Appeal
On July 20, 2007, the Wilsons and Melanie Sloan, of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which represents them, announced publicly that they had filed an appeal of the U.S. District Court's decision to dismiss their lawsuit, [11] [12] which was heard on May 8, 2008. [13] On August 12, 2008, in a 2–1 decision, the three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the dismissal. [14] [15] On behalf of the Wilsons, Sloan said that CREW "is considering asking the full D.C. Circuit to review the case and an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court." [14] Agreeing with the Bush administration, the Obama Justice Department argues the Wilsons have no legitimate grounds to sue. On the current justice department position, Sloan, stated: "We are deeply disappointed that the Obama administration has failed to recognize the grievous harm top Bush White House officials inflicted on Joe and Valerie Wilson. The government’s position cannot be reconciled with President Obama’s oft-stated commitment to once again make government officials accountable for their actions." [16]
On June 21, 2009, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal. [17]
Lawrence Ari Fleischer is an American media consultant and political aide who served as the 23rd White House Press Secretary, for President George W. Bush, from January 2001 to July 2003.
Valerie Elise Plame, is an American writer, spy novelist, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. As the subject of the 2003 Plame affair, also known as the CIA leak scandal, Plame's identity as a CIA officer was leaked to and subsequently published by Robert Novak of The Washington Post.
Judith Miller is an American journalist and commentator known for her coverage of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program both before and after the 2003 invasion, which was later discovered to have been based on inaccurate information from the intelligence community. She worked in The New York Times' Washington bureau before joining Fox News in 2008.
Joseph Charles Wilson IV was an American diplomat who was best known for his 2002 trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium; his New York Times op-ed piece, "What I Didn't Find in Africa"; and the subsequent leaking by the Bush/Cheney administration of information pertaining to the identity of his wife Valerie Plame as a CIA officer. He also served as the CEO of a consulting firm he founded, JC Wilson International Ventures, and as the vice chairman of Jarch Capital, LLC.
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Brewster Jennings & Associates was a front company set up in 1994 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a cover for its officers. The most famous is Valerie Plame, a "covert employee of the CIA" whose then-classified status was published in a syndicated newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak later said that his initial primary source was then-United States Deputy Secretary of State (2001–2005) Richard Armitage, though Armitage disagreed with Novak as to the extent of his role.
The Plame affair erupted in July 2003, when journalist Robert Novak revealed that Valerie Plame worked as covert employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, although the seeds of the scandal had been laid during 2001 and 2002 as the Bush administration investigated allegations that Iraq had purchased Nigerien uranium.
The Plame affair was a political scandal that revolved around journalist Robert Novak's public identification of Valerie Plame as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer in 2003.
The CIA leak grand jury investigation was a federal inquiry "into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee's identity", a possible violation of criminal statutes, including the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, and Title 18, United States Code, Section 793.
Melanie Sloan is an attorney, former counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, and the former Executive Director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit government ethics and accountability watchdog group. In March 2017, Sloan joined a new government ethics watchdog group, American Oversight, as senior adviser.
United States v. Libby was the federal trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, a former high-ranking official in the George W. Bush administration, for interfering with special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's criminal investigation of the Plame affair.
Robert L. Grenier is a career Central Intelligence Agency officer who served as the agency’s top counter-terrorism official from 2004 to 2006.
John Deacon Bates is a Senior United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. He was appointed by President George W. Bush in December 2001, and has adjudicated several cases directly affecting the office of the President. Bates served as Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, from July 1, 2013 to January 5, 2015, after which he returned to full-time service as a District Judge.
The Plame affair was a dispute stemming from allegations that one or more White House officials revealed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Valerie Plame Wilson's undercover status. An investigation, led by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, was started, concerning the possibility that one or more crimes may have been committed. The initial focus was on Scooter Libby; however, he was not the primary source of the leak.
I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby is an American lawyer, and former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.
The Scooter Libby clemency controversy arose when U.S. President George W. Bush commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby, the former Chief of Staff to Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney, on July 2, 2007. It resulted in a hearing, "The Use and Misuse of Presidential Clemency Power for Executive Branch Officials", held July 11, 2007, by the full Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives. The hearing was intended to "explore the grave questions that arise when the Presidential clemency power is used to erase criminal penalties for high-ranking executive branch employees whose offenses relate to their work for the President", as well as to assess the consequences of the perjury and obstruction of justice of which vice-presidential Chief of Staff Lewis Libby was convicted March 6, 2007.
Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House is a memoir by Valerie Plame Wilson. Wilson is the former covert CIA officer whose then-classified non-official cover (NOC) identity as "Valerie Plame" was leaked to the press in July 2003, after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV, had criticized the George W. Bush administration's rationale for the Iraq War. The outing made her the center of the American political scandal known as the Plame affair. Her public outing led to her decision to resign from the CIA in December 2005, when she attempted to retire early at the age of 42. Being told that she could not collect her pension until the age of 56, she determined to write this book both as a means of telling her own story in her own words and as a means of earning income to replace her deferred retirement annuity. She encountered resistance from the CIA in the course of chronicling her work with the organization.
Matthew Cooper is political journalist with a career spanning over 30 years, currently serving as the Executive Editor of Digital at the Washington Monthly. From 2014 to 2018 he was a senior writer and an editor at Newsweek. Before that he was the managing editor for White House coverage at National Journal magazine and editor of National Journal Daily. Cooper is a former reporter for Time who, along with New York Times reporter Judith Miller was held in contempt of court and threatened with imprisonment for refusing to testify before the Grand Jury regarding the Valerie Plame CIA leak investigation. He was a blogger for Talking Points Memo in early 2009, and contributed to the magazine Condé Nast Portfolio until it closed in April, 2009, after which he became a correspondent for The Atlantic magazine. He worked for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission on a book about the group's findings from the economic collapse in 2010.
Richard Lee Armitage is an American former diplomat and government official.
Fair Game is a 2010 biographical political drama film directed by Doug Liman and starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. It is based on Valerie Plame's 2007 memoir Fair Game and Joseph C. Wilson's 2004 memoir The Politics of Truth.
