Congressional Record: July 20, 2004 (Senate)
Page S8437-S8438
LEAK INVESTIGATION
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, I am here on the Senate floor again today
to remind my colleagues, and those who may be watching on C-SPAN, that
it has now been 1 year and 6 days since two high-ranking White House
officials leaked the name of agent Valerie Plame, a CIA agent, to a
columnist by the name of Robert Novak, who then published it in his
column. Two high-ranking White House officials leaked this name to more
than one reporter. It is interesting that no other reporters reported
it except Robert Novak.
Here we are 372 days--1 year and 6 days after this crime was
committed. We still have no answers about who in the White House was
responsible for this leak. We still have no assurance from the
President or the Vice President that those who are responsible do not
still remain in high-ranking decision making roles in the White House.
They are probably still there.
This administration has failed to find and punish the officials
responsible for this criminal action. Ms. Plame's identity was leaked
by senior White House officials only 8 days after her husband
questioned in print one of the key administration justifications for
the war in Iraq; that is, that Iraq had sought to buy uranium ore from
the country of Niger.
This blatant defiance of public accountability weakens our country.
It damages our international credibility and undercuts our human
intelligence efforts at a time when they are needed more than ever. It
is just one example of the way this administration has weakened
America's standing in the world.
I will speak further to this issue during the remainder of the week.
Again, I will continue to point out how this has weakened America. Last
month, for example, a group of 26 former senior diplomats and military
officials who worked for Presidents of both parties, Republican and
Democrat, issued a compelling statement about the damage the
administration has done to our security. Their statement said:
Our security has been weakened.
It said further:
[The] Bush administration has shown that it does not grasp
the circumstances of the new era and is not able to rise to
the responsibility of world leadership in either style or
substance.
When a former Ambassador, Joseph Wilson, raised issues that
questioned part of President Bush's rationale for the war in Iraq, this
administration attacked him politically, and then went after his wife.
And the smear campaign continues, as we have seen in recent columns and
four statements this week.
I am not here to criticize or defend former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
I am here to make the point that when he dared to question whether one
of the President's justifications for the war in Iraq was correct, the
White House was so intent on discrediting him that they were willing to
expose the identity of an undercover CIA agent in an act of vicious
political retribution. They were willing to break the law, and to
damage the relationship between the White House and the intelligence
community. This administration purposefully stretched intelligence data
they knew to be questionable to justify the war to the American people
and to Congress.
According to the Senate Intelligence Committee report, in February of
2002, the CIA sent former Ambassador Wilson to Niger to investigate
claims that Iraq had sought to purchase Nigerian uranium ore. His trip
and subsequent debriefing neither verified the claim, nor disproved it.
Following his trip, the intelligence community continued efforts to
verify the claim.
In October of 2002, the White House sought to include that claim--
that Iraq had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger--in a policy speech
by the President that was to be given in Cincinnati. But the CIA had
such serious concerns about this being in his speech that they sent a
memo to the White House seeking changes. The CIA did not think these
concerns were being taken seriously, so the following day, they sent a
second memo that urged the information be deleted from the President's
speech.
So now we have two memos to the White House on subsequent days asking
that this be taken out of his speech because ``the evidence was weak''
and that the CIA had told Congress that ``the Africa story was
overblown.'' That same day, CIA Director Tenet personally called Deputy
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to express his concerns about
using this information in the speech. And guess what. It was taken out
of the President's speech by Stephen Hadley, the Deputy National
Security Adviser.
That is how concerned the CIA was about this information and about
the credibility of the information: two memos and a personal call from
the Director of the CIA to Deputy National Security Adviser Hadley. It
was taken out of the President's speech. This is October.
Between October and January, both the State Department and the CIA
obtained copies of documents that purported to be a uranium ore
purchase agreement between Iraq and Niger. As I heard, these documents
came from someplace in Italy. But the State Department determined the
documents were probably a hoax.
So between October and January, there was even more reason to doubt
the credibility of these uranium ore claims. Nonetheless, when the
President took the floor in the House Chamber to give his State of the
Union Message, what happened? Those claims were included in his speech.
Who was the person responsible for vetting, for clearing these kinds
of statements in the President's State of the Union Message? Guess
what, it was Stephen Hadley, the Deputy National Security Adviser. He
was in charge of vetting the national security issues for the
President's State of the Union speech. This was the same person who
just a couple of months before had received two memos and a personal
[[Page S8438]]
phone call from Mr. Tenet, the head of the CIA, telling him these
claims were highly suspect. But these words made it into the
President's State of the Union Message. Thus, the White House, in its
determination to wage war, included information they knew to be
questionable to justify the war in Iraq.
Six months later, when Joseph Wilson questioned that information, two
senior White House officials undertook a campaign to destroy the career
of his wife. Who would have known that Valerie Plame was married to
Joseph Wilson? Maybe some in the CIA knew it. I don't know who else
knew it. They had different names. She was deep undercover. She was not
given diplomatic immunity. She was very deep undercover in the CIA.
In the process of blowing Ms. Plame's cover, these White House
officials cost the people of this country a 20-year investment in
Valerie Plame. They placed into jeopardy her entire network of contacts
and CIA operatives. They caused the entire intelligence community to
question whether they might be next and be exposed. Thus, they weakened
the reputation of this country at home and abroad.
Don't take my word for it; take the words of three former CIA high-
ranking officials. Vincent Cannistrano, former chief of operations and
analysis at the CIA counterterrorism center, said of the Plame
disclosure:
The consequences are much greater than Valerie Plame's job
as a clandestine CIA employee. They include damage to the
lives and livelihoods of many foreign nationals with whom she
was connected, and it has destroyed a clandestine cover
mechanism that may have been used to protect other CIA non-
official covered officers.
Or the words of James Marcinkowski, a former CIA operations officer,
he said:
The deliberate exposure and identification of Ambassador
Wilson's wife by our own Government was unprecedented,
unnecessary, harmful, and dangerous.
Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst, said:
For this administration to run on a security platform and
to allow people in this administration to compromise the
security of intelligence assets I think is unconscionable.
No one listening to these three men could have any doubts about the
damage this act has done to our intelligence community and the extent
to which this has weakened America.
We have seen that this administration has put relentless pressure on
the intelligence community to justify the war. I have been informed
that Vice President Cheney personally went to the CIA headquarters--
personally went across the river in Virginia to the CIA headquarters--
at least eight times in the months when this intelligence data was
under review. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that the Vice
President's office even prepared its own dossier of all the information
they thought should be used by the Secretary of State to justify the
war, much of which the State Department rejected.
My question is, what was Vice President Cheney doing visiting the CIA
over eight times? This is unprecedented--unprecedented.
And my final question is this: Where is the same drive and
determination by the President or the Vice President when it comes to
finding those responsible for the breach of national security this leak
caused?
The people who exposed Valerie Plame broke the law. Title 50 U.S.C.,
section 421. It is very clear on this: Any person who has access to
classified information that identifies a covert agent shall be fined or
imprisoned not more than 10 years or both.
I ask unanimous consent that the exact words of 50 U.S.C., section
421, be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Title 50.--War and National Defense
chapter 15.--national security, protection of certain national security
information, 50 usc Sec. 421 (2004)
Sec. 421. Protection of identities of certain United States
undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and
sources.
(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having
had access to classified information that identifies covert
agent. Whoever, having or having had authorized access to
classified information that identifies a covert agent,
intentionally discloses any information identifying such
covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive
classified information, knowing that the information
disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United
States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert
agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall
be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned
not more than ten years, or both.
(b) Disclosure of information by persons who learn identity
of covert agent as result of having access to classified
information. Whoever, as a result of having authorized access
to classified information, learns the identity of a covert
agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying
such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive
classified information, knowing that the information
disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United
States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert
agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall
be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned
not more than five years, or both.
(c) Disclosure of information by persons in course of
pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert
agents. Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities
intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason
to believe that such activities would impair or impede the
foreign intelligence activities of the United States,
discloses any information that identifies an individual as a
covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive
classified information, knowing that the information
disclosed so identifies such individual and that the United
States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such
individual's classified intelligence relationship to the
United States, shall be fined under title 18, United States
Code, or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
(d) Imposition of consecutive sentences. A term of
imprisonment imposed under this section shall be consecutive
to any other sentence of imprisonment.
Mr. HARKIN. Mr. President, this law does not make any exceptions. It
does not say, you can be fined or put in prison unless your spouse has
gone against the administration's policy. It does not have that in
here. No one is excused, not even, in my opinion, Mr. Novak.
One year and 6 days later we are still waiting for some action to be
taken against those who broke the law. I have said repeatedly, if the
President wanted to know the identity of these high-ranking officials,
he could have done so within 24 hours. Clearly, Mr. Bush does not want
to know the identity of the leakers, and when he was asked about it, he
just dismissed it out of hand, smiled about it, said: There are a lot
of leakers, who knows, a lot of people in the administration, and he
just brushed it off. Where is Mr. Bush's sense of outrage that two
people would do this and so weaken America's national security?
I think getting these answers means only one thing: The President of
the United States, Mr. Bush, the Vice President of the United States,
Mr. Cheney, should be put under oath and filmed at the same time and
deposed and asked these questions. One might say: Senator, that is an
awful drastic step to be taken to put the President and Vice President
under oath. I remind my colleagues that just a very few years ago a
former President was put under oath and questioned under oath and
filmed, and we sat in this Chamber and watched on television sets the
deposition of former President Clinton when he was put under oath.
Regardless of how one may have felt about the impeachment one way or
the other, I think the fact that the President was put under oath and
questioned sent a signal very loudly and clearly to the people of this
country: No one is above the law, not even the President of the United
States. If it was good enough for a former President, it is good enough
for this President.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Senator has consumed the 5
minutes allocated to Senator Reid as well.
All time has expired on the Democratic side.
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, am I correct that we will now go to the
Myers nomination?
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