The investigators knew that Armitage was the one who “outed” Plame on October 1, 2003.  Fitzgerald began his tenure four months later.  The Grand Jury began its investigation yet another year after that.  After October 1, 2003, what was there to investsigate?  And during this entire time, everyone involved knew, or should have known, that no crime had been committed under 50 USC 426. 

When the Plame thing first hit the news, I did as I always do when there is an issue of law at hand, and what every prosecutor does or should do: I searched out the relevant law.  What I found in 50 USC 426 was that if you had not been posted overseas as a covert agent within the past 5 years, you were not protected by the law, no crime, no prosecution.  At that time, I asked: when was Plame last posted overseas in a covert status?

Working at Langly, I imagine that she had a parking sticker on her car, that she had “CIA” on her tax documents, that she was listed in the company telephone directory.  Hardly a way to keep one’s association a secret.

Over time, it came out that Plame was brought in from the cold in 1997 because the C.I.A. suspected that her name may have been on a list given to the Russians by the double agent Aldrich Ames in 1994.  If they were so concerned, why did they wait 3 years?  Not material to the question at hand.  What is material is that this was more than 5 years before the “outing” required by law for legal protection under 50 USC 426.  (The Wilson-Plame-Novak-Rove Blame Game, http://www.factcheck.org/article337.html).

I opined, and was ridiculed, that there would be no indictment for “outing a covert agent.”  I was right.  No crime, no indictment, no trial for the “outing.”  But there was more.  Armitage was the “leaker” and the investigator knew it from the get go.  There was no legal reason for the investigation.

The time line is as follows:

June 2003 - As it turned out, Novak wasn't the only person Armitage talked to about Plame. Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward has also said he was told of Plame's identity in June 2003. (Newsweek, Sept. 4, 2006 issue, By Michael Isikoff)

July 8, 2003- Armitage acknowledged that he had passed along to Novak information contained in a classified State Department memo: that Wilson's wife worked on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues at the CIA. (The memo made no reference to her undercover status.) Armitage had met with Novak in his State Department office on July 8, 2003 (Newsweek, Sept. 4, 2006 issue, By Michael Isikoff)

July 11, 2003 –...Cooper also says he had talked earlier to Cheney’s Chief of Staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, about the story. “I asked Libby if he had heard anything about Wilson 's wife sending her husband to Niger. Libby replied, ‘Yeah, I've heard that too,’ or words to that effect. Like Rove, Libby never used Valerie Plame's name or indicated that her status was covert.” (Matthew Cooper, " What I told the Grand Jury, ” Time, July 2005).

September 30, 2003 – The Justice department publicly announces an official criminal investigation.

October 1, 2003 –- In the early morning of Oct. 1, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell received an urgent phone call from his No. 2 at the State Department. Richard Armitage

 Armitage's admission led to a flurry of anxious phone calls and meetings that day at the State Department. (Days earlier, the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the Plame leak after the CIA informed officials there that she was an undercover officer.) Within hours, William Howard Taft IV, the State Department's legal adviser, notified a senior Justice official that Armitage had information relevant to the case. The next day, (Newsweek, Sept. 4, 2006 issue, By Michael Isikoff)

October 2, 2003 – a team of FBI agents and Justice prosecutors investigating the leak questioned the deputy secretary. Armitage acknowledged that he had passed along to Novak information contained in a classified State Department memo: that Wilson's wife worked on weapons-of-mass-destruction issues at the CIA. (The memo made no reference to her undercover status.) Armitage had met with Novak in his State Department office on July 8, 2003. (Newsweek, Sept. 4, 2006 issue, By Michael Isikoff)

October 14, 2003 – Libby is interviewed by FBI special agents on this day and on November 26, 2003.

December 30, 2003 – Facing allegations of bias, Attorney General Ashcroft recuses himself from the investigation and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald takes over the investigation as a special prosecutor. (" Ashcroft Recuses Self … ” Washington Post, 31 December 2003 ).  

Janurary 2004 – The grand jury investigation starts. (Fitzgerald, Patrick J., Department of Justice , United States of America v. I. Lewis Libby.  28 October 2005.)

The Los Angeles Times recently had a front page article on English Learners in the K-12 schools of the Southern California counties of Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Bernardino (February 11, 2007).  There was not enough definitive information to make a guess as to what it all meant.  So I searched the net for numbers.

I found the following numbers but failed to save the hyper link:

In Comparing California

http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/Articles/article.asp?title=California%20comparison

it was noted that the Student-teacher ratio in California was 20.6.

That would give us 295,041.8 teachers and $16,653,339,140 for teacher wages per year.

In 2004-05, 25.2% of California’s students were learning English, while an additional 16.8% had mastered English though it was not their first language.  80% of English Learners are Hispanic. http://www.edsource.org/sch_stu_ell.cfm

The rest of this requires the application of common sense and deductions, and the like.

This gives us 42% of the total student body as immigrant or immigrant extraction with 31.6% Hispanic.

25.2% of 6,077,861 is 1,531,620.97 Students, 74,350.53 teachers (and classrooms), and $4,047,940,398.04 in wages for those teachers.

16.8% of 6,077,861 is 1,021,080.65 Students, 49,567.02 teachers (and classrooms), and $2,698,626,932.02 in wages for those teachers.

http://www.edsource.org/sch_stu_dist.cfm shows that close to half the students in California schools are Hispanic.  What percentage of those are illegal?  What percentage are anchor babies?  If, in the mid 80’s, the border had been closed and amnesty had not been given, what percentage of these students would not be in our schools today?  By not asking the status of the children and their parents, we can’t know.  Perhaps we don’t want to know.