Reply #36: you're assuming that the NIE identified Plame

[onenote]

That's not clear at this point; indeed Fitz has indicated otherwise to the court.

onenote

PS - even if chimpy authorized the outing of Plame, it would be a stretch for it to be considered treason without some actual evidence of actual aid and comfort to the enemy resulting therefrom. That's because the Criminal Code contains several provisions describing various degrees of culpability for causing a covert agent's identity to be revealed, ranging from 10 years to 3 years as the maximum penalty. So merely revealing the identity isn't enough. Justice Marshall, early on in the country's history, specifically noted that the treason provision of the Constitution is to be narrowly applied and indicating some deference to COngress: "

Crimes so atrocious as those which have for their object the subversion by violence of those laws and those institutions which have been ordained in order to secure the peace and happiness of society, are not to escape punishment, because they have not ripened into treason. The wisdom of the legislature is competent to provide for the case; and the framers of our Constitution . . . must have conceived it more safe that punishment in such cases should be ordained by general laws, formed upon deliberation, under the influence of no resentments, and without knowing on whom they were to operate, than that it should be inflicted under the influence of those passions which the occasion seldom fails to excite, and which a flexible definition of the crime, or a construction which would render it flexible, might bring into operation."