murder or suicide?

To explain why i've been so excited about the difference between IIPA and Espionage - here's the description of Espionage by reddhedd at firedoglake on wednesday:

18 USC 793: Gathering, transmitting or losing defense information. This is part of what is more commonly known as the Espionage Act, and this statute has not been discussed widely enough in the media, frankly. The most relevent section is 793(d), which states that:

"Whoever, lawfully having possession of, access to...or being entrusted with...information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it....[s]hall be fined or imprisoned for up to ten years, or both." (emphasis from reddhedd.)

What this means is that if a person were lawfully able to have access to classified information, as in someone at a high level of government who had signed a Standard Form 312 (SF 312) giving them high level clearance with all of the attached warnings against unauthorized disclosure, and that person spoke with an unauthorized person and revealed classified information, they are in deep doo doo. There is NO requirement here for a particular name to be named, or for the person disclosing the information to know exactly in what capacity a certain CIA agent may have worked. The requirement under this statute is that a person who had lawful access to information took that and used it for an improper purpose outside of what was allowable in their SF 312 agreement.

Note that the language is fairly encompassing in terms of what someone might try and do with the information: willfully communicates, causes to communicate or attempts to communicate. That's a fairly open door in terms of conduct precisely because this is just the sort of behavior that people in government have deemed to be reprehensible and deserving of substantial penalties. Section (g) of this statute also provides for an additional conspiracy charge and penalties applicable thereto -- so Fitz could get double the fun with a conspiracy charge on top of the above violation. There are also provisions for property forfeiture written into this section." (emphasis mine)

Thats the difference. remember all the wingnut talking points about IIPA - that it was 'difficult to prove', with the 'onerous 4 conditions' and "wilsons wife" and "she had a desk job" and all that? all of that nonsense is moot under chapter 37.

and section g (the conspiracy part) reads:

"(g) If two or more persons conspire to violate any of the foregoing provisions of this section, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each of the parties to such conspiracy shall be subject to the punishment provided for the offense which is the object of such conspiracy."

they've all signed Standard Form 312, and as best as we can tell, they *all* conspired. ie they are all toast. rove and libby and whoever else spoke to journos might get the double wammy, but the rest of them all get caught up on the conspiracy charge - and "all" is a really long list. it very possibly includes everyone in the WhiteHouse Iraq Group (WHIG), and possibly just about everyone on the AirForce One trip to Africa. As best as i can see, it'll be difficult for Fitzgerald to discriminate - it appears that they were all involved - it appears as though it was conspiracy by committee.

Oh - and the penalty for each count?

"Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both, for each individual count"

So if Plame's identity was 'leaked' to 6 journos - thats 60 or 70 years for *everyone*.

and thats just for chapter 37 - then theres the perjury and the obstruction charges - how many counts of each of those? how many angels on a pin?

i imagine there'll be a lot of traffic through Fitzgerald's doors in the next couple of weeks - lots of finger-pointing and lots of sleepless nights. Perhaps the biggest source of mystery we'll have to face in the next little while is 'murder or suicide?'