[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 150 (2004), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Pages 16203-16205]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           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

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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 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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