Supreme Court ends Plame case against Cheney, Libby

By Raw Story

Outed CIA agent Valerie Plame will not get her day in court.

“The Supreme Court announced Monday it will not give further consideration to a lawsuit brought by a fired CIA agent and her husband against high ranking Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney,” Lee Ross reports for Fox News.

Fox adds, “The decision is a victory for Cheney and his former chief of staff, I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. They and nine unnamed co-defendants were sued by Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband Joseph after her CIA cover was leaked to reporters.”

Valerie Plame first became a household name when her identity was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. The column came only a week after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written an op-ed for the New York Times asserting that White House officials twisted pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Her outing was seen as political retaliation for Wilson’s criticism of the Administration’s claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons program.

In February of 2006, RAW STORY’s Larisa Alexandrovna broke the news that “the unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad.”

“According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran,” Alexandrovna reported.

A major motion picture is due to be released in 2010 about the Plame case entitled “Fair Game,” starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, and directed by Bourne Identity helmser Doug Liman.

Last week, Obama Administration lawyers took an interesting approach in a Plame related case.

“A federal judge yesterday sharply questioned an assertion by the Obama administration that former Vice President Richard B. Cheney’s statements to a special prosecutor about the Valerie Plame case must be kept secret, partly so they do not become fodder for Cheney’s political enemies or late-night commentary on The Daily Show,” R. Jeffrey Smith reported for The Washington Post.

The AP reported, “Justice Department lawyers told the judge that future presidents and vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available to their political opponents and late-night comics who would ridicule them.”

“If we become a fact-finder for political enemies, they aren’t going to cooperate,” Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith said. “I don’t want a future vice president to say, `I’m not going to cooperate with you because I don’t want to be fodder for ‘The Daily Show.’”