The most glorious smackdown of Toensing,

The brilliant testimony of Valerie Plame, and the bringing to light more things to investigate for Henry Waxman. Emptywheel from Firedoglake:

Which leaves us, two days later, to reflect on what the Hearing accomplished. Importantly, Waxman gave Valerie Wilson an opportunity to correct, under oath, many of the fictions the right has propagated about her in the last four years. Just as importantly, the Hearing served to remind us (as Patrick Fitzgerald did in his closing statements) that Valerie Wilson is a person, not an argument. Not only does she have kids and a husband. But she used to have an important role in protecting our country from the proliferation of nuclear weapons. She served our country, and the gratitude our country showed her was to expose her, her family, her colleagues, and the assets she recruited to a great deal of danger.

But the hearing also did one more thing. It established uncontrovertibly that the White House did not follow statutes governing the unauthorized release of classified information. Regardless of what happens with the other materials Fitzgerald collected during his investigation, establishing that fact gives Waxman the ability to pursue more information. It took a matter of hours for Waxman to take the next step–asking Josh Bolten for a full accounting.

Update: Tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors notes how much Toensing actually didn't know.

Update: Silent Patriot at Crooks and Liars reminds Toensing what the word covert actually means and how it's not hard to find:

I am not a lawyer, but I tracked down the language of the law and it reads as follows:

FindLaw:

(4) The term "covert agent" means -
(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an
intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed
Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency -
(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member
is classified information, and
(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within
the last five years served outside the United States;

I was wondering if you would be willing to explain why Ms. Plame was not "covert" despite her sworn testimony that (a) she was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, (b) her identity was classified (as was confirmed during yesterday's hearing), and (c) she had indeed served overseas within the past five years. By the very definition of the law you helped craft, it would appear that she meets every qualification of a "covert" agent.

Interesting information on Victoria Toensing

One journalist had an interesting ... interaction ... with her. He relates the story of tracking down the terrorist who shot Leon Klinghoffer.

At NBC, with the help of our Mideast sources, we managed to find Abbas. With an NBC crew in tow, I flew to a Middle East country and interviewed Abbas. We got him to admit to ordering the hijacking, and the killing of Klinghoffer because, Abbas told me, Klinghoffer was attempting to incite other passengers to resist.

To get the interview we had made one commitment: That NBC would not reveal the meeting place.

Enter Victoria Toensing.

NBC was protecting terrorists, she said. And with that charge a huge public debate over freedom of the press broke out. People took sides. There were demands that the NBC reporter (me) and crew return to Washington to appear before a grand jury.

Changing the story

It always seemed to me that most people felt NBC had done a decent journalistic job in tracking down Abbas, that we elicited a confession from those involved and showed them for the thugs they were.

Still, the debate played for days. Toensing knew what she was doing. The NBC debate overshadowed the stories about American failures in the Mideast or screw-ups chasing terrorists.

The truth was any tinpot government security service would have been able to track a four-person television crew leaving Heathrow Airport for the Middle East. I met Victoria Toensing years later at a Washington function and she told me exactly where we had met with Abbas and who his henchmen were.

Now Victoria is testifying at the Valerie Plame hearing. Her job is still the same — to change the nature of the way the story is perceived.

This time she is saying that Valerie Plame was a low-level CIA employee, not a covert operative. As a result, no crime was committed when she was outed in a national newspaper column.