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September 29, 2003
Info on the Intelligence Identities Protection Act
The Washington Post tonight is running a story that offers some good background on the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the law most frequently cited as having been broken by whomever leaked the name and CIA status of Valerie Plame.
The law was passed as a reaction to Phil Agee, a former CIA agent who had written a book and wrote a column for the "Covert Action Information Bulletin", both of which revealed the identity of undercover operatives. The article notes that if the law has been used at all since it was passed, it's been used very rarely. Most think it hasn't been used at all.
The law enacted to stop Agee and others imposes maximum penalties of 10 years in prison and $50,000 in fines for the unauthorized disclosure of covert agents' identities by government employees who have access to classified information.This, of course, opens up a possible line of defense if whomever named Plame is ever identified. If they can raise reasonable doubt (or if the prosecution can't prove) that they meet all three criteria, then there may not be a prosecutable crime under this law.The statute includes three other elements necessary to obtain a conviction: that the disclosure was intentional, the accused knew the person being identified was a covert agent and the accused also knew that "the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States."
The law says no person other than the one accused of leaking the information can be prosecuted, a provision that would protect journalists who report leaked classified information identifying a covert agent. But there is one exception to that protection.
The measure says people who engage in a "pattern of activities" intended to identify covert agents and who have "reason to believe that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States" can be prosecuted. Smith said that language was aimed at the publishers of the Covert Action Information Bulletin and others who made it a practice to identify undercover CIA agents.
However, as noted yesterday, Ashcroft has been successful in at least one case using Title 18, Part I, Chapter 31, Section 641 of the US Code, which makes it a crime to
...embezzle[s], steal[s], purloin[s], or knowingly convert[s] to his use or the use of another, or without authority, sell[s], convey[s] or dispose[s] of any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency thereof...to prosecute someone who leaked non classified information to the British press, claiming that the information passed on was the "thing of value". Richard Nixon also tried using this statutes along with the 1917 Espionage Act to prosecute Daniel Ellsburg for leaking the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times, but that case was dismissed. Ronald Reagan's justice department also used those same statutes to prosecute Samuel Morison for sending classified photos of a Soviet sub to Jane's Defence weekly.
Now, I'm not a lawyer, but even if a case can't be made under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, it may be possible using the general theft statute (I would imagine that the identity of a covert agent would be considered a "think of value" to the CIA, which is an agency of the United States), plus one or more other laws creatively, such as Ashcroft has already done, to find a statute under which the leaker could be prosecuted.
Whether the leaker is in the White House or is some low-level flunky who just grabbed onto some interesting information, whomever did this needs to be identified and prosecuted. And sure, I'd love to see this damage the Bush administration - but even if it turns out that somehow this was a setup job done by someone just trying to make the Bushies look bad, the truth needs to come out and the guilty party needs to be punished. It really that simple.
Posted by thorswitch at September 29, 2003 11:03 PM
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Tracked on September 30, 2003 09:28 AM