John Kerry was actually speaking about the fired-for-leaking-classified-information-CIA-analyst, Mary McCarthy, the Democrat appointee of a man who pled guilty to stealing and destroying classified documents and who also served as Kerry’s own presidential campaign adviser on foreign policy and national security, when he said:

“If you’re leaking to tell the truth, Americans are going to look at that, at least mitigate or think about what are the consequences that you . . . put on that person.”

…but his point supports the Bush administration in the Plame non-scandal, as well Afterall, a bipartisan Senate committee already found that Wilson lied about who sent him and what he found. And despite the fact that the information was declassified, and thus incapable of being “leaked”, the administration was simply “telling the truth” about who sent Wilson to Niger. According to John Kerry, this is a mitigating factor.

But make no mistake, Kerry was firmly against this leak… before he was for it.

From the New York Sun:

Contrary to published reports, a State Department memorandum at the center of the investigation into the leak of the name of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, appears to offer no particular indication that Ms. Plame’s role at the agency was classified or covert.

The memo, drafted by the then head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and addressed to the then secretary of state, Colin Powell, was carried aboard Air Force One as President Bush departed for Africa in July 2003. A declassified version of the document was obtained by The New York Sun on Saturday.

Another manufactured scandal disappears before Democrats’ eyes.

hat tip: AtlasShrugs

Byron York has the scoop:

CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald argued at a hearing Friday that, as far as the perjury charges against former Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby are concerned, it does not matter whether or not Valerie Wilson was a covert CIA agent when she was mentioned in the famous Robert Novak column of July 14, 2003. “We’re trying a perjury case,” Fitzgerald told Judge Reggie Walton. Even if Plame had never worked for the CIA at all, Fitzgerald continued - even if she had been simply mistaken for a CIA agent � the charges against Libby would still stand. In addition, Fitzgerald said, he does not intend to offer “any proof of actual damage” caused by the disclosure of Wilson’s identity.

So then what was this case about to begin with?

It’s the only logical conclusion that can be made when the same liberals who had a hissyfit about the Plame non-story are now praising the New York Times for actually leaking highly classified information about an NSA program aimed at combatting terrorism… a leak that may now aid the very terrorists this Administration is trying to thwart.

Defense lawyers in some of the country’s biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.

Government officials, in defending the value of the security agency’s surveillance program, have said in interviews that it played a critical part in at least two cases that led to the convictions of Qaeda associates, Iyman Faris of Ohio, who admitted taking part in a failed plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge…

UPDATE: Michelle has yet another example of MSM aiding terrorist organizations and sums it up perfectly: “If only these MSM blabbermouths invested as much energy exposing the terrorist sympathies and connections of CAIR as they did in exposing every last Bush administration counterterrorism measure to protect American lives, they’d fully understand the damage they have done.” Exactly!

UPDATE 2: The New York Post gets it.

In early May, Wilson and Plame attended a conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, at which Wilson spoke about Iraq; one of the other panelists was the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Over breakfast the next morning with Kristof and his wife, Wilson told about his trip to Niger and said Kristof could write about it, but not name him.

“As an employee of the CIA,” he writes in the preface to the paperback version of his book, “The Politics of Truth,” “she could have no contact with the press without prior approval.” Sitting in at a breakfast with a Times reporter in which her husband discusses a CIA trip that she recommended certainly qualifies as “contact.”

1. The reference in the preceding line is to just the three: Wilson, Plame and Kristof.
2. Kristof’s wife, Sheryl WuDunn, is also a NY Times journalist, so if the reference was to her, it seems that fact would’ve made it important enough for Ward to have used WuDunn’s name — to point out Wilson met with two NY Times reporters for breakfast — instead of sloppily saying “his wife”.
3. Finally, the entire article is about Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame and it references the phrase “his wife” 10 other times and every one of those 10 other references is clearly to Plame.

Joe Wilson has maintained since the beginning of this bogus story that his wife’s alleged “covert” status as a CIA operative was leaked to the press in retaliation for his public criticism of the administration in an Op-Ed piece he wrote for the New York Times.

But there’s a little problem with that claim now. According to Woodward’s sworn testimony last week:

… a senior administration official told him in mid-June 2003 that Wilson’s wife worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction.

Joseph Wilson, the husband of outed CIA operative Valerie Plame, called on Thursday for an inquiry by The Washington Post into the conduct of journalist Bob Woodward, who repeatedly criticized the leak investigation without disclosing his own involvement.

“It certainly gives the appearance of a conflict of interest. He was taking an advocacy position when he was a party to it,” Wilson said.

A lawsuit may soon tell us.

Did Joseph Wilson expose his own wife as a CIA employee months before columnist Robert Novak published that information? Fox News military analyst and retired Major General Paul E. Vallely is being threatened with a lawsuit for saying that the answer is yes, and that he was there when Wilson confirmed her CIA status.

What’s more, Vallely tells Accuracy in Media that he is prepared if necessary to go to court to prove it.

Not sure if this account is true, but if it is, it sure changes the game quite a bit. And if it is true, I’m gonna take credit for calling this one back on July 10, 2005.

As always, Investor’s Business Daily gets it (hat tip: Glenn):

If stealing and destroying secret documents, stuffing them into your pants and then lying about it isn’t a crime worthy of jail time, why is having a different recollection of events than Tim Russert?
…
Contrast the Libby charges with the slap on the wrist given Sandy Berger. He engaged in a real cover-up when he took classified documents useful to the 9-11 commission, destroyed some of them and then lied to the National Archives about it. No jail time, just a small fine. What was he hiding? Whom was he protecting?

Libby now joins Weinberger, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay and others who are guilty of nothing more than being loyal and effective servants of their party and president. Like the “Borking” of judicial nominees, the ongoing criminalization of political differences will only make it harder to attract good public servants if they can go to jail for merely talking to a reporter.

In the end, Libby may be able to echo the immortal words of Ray Donovan, Ronald Reagan’s labor secretary. After being acquitted in 1987 of corruption charges in a similar trial by media, he wondered: “Where do I go to get my reputation back?”

Joe Wilson is going to go on 60 Minutes Sunday to continue his parade of lies. Apparently he thinks everyone should have more than just 15 minutes of fame. He’s probably got marching orders from the DNC to try and go in for the kill now that Rove has “escaped” indictment.

Joe Wilson, whose wife’s unmasking as a CIA agent is at the center of the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation, said today that that his wife, Valerie Plame, has been threatened. Wilson talks to Ed Bradley in his first interview since Fitzgerald announced the indictment of I. Lewis Libby. It will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday Oct. 30 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

“There have been specific threats [against Plame]. Beyond that I just can�t go,� Wilson tells Bradley. Wilson says he and his wife have discussed security for her with �several agencies.”

Former CIA colleagues say that by revealing her identity, harm could be caused to the CIA’s agents and operations. “If a CIA agent is exposed, then everyone coming in contact with that agent is exposed,” says Jim Marcinkowski, a former CIA agent who trained with Plame at the top-secret Virginia facility known as “the Farm. There is a possibility that there were other agents that would use that same kind of a cover. So they may have been using Brewster Jennings just like her,” said Marcinkowski, referring to the fictional firm the CIA set up as her cover that also came out when journalists, including Robert Novak, disclosed it.

Again, if her cover was blown intentionally by someone in the administration, you can bet we would’ve seen such a charge resulting from Fitzgerald’s 2 year investigation. But the absence of such a charge shows that either there was no leak or she was not undercover. Since there is no question Valerie Plame Wilson was discussed between officials and journalists, the only conclusion to reach is that she was not a covert agent at the time.

And Joe Wilson wasn’t secret about his wife’s “other name” - Valerie Plame. He lists it on his bio for CPSAG. And they didn’t hesitate to pose for photos to show the world what the “undercover agent” looked like.

If the damage arises from tying Wilson-Plame to the CIA front company, Brewster-Jennings, there’s only one person to thank for that… Valerie E. Wilson. She listed Brewster-Jennings as her employer when she donated $1,000 to Al Gore on April 22, 1999. Not really the best way to keep things under wraps is it? (She listed herself as “retired” when she donated to the 527 group and election fraud perpetrators America Coming Together (”ACT”) last year)

But even Bob Woodward contradicts Wilson’s 60 Minutes assertion about the alleged damage:

They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that Joe Wilson’s wife was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn’t have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone and there was just some embarrassment.

So who is lying?

Wilson continues:

Wilson tells Bradley, contrary to reports that many knew Plame was in the CIA, that only he and three other people knew. “Well, very few people outside the intelligence community [knew she was CIA]. Her parents and her brother, essentially,” says Wilson.

But according to her former boss:

A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an “undercover agent,” saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency’s headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.

“She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat,” Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.

Again who’s lying?

Considering Joe Wilson has been shown to be a liar already, I think that credibility is an issue for him at this point.