If YOU think Valerie Plame's identity should have been kept under wraps, look here!

[sohj]

This morning I got a clever "petition" in my e-mailbox.

I forwarded it to a lot of people with the following message:

Dear All:

Sorry for the mass forwarding, but, I thought many if not all of you might be interested in this. I am on many mailing lists from a variety of political organizations of all various ideologies. The "petition" below is the cleverest I have seen on this outrageous topic.

I have long wondered about the ability of our leaders (not just the ones in office now and not just recently) to think and act logically about the issues of national security. I have also been deeply saddened at the pragmatism that calls for the existence of the CIA and "secret agents" in general. However, we have them and exposing the identity of someone who works as a clandestine operative to settle a politcal score is horrific on a personal and ethical level and stupendously foolish on a diplomatic level.

Please take a look.

Thanks,


http://moveon.org/affidavit/?id=1802...4MfI0npTMfjZWA

[Marlena]

Cute. However, I'm not a "senior administration official." Also, I significantly doubt that merely being faced with signing such an affidavit will flush out the wrongdoer. While they'd be exposed to further sanctions for lying under oath if they falsely signed, these sanctions are far less severe than those that they'd face for revealing Plame's identity to the press.

There really needs to be an independent investigation of this.

[sohj]

You're right. But, I've written two letters to my senators (one each) and one letter to the editor of the New York Times and intend to send another this weekend to the Post and Daily Snooze and kinda don't know where else to "yell" about this. Signing petitions is one thing open to me and I like this one better than the others I've seen.

If I happen to trip over anyone useful in my daily life, you can bet your bottom dollar that I'll give him/her an earful (Why doesn't Condolezza Rice stop into our office? Or at least Robert Byrd.), but that is fairly unlikely.

[sohj]

Sorry to keep posting to my own thread...but I just got an e-mail reply from one of the people I had forwarded this link to this morning (who is not a US citizen, btw, but British, but I thought she'd be interested anyhow). She asked me a very sensible question and I'm now chewing on it....and would be interested on your (plural) take on this.

"isn't this kind of thing an abuse of the Fifth amendment? ie by requiring people to speak out to declare themselves innocent, you automatically accuse those who choose to remain silent ...?"


So, I'm leaning towards "No, not an abuse." My reasoning is that if you "remain silent", the reasoning goes, you are NOT incriminating yourself. Whether or not you are investigated further is not really a function of whether or not you signed the affidavit. After all, as Marlena's post suggests, the leaker could very well just perjure him/herself and sign the affidavit. I mean, the FBI would still have to investigate everyone, really. :

Whaddya all think? Any judicial scholars on board?