Interesting facts from the past.

Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff testified Thursday he believes prosecutors of billionaire financier Marc Rich “misconstrued the facts and the law” when they went after Rich on tax evasion charges.

The testimony from Lewis “Scooter” Libby, who represented Rich dating back to 1985 but stopped working for him in the spring of 2000, came during a contentious, hours-long House committee hearing into former President Bill Clinton’s eleventh-hour pardons.

Story

This sums it up. It might please a few but it angers many.

President Bush commuted the sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby yesterday, sparing Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff 2 1/2 years in prison after a federal appeals court had refused to let Libby remain free while he appeals his conviction for lying to federal investigators.

Bush, who for months had sidestepped calls from conservatives to come to Libby’s aid, broke his silence early yesterday evening, touching off an immediate uproar from Democrats who accused the White House of circumventing the rule of law to protect one of its own.

The president announced his decision in a written statement that laid out the factors he had weighed. Bush said he decided to “respect” the jury’s verdict that Libby was guilty of four felonies for lying about his role in the leak of a covert CIA officer’s identity. But the president said Libby’s “exceptional public service” and prior lack of a criminal record led him to conclude that the 30-month sentence handed down by a judge last month was “excessive.”

The president noted that he had promised before not to intervene until Libby had exhausted his appeals. But he stepped in short of that point. “With the denial of bail being upheld and incarceration imminent,” Bush said, “I believe it is now important to react to that decision.”

Although he eliminated Libby’s prison term, Bush did not grant him a full pardon, which was sought by some conservatives and would have erased his conviction. As a consequence, Libby will still have to pay a $250,000 fine and will remain on probation for two years. The president said Libby’s punishment remained “harsh,” in part because his professional reputation “is forever damaged.”

Bush commuted the sentence hours after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected Libby’s request to postpone his prison term while he pursued appeals. The panel concluded that his grounds for appeal were unlikely to be strong enough to prevail in higher courts.

The appellate judges’ unanimous opinion upheld an identical ruling slightly more than two weeks ago by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, the trial judge in Libby’s case. After a month-long trial that forced presidential aides and prominent journalists onto the witness stand, Libby was found guilty of two counts of perjury and one count each of lying to FBI agents and obstructing a federal investigation into whether administration officials illegally disclosed the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame.

Bush has granted far fewer pardons and commutations than any of his predecessors, dating to John F. Kennedy. He commuted three previous prison terms during his 6 1/2 years in office.

At a time when his popularity is as low as any president’s in modern history, Bush’s action also defied public opinion. Shortly after Libby was convicted in March, three national public opinion polls found that seven in 10 Americans said they would oppose a pardon of Libby.

Still, the president appeared to calculate that he would antagonize his conservative base too severely if he did not provide Libby some form of reprieve, according to people close to the White House

Story

The numbers don’t look good.

A new SurveyUSA instant poll finds just 21% of Americans agree with President Bush’s decision to commute Scooter Libby’s prison sentence, 60% say Bush should have left the judge’s prison sentence in place, and 17% wanted a full pardon.

Only those familiar with the case were asked to react to the President’s action.

Partisan breakdown: 32% of Republicans agree with the President’s decision, compared to 14% of Democrats and 20% of Independents.

Poll

This list isn’t meant to offend anyone. It’s just interesting to see who has been drumming up support for Scooter Libby.
I hope this doesn’t come back to bite Fred Thompson. He is one Republican that I could vote for.

Spencer Abraham Government 12-Jun-1952 US Secretary of Energy, 2001-05
Lawrence Bathgate Attorney 17-May-1939 GOP activist
William Bennett Government 31-Jul-1943 Former Drug Czar and gambling man
Wayne L. Berman Activist 8-Nov-1956 Washington lobbyist
Stuart Bernstein Diplomat 1938 US Ambassador to Denmark, 2001-05
Richard W. Carlson Diplomat 1941 US Ambassador to the Seychelles, 1991-92
Lewis M. Eisenberg Activist c. 1942 Granite Capital International Group
David Flaum Activist c. 1953 Flaum Management Company
Steve Forbes Business 18-Jul-1947 Owner and publisher of Forbes magazine
Sam Fox Business 1929 US Ambassador to Belgium
Francis Fukuyama Author 27-Oct-1952 The End of History and the Last Man
G. Michael Green Attorney 29-Sep-1958 Washington tax attorney
Charles A. Heimbold, Jr. Business 27-May-1933 CEO of Bristol Myers Squibb, 1994-2001
Sheldon Kamins Business ? Blum Frank & Kamins
Jack Kemp Politician 13-Jul-1935 American politican, football player
Jeane Kirkpatrick Government 19-Nov-1926 7-Dec-2006 Reagan’s UN Ambassador
Michael Kojaian Business 25-Nov-1930 Kojaian Management Corporation
Howard Leach Diplomat 19-Jun-1930 US Ambassador to France, 2001-05
Bernard Lewis Scholar 31-May-1916 Middle East scholar
Fred Malek Government 22-Dec-1936 Nixon’s Jew counter
Mary Matalin Politician 19-Aug-1953 Political creature
Ed Meese Government 2-Dec-1931 Attorney General under Reagan, 1985-88
Philip Merrill Publisher 28-Apr-1934 10-Jun-2006 Capital Gazette Communications
Don Nickles Politician 6-Dec-1948 US Senator from Oklahoma, 1981-2005
Bill Paxon Politician 29-Apr-1954 Congressman from New York, 1989-99
Marty Peretz Publisher c. 1937 Co-owner, The New Republic
Mercer Reynolds Politician 17-Jun-1945 Chief fundraiser behind GWB presidential campaigns
Nina Rosenwald Philanthropist ? Sears Roebuck heiress
Dennis Ross Diplomat c. 1949 US Envoy to the Middle East
Mel Sembler Diplomat 1930 US Ambassador to Italy, 2001-05
Ron Silver Actor 2-Jul-1946 Wiseguy
Alan Simpson Politician 2-Sep-1931 US Senator from Wyoming, 1979-97
Allan Tessler Business c. 1936 Epoch Investment Partners
Fred Thompson Actor 19-Aug-1942 Actor turned Senator from Tennessee
James Woolsey Government 21-Sep-1941 CIA Director, 1993-95

Here

Another view and the people that made it happen.

The men behind The Man Behind Dick Cheney are relieved.

They are people of means and influence, ambassadors and honorables, and they’ve raised millions to pay for the legal expenses of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Yesterday evening they learned, along with the rest of us, that the president has commuted Libby’s 30-month sentence and the vice president’s former chief of staff won’t be going to jail for lying.

Former ambassador to Italy and developer Mel Sembler was returning from a fundraiser, and his chartered flight had just touched down in St. Petersburg, Fla.

“I got off the airplane and picked up my telephone and turned it back on again and found about 12 phone messages,” said Sembler, the chairman of the Libby Legal Defense Trust. “I was most pleased with my president.”

Richard Carlson, former ambassador to the Seychelles, was standing near his wife when he heard the news from an Associated Press reporter.

“My wife burst into tears,” Carlson said.

As a certain wealthy blond socialite recently learned, no amount of money can guarantee a Get Out of Jail Free card. But — and this is a big but– if one’s prison sentence should suddenly be commuted by the nation’s highest elected official, a large pile of money still comes in handy. Because jail or no jail, one has to pay one’s lawyers.

Enter: friends in high places. Through personal contributions, fundraising efforts and direct mail, the 29 men and two women of Libby’s legal defense trust have raised close to $5 million, according to Sembler and Carlson. They plan to continue raising money; both believe Libby’s legal fees amount to more than the money in hand. And if he continues to appeal his conviction, the bill will rise.

The advisory committee of Libby’s trust is made up of developers, investors, publishers, think-tankers. There’s former senator Fred Thompson, the “Law & Order” star and Republican presidential aspirant — who even held a fundraiser for Libby at his McLean home, according to Carlson.

Story

Here is one By Janet Hook, Times Staff Writer
Eddie Mahe is a happy man.

With his decision to keep I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby from going to prison, President Bush has provoked a firestorm of controversy but avoided what might have been even more damaging to his presidency: defections of Republican loyalists who are among the last to support the beleaguered White House.

Libby’s fate had become a cause celebre among conservative GOP activists, even as the public overwhelmingly opposed a presidential pardon.

Bush’s action shows that, with a little more than 18 months remaining in his second term and his influence at its lowest ebb, he is still willing to rely on his signature leadership style — one that risks polarizing the country to take stands that satisfy his conservative base.

After the Republican rout in the 2006 midterm elections, Bush gave signs that he might try a more pragmatic, centrist approach. But his main attempt to do so — backing a bipartisan bill to overhaul immigration law — ended in a spectacular failure when the bill died in the Senate last week. And the immigration debate had badly strained Bush’s relationship with conservatives, who were furious that he supported a bill they believed would allow amnesty for illegal immigrants.

“He’s playing to his base,” said Fred I. Greenstein, a political scientist at Princeton University. “He’s sort of retreating to his hard disk — his core beliefs.”

A CNN poll found that 72% opposed a presidential pardon, and 19% supported it. But many analysts say that Bush had little to lose and much to gain politically by siding with the minority view. Bush chose to commute Libby’s 30-month jail sentence, but did not pardon him.

“He won’t antagonize anyone who didn’t already hate him, and he will give solace and encouragement to the people who like him but are having doubts about his resolve,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.

Among the encouraged was Eddie Mahe, a former Republican National Committee official, who said, “I shot my fist in the sky and said, “Yay!’ “

Story

Here is an interesting point of view by David Corn of the Nation.
Now comes the fall out.

It’s appropriate.

The president who led the nation into a disastrous war in Iraq by peddling false statements and misrepresentations has come to the rescue of a White House aide convicted of lying.

Before the ink was dry on today’s court order denying Scooter Libby’s latest appeal — a motion to allow him to stay out of jail while he was challenging his conviction — George W. Bush commuted Libby’s sentence. Libby will no longer have to serve the 30-month prison sentence ordered by federal district court Judge Reggie Walton. He will, though, have to pay the $250,000 fine that was part of the sentence.

The commutation — which is not a pardon and does not erase Libby’s conviction — is a reminder that Bush and his crew do not believe in accountability. Bush has been rather stingy in the use of his pardon power. And regulations issued by his Justice Department note that recipients of pardons should serve their sentences and demonstrate contrition before obtaining presidential absolution. (Libby had expressed no remorse and was not scheduled to report to jail for several weeks.)

Yet with this commutation, Bush ducked those requirements, and he is allowing Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, who was found guilty of lying to federal investigators in the CIA leak case, to go unpunished. The fine will be no problem for Libby. His neoconservative friends and admirers will kick in to cover that tab. (Perhaps even Cheney will send a check.)

Libby had become a symbol of the Bush White House’s problem with the truth. After all, his lies had been designed to block FBI agents and federal prosecutors from learning the full truth of a White House effort to discredit a critic who had accused the Bush administration of twisting the prewar intelligence. And now the final act in the long-running CIA leak scandal — Bush’s commutation — stands as another symbol of this grand theme: lying doesn’t really bother this crowd.

Story

The Appeals Court has refused Scooter Libby’s request to remain free on bail while appealing his conviction.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A federal appeals court Monday rejected former White House aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s request to remain free on appeal after his March conviction on federal charges stemming from the leak of a CIA agent’s identity.

Libby, once Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, faces a 30-month prison term after being convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements to federal agents probing the 2003 exposure of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson, whose husband had become a critic of the war in Iraq.

A three-judge panel of the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals found Libby has not raised a question for judges “that is ‘close’ or that ‘could very well be decided the other way’” — the standard for remaining free on appeal.

Barring further appeals, Libby’s term will start when the U.S. Bureau of Prisons decides where he will serve his time and sets a date for him to surrender. But his lawyers may appeal Monday’s ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which rarely intervenes in these kinds of cases.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who oversees the D.C. circuit, would decide whether to send any emergency petition to the full court.

It’s time now for President Bush to get involved in the Scooter Libby legal mess.

He needs to either pardon him outright or commute the jail sentence and let him appeal the rest of the conviction.

Non-violent offenders do not deserve jail time.

Major Update President Bush has commuted I. Lewis Libby’s sentence.

HT: Drudgereport

The Presidents statement can be found here.

Official Grant of Executive Clemency.

While Lewis I. “Scooter” Libby is still waiting to hear from the appeals court whether or not he can remain free on bail while awaiting his appeal the Bureau of Prisons has issued an inmate number to him.

For years he was known as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and assistant to President Bush. On Wednesday, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby became federal inmate No. 28301-016.
Libby, who was convicted in March of lying and obstructing an investigation into the leak of a CIA operative’s identity, faces 2 1/2 years in prison.

The assignment of an inmate number by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons represents another step on the road to prison. Inmate numbers stay with prisoners even after their release.

Libby, however, is hoping that an appeals court will intervene and put the sentence on hold before he is ordered to surrender.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has not indicated how quickly it will rule. Lawyers in the case said Libby had not yet been assigned to a prison or given a date to surrender.

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald opposes Libby’s bid to delay his prison term. He says Libby does not have a good chance of having his conviction overturned and should begin serving prison time immediately.

Libby’s friends have asked President Bush to step in and pardon him, a request that Bush has sidestepped while the legal case drags on.

How I hope he remains free while his appeal is being heard and decided, and short of that, I hope the president will commute the prison part of his sentence and let him continue his appeal to try to clear his name.

I was just reading this post in the Politico that is discussing political reasons for President Bush to pardon or commute Scooter Libby’s sentence.

The all-important base is against President Bush, and according to this post, it will improve the president’s popularity with the base.

The post also talks of the president’s famed loyalty and uses it as a reason for a pardon or commutation of sentence.

I disagree with this thinking completely.

Don’t get me wrong; I believe the president should ideally commute the sentence to drop the jail time and leave in the fine and probation so Libby will have the chance to appeal his case and clear his name, and if he fails at that, he will not have to serve time in jail which seems to be an excessive considering the rest of the punishment.

The president may just do that as soon as he hears whether or not the appeals court will allow Libby to be free while appealing his case and then pardon him or commute his sentence before leaving the White House if necessary.

But it should be done because the president thinks it’s the right thing to do and not the right political thing to do.

He’s not running for office ever again, so what more can the base do to him? Besides, as rabid as some are about the president it will be like tossing a bare bone to a dog. The next day they’ll be barking at him for more and will like him no more than they do now.

This president has been loyal to a fault. There is nothing wrong about loyalty, but the loyalty of this president has given us an Attorney General who is bringing more and more disrepute on the president and the Justice Dept., while the Attorney General takes advantage of it to stay in power.

Confirmation hearings for a new AG would be contentious, but with the amount of time left in this presidency, we could get by with an acting AG while we wait to get someone confirmed, even if it takes the rest of the term.

I sincerely hope Libby doesn’t go to jail and has the opportunity to clear his name. If the Appeals Court doesn’t let him stay out on bail while his appeal is pending, I think the president should do what is right humanely, and let Libby be pardoned or, preferably commute his sentence.

As expected Judge Walton has ruled that as far as he is concerned Lewis Libby will go directly to jail and will not pass Go.

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal judge said Thursday he will not delay a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby in the CIA leak case, a ruling that could send the former White House aide to prison within weeks.
U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton’s decision will send Libby’s attorneys rushing to an appeals court to block the sentence and could force President Bush to consider calls from Libby’s supporters to pardon the former aide.

No date was set for Libby to report to prison but it’s expected to be within six to eight weeks. That will be left up to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, which will also select a facility.

“Unless the Court of Appeals overturns my ruling, he will have to report,” Walton said.

Let’s see what the appeals court decides, but I’d like to see the president commute the sentence to the probation and fine with no jail term. Then let Libby continue his appeal to clear his name.

This case is turning out to be death by a thousand cuts.

Lewis Libby is due back in court today to find out whether he will be allowed to remain free while awaiting his appeal.

I’d say his chances for that are slim to none based on what the judge has already said.

Libby’s attorneys are ready to send an emergency order request to the appeals court, asking to allow him to be free on bail while he pursues his appeals process.

If this doesn’t succeed all eyes will be on the president to see if he will pardon Libby or commute his sentence to everything he was already sentenced to except incarceration.

We’ll just have to wait and see.

According to an MSNBC reporter standing outside the courthouse, Scooter Libby got 30 months in jail and a $250,000 fine for his conviction of perjury and obstruction of justice, and two years’ probation after he gets out of jail.

The hearing is ongoing still, and speculation is it is being decided whether or not Libby will be free on bail while he’s appealing his conviction.

This sentence seems to me to be overkill. Who did he murder?

Update: A bail hearing is scheduled for next Wednesday, June 13, but the judge is giving all indications Libby should go to jail now and not be on bail while awaiting his appeal.

Go to Just One Minute to read the live blog done from the courthouse today while the procedings were going on.

Lewis I. “Scooter” Libby is at the courthouse now, awaiting sentencing which will come sometime today.

According to this article he’s between a rock and a hard place.

Before sentencing the judge will ask him if he has anything to say. If he says nothing it will probably go against him. If he says he’s sorry for putting his family through this legal mess for the past couple of years it will go against him.

If he says he apologizes sincerely for committing the crime of perjury he has no appeal left, but might make the judge happy enough to give him a lighter sentence.

Who really knows? My guess is the judge’s mind is made up and isn’t going to change no matter what goes on in the courtroom today.

I say go for silence or a general statement not admitting any guilt since he has his conviction under appeal.

MSNBC is reporting Valerie Plame really was covert when Robert Novak published her name.

We now know that because Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has an attachment to his memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

The nature of Plame’s CIA employment never came up in Libby’s perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

Why didn’t it, since that was the basis of the investigation conducted by Fitzgerald anyway?

Why was the so-called lie more important to Fitzgerald than the actual crime of outing a covert CIA agent?

We know now it was Richard Armitage who leaked the information to Robert Novak, by Armitage’s own admission and by Novak’s.

Armitage claims he didn’t know she was covert, but ignorance of the law is no excuse. At least that’s what I was taught in school.

The unclassified summary of Plame’s employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, “Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.”

[...]

The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame, “engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business.” The report says, “she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times.” When overseas Plame traveled undercover, “sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias — but always using cover — whether official or non-official (NOC) — with no ostensible relationship to the CIA.”

From an editorial in Investors Business Daily we read this item in the next to last paragraph:

The Washington Times’ Bill Gertz has reported that U.S. officials said her identity was first disclosed to Russia by a Moscow spy in the mid-1990s. She returned to the U.S. in 1994 because the CIA suspected her cover was blown by turncoat Aldrich Ames.

Interesting. So, that leads me to this Washington Times Gertz piece dated 7/22/04, according to the archives date in the URL.

The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a news column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation, U.S. officials say.

Mrs. Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a Moscow spy, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.

The documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them, the officials said.

So, in the 90s it is suspected Aldrich Ames outed her to the Russians and somebody in the CIA itself later outed her to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana, as in Cuba, as in Castro rules there, and the Cubans got their hands on the information somehow and read it!

Gertz’s article goes on to say:

However, officials said the disclosure that Mrs. Plame’s cover was blown before the news column undermines the prosecution of the government official who might have revealed the name, officials said.

“The law says that to be covered by the act the intelligence community has to take steps to affirmatively protect someone’s cover,” one official said. “In this case, the CIA failed to do that.”

A second official, however, said the compromises before the news column were not publicized and thus should not affect the investigation of the Plame matter.

So, the justification by at least one official is since she wasn’t outed in the US where she should be safe anyway, it should be irrelevant that Russia and Cuba knew her status because they didn’t announce it. Clear?

To summarize, we now supposedly have a real crime committed by Richard Armitage, who wasn’t charged, and Scooter Libby is going to the big house for not remembering which reporter he talked to when.

In the meantime, since the 90s her identity has most likely been known to the Russians and at some point the CIA itself put her name to paper and sent it to Cuba where the Cubans got their grubby little paws on it and knew too.

So, was she outed by Armitage? She wasn’t by Libby. Was she outed by Ames? It appears so. Was she outed by the CIA to Cuba? It looks like it.

I admit to not being the most intelligent person in the blogosphere, but even I can’t buy this story. Somebody please help me.

Others blogging this story: Captains Quarters who says:

So now we have confirmation that Plame did get her cover blown. I suppose the only reason that Fitzgerald didn’t bother to indict Richard Armitage for the crime was that it would have meant explaining how the CIA tried to hide its NOC asset in plain sight.

Macsmind, who isn’t buying the story she was covert at all.

Follow the links and read what others are saying on this topic.

Kimsch at Musing Minds has transcribed the Valerie Plame statement to the House Committee today.

She mentions by title the Vice President and Scooter Libby by name, but somehow doesn’t mention the one who has admitted to outing her name: Richard Armitage.

Plame would have us believe she was still a covert agent at the time her name was publicly mentioned, when in fact, no one was ever charged with that crime. If she had been covert Armitage would have stood trial for outing a covert CIA agent.

Instead Scooter Libby was convicted of perjury for not remembering who he told about Plame and when.

If Plame’s husband Joe Wilson hadn’t written the article in the New York Times that lied about his mission to Niger none of this would have even been an issue.

I’ll say one thing for Mrs. Wilson: she can certainly pour it on.

I’ve served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a Covert Operations Officer for the Central Intelligence Agency. I worked on behalf of the National Security of our country, on behalf of the People of the United States until my name and true [emphasis Plame-Wilson] affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14th 2003 after a leak by administration officials.

Today I can tell this committee even more. In the run up to Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified. I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policy makers on Iraq’s presumed Weapons of Mass Destruction programs. While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against his WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.

Valerie, dear, if you were still covert why was no one ever charged with outing you? Instead we get a runaway jury to convict a man simply because he was a member of the Bush Administration.

His memory was no better and no worse than many of the reporters who testified in the case, but the judge wouldn’t allow a memory expert to testify. That was one of the questions asked in the jury room during deliberations.

The judge also wouldn’t allow testimony about what Libby was working on in detail at the time of the trial because Libby exercised his right not to testify.

No, I don’t feel sorry for Plame-Wilson. I feel sorry for Scooter Libby who faces time in jail and a loss of his savings to protect his name, while still having young children living at home.

Justice would be served if he gets a new trial, the verdict is tossed or he gets the same type of punishment President Clinton got when he was found guilty of perjury to a grand jury—a slap on the wrist and a chance to go on the speaking circuit to make some money after having served his country.

Others blogging on the Plame hearing:Conservative Times, Sister Toldjah,and Powerline.

UpdateYou can see Victoria Toensing’s testimony and reference material here. Victoria Toensing was the attorney working for Goldwater when the law making covert agents names public was written. She wrote the law. Very interesting read.