Libby obstructed an ongoing investigation into a crime that apparently never happened. No impact on national security.
Assuming those 7 members of Congress called for Gonzales' resignation, you call that bipartisan?
How do you arrive at the conclusion that there was no impact on National Security.
The CIA front company Brewster Jennings was destroyed and the damage assesment has never been revealed but it's rumored that assets (i.e informants) were assasinated.
Plame was covert at the time she was outed
The investigation was initiated at the request of the CIA so I guess it's safe to assume that they thought a crime had been commited
Libby's own notes state that he learned of Plames identity from CheneyLibby is a friggin lawyer. If he KNEW he had not commited a crime then why lie about it and open himself up to perjury and obstruction charges. He must really feel like an ass that he chose to lie when he simply could have told the truth and gotten off.
Here's a relevent comparison from John Dean:
In July 1984, Samuel Morrison - the grandson of the eminent naval historian with the same name - leaked three classified photos to Jane's Defense Weekly. The photos were of the Soviet Union's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, which had been taken by a U.S. spy satellite.
Although the photos compromised no national security secrets, and were not given to enemy agents, the Reagan Administration prosecuted the leak. That raised the question: Must the leaker have an evil purpose to be prosecuted?The Administration argued that the answer was no. As with Britain's Official Secrets Acts, the leak of classified material alone was enough to trigger imprisonment for up to ten years and fines. And the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit agreed. It held that the such a leak might be prompted by "the most laudable motives, or any motive at all," and it would still be a crime. As a result, Morrison went to jail.
Here is the CIA's damage assesment after Aldrich Ames - see if you think some of this might apply to the outing of Plame and worse Brewster Jennings: The damage which Aldrich Ames did to his country can be summarized in three categories:
-- By revealing to the Soviet Union the identities of many assets who were providing information to the United States, he not only caused their executions, but also made it much more difficult to understand what was going on in the Soviet Union at a crucial time in its history;
-- By revealing to the Soviet Union the way in which the United States sought intelligence and handled assets, he made it much more difficult for this country to gather vital information in other countries as well;
-- By revealing to the Soviet Union identities of assets and American methods of espionage, he put the Soviet Union in the position to pass carefully selected "feed" material to this country through controlled assets;
