I believe Fitzgerald didn't pursue it because he couldn't prove the parties knew for certain she was covert.

You remind me of a one (Left) side of two-ground-hogs tied in a burlap bag and being drug via D.C. on a court day.

In violation for not paying a $2.oo illegal handicap parking violation, my sheriff's buddy says, LWM is a in macho big trouble. I am NOT a lawyer, but I will gladly represent you 'bro-bony' if you need to appear before a Cauliflower judge. You L.W.W. doth protest too much?

You sing the song "L.W.M. never sleeps, and he never gives in or Up, he never shuts Up, he sleeps all day and never folds his deck-cards, yea!" You always wins with a bluff! LWM never shuts Up, ever. The lyrics we can all-hum with LWM is the same-same, Yahoo! "Never give up-3X's and chorus is the same-same, and ye-all can sing together now. Yahoo.

LWM, you need to talk to a lawyer for a 52-state outstanding, delinquent, NON paid, handicap parking violation? You forgot? I bet you never remember How many states there are in the USA? Maybe you should fold on occasion, and have a "i-over-e" intelligence-over-emotional breakdown delirium's condition?

Your good "intelligence, coupled with black snake curly tail know-how," is Exquisite! I bet YOU can refute how long it takes for a colored toxic cobra to copulate?

If you run into a 200-year old oak tree, you'd try to blame the tree for a DUI?

Lou-Law sue said, "LWM not wrong all the time, him is fun to listen to LWM run his mouth and say others just ain't balanced and right!" Yep. You is stunning! I affirm YOU on the Earth for something-- Perhaps, a good compost tea? Whoopee!

CYA-cover your arse. LWM, because you remind me of a chubby monk with a smile and a dust-mop. You have damn uncontrolled impulse that amazes amazement's. A river current twist and turns and you dislodge the dams with wise-dumb phrases. You are not a napper pencil stick pusher. When you start each day swirling a mop, I think YOU point to your head and jump full-force as if YOU thunk a mop was a Samurai sword.

You remind me of a mendicant beggar who strolls via the Internet with a useless blank-38-pistol under your non-under-ware cloak. You would rather over eat strawberries than draw blood from smacking a bed-bug-flea, or kissing a Maria mosquito.

I will not be here tomorrow because it's Hay Day! When the rooster calls forth the sun, the straw hat and suspender pants Mennonites want to have me bring jelly-filled donuts. If I had a vanilla ice cream cone, I'd throw the double dicker scoop right into the Mennonite hay-wagon's slave driver's face.

It's $2:00 for a parking violation and $2:00 for a bale of barley Hay! Irony!

If you, LWM, went to the Louvre Museum in France, I'd bet you would beg outside in a black trench-coat for a extra $-Monet and ask for additional cash for the dilapidated Van Gosh VAN that won't run, and just stalled in a $2:00 lame-Park violation space, and the clinkard is also very rusty and needs spray painted?

You need a lawyer for a $2:00 parking ticket? Ask around, and you will find out there are not many honest and principled ones to be found...

...I bet your grandma-ma says, "That damn lefty L.W.M. is a bit much."

Also: "Him not all right. Sometimes he's almost right if he don't wake-up from a black-asp snuggling up next to him on the left-side of a square hay-bail pillow."

If somebody else has already noticed this, then disregard, but I didn't find it in cursory readings of the posts since Glenn's update VI. He references "an excellent summary" on A Newer World, about Tom Maguire's "unclear" status about the covert status of Valerie Plame Wilson.

Maguire replies in tired tones that the question has always been not whether the CIA considered her covert, but whether she was covert under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. He, like all of the right wing since Toensing, claims that Wilson didn't qualify because of the foreign service requirement. After the usual ritual denigration, he refers the author on Newer World to his own article, in which he says (after asking that Henry Waxman be prosecuted) that:

And I'll even help - just for starters, tell me why I should give zero weight to this definiton of "service abroad":

D. Service abroad means service on or after September 6, 1960, by an employee at a post of duty outside the United States and outside the employee's place of residence if that place of residence is a territory or possession of the United States.

Obviously, this is nowhere near dispositive since it is not a CIA definition. But who out there is certain that this definition stands alone in opposition to common practice throughout the US government? Who suspects that maybe this is a common definition that crops up in other agencies as well? How might a judge rule in light of that, and in light of the history of the Act? And who would care to do a bit of, hmm, legal research to attempt to pin that down?

The reason for waxing prolix in the last paragraph with an ode to the mysterious who that can understand the definition of service abroad is that this definition is from...

U.S. Geological Survey Manual

370.630.6 - Home Leave

3/16/93

The actual language in the IIPA, on the other hand, reads,

4) 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...

Parsing the contingencies into a direct sentence, the relevant clauses (to Valerie Wilson's case) read:

The term "covert agent" means: a present officer of an intelligence agency i) whose identity as such an officer is classified information, and ii) who has within the last five years served outside the United States.

Since she served outside the U.S. at least 7 times in 10 countries, as stated in the Fitzgerald document, there is no lack of clarity that any judge would accept, least of all the lack of clarity of using the definition for the United States Geological Survey.

Case closed Maguire, you pulled in the USGS document when your argument ran out of steam, and expected everybody not to check. That coincides pretty neatly with the definition of a liar.