At times watching the Valerie Wilson/CIA leak hearings Friday, especially during Victoria Toensing’s Fraud-fest 2007 testimony, I felt like we were all taking a journey "Through the Looking Glass" of the great Lewis Carroll (with apologies to Carroll for the one emended word) in the following quote:
"I don’t know what you mean by ‘[covert],’" Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. "Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’"
"But ‘[covert]’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument,’ Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things."
Like the self-satisfied Humpty Dumpty, Victoria Toensing was determined to make words mean just what she wanted them to, and she smiled contemptuously every time she was put on the spot, retreating to her precious knowledge as author of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 (IIPA). Here’s how she handled the fact that both Valerie Wilson and CIA head General Hayden have entered in indisputable evidence that she was indeed covert:
TOENSING: You can call anybody anything you want to in the halls of the CIA.
WAXMAN: General Hayden! General Hayden, head of the CIA, told me personally that she was. ...
TOENSING: Does he want to swear that she was a covert agent under the act?
WAXMAN: I'm trying to say as carefully as I can. He reviewed my statement, and my statement was that she was a covert agent.
TOENSING: Well, he didn't say it was under the act.
Waxman was left to conclude, "So you want to completely define the words so there’s so narrow a meaning that your statements can be credible [pausing meaningfully] but not honest." Watching Toensing retreat to her credentials ("That’s part of my credentials .... I know what the original intent of the act was"), one might have had the impression that when she said that Valerie Wilson did not meet the technical definition of "covert" under the act in question that such an act must surely be complex and arcane. Such an impression would be false.
One of the act’s three possible definitions, the first one involving US citizens, exactly describes Valerie Wilson in no uncertain terms:
"The term ‘covert agent’ means—
(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency—
(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and
(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States; or ..." [followed by other definitions, including, for instance, one that would apply to non-US citizens; emphasis added]
There is nothing arcane, ambiguous, or complex about such a definition or its applicability to Valerie Wilson. 1) She was an officer or employee whose identity was classified. 2) And we now know that she served outside the US within the last five years. Were this not true, the CIA would not have allowed her to say so under oath.
Toensing’s prior dubious assertion that Valerie Wilson had not worked abroad was the basis for her previous claims that she is not covert under the statute. Notably, in an op-ed that appeared in The Washington Post on February 18th, she wrote, simply (but falsely), "Plame was not covert. She worked at CIA headquarters and had not been stationed abroad within five years." Note the equivocation "stationed abroad" here, a lying, higher standard than the act’s actual, broader "served outside the United States."
When pressed, Toensing attempted to shift the terms to other sections of the act—outside the actual definition in the act. For instance, her entire "shame on the CIA" talking point, drawn from § 421 of the IIPA, actually has to do with the standards required to prosecute a leaker, not the act’s definition of "covert." One requirement for prosecution under the act is "that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States." Again, then, these terms are not from the definition of "covert agent." Yet, Toensing, determined to make the words mean whatever she wants, blurs such a major distinction in order to put up a smoke screen. Although Valerie Wilson’s job and true employer were classified and the CIA expended thousands of dollars to create a cover company to conceal her identity and that of other covert operatives, Toensing lamely implies that the CIA did not actually take measures to conceal her identity because—to cite her main example and the chief Republican talking point—she donated money to the Gore campaign in 2000, using her cover/front employer Brewster-Jennings & Associates. But here is what former CIA agent Larry Johnson said in October 2005 on CNN’s "The Situation Room": "when Valerie wrote that check to Al Gore's campaign as a member of [CIA cover organization] Brewster-Jennings, she was living her cover." In short, Toensing’s argument totters and falls apart again.
Because her main arguments were either disproved or unrelated to the act’s definition of covert, Toensing also shifted the terms in yet another way, arguing for example:
"I'm just saying, ‘All I know is, congressman, under the testimony I've heard, nobody said they ever knew -- and nobody was ever charged with knowing that she was covert,’ and therefore she wasn’t covered by the statute."
In truth, we have already seen that Valerie Wilson was covert according to the definitions "covered by the statute." And, we have also seen that the burden to prosecute due to the CIA taking affirmative measures to conceal her identity was also obviously met. Thus, Toensing retreats occasionally to language about whether the leakers knew that Valerie Wilson was covert. (Note that Toensing’s language here inadvertently admits that Wilson was covert, by the way.) Here again she draws vaguely upon language from sections of the act regarding requirements that must be met for prosecution: "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...."
It is this language having to do with the difficult legal burden of proving "intentionally" and "knowing" that probably kept Fitzgerald from prosecuting Libby, Rove, Cheney, and others (as well as Constitutional issues regarding the Executive Branch’s manipulation of its purported authority to declassify at will). If so, that would explain Fitzgerald’s public statements that "There is no doubt that her relationship with the CIA was classified," but that he had no further plans to prosecute others regardless of this fact. Toensing’s assertion that because nobody has been charged with knowing that Valerie Wilson was covert, therefore she wasn’t covered by the statute is fraudulent.
Certainly, Valerie Wilson was covert, even according to Humpty-Dumpty Toensing’s precious statute, and she knows it. Toensing didn’t just equivocate in her attempts at a "knock-down argument" to define and re-define "covert." She lied under oath.