Valerie Plame’s lawsuit?

July 21, 2005

Here’s an angle I never considered. Anthony Sebok, a professor at Brooklyn Law School, has posed a question about the Plame Game scandal that deserves more attention — could Plame sue Karl Rove?

The fact that Rove leaked her identity while working for the president would undercut her ability to file a civil claim, but court rulings in this area do not exactly offer sweeping immunity to federal employees. Rulings have concluded that officers should be able to pursue the public good without the distractions of litigation.

Would this apply to Rove? Maybe not. Not only was he clearly not pursuing the public good through his office, the same court rulings have also said federal employees lose their immunity from lawsuits if the employee “knows” he or she is violating someone’s rights.

Some of these details are still unclear, and tort law and legal immunity can get a little complicated here. But based on what we know, Rove publicly disclosed private facts about Plame and ruined her career. It certainly sounds like grounds for a civil suit.

Remember, the possibilities surrounding this kind of case are significant. Just ask the last president.

In 1998, President Bill Clinton was almost forced from office because he lied about whether he had had “sexual relations” with Monica Lewinsky in a deposition. The deposition was not conducted by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr, but by the lawyers for Paula Jones — who had sued the President under federal civil rights law and Arkansas tort law.

One of the greatest features of the American civil justice system — especially its tort law — is that it gives average citizens the power to force anyone, even Presidents, to answer them in court. Could Valerie Plame, the CIA agent whose identity was leaked to the press, take matters into her own hands and use the civil justice system to get Karl Rove – who may, it seems, have been the leaker — to answer her in court?

Jones user her baseless civil suit to pursue discovery, force her opponent into a deposition, and force information into the open.

I wonder what would happen if Plame pursued a similar course?

Not as long as she’s working for the CIA. Commenters in an earlier post have half-convinced me that she and her supporters are doing their share (as anonymous sources, ironically) to keep the story listed A1.

The other half of me thinks that CIA didn’t have somebody on Air Force One while The Memo was being passed around, unless it’s Tenet himself doing the leaking. OTOH Powell had every opportunity to watch the smear job from the inside, from start to finish. And after Ari tried to toss the shit on him, Powell has every motive to lift the rock and let the grubs squirm.

  • OK, maybe she can resign from the CIA, and file the lawsuit. I would assume her CIA buddies would keep standing by her, right?

  • Even if Plame remains a CIA employee, there is no reason that a possible lawsuit on her behalf couldn’t be filed under a pseudonym to protect her identity, and have the case kept “under seal” to prevent public access. Further, even though Rove is a government employee, the concept of “governmental immunity” is a limited one, and likely would not apply to his actions in outing Plame and then in covering up those actions.

    As CB noted, reckless and intentional acts that are outside the scope of one’s employment, and additionally are illegal, clearly voids that limited immunity otherwise afforded to governmental employees. Finally, Plame is not a public figure — or at least was not until the plan hatched and executed by the White House(doh!) — and is not otherwise “fair game” for fair public commentary.

    There is a hell of a lot more of “case” here than Paula Jones ever had against Clinton.

  • I’m not very cognizant of how this works, but if a case was filed under a pseudonym and kept “under seal,” would we know about it? If there were true then it might be going on right now. On the downside you’d lose all of the public discovery schadenfreude that CB describes inhis post.

  • What will happen if Plame sues? Remember the partisan-based hypocracy of the right-wing media. They will never go after their own, instead they will instantly begin vilifying her as a selfish, unpatriotic, partisan money-grubber. Any lawsuit by her instead of by the CIA will be a huge boon to them, because they will constantly draw attention to her to make Rove look like a innocent victim.

  • Today your question has been answered. They even have a website to raise legal funds.

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