In case you’re fuzzy on this, here it is in a nutshell:

1) Nonpartisan diplomat Joseph C. Wilson IV is sent by the George W. Bush administration to Niger, Africa to check out intel that claimed Saddam was trying to get yellowcake uranium from said country.

2) No evidence was found, Wilson returned to the US and reported that fact.

3) Bush makes the claim in his State of the Union address that Saddam had, in fact, sought to obtain yellowcake through Niger (pronounced NEE-JEHR).

4) Wilson does an op-ed in the NYT claiming that the Bush 43 Admin is squelching his findings and pumping up incorrect intel to help justify the Iraq Attack

5) The name of Wilson’s wife is leaked to the press. The catch is that his wife was an undercover CIA agent and it’s a treasonous act to expose the identity of an undercover agent because it can not only endanger her life but an operation that could do as much as start a war.

6) Naturally, the government wants to know who leaked her name to the press. Strangely, they go after Time Mag reporter Matthew Cooper and NYT reporter Judith Miller for what they know but CNN’s Robert Novak isn’t on the hotseat despite the fact that they all mentioned Wilson’s wife’s name in their reporting.

7) Time Mag gives in and turns over Miller’s notes which point the source-finger at Rove. Yep, big surprise, it’s Rove who leaked the Wilson’s wife’s name. If you know anything about Rove, you know that he did it to get back at Wilson for speaking out about the Bush 43 Admin trying to bury the yellowcake-non-story.

Here are some links pertaining to this story. The first bunch are from right here at ThePete.Com. Many are “round-up” posts just like this one because there was so much coverage of this story back when it first broke. How Bush still got away with lying escapes me at the time of this post.

From ThePete.Com:
(oldest to newest)
thepete.com/wow-bush-43-admin-admits-a-mistake-a-big-mistake/
thepete.com/usgov-spins-web-of-defense-against-accusations-of-misleading-the-world-on-iraq/ (July 10, 2003)
thepete.com/bush-knew/ (July 10, 2003)
thepete.com/more-usgov-spin-on-iraquraniumniger-evidence/ (July 11, 2003)
thepete.com/iraquraniumniger-usukgov-spin-round-up/ (July 13, 2003)
thepete.com/iraqnigeruranium-lie-news-round-up/ (July 14, 2003)
thepete.com/bush-misled-about-more-than-niger-evidence/ (July 17, 2003)
thepete.com/niger-evidence-news-round-up/
thepete.com/oo-they-said-the-i-word/
thepete.com/rove-leaked-cia-agents-name-big-fucking-surprise/

Off-Site links:
Private Spy and Public Spouse Live at Center of Leak Case (NYTimes.com)
The above links to a pretty good basic article regarding the whole thing. Of course, it doesn’t bring up what really matters, why Bush has yet to be impeached for clearly lying to us all. It does include this tidbit:

Former C.I.A. officers differ on the impact of Mr. Novak’s identification of Ms. Wilson, who had been working against weapons proliferation in Europe and elsewhere while posing as an analyst for a shell company in Boston, Brewster Jennings & Associates, set up by the agency.

Clandestine service officers working under such “nonofficial cover” - rather than the traditional guise of diplomat - are considered to hold the most sensitive and vulnerable jobs in intelligence, lacking the protection of diplomatic immunity if they are unmasked overseas. Disclosing the C.I.A. employment of officers under cover can endanger the officers, their operations and their agents, as well as violate the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, the law that prompted the current leak investigation.

The article goes on to quote CIA officers who feel that her cover was already pretty thin–to that I ask this question:

Is there a law that can’t be broken if you can find the right qualifiers?

Here’s another question:

When do we stop breaking our laws?

More links:

The Rove Factor? (MSNBC.com / Newsweek)
The above article confirms that it was Rove that leaked the agent’s name. So, technically, he should be brought up on treason charges, right? Or at the very least he should be arrested for violation of that 1982 law, right?

Prosecutor jail for journalists in leak case (Reuters.com / MyWay.com)
Here’s where things get dicey. I’m going to do a separate blog entry on this part of the story, so if you’ve already read about this, my apologies. While I’m all for catching the guy who leaked this agent’s name, freedom of speech is something that I am very passionate about and it’s being threatened in this situation. See, these reporters who revealed the agent’s name in their reporting are now being forced to give up their source. I think this is wrong despite the fact that it’s too late. See, I feel that these reporters should be put on trial for violating that 1982 law–not for refusing to turn over their sources. Journalists should be protected from being forced to give up their sources. However, someone disagrees with me. Here’s a quote from the above linked article:

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald urged Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan to reject requests from New York Times correspondent Judith Miller and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper for home detention instead of jail.

“Journalists are not entitled to promise confidentiality — no one in America is,” Fitzgerald, a U.S. Justice Department prosecutor, wrote in one of the court filings.

Isn’t that nice? So, now, apparently any of us Americans can say whatever we want but we can be forced to admit who told us what we are saying. According to this DoJ prosecutor it’s illegal to keep secrets if they are given to you by someone else.

Is God still blessing America? I can’t really tell at this point.

I’m really curious why Robert Novak isn’t being nailed for this along with Miller and Cooper since it’s my understanding that he mentioned the agent’s name in his reporting, too.

UPDATED 7/11/5: Well, the scuttlebutt about Novak is that he’s done some sort of deal with the USG to avoid prosecution. How the guy sleeps at night without letting us know what that deal is is beyond me. I’m beginning to think Jon Stewart was right when he called Novak “Douchebag for Freedom.”

Anyway, here’s another link on this story:

Matt Cooper’s Source (MSNBC.com / Newsweek)
This article basically explains that Rove mentioned to Cooper that Wilson’s wife was the instigator of his mission to Africa. He also mentioned that she was a CIA Agent working on WMD issues for the agency. In the end, this article is quite fuzzy as to just what the hell Rove meant by the info. Still, have a read and if it makes sense to you, be a dear and explain it to me?