about how to bat down Wilson's allegations that the administration had twisted the intelligence about Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Cheney also ordered her to start monitoring all television reports on the Niger controversy and arranged a luncheon for conservative columnists to help get out his take on everything...
..When the investigation began, the president said he hated leaks and would hold leakers of classified information accountable. But he has not sacked anyone over the case.
Libby resigned the day he was indicted in October 2005. Two other officials who gave reporters information about Plame, former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage and former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, left government before Fitzgerald's inquiry concluded.
Source:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/08/AR2007060802478_pf.html
