I’ll admit that I didn’t pay much attention to the Plame case until recently (heck, I didn’t pay much attention to politics in general until recently). But once the name Karl Rove was mentioned in regards to the leak, my ears perked up, and I’m trying to learn all the details on the fly. So stick with me, and please, let me know of any inconsistencies in what I’ve put together.
On the July 5 edition of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, one of the guests was John Dean, Nixon’s WH legal counsel. And he said something that I think should be getting a whole lot more attention now that the Rove angle has been blown wide open in the MSM. From the transcript:
But let me tell you the hooker, and the one that got everybody at Watergate, and that was the conspiracy to defraud the government, because you can defraud the government by not doing your job. And you wouldn’t be doing your job if you are using and revealing to the press inside information about CIA assets.
John Dean knows a little something about the charge of defrauding the US. Take a look at the Nixon Articles of Impeachment and you’ll see him brought up on that very charge down in section 10 of the Specification of Charges.
::flip::
I decided to look a little more closely at what, exactly, is ‘conspiracy to defraud the government’? Well, here it is from FindLaw:
If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense
against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any
agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of
such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy,
each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than
five years, or both.
If, however, the offense, the commission of which is the object
of the conspiracy, is a misdemeanor only, the punishment for such
conspiracy shall not exceed the maximum punishment provided for
such misdemeanor.
OK, so what the heck does all that mean? Fortunately, the DoJ site has some details for us based on caselaw. A few of the pertinent points:
The operative language is the so-called “defraud clause,” that prohibits conspiracies to defraud the United States. This clause creates a separate offense from the “offense clause” in Section 371.
…
The statute is broad enough in its terms to include any conspiracy for the purpose of impairing, obstructing or defeating the lawful function of any department of government . . . (A)ny conspiracy which is calculated to obstruct or impair its efficiency and destroy the value of its operation and reports as fair, impartial and reasonably accurate, would be to defraud the United States…
…
To conspire to defraud the United States means primarily to cheat the Government out of property or money, but it also means to interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest. It is not necessary that the Government shall be subjected to property or pecuniary loss by the fraud, but only that its legitimate official action and purpose shall be defeated by misrepresentation, chicane or the overreaching of those charged with carrying out the governmental intention.
If Karl Rove did indeed leak Valeria Plame’s identity, that seems to me to be a clear case of interfering with or obstructing one of [the CIAs] lawful governmental functions…by means that are dishonest.
Now if we take this a step further…if this is eventually brought back to Joe Wilson’s debunking of the Niger/Iraq yellowcake claims (which seems to be a clear connection), and the role that fixing intelligence had to do with the run up to war in Iraq, this could be what blows the doors open and could potentially implicate a laundry list of administration officials. Will it happen? I doubt it. I think a lot of the connections would just plain be too hard to prove.
But I don’t think that is going to save Karl.