The Armitage leak
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Asked by a viewer whether Scooter Libby could have been prosecuted under the Espionage Act, or whoever leaked Valerie Plame's name, John Kiriakou corrected the premise of the question before answering it.

The person who leaked

The questioner had suggested a conspiracy involving Dick Cheney. Kiriakou did not adopt that framing. "It was Rich Armitage," he said, identifying him as "the deputy secretary of defense", "who leaked Valerie Plame's name."

On the legal exposure Kiriakou was unambiguous. "Not only could he have been charged with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, everybody assumed that he would be charged, at least with that," he said, "and in fact he was never charged with any crime."

What Libby was actually accused of

Kiriakou then separated the two men, which is the substance of his correction. "Scooter Libby never leaked Valerie Plame's name," he said. "He was never accused of leaking Valerie Plame's name. He was accused of perjury, and that's what brought him down."

The distinction matters to Kiriakou's wider argument because the Libby case is routinely remembered as the prosecution of the Plame leak. On his account it was nothing of the kind: the disclosure went unprosecuted, and the only conviction obtained arose from testimony given during the investigation of it.

The pattern he draws from it

Ted Rall drew the conclusion Kiriakou had been building toward, that the hypocrisy lies in the charging decision itself, and that if you are "one of the swells, one of the inside people, you can say anything you want," while an outsider or a truth-teller should expect a rough road. Kiriakou agreed and called the description an understatement.

He raised the Armitage case in the same conversation in which he was arguing that Tulsi Gabbard had committed the same statutory offence and would likewise not be charged, and in which he maintained, consistently, that nobody should be prosecuted under that statute, himself included.

A note on the office

Kiriakou describes Armitage as deputy secretary of defense. The description is preserved here as he gave it; he did not correct himself and the point was not raised in the exchange.

See also

- Valerie Plame
- Intelligence Identities Protection Act
- The thirty-seven analysts
- Espionage Act
- Ted Rall
