Talk:Timeline of the Plame affair

Wikify complaints
I addressed the wikify complaints, I think, and removed the template. Please restore it with comments if you disagree. --agr 17:40, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Plame affair
Opened article at Plame affair which takes material very various other articles, but, like Watergate or Iran-Contra affair and others, details this major issue apart from any specific person or persons. Articles on individuals are too limited to deal with these matters. Excellent time line here -- most useful and intersting, well done. Calicocat 05:43, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

Suggest name change
I'm wondering if the editors of this timeline might consider changing its name to "Plame affair timeline" so as to run parallel with Plame affair? I think the word "scandel" can be a bit charged and perhaps be called "POV" etc. Thoughts? Calicocat 15:31, 20 July 2005 (UTC)


 * My dictionary defines "scandal' as "an action or event regarded as morally or legally wrong and causing general public outrage." I think that is appropriate for this story. At the time the leak happened, both sides of the political spectrum in the US expressed strong outrage and there are laws against disclosing classified information in general and agent identities in particular. People with security clearances sign contracts not to reveal classified information even by confirming newspaper stories. "Affair," on the other hand has a strong sexual connotation, at least in American English, and there is more than a whiff of sexual politics in this matter. (Wilson's report is to be discounted because his wife may have gotten him the assignment. Huh?) --agr 13:28, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Totally incorrect. The word "Affair" means -- 1) Something done or to be done; business. 2) affairs Transactions and other matters of professional or public business: affairs of state. 3)a) An occurrence, event, or matter: The senator's death was a tragic affair. 3)b) A social function. 4) An object or a contrivance: Their first car was a ramshackle affair. 5) A matter of personal concern. 6) affairs Personal business: get one's affairs in order. 7) A matter causing public scandal and controversy: the Dreyfus affair. 8) A romantic and sexual relationship, sometimes one of brief duration, between two people who are not married to each other. (emphasis added). Many press accounts have adopted the Valerie Plame Affair, so Plame affair is just a bit shorter and more in keeping with Wikipedia policy on article names. The assertion that Plame sent Wilson is a debunked GOP talking point.  Historical precedent in the U.S. -- Iran-Contra Affair. Plame affair is more neutral than "Rovegate" or other such "gate" slang term harkening back to Watergate. An existing article with the name Plame affair is related to this article, so in the interest of parallelism, Plame affair seems a logical, neutral, natural selection. Calicocat 19:52, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Of course "his wife sent him" is a discreditd talking point, but what was its subtext? What difference would it have made if it were true? Note that this article appeared first. Plame affair should consider changing. Compromising an agent who was trying to stop the spread of WMDs is a scandal if there ever was one. --agr 20:23, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

I did some Google and Google News searches. Plamegate narrowly edges out 'Plame Affair' in the general search, but 'Plame Affair' is ten times more common in recent news reports. The 'Plame Scandal' form is comparitively rare. The 'CIA Leak' bit runs into trouble in that it is fractured into 'CIA Leak Case', 'CIA Leak Probe', 'CIA Leak Scandal', et cetera. Simply 'CIA Leak' is more common than any of the 'Plame' titles, but lacks specificity. Overall I'd say that the media haven't 'settled' on a final name for this imbroglio yet and suggest we don't bother synching up our nomenclature until they do. --CBDunkerson 18:59:13, 2005-07-26 (UTC)

"Plamegate" (in quotation marks) in a Google search on Jan. 10, 2008, turns up 215,000 hits (many of which are dated 2005 and earlier and hence reveal obsolescence); "Plame affair" (currently title of what used to be CIA leak scandal--see --in Google search turns up over 100,000 hits but also dated and many of them to that Wikipedia article and other Wikis based on it [hence not citable]; "CIA leak scandal" (once more appropriately [in my view] keyed to this article "CIA leak scandal timeline") turns up enough hits (over 34,000) with more recent dates to suggest that it is more recognizable at this point in time (more "current usage"). The earlier comments written in 2005 need updating in view of these changes in current usage over time.  See request move proposal(s) in Talk:Plame affair, which used to be Talk:CIA leak scandal and other various names. Still being discussed. --NYScholar (talk) 06:54, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Plame's Identity Marked As Secret
Plame's Identity Marked As Secret Memo Central to Probe Of Leak Was Written By State Dept. Analyst

By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei Washington Post Staff Writers Thursday, July 21, 2005; Page A01

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials. Calicocat 12:43, 21 July 2005 (UTC)


 * On page 10, paragraph 2 of the Amici Curiae Brief filed by 36 major news organizations Robert Novak reports he called the C.I.A. to determine whether Valerie Plame is an agency employee and received confirmation that she was.


 * If this information was classified, Robert Novak did not have the security clearance required to receive that information.


 * Furthermore, on the surface it appeared the C.I.A. failed to protect her identify as required by the statutes to prosecute someone for violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act by providing this information to Robert Novak.


 * Novak admits his source at the CIA asked him not to publish Plame's identity. It would seem reasonable for that source to conclude from Novak's question that a leak had already occurred and that the CIA's best course of action was to to ask Novak to cooperate in the matter by not publishing her identity. It's called damage control, and it's hard to do that without confirming the information. Given Novak's reputation as a super patriot and supporter of the U.S. defense establishment, the source could well have assumed that such cooperation was a forgone conclusion. In other words, it sounds like the CIA did everything it could under the circumstances to protect Plame's identity from public disclosure. And public disclosure is the test under the Act. --agr 16:30, 21 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, I agree with you that "something" was (and should have) been done, unfortunately, it does not seem to be a compelling case that sufficient protection was undertaken (at least from the information available to date). For example, is a request by a C.I.A. spokesman (by definition down in the chain of command) really conveying the full seriousness of the protection effort versus a call from the C.I.A. Director which has often happened in the past.  While some might argue yes and it would be difficult to definitively refute that, there can be no arguing that a call from the C.I.A. Director or Deputy Directory does a far superior job.  Also, not being a lawyer, is it possible that some sort of legal move could have been initiated to prevent or delay the publication?  Finally, what's wrong with saying (to Mr. Novak) "If she really is a C.I.A. operative, you are exposing that person, that person's relationships (both personal and professional) to uncertain dangers by publishing this." in the hypothetical rather than explicitly confirming the fact and thereby participating in the "outing"?


 * For my two cents, if the only thing the spokesperson did was to say, "Yes, she is an employee and we don't want you to publish it because...", I would label that as a bit shoddy relative to other options discussed above.


 * It would have been nice to have a transcript of that recorded event to determine what was actually discussed. It would not surprise me if the C.I.A. actually has a mechanism in place to do that nor would it surprise me if they wouldn't release it either.


 * Well, to begin with, I think you are reading too much into the term "spokesman." In the journalistic charade of hinting at confidential sources, that could be anyone form a junior press officer to the Director of Central Intelligence himself. Recall Libby's request to be identified as a "former congressional aid." Novak had undoubtedly cultivated high level sources at the CIA and I strongly suspect those are the people he would call on to confirm such a leak. They would be angry with him if he didn't and he would be insulted by an "if it were true, it would be bad to publish" kind of answer.  And, again, I think they may well have trusted him as a patriotic citizen to do the right thing.


 * As for the Director making calls (assuming he wasn't Novak's source), there is also the likelihood that Tenet knew perfectly well where the leak was coming from and why. I'm sure the White House had already made clear its displeasure with the Wilson stories. Tenet would be a pretty poor DCI if he couldn't figure out what was going on.


 * Finally, the law does not require the CIA to do a perfect job in protecting an agent. The law merely requires knowledge "that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States." --agr 16:30, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Why TWO Timelines?
Currently this article has a time-line for 'major events' and another for 'reactions'... yet in many cases the reactions ARE the major events. For instance, the White House denials of involvement appear in both timelines. Likewise, numerous entries in the 'major events' timeline ONLY describe the reactions and statements of various people. I think we should combine these into a single time-line. --CBD 14:39, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

What did the president know?
An article in the Washington Post gives summary of where things are in Plame affair. Several points herein should be useful to Plame scandal timeline and Plame affair article development. [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/07/25/BL2005072500724_pf.html What Did the President Know? Washington Post, Mon. 23 July 2005] Calicocat 00:18, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

Period summary, overall summary.
I think it would be helpful to have sections of summary notes for each major section of the case and then a kind of overall, brief summary of all the events. We have a date index, I'd like to also see some functional index,-- FBI interviews, CIA calls for Special Prosecutor, Fitgerald appointed...and so on. This might compliment work being done at Plame affair and other related articles, such as Karl Rove, Yellowcake forgery. What do you think? Calicocat 13:27, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

'CIA outed Plame' claim
The amicus brief can be found here. The relevant text is on page 31;

"An article in the Washington Times indicated that Plame's identity was compromised twice prior to Novak's publication. If this information is accurate - another fact a court should explore - there is an absolute defense to prosecution."

Note that they do not state this to be 'true'... they indicate that the claim had been made and IF true would provide a defense against violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act... though obviously not perjury, conspiracy, obstruction, espionage, and other possible charges. The referenced Washington Times article can be found at.

However, the claims made in that article by 'US officials' (*cough* Rove *cough*) are contradicted by the CIA... who say only that they had concerns that Plame's cover MIGHT have been blown by Aldrich Ames. 

Walter Kansteiner
What is the fascination with Walter Kansteiner? Is there some conspiracy theory I'm not aware of? As I read Wilson's book, Wilson got routine clearance from Kansteiner, Kansteiner's boss, and the ambassador before going over, but the repeated references to him make it sound as if Kansteiner played some important role in the timeline. If he did, I sure can't tell what it is.

--TheronJ 03:31, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Nigerien Embassy Burglary
The information on the Nigerien embassy burglary is poorly sourced and conflicting. The Christian Science Monitor says that an actual burglary occurred in 1991, during the Presidency of the George H.W. Bush.  A muckraking piece in Republica says that a 2001 burglary never occurred at all, but was staged by Nigerien conspirators as an excuse to report letterhead stolen, if the following blog translation is accurate.. Both are too speculative to include in a definitive timeline without a contemporaneous source. However, if someone can find a contemporaneous news account of either the 1991 or 2001 burglary, or thinks that they're relevant and wants to take a crack at qualifying how believable the sources are or aren't, that's fair.

-- See the correction to this article in the Washington Post. The Post has clearly examined the issue of the two different dates and come to the conclusion that the 1991 date is wrong and the 2001 date is right. I think the Post can be considered to be credible, so I re-inserted the item in the timeline.

-- JPMcGrath, 2005-12-01, 04:45 UTC


 * So should we remove the 1991-date source? Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 03:07, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

David Kelly?
Why on earth is David Kelly's mysterious suicide included on a timeline of the Plame affair? Unless someone can make sense of this it should be deleted.


 * The connection certainly seems very remote to me:


 * 1) Someone leaked the name of Valerie Plame.
 * 2) Valerie Plame is married to Joe Wilson.
 * 3) Joe Wilson went to Niger to investigate possible attempts to purchase Yellowcake.
 * 4) The Yellowcake was supposed to have been for Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
 * 5) Iraq involvement in biological weapons was also being investigated.
 * 6) David Kelly participated in that investigation.
 * 7) David Kelly committed suicide.
 * Can anyone suggest a closer relationship? -- JPMcGrath 02:57, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Missing sources for items in this timeline?
Many of the items in this timeline do not have sources after them (see Dec. 2002 through Mar. 2003, e.g.). What are the verifiable and reliable sources for each item in the timeline? Every item, not just some items, needs verifiable documentation. Otherwise, it is not possible for readers to verify the accuracy of the entire timeline. Due to the considerable number of missing citations, and the inability of other readers and editors to check the verifiability of many items listed in this timeline, I have added a tag to the article today. --NYScholar 22:10, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I just looked at some of the coding for some of the dates in the timeline: there are external links embedded in the dates that are not properly coded and are therefore not showing up. The final external link brackets are placed after the double brackets for the dates and the external links are therefore not visible. Much editing needs to be done (by others; I haven't time to do it) to correct this problem. Sorry to be the one to point it out, but it explains why so many citations of sources are not visible. The external links need to be converted to notes format following the use of notes as references in the article. The "References" section needs to be retitled "Notes" section, and the format throughout for citations needs to be consistent. The present problematic coding is hard and often impossible to follow in order to verify the sources throughout the whole article (timeline). Many of the sources are blogs and not-always substantiated news reports and therefore not necessarily factually reliable sources according to WP:Reliable sources as well; some things listed as facts in the "timeline" are conjecture, claims, based on POV of authors of blogs, and not necessarily proven facts. The title "timeline" implies historically-chronological (undisputed) facts, and what is listed in a "timeline" needs to be verifiable (in every instance, or item). --NYScholar 22:31, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

I've done some work on moving mis-coded links to ends of sentences that they seem to relate to. The links in the notes still have multiple typographical errors; they all need to be converted to proper documentation format (names of authors, titles, places and dates of publication, etc.). I'm afraid that I do not have the time to do more. Perhaps others can work on fixing this article so that its documentation format is consistently using notes (not just numbered external links or URL adresses). Very few of the notes are currently formatted correctly. There may still be some stray typographical errors that need correction throughout as well. See the embedded editorial notes re: need to re-organize and weed out duplication and repetition throughout the so-called "timeline"; the format needs to be streamlined and made more like a "timeline" and less like an "article."--NYScholar 14:34, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Organization (Re-organization) of the "Timeline"
After spending a lot of time trying to work on this "timeline," it emphatically strikes me that it needs much re-organization into one coherent bulleted list of dates, organized chronologically throughout (not topically). The topical organization after the initial chronological organization is confusing. It should read as a complete chronological "timeline." I would appreciate others attempting to cut and paste the timeline so that it is not repetitious and reads fully chronologically, as a "timeline" should read. In doing such revision, please do not lose the sources and please try to develop the notes fully. Many of the sources cited by earlier editors are now broken outdated links and URLs that have either been deleted from website archives or changed. Better sourcing is needed for this "timeline" throughout. If people can work collaboratively (without editing wars or further controversies) on correcting these problems, thank you. --NYScholar 01:50, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Missing citations, cleanup still needed
The citations format is not up to Wikipedia standards. There are missing citations throughout and statements have no sourcing at all. Sources given need proper identification (author, title, publication, date published, date accessed, and so on) and verification as well as evaluation in terms of notability and reliability. This article still needs much editorial work. I do not have time to do any more. I suggest that others step up to do this work. This article is not currently reliable. --NYScholar 22:47, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Current tags
Originally posted in November 2006 and still pertinent in February 2007. --NYScholar 00:07, 7 February 2007 (UTC) Ditto. --NYScholar 20:59, 23 June 2007 (UTC) Ditto: Two years later, the citation formatting of this article is still very inconsistent and problematic and needs cleaning up. I don't have time to do it; I hope that others will provide full citations for every source used in this article. Please see: WP:CITE relating to Guidelines for controversial articles, as well as WP:BLP. Full citations (author, title, work, date of publication, date accessed) needed throughout, still; unnecessary repetitions and incoherence of organization need clean up too. --NYScholar (talk) 07:21, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Previous section (updated)
Please see updated comments in and request move proposal(s)--and archived discussions and archived talk pages re: the names--at Talk:Plame affair. Thank you. --NYScholar (talk) 07:00, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

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Identity of the leaker
Regarding "the Bush Administration's action in leaking Plame's identity", who then was the leaker? Was it Richard Armitage? Or Karl Rove? (Surely not Scooter Libby?)

This article gives a mountain of data, but (even allowing for increased dimwittedness as I approach my 50s) I don't think it's easy to find a molehill of useful knowledge. --Uncle Ed (talk) 19:54, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. Vegaswikian (talk) 05:56, 28 June 2011 (UTC)

CIA leak scandal timeline → Plame affair timeline –

There have been many, many "CIA leaks" over time. For example, Aldrich Ames. Every one of them that is criminally prosecuted begins with a grand jury investigation. Thus, the name 'CIA leak grand jury investigation' is very vague and could apply to many, many different events. The actual article is referring to only one of these cases: the Valerie Plame affair. By renaming it, the specificity will be improved and confusion between this 'leak case' and other cases (like the Sterling case) will be clarified. Decora (talk) 16:15, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Support: current name is too vague. –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 20:58, 21 June 2011 (UTC)


 * Support the current name is stupidly vague; consider how many leak scandals there have been in the CIA over the years. The related article CIA leak grand jury investigation should also be renamed. This suffers from WP:RECENTISM 65.94.47.63 (talk) 05:37, 22 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:Commonname and agree with 65.94.47.63. Flamarande (talk) 16:59, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

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