The Covert Agent Identity Protection Act<\/a> is narrowly tailored and not a threat to legitimate whistleblowers.<\/p>\n(2) Nevertheless, there were plausible reasons to suspect that members of the Bush Administration had violated the Act by releasing Valerie Plame’s name. Hence an investigation was appropriate.<\/p>\n
(3) A serious investigation required official FBI interviews, subpoenas, and testimony under oath.<\/p>\n
(4) In the course of his interviews and testimony, I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby lied, thereby committing felonies that had to be prosecuted.<\/p>\n
In my view, this four-part argument must be weighed against the precedent-setting interference in personal liberties that (3) implies. To be hauled in front of a grand jury and required to testify is an expansion of governmental power, and it will not be limited to the Plame case, nor to the Bush Administration. One can easily imagine pacifist whistleblowers triggering the same process.<\/p>\n
Much depends on whether (2) is valid. And that seems a close call. If the Act truly has limited scope, then perhaps it was pretty obvious that no one had violated it. Then no investigation was necessary (and civil libertarians, despite our abhorrence of the Bush Administration, should have opposed the appointment of a Special Prosecutor). If the Act is pretty broad, then I’m not sure I like it, because it could sweep up courageous whistleblowers as well as Cheney staffers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I suppose the most favorable summary of the Libby prosecution would go like this: (1) The Covert Agent Identity Protection Act is narrowly tailored and not a threat to legitimate whistleblowers. (2) Nevertheless, there were plausible reasons to suspect that members of the Bush Administration had violated the Act by releasing Valerie Plame’s name. Hence […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}