F What’s a gaggle [Holden?]

Ha!

I’m sure this was an analyst on LOAN.

For the history books, when this blog post becomes the record of what really happened.

In the previous comment section, someone using the name “Joe Wilson” responded to someone stating that Mr. Wilson was a “lowly old diplomat” with the following: Lowly old diplomat? Thanks a lot.

Could have been snark from someone else, or maybe Joe Wilson is checking out FDL.

Anyway, if Mr. Wilson’s reading, you are an American hero in my book, just as everyone at FDL is an American hero.

And even though I doubt any Medals of Freedom will be forthcoming from the corrupt/lying/deceitful Bush administration, I believe a Bloggin’ Medal of Freedom is richly deserved and should be awarded all of you.

As one of the people whose name is in the “About Us” link at the top, let me please go out of my way to welcome our many new visitors, and say all questions are welcome.

We may not get to them in a timely fashion while this breaking news stuff is ongoing, but we’re glad to have you here.

Thank you…some of us have been participating on the political internets since the before The Horse came and went. That we are over here reading this great trial action now doesn’t actually make each one of us a Noob.

The gist of the query was “Does simply having a particular level of Security Clearance” allow free access to that information.

The issue seemed to be whether any sort of criminal act occurred by the casual spread of Plame’s identity within the administration to people who had no legitimate reason to know her identity.

Here’s the relevant policy.

http://www.fas.org/sgp/clinton/eo12968.html

There is a restricted “need to know” stipulation for the individual with a specified clearance level and such users of that information must guarantee that anyone that they pass the information to has a “need to know”.

This relates to Grenier’s concern about whether he had breached the classification wall relating to CIA officers when he disclosed Plame’s status to Libby.

He did the appropriate thing however. Any possible breach to an individual outside the “need-to-know” or who lacks Security Clearance must be reported to the appropriate supervisor. Grenier did this.

It seems that Libby (as well as Rove and Armitage) were blabbing away to Judy Miller, Cooper, Novak and a host of others who, by no reasonable notion, could be adduced as having proper security clearances and a legitimate need to know.

….
G …We were talking about a unit in DO the vast majority of whose employees are undercover.
Z Nothing further.

Mmmmh? Team Libby just let that hang there?

I was thinking the same thing. On the last question, no less. At the very least, the lawyer should have thrown in a softball question (”Are you a cat person or a dog person?”) so that that wasn’t the last thing the jury heard.

Mmmmh? Team Libby just let that hang there?

dqueue @ 6

Many thanks EW for denoting who’s speaking!

What is the point of “Fitz!” to open every thread? And the comments are moderated?? Ugh.

The custom of beginning the thread with an invocation of “Fitz” began as a morph of a blogger convention of being “First!” to the thread. If you have not been first to a fdl thread, you could not possible know the joy attendant therein. “Fitz” was the reason many of us first came to fdl and it is part of our little culture. As shooter would say, “we’ve mad our decision.”

As to moderation of the comments, it is one of the most appreciated parts of our discourse here. Dissidence and discussion are encouraged but attempts to derail the blog with slamming or misrepresentation by trolls and other nefarious creatures are not tolerated. And for that, most of us are very thankful.

But for the groundbreaking live-blogging of the Libby trial, could we pretend it’s for the good prosecutor???