Word: coverts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...said that there is evidence that the CIA was involved in covert actions in Chile, such as attempts to block loans to Chile from multilateral banks which may have facilitated the coup...
...Administration's exposure of a covert CIA operative, Valerie Plame, was unprecedented, but at last week's Cabinet meeting, the President shrugged and said he didn't think the leaker would be caught. His apparent nonchalance is outrageous. Plame was integral to the CIA's effort to suss out the movement of weapons of mass destruction--ground zero in the war on terror...
...shut down serial leakers like Philip Agee, a renegade ex--CIA operative who routinely unmasked spies in the 1970s. It is rarely invoked, in part because it was designed to stem not the epidemic of Washington security leaks but a specific and pernicious act: the deliberate revelation of a covert agent's identity...
...burden of proof. Prosecutors must show that a leaker had access to classified information and knew that its release would unveil someone whose identity the government was trying to conceal. The law provides a mechanism to punish someone who demonstrates a "pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents." The penalties: up to 10 years in jail and a stiff fine...
...convict someone involved in identifying Joseph Wilson's wife, prosecutors would need to prove that the leaker knew she was a covert agent, not just an employee of the CIA. Because of this standard, the law makes it difficult to nail an aide who heard at the water cooler that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee and told that to a reporter. In that case, a defense lawyer might successfully argue that the leaker's motive was not to blow her cover but rather to imply nepotism in Joseph Wilson's assignment to Niger...