**My thanks to the leftcoaster for their work on gathering a lot of this data**
The GOP-bought disinformation spin machine is in hyperdrive right now over the Valerie Plame Treasongate so it is crucial that we all keep focused and remember the salient points, lest we get confused with the smoke and mirrors being brought out to distract and confound.
These are the facts.
2) In the released Cooper email, it is quite clear that Karl Rove stated that Joseph Wilson's wife was an agent working for the CIA on WMD.
The rest of the garbage you are hearing is nothing but window dressing to distract you from these two facts. Once you put these two facts together, you can reach only one conclusion and that is that Karl Rove is a traitor to this country and he needs to be prosecuted for treason against the Untied States of America. Period, end of story. What is convenient about these two facts is that you can summarize them simply and apply them as an answer to any spin you might hear. To summarize:
Karl Rove committed treason against the United States of America by violating section 421 of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, by revealing the secret identity of a covert operative to a reporter.
Now to the spin:
Spin-Cycle # 1 - Valerie Plame was not covert.
This is rapidly becoming a favorite of the noise machine. They have trotted out such proof that Joe Wilson actually went out in public with his wife. Their evidence also now includes that Valerie Plame commuted to work. Wow. Let us clarify for the truly dense. The accusation is not that Karl Rove let a reporter know that Joe Wilson had a wife, but that his wife was an UNDERCOVER AGENT! The fact of the matter is Valerie Plame most definitely WAS a covert operative, as detailed here by someone who went to spy school with her:
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/13/04720/9340
As Mr. Johnson points out, Ms. Plame was a non-official cover agent, or a NOC. Anyone who saw the Mission Impossible movie with Tom Cruise will remember that the "NOC List" was the subject of the plot, where Cruise was trying to keep this secret information out of the hands of the bad guys. Too bad Karl Rove apparently missed the movie.
Spin-Cycle # 2 - Karl Rove never leaked her name.
This one is designed to sound so simplistic that people might walk away in disbelief, not realizing they just got snookered. Referring back to the law that was violated, her name does not have to be leaked, only "ANY INFORMATION identifying a covert agent". I think it is reasonable to say that Rove certainly identified Ms. Plame, specifically as an agent for the CIA.
Spin-Cycle # 3 - Karl Rove never knew that Valerie Plame was covert.
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