Quote:
|
Originally Posted by albed
Pure luck that nobody got killed, eh?
|
luck?
to begin with if you took the trouble to actually read the law you'd know that
even if nobody died as a result the punishment for violating 18 USC Sec. 794 is anything from 1 year to life imprisonment. it's
execution if the leak results in the death of the agent in question or an asset of the agent, or other dangerous things spelled out in the statute.
"...shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life, except that the sentence of death shall not be imposed unless the jury or, if there is no jury, the court, further finds that the offense resulted in the identification by a foreign power (as defined in section 101(a) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978) of an individual acting as an agent of the United States and consequently in the death of that individual, or directly concerned nuclear weaponry, military spacecraft or satellites, early warning systems, or other means of defense or retaliation against large-scale attack; war plans; communications intelligence or cryptographic information; or any other major weapons system or major element of defense strategy."
so leaving aside any deaths for the moment karl rove is in serious potential trouble of about the worst imaginable kind and could be facing spending the rest of his life in prison as a result of his dirty trick. really his only defense becomes one of intent and belief, as in he didn’t
intend for the information that
he gave to a reporter be used by an enemy
and that he had no "reason to believe" that
publishing the information in millions of newspapers, web pages and on tv could - again - be
used by an enemy. for a sophisticated white house guy regularly privy to all kinds of secret defense stuff that argument's pretty slim. doesn't mean he wouldn't try it but it probably won’t wash.
then there is the matter of executive privledge. george bush may fall back on that hoary republican favorite to shield rove but for a "new kind of politician," "committed to openness" and already on record as wanting to get to the bottom of this despicable act and punish the guilty "no matter who they are" that might not look so good either.
off with his head then.
if they really want it badly enough the government would have the problem of identifying assets who themselves were secret, or identifying where and how some nuke, satellite, crypto system, war plan etc got compromised, no palatable task in an open court. so they might settle for some punishment short of the death penalty - unless it becomes widely known that a security compromise occurred or that people have died as a result of rove's leak.
as for that, and to answer your first question posed above,
"Yes knife, how many were killed? A simple question even you might have difficulty spinning into propaganda." it has been reported that more people were murdered from this leak than were so far identified as killed in london's subway blast. if that is indeed true and it does become more widely reported (which if true it will), or if the public outcry is large enough, the prosecutors may not feel the need to withhold identification of assets (agents) who have already been identified and are in any event already dead. but you never know, they may feel that rove's defense lawyers could do further harm on fishing expeditions so they could let it go - unless it's tried without a jury which the law allows, or in one of bush's new secret terrorism courts. if it were to go that far rove could indeed get sentenced to death and would then have to beg his tough-on-terror boss for a presidential pardon, which would be an ugly irony, or spend years on appeal, which may get tougher if the conservatives in congress get their way and speed up the death penalty process, high irony indeed as it was rove who agreed they do so.
- js.