Plame Suit Dismissed by Controversial GOP Loyalist

A federal judge has dismissed the civil lawsuit filed against top Bush administration officials by former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson. The judge, John Bates of the US District Court in Washington, DC is a Bush appointee who previously dismissed a lawsuit filed by the federal government against Vice President Dick Cheney. That suit sought access to Cheney's energy task force documents.

Since his tenure on the federal bench began six years ago, Bates's legal opinions and rulings supporting the administration's executive powers stand in stark contrast to his legal work as an assistant US attorney. He worked for Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr prosecuting President Clinton's Whitewater investment deals.

In 1997, Bates successfully argued for the release of thousands of pages of White House documents related to Hillary Clinton's conversations about Whitewater.

In January 2003, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, suggested that the judge was a hypocrite by pursuing access to White House documents when Clinton was in office while supporting Cheney's claims of executive privilege in refusing to turn over his energy task force documents to Congress.

"When that guy was working for Ken Starr, he wanted to go open the dresser drawers of the White House," Leahy said. "I guess it's a lot different when it's a Republican vice president."

Since 2001, Judge Bates has been a staunch supporter of the White House's assertion of executive privilege on a wide range of controversial legal challenges by third parties.

Bates, who was appointed by President Bush in 2001, first came to the public's attention in December 2002 when he dismissed a lawsuit filed against Cheney by the Government Accountability Office that sought access to the vice president's energy task force documents.

In that case, Bates threw out the GAO's lawsuit, stating that the GAO lacked the authority to sue the vice president, a ruling that was criticized by the legal community. On Thursday, Bates dismissed the Wilsons' lawsuit for similar reasons.

He wrote that, as a technical legal matter, the Wilsons can't sue under the Constitution. Bates added that the defendants had the right to rebut criticism aimed at the White House by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who accused the administration of twisting prewar Iraq intelligence. He said the leak of Plame's undercover CIA status to a handful of reporters was "unsavory" but simply a casualty of Wilson's criticism of the administration.

"The alleged means by which defendants chose to rebut Mr. Wilson's comments and attack his credibility may have been highly unsavory," Bates wrote. "But there can be no serious dispute that the act of rebutting public criticism, such as that levied by Mr. Wilson against the Bush administration's handling of prewar foreign intelligence by speaking with members of the press, is within the scope of defendants' duties as high-level Executive Branch officials."

Wilson and his wife have filed a civil suit against top administration officials - among them Vice President Dick Cheney, White House Political Adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for allegedly violating his and Plame Wilson's civil rights when they disclosed her covert CIA status to the media. The defendants argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed on grounds that it was a "policy dispute." Libby was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in prison earlier this year of four counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury about how he discovered that Plame Wilson was a CIA employee, and whether he discussed her role at the agency with the media. Bush commuted Libby's sentence calling it "excessive," despite the fact that it had been in line with federal sentencing guidelines.

A federal investigation led by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald later found that numerous White Officials had retaliated against and sought to discredit Joseph Wilson for publicly claiming that the administration had manipulated Iraq intelligence by telling a handful of elite Washington, DC reporters that Wilson's investigation into the Niger claims could not be trusted. The administration told the reporters that Valerie Plame Wilson worked at the CIA and had arranged to send her husband to Niger. The officials suggested that the trip was the result of nepotism. Plame Wilson testified before Congress this year that she had had no role in selecting her husband for the mission.

Melanie Sloan, executive director of the government watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, who leads Wilson's defense team, said she would immediately appeal Judge Bates's verdict.

"We disagree with the court's holding and intend to pursue this case vigorously to protect all Americans from the vindictive government officials who abuse their power for their own political ends," Sloan said in a statement. She added that Bates "recognized that the Wilson's claims 'pose important questions relating to the propriety of actions undertaken by our highest government officials.'"

Wilson, the former ambassador, reacted to Bates's ruling by vowing to continue fighting.

"This case is not just about what top government officials did to Valerie and me." Wilson said. "We brought this suit because we strongly believe that politicizing intelligence ultimately serves only to undermine the security of our nation. Today's decision is just the first step in what we have always known would be a long legal battle and we are committed to seeing this case through."

Bates's support of the Bush administration's position on secrecy was instrumental in getting the judge appointed to the court set up by Congress in 1978 to monitor domestic spying immediately after the Bush administration said it would start using the court to obtain domestic surveillance warrants. Bates, who was appointed to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by Chief Justice John Roberts in February, replaced a judge who resigned in protest following news reports that the White House circumvented the court and spied on American citizens who were allegedly communicating with terrorists. As a judge on the FISA court, Bates reviews the Justice Department's applications for domestic spying activities in the US and has a final say on whether to approve the requests.

Jason Leopold is a former Los Angeles bureau chief for Dow Jones Newswire. He has written over 2,000 stories on the California energy crisis and received the Dow Jones Journalist of the Year Award in 2001 for his coverage on the issue as well as a Project Censored award in 2004. Leopold also reported extensively on Enron's downfall and was the first journalist to land an interview with former Enron president Jeffrey Skilling following Enron's bankruptcy filing in December 2001. Leopold has appeared on CNBC and National Public Radio as an expert on energy policy and has also been the keynote speaker at more than two dozen energy industry conferences around the country.

Matt Renner is a reporter for Truthout.

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