Asymmetrical Information

Wilson doesn't have any credibility; his claim to fame is a lie.

Wilson said the 16-word statement, where it was said Hussein had sought uranium from Africa, was a lie. However, Wilson's own report includes a Niger official saying he was contacted by an Iraqi official, and that the Niger official thought it was an attempt to buy uranium.

Bush says Hussein sought uranium; Wilson's report says Hussein sought uranium; Wilson said Bush lied. Which time did Wilson lie?

He was sent there to investigate uranium sales between Iraq and Niger. He found that assertion to be "highly doubtful".

his NYT op-ed
"In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular inteligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake , a form of lightly processed ore , by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.
...
I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq , and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington.
...
I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place. "

The fact that he noted a 1999 trade delegation doesn't undermine his credibility.

Time
"This is in Wilson's report back to the CIA," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer told reporters last week, a few days before he left his post to join the private sector. "Wilson's own report, the very man who was on television saying Niger denies it...reports himself that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales."

Wilson tells the story differently and in a crucial respect. He says the official in question was contacted by an Algerian-Nigerien intermediary who inquired if the official would meet with an Iraqi about "commercial" sales , an offer he declined. Wilson dismisses CIA Director George Tenet's suggestion in his own mea culpa last week that the meeting validates the President's State of the Union claim: "That then translates into an Iraqi effort to import a significant quantity of uranium as the president alleged? These guys really need to get serious."

Independent
"Basically the Government's 'information' appears to be nothing more than a deduction, and an unlikely one at that," said Glen Rangwala, a Cambridge University expert on WMD. "Mr Blair and Mr Straw are saying that if an Iraqi delegation went to Niger, it could have had no purpose other than to buy uranium.

"In fact, from 1999 onwards, Iraq sent delegations all over the world, including Africa, to sign free trade agreements. The Iraqis weren't really interested in trade, but in getting sanctions lifted. They were holding out the promise of cheap oil to buy the votes of poor countries which might end up on the Security Council. Their main strategy was to isolate the US and Britain on the sanctions issue."

Clinton lied, no question, but he lied about a blowjob. GWBs lies resulted in the devastation of a nation and the bloody death of thousands of people. If Clinton's deception had had a similar outcome, I would have to say: that was one hell of a blowjob. Well done sir.

Actually, Novak did contact the CIA, who asked him, without admitting she was an agent, not to run the story. He decided that their request was weak, and ran it anyway. I'm guessing that the other 5 journalists in question got the same answer from the CIA, and complied with the request. And I'd say the fact that the CIA has asked Justice to investigate makes it pretty clear that she was an undercover agent. Otherwise, no crime would have been broken, thus no reason for justice to be involved. Whether or not it put anyone or any operations in jeopardy is spectacularly irrelevant. It's still a crime to reveal their identity, and felons in the white house are generally considered a bad thing. Also spectacularly irrelevant is Joe Wilson's credibility. No element of this hangs on his word at all. Have you actually read the WaPo story? They have a senior administration official (likely Tenet) saying that it happened, plus the official CIA request to Justice, which makes anything Wilson says the olive in the martini. Nice, but not at all necessary.

Also, the Clinton comparisons are offensive. Clinton lied to the american people about a matter of little import to anything other than his character. I do not defend it, and it will stain his legacy for a long time. But this is at least two senior administration officials committing serious felonies regarding national security for indefensible reasons. This is an administration which has known about these offenses for two months refusing to do anything about it. To have knowledge of a crime and fail to report it is to be complicit in that crime. The only question is, how many people are complicit, who are they, and why are they still working in the White House?

Many DEMOCRATS admitted that Clinton was extraordinarily dishonest years before Monica and blowjobs. Anyone who says that the only lie Clinton told or that the only thing Clinton ever did wrong was lie about sex is either laughably ignorant or as big a liar as he is.

As former national security staffers Timberlake and Triplett meticulously documented, Clinton sold CIA secrets (and revealed secret sources in SE Asia) for cash.

His White House illegally obtained and reviewed over 900 FBI files on his opponents.

He used private investigators and the IRS to harass and intimidate opponents.

He illegally used the FBI and the Justice Dept to harass and intimidate opponents.

His administration obstructed justice on a massive scale involving dozens of legal cases and official investigations.

The civil liberties violations in the Elian siezure were so egregious that even lefties like Lawrence Tribe and Alan Dershowitz were horrified.

He (and his brother and brother-in-law) peddled pardons in return for millions.

The list could on for many pages, but that ought to be enough to remind those who only chose to pay attention when the subject was sex.

When all else fails, by all means bring up Clinton.

Well if you you're talking failure and , er, 'bringing things up', Clinton's name does spring to mind. But limp jokes about Presidential cocks aside, this is awful. Will it be fully investigated by the media that is concentrating on fellating GWB until his reelection?

Oh, stan. Republican incumbents have done all those things. Clinton's crimes were passing a few progressive civil rights bills and having an 'interesting' sex life. He should burn in hell for his heresy!

The difference is that Democrats ADMITTED that Clinton was deceptive and/or lied. They simply disputed that it amounted to an impeachable offense, a threshold which by definition is vague and easily debatable.

Here, the offense is defined by statute. Was there disclosure? Clearly, since Novak published Plame's name. Was it a violation of the statute? Nobody here knows. Except that I would infer from Wilson's aggressive pursuit of this issue that Plame does fall within the statutory definition of a protected CIA agent.

Unlike debating what an impeachable offense should be, there is no purpose in arguing over whether Plame's "outing" actually constituted either a grave national security threat or a personal threat to her. That is not an element of the crime. Simply put, saying that nobody got hurt is not going to be a defense.

When all else fails, by all means bring up Clinton.

Posted by: Orbitron on September 29, 2003 12:53 AM

By all means, I will. This whole "Destroy Bush" mentality we've witnessed since Bush was elected, is a bi-product of the Clinton Impeachment. The radical, extreme, fringe on the left, has this mis-guided idea that Bill Clinton's sorry legacy was a successful attempt by Hillaries "Vast Right wing Conspiracy" to destroy a wonderful President. Sick Willies Legacy was his own doing.....period.

Jane, you may not have any intelligence background, but I do. And, from my experience, which wasn't at the highest levels but did include access to some pretty hot stuff, I propose the following law, which we might call "the Kennedy Law" or the "Missle Gap Law":

whenever apparently sensitive information is revealed to the press, it is (a) nearly invariably false, and (b) probably being released by someone who is trying to damage the current administration, whoever it is.

Both points arise from the logic of the situation: (a) if you really are revealing highly sensitive information, you are -- as you note -- taking a big risk. On the other hand, if you're lying, you're not taking much if any risk. As to (b), well, why would you leak false and damaging information if you were happy with the way things were?

I can confirm that most of your suppositions look reasonable to me: the wife of an Ambassador has no cover; she can't be covert, although it's not impossible that she once was (maybe Wilson and Plume met when she was second assistant station chief or something). But her job working for a beltway bandit, and the usual characterization of her as an "analyst", strongly suggests that she's not an operative, but, well, an analyst. And the day is long past when the mere fact of working for CIA or NSA is considered tremendously sensitive: hell, they even have road signs now.

... oh, and with reference to Wilson: he may or may not be "credible" in the sense of being honest, but if he really believed that after drinking mint tea with ministers of state for a couple of weeks, he had really gotten any useful information about potential covert U sales to Iraq, he may be honest, but he's an idiot.

Surely simple analysis of the meanings of the words involved can clear up the question of "was she an undercover agent?"

There are only two ways to not be an undercover CIA agent:

1) Not being a CIA agent
2) Not being undercover

If 1) were true, there would be no issue here, but it certainly looks like she was.

Since there is doubt about 1), 2) cannot be true.

Charlie, if you bothered to read the op-ed piece, you'd know that Wilson did more than drink mint tea with officials. If you read the interview with Josh Marshall at the TPM site, you'd see that he investigated the whole uranium operation, from when the ore is mined to when it's shipped out of Niger. Look it up, and then get back to us.

Megan, you wasted your time with this post.

"It's not clear that she was an undercover operative."

Then why is the CIA bothering the Justice Deparment with it in the first place?

I can imagine the dialog between the respective point men for both agencies:

Justice: "So you're saying for the record that Ms. Plume was an undercover operative for the CIA, and that you want an investigation to find out who broke the law here."

CIA: "No, she wasn't an undercover operative, no laws were broken, we just want to bug the hell out of the White House because of the s*** we got about those "16 words".

Justice: "Yeah, Ashcroft makes us pray everyday in the staff meetings, so we'll help you light a fire under the White House."

CIA: "Right on!"

"Or that they're holding back what damage there was because they, after all, apparently signed off on the leak."

So the CIA signed off on the leak, and now they do a 180 and decide to go after the leaker who was assured earlier that it wasn't a problem to make this information public because some damage occured after all. It all makes a lot of sense.

Not.

A couple of things:
Plame does not work publically for the CIA or NSA. She works for a private energy firm.

Which would make her covert - if the accusation is true.

As I understand it, in the U. S. she goes by the name Valerie Wilson.

Also todays WaPo is saying that the CIA had privately pushed for a investigation a week after Novak's column emerged. It is Justice that has waited for two months - what the CIA has done is give them a hurry-up.

If someone broke the law here, well, Bill Clinton is irrelevent.

Also: Wilson's conclusion that the Niger claim was false was based on his observation that a French company basically ran the whole operation. Either Wilson was right or it's war with France. See the excellence TPM interview.

"If it's true, just go," wrote The Economist about Clinton, and I agreed with them. I'd say the same here about "L'Affaire Plame". This doesn't have to be a figleaf for Democrats and Republicans pointing fingers at each other. It has to do with standards of conduct that we should all expect of public officials.

I'm glad that, post-Clinton, impeachment is on the tip of everybody's tongue. And I'm glad that, should this story turn out to "have legs" as they say, the Bush administration may have to face the same sort of ordeal. On both sides of the aisle, there's a generational lag playing out about the fact that the prerogatives of power no longer include the ability to hide very much. Both the Clinton and Bush administrations have generated a great deal of ill-will by behaving badly in ways that were strongly suggested but could not quite be proved. For Clinton it was sleazy fundraising, abuse of law enforcement information for political purposes, patronage scandals, etc. For Bush et al it is obsessive secrecy, policymaking that appears to benefit cronies (e.g. energy policy), overzealousness and vindictiveness in attacking those who disagree with them, and apparent self-dealing in government contracting (Brown & Root / Halliburton). For both administrations, and with similar justice, even small but provable misdeeds have had the potential to grow into a large and politically costly scandals.

Megan may respond with "Jane's Law" that the party in power is always smug and arrogant and the party out of power is always insane, but I think that she is over-extrapolating from present conditions. Both Clinton and Bush have too often found it expedient to misbehave in support of narrow political interests rather than the broad public interest. In an older political calculus, this may have been a winning strategy because politicians had more to gain from their core supporters, funders, and influential friends than they had to fear from disorganized if increasingly disgruntled segments of the public. But an increasing level of scrutiny and decreasing threshold for scandal have made alienating too many people more dangerous. Politicians really will have to govern more from the center, and more, um, unimpeachably to avoid unpleasant snowballs. This is a positive development.

[p.s. I don't mean to suggest that the meat of "L'Affaire Plame", if it is true, would be a small thing standing in for a larger problem. Outing a CIA agent really is potentially a deadly misdeed, and we don't yet know whether there are foreign acquaintances of Ms. Plame who've been made nervous or worse by these events. "L'Affaire Monica" really was a small thing standing in for a larger one, which had nothing to do with blow jobs and everything to do with a long suspected self-interested deceitfulness on the part of the President made suddenly undeniable. The President can remove his pants for whomever he wants, but he cannot lie to cover his own ass.]

hi all,
i would be interested in comments from those unsure (jane) or clearly wanting to defend the admin (stan, etc.) as to what they make of the fact that the white house is not interested in investigating what, if true, would be a serious breech of security (not to say, etiquette) within its own ranks. this seems to me the most interesting thing of all. what does this say about the admin--"we are above this whole nonsense, which is politically motivated and a poorly conceived attempt to discredit our exemplary character"; or, "we really do have our hand in the cookie jar, and we are stalling"; or, "problem? a problem, you say? what day is it today?"; or, "you know, the attention span of the average american or media commentator is about ...(fill in the blank)..."

true, its speculation, but the silence is deafening. my money is on justice to stall... it would be quite something if they set up an independent inquiry onm this though, wouldn't it?

Jane,

At the risk of repeating what others have posted I can't see what youre point is.

The CIA has confirmed she was undercover (as defined by the relevant laws) by the simple act of asking the Justice Dept to investigate. If she were not, there would be nothing to investigate.

Again, this is not about what Wilson may have said, or the Democrats, or the man on the street. This is the CIA itself confirming it! Your commenst about Wilson's credibility may have made sense a week ago. They no longer do since the CIA has confirmed what Wilson said about his wife.

Same with your comments about whether the damage was large or small. Who cares? How is that relevant at this stage? Maybe a judge can consider that when sentencing but there is no "There was little damage so don't apply the laws to me" clause.

As for who did it let's wait and see. The "it's such a stupid idea that they could never have done this" is a very weak argument as a quick look at history (and our jails) shows.

Yes, GT, and there's no "it was really embarassing" clause in the perjury statute either, nor a "Democratic president" clause in the relevent sexual harassment statutes, but Clinton stayed in office.

Whoever did this may have been in technical violation of the law, may have to resign, may get their wrist slapped. But if this didn't damage covert operations, no one outside people who already hated Bush, and a few hardcore political types, will care.

Several points. There has not been an administration, except possibly for Ford’s and Carter’s, where there was not some kind of criminal or a-constitutional dealings. The pathological aspects of power make it an almost certainty that someone in any given administration will do something they are not supposed to, because they think they can get away with it.

It is irrelevant what happened or did not happen when Clinton was president. If this is true, then someone broke the law. If Novak got the information from somewhere else and was lied to in an effort to embarrass or discredit the administration, then that also needs to be found out. Additionally, the CIA may have a more mundane reason for asking Justice to investigate. They are constrained from running Ops within the US, and investigating the leak would be considered an OP. (If I am mistaken in this, sorry). Justice however, can and should and must find out what happened.

Just so the left wing nutjobs who post here know, I do not like Bush or Ashcroft and am seriously unhappy with their domestic policies and have been since before 9/11. I did not and do not want a Gore Presidency either. He was and is a jack off. Regretably, there was no third choice.

I think this is the kind of political scandal that all administrations have to deal with. What they do and how they do it will tell a lot of the basic honesty of this group vs. their opportunism.

Personally, I think someone leaked it to damage Wilson, not realizing how serious an offense it was. I say this, because this administration has generally been smarter about such things.

"But if this didn't damage covert operations, no one outside people who already hated Bush, and a few hardcore political types, will care."

I strongly disagree. A good number of the thousands and thousands of voters who work in fields related to defense, diplomacy, national security, international policy, etc etc etc WILL care about this kind of breach because it is relevant to their daily lives or relevant to people close to them.

Washington Post reports today that:

"She is a case officer in the CIA's clandestine service and works as an analyst on weapons of mass destruction. Novak published her maiden name, Plame, which she had used overseas and has not been using publicly. Intelligence sources said top officials at the agency were very concerned about the disclosure because it could allow foreign intelligence services to track down some of her former contacts and lead to the exposure of agents."

"GWBs lies resulted in the devastation of a nation and the bloody death of thousands of people."

Which nation is that? Both Iraq and Afghanistan are far better off because of our military intervention. Do you truly wish to return power to Saddam Hussein and the Taliban?

This has bugged me for quite a while.

Wilson's OpEd said: "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place. "

So. He confirmed that Niger had not sold yellowcake to Iraq. What the UK has said that their intel reports indicate, and what Bush said in the SOTU speech was that they had TRIED to buy it.

He did what politicos do when asked a question that they don't want to answer - they answer a different one. There is also the fact that the government officials that he drank tea with surely didn't want to admit that they had discussed selling Uranium to the number two most wanted man on the USGov Fecal Roster.

As to blowing Plame's cover, if someone did it they should be disciplined in some way.

hi all,
"may have to resign, may get their wrist slapped."

hmm, not bad for a possible felony...

"Just so the left wing nutjobs who post here know,"

is that opposed to the right wing n... whoops, gotta remember the civility

Perhaps someone better informed than I could enlighten me as to why Plame didn't have any better alias for this sensitive undercover work than her maiden name. If she needed some kind of alias, why use something as obvious as her maiden name? If she didn't need an alias, why does it matter that Novak published her maiden name?

How could this not damage covert operations? It's possible that it might not have damaged anything Plame was involved in, but doesn't this have to affect the attitudes of other covert employees?

How happy would you be to do risky work like this knowing that senior administration officials might identify you to a reporter for their convenience? How happy would you be if you were a foreigner working with a CIA agent?

Sorry Jane, the signs are that this is serious business. Is it more likely that Novak would lie, or that someone in the White House would make this sort of blunder? I'd say the latter, by a long way.

dirk - Stop pretending Clinton "only" lied about that... he, based on the left's new definition, "lied" about intelligence that led to the bombing of an aspirin factory, and about the extent of the genocide in Kosovo.

"As I understand it, in the U. S. she goes by the name Valerie Wilson."

This is false, and one of the many major inconsistencies going on here. She is called "the former Valerie Plame" on Mr. Wilson's bio on at least two websites.

Excuse me, what are we talking about? How in hell do you remain a CIA secret agent if your husband becomes an American diplomat? Does this not sound at least a little bit weird?

The CIA has confirmed that Plame was a covert operative.

The White House is refusing to do its own investigation.

What are the new updated rationalizations, folks?

"The CIA has confirmed that Plame was a covert operative."

Alas, you are ignoring the central question. Why was a wife of a very high profile government official a secret agent of the CIA? Isn't this crazy? Also, what would have happened if this news got out while he was still an ambassor?

"...while he was still an ambassor?"

Gulp, let's make that "ambassador."

"Alas, you are ignoring the central question. Why was a wife of a very high profile government official a secret agent of the CIA? Isn't this crazy? Also, what would have happened if this news got out while he was still an ambassor?"

Actually, it's not terribly crazy if she weren't a case officer but were a station chief/asst. statio chief/etc. As an ambassador's wife, she would already be secured at the embassy and have access to the usual diplomatic channels. She would necessarily have to limit actual case work, though, since any internal security forces would already be watching and she'd be a fairly public figure. Most likely she'd already be included in whatever bio was written up on her husband, as well. I have no clue what the diplomatic fallout would be if she were discovered, though.

What does puzzle me is the WaPo saying she's both a DO case officer and a DI analyst. The two would seem to be mutually exclusive.

What bothers me the most about this affair is that the entire story is constructed by the news media using anonymous sources. In the blogosphere, we insist on links, and sources, so that we can "fact check your ass". We have done that on many occasions and revealed factual and philosophical errors, and plagerism, among other "crimes of fact". Here we have an allegation that may or may not be a crime, but with no government official on the record providing any facts. We have Bob Novak's word for the original story, and wronged husband Wilson's complaint about it, and that is all. If this were a story originating in the Internet, it would have died a long time ago for lack of sourcing. Why is it that the news media can do this, over and over with many stories, and not be called on it? It's not news if it cannot be fact checked, is it?

It's quite clear that someone may be lying here. Absent names and job titles, we cannot know who. And, of course, news people cannot be forced to name their sources by law. So where can any investigation go? An anonymous smear, originating with complaints from an avowed anti-administration source, Wilson, and not a single fact to back it up.

Er, one thing that occurs to me is, did she even reside with her husband full-time while he was doing the Ambassador thing?

I'm not sure that can be assumed. Surely, these days there must be ambassadors with working wives who don't join them, especially if they're in potentially unsafe locations.

Chuck writes: "We have Bob Novak's word for the original story, and wronged husband Wilson's complaint about it, and that is all."

No, we also have the fact that the CIA has investigated and brought the DOJ into it. So it's probably not completely made up.

I don't really think that matters, Jon. If she were operating under her own name -- which is the only way it would matter that Novak revealed it -- she would be known as the wife of a US ambassador. Anyone who talked to her would be watched by local security. So I think it's vanishingly unlikely that she has been conducting significant operations abroad any time in the last ten years.

The vagueness of the accusation, and the refusal to specify damage or name names, lead me to believe that it is most likely not very damaging, and that the leak from the CIA is aimed at the Bush administration, not at righting an egregious wrong. But we'll see.

The thing I find odd in the "Bush revenge" narrative is the choice of Robert Novak. He's an anti-war-in-Iraq anti-Israel conservative. Isn't that a weird choice for Bush, if he's trying to cover his ass over the Niger thing? Why not go to someone from National Review instead?

"She is called 'the former Valerie Plame' on Mr. Wilson's bio on at least two websites." And that is inconsistent with "in the U. S. she goes by the name Valerie Wilson"....how? I will grant you that this indicates that the connection between "Velerie Wilson" and "Valerie Plame" wasn't super-duper-secret.

What seems to be true, is that Plame wasn't a character out of LeCarre. That doesn't mean that she didn't use "Valerie Plame" when she needed to do things that wouldn't easily be connected to the US government. As was mentioned, it looks as if her covert work was most as a case officer. Such people need to be shadowy, but not necessarily invisible.

The vagueness of the accusation, and the refusal to specify damage or name names, lead me to believe that it is most likely not very damaging, and that the leak from the CIA is aimed at the Bush administration, not at righting an egregious wrong.

Even if that were true how is that in any way relevant to the issue at hand, which is why was Plame outed and by whom?

Whatever reasons the CIA may have had to make public what they have learned in no way changes the central facts of the case. Novak and the WP both have reported that administration officials leaked Plame's job status which appears to be illegal. This has been known for two months. And Bush seems uninterested in finding out who the potential felon in his staff is.

Why do we keep tiptoeing around the real issue?

"Why do we keep tiptoeing around the real issue?"

Yes indeed, "Why do we keep tiptoeing around the real issue?" The real issue is that this is a silly attempt to hurt the Bush administration. It is illogical for a wife of a high profile diplomat to also be secreat agent. Thus, why are the major media cooperating in this nonsense?

It is illogical for a wife of a high profile diplomat to also be secret agent.

Well, I guess you know better than the CIA what they do.

You have old talking points David. A few days ago your talking points were fresh. Now it's too late. The CIA has confirmed she was an undercover agent.

"As was mentioned, it looks as if her covert work was most as a case officer. Such people need to be shadowy, but not necessarily invisible."

Don't you realize how crazy this sounds? Wilson's wife is supposedly a secret agent. It is therefore absurd to assign any CIA employee married to a high profile ambassador to a clandestine assignment. Was this sort of stupidity the norm during the Clinton administration? If so---this is the real scandal!

David,

I'll let the the experts at the CIA decide how to run their operations. I don't have access to the information and neither do you.

All that is irrelevant right now. Even if having Plame as a secret agent was a bad idea (something neither you nor I nor anybody on this board is qualified to comment on) the fact remains that 'outing' her is illlegal.

Repeat after me: It's illegal!

That's it, that's all you need to know. Wilson's credibility or lack of it is irrelevant. The reasons why the CIA decided to make this public is irrelevant. If there was a major or minor damage is irrelevant.

Two separate press reports have confirmed that one or more Bush administration officials have done something that appears to be illegal.

That's the issue.

I should add that it's no longer just press reports. It's the CIA itself making the accusation.

"Well, I guess you know better than the CIA what they do."

Yup, that is a possibly true. Shucks, my unbelievable brilliance sometimes stuns even me. We know that during the Clinton era the CIA was rapidly becoming a touchy feelie group of idiots that did little to protect us from our enemies. Any spy organization sending out a secret agent married to a high profile diplomat deserves to be ridiculed. This is overwhelming evidence that they didn’t take their work very seriously.

Whatever. If you like to think you know better than the CIA how to run its operations be my guest. I like to think I play better tham Jordan.

It's irrelevant in any case.

We need to know what Valerie Plame's position with the CIA was. It is only a felony if she were a covert intelligence officer, and her identity was classified. The CIA traditionally keeps the names of all of its employees secret, to protect them. It has been suggested several places that she was an analyst concerning WMD, which I believe would make the "outing" non criminal.

David, again, I think that you're a little too beholden to a romanticized cloak-and-daggers view of this stuff. Doesn't it occur to you that there would be--probably necessarily be--a level of covertness that is something less than "secret agent"? You realize, of course, that various embassy employees can be and often are undercover intelligence agent. State dept. employees can be. By your reasoning, *no one* at the embassy would ever be an intelligence agent because it's too high profile. But that's clearly not the case. In actual fact, for certain kinds of things, having someone at an embassy in intelligence is useful and necessary. And, from what I understand, it's not those folks that are actually the cloak-and-dagger agents on the street; instead, they're case officers, analysts, and other desk people. Sometimes they're controllers of agents and the like. Plame supposedly worked as an energy consultant, but she was also a diplomat's wife. This means that she'd be traveling to interesting places and meeting with all sorts of people, but also have direct access to secure facilities and diplomatic pouches associated with embassies. Sounds good to me.

Clinton outed covert operatives? Since when? Was this before or after Clinton covered up the motive to steal the FBI files by firing the travel staff and murdering Vince Foster and Ron Brown? Maybe he did so after smoking crack from a pipe that Mrs. Clinton used to decorate the White House Christmas tree.

If Clinton did out operatives, how stupid must Scaife, Olson, Burton, D'Amato, Ray, and Starr have been if the best they could get was lying about sexual encounters during a deposition about sexual harrassment, despite having a brigaide of FBI agents on their staffs? (Again, for the millionth time, the Arkansas fed. judge -- whathername -- ruled the Monica evidence immaterial, so there was no perjury. Just a lie subject to contempt of court citations.)

Sometimes I wish people would just look in the mirror before ranting about wing-nuts.

And I question the wisdom of turning a blind-eye to an unpatriotic act like this just because, as Jane argued, no one cares because no operations were affected. "No one cares" seems to me to be an inappropriate standard to judge the importance of a national security violation.

David, you're descending into self-parody. Diplomatic officials & relatives have been CIA for years and years.

So how do we know that the "senior White House officials" are really senior white house officials? How do we know that the White House isn't doing it's own little covert investigation? If someone in the White House is spilling intelligence secrets, it makes sense to go after them quietly, not with sirens blazing and reporters bleating (though they'll bleat anyway). If I were trying to find a leak, I'd act like I didn't have a clue in public, too. Until I found the SOB.

Though again, we have reports claiming that their source told them that the leak was two senior White House officials. That's pretty thin.

The CIA obviously wants to know who leaked the information as *someone* apparently did. But we really have no idea who it was.

Bolie IV

> committing perjury after taking mind-boggling
> risks in the Oval Office with a woman he'd
> met, according to Clinton defender Jeff
> Toobin, minutes before he hauled her into a
> closet to grope her; and so on.

Heh. Hauled her? Groped her? Jane, you channel Linda Tripp really well.

And, do you have a page cite from Toobin's book for this one?

Interesting:
That wasn't news to me. I had been told that ? but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of. Clifford D. May: Spy Games.

I'll try to find it. I was shocked when I read that part, as I'd assumed there was some sort of ongoing flirtation during which he'd been able to ascertain that she was discreet, but according to Toobin, he groped her minutes after meeting her. I'm not even sure he knew her name. It was breathtakingly reckless.

And Partha, yes, he hauled her into a closet off the Oval Office. It's all in Toobin's book, which is highly sympathetic to Clinton -- he also wrote a pro-Gore book on the Florida election. That's not Linda Tripp -- that appears to be the straight Democratic line on the matter.

So the CIA signed off on the leak, and now they do a 180 and decide to go after the leaker who was assured earlier that it wasn't a problem to make this information public because some damage occured after all. It all makes a lot of sense.

Not.

Really? And why not? I've read some left-of-center essays on high-level perfidy that used arguments like this as starting premises and then went wilder from there, some with reasonably credible citations to boot. What makes you think it's out of the question here?

"'Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July to confirm Mrs. Wilson's involvement in the mission for her husband -- he is a former Clinton administration official -- they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives'... " - Robet Novak, as reported by Drudge

So, Do I trust the media that wants to nail Bush for *anything* that says the CIA claims shes is a covert Op, or Do I believe the anti-Iraq War Novak which says the CIA told him she isn't?

Of course, this all could mean that she was a undercover agent, under the guise of a analyst, and the CIA only told Novak the cover, in which case, still, none of this has to do with Bush.

"So, Do I trust the media that wants to nail Bush for *anything* that says the CIA claims shes is a covert Op, or Do I believe the anti-Iraq War Novak which says the CIA told him she isn't?"

The second option is the more plausible. One should take the “mainstream” media with a huge grain of salt. These folks will do just about anything to destroy this administration. Heck, just look how they have been distorting the truth concerning Iraq. The recent gloom and doom reporting is pure anti-Bush propaganda.

"David, you're descending into self-parody. Diplomatic officials & relatives have been CIA for years and years."

Time for a reality check. There are junior diplomatic representatives---and there are senior diplomatic representatives. Joseph Wilson was clearly among the latter as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998. It would be absurd to allow the marriage partner of such an individual to be employed as a spy for the CIA. I doubt if you can point to even one instance in American diplomatic history. Can you?

"Whoever did this may have been in technical violation of the law, may have to resign, may get their wrist slapped. But if this didn't damage covert operations, no one outside people who already hated Bush, and a few hardcore political types, will care."

Jane,

Two senior Bush officials may have to resign in disgrace, but no one will care? Truly, there are none so blind...blah, blah, blah.

And David, I can think of several reasons why being both an energy consultant and wife of a diplomat would be excellent cover for a CIA agent, the primary one being access to sources. WMD programs are often hidden within or disguised as legitimate energy programs. As an energy consultant, she would have access to a variety of people who would know what kinds of materials their countries were purchasing that might be diverted to WMDs, and might be willing to share that information with us. As a diplomat, she would have had tremendous social access to the top tier of officials in any country she was in. Why is it ludicrous that she was an agent? I simply don't understand your reasoning. Could you be more explicit?

David, unless someone reading this comment thread has access to the CIA files going back to 1947, and the complete files of the OSS, they wouldn't be able to confirm or deny your assertion.

In the present atmosphere, for someone to cite one counter-example to your assertion would get them into trouble unless the couple in question were dead.

You can't prove a negative.

If something couldn't or can't happen because it 'doesn't make sense', then a lot of events in American history become phantoms and non-events.

That should read "diplomat's wife," rather than "diplomat," of course.

being the "commercial attache" or whatever "attache" is frequently a spy/operative role, since everyone's hazy as exactly wtf your job is and you can kind of loaf and make yourself look busy... the line between kid having a nice time playing and seeing the world (frequently dip service is a vacation/formative job for upper class, or now the well educated) and an operative is hard to draw.

what DT isn't saying, but should be, is that the specific roles of junior embassy personnel and the ambassador's wife is really freaking different. Especially the US Ambassador's wife. there's security, planning, protocol, 900 lunches a day, charity events, balls, art galleries, teas, etc, etc, etc. Not quite first lady style, but it's a similar idea (high profile to elite of the country, schedule is well know, planned in advanced, and absolutely rammed beyond belief. If you're not overly busy with official duties, then you stick out and you'd get lots of attention from the authorities (beyond what us ambassadors and their wives already get everywhere in the world)

now as seems strange, the lefties have forgotten that investigation does not equal conviction. otherwise alland derschowitz and the aba would be out of jobs. hell for lots of people reading, conviction doesn't mean conviction (FREE MUMIA!!!!). so the facts are, currently but will change soon, cia neither confirms nor denies she is a "secret", novack denies, leftists bloggers with no sources affirm, DOJ is investigating (bush is evil for not invetigating, DOJ's investigation confirms that Karl Rove should be executed for crimes against the state.. we're coherent, really) the rest of the world has no idea wtf is going on and is trying to sort things out...

nice... ok kevin.. start seething, and head over to atrios to fill up on ranting

"...what DT isn't saying, but should be, is that the specific roles of junior embassy personnel and the ambassador's wife is really freaking different. Especially the US Ambassador's wife. there's security, planning, protocol, 900 lunches a day, charity events, balls, art galleries, teas, etc, etc, etc. "

That's a very valid point. Yes indeed, I just find it very hard to believe that Mrs. Wilson was a super spook while her husband served as a major diplomatic representative. This does not make a lick of sense.

“Why is it ludicrous that she was an agent? I simply don't understand your reasoning. Could you be more explicit?”

The United States government would be humiliated if it could ever be proven that a marriage partner of a prominent ambassador representative was doubling as a CIA secret agent. We would merely give propaganda ammunition to our nation’s enemies. This situation is vastly different than the mere assignment of a discrete CIA operative to our sundry diplomatic missions. The latter is totally a different kettle of fish.

"And that is inconsistent with 'in the U. S. she goes by the name Valerie Wilson'....how?"

Because the WaPo implies (and Wilson has out and out said) that the name Plame would blow her alleged "cover" completely... and there is now a third website, a month before this flap began, that has the name.

Well, this one seems to be posting right now too, so let me add the thingy.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=104&topic_id=433309&mesg_id=433309

>The current spin from administration defenders within and without the mainstream media is that Valerie Plame was only an analyst, and not an operative. This, somehow, is supposed to lessen the blow of an administration willing to attack the families of its critics. Yet the characterization of Plame as an analyst is factually incorrect. For one, Robert Novak himself indicated as much in the original report that birthed this scandal. “Wilson never worked for the CIA,” wrote Novak, “but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction.”

>Ray McGovern, who was for 27-years a senior analyst for the CIA, further confirms the status of Plame within the CIA. “I know Joseph Wilson well enough to know,” said McGovern in a telephone conversation we had today, “that his wife was in fact a deep cover operative running a network of informants on what is supposedly this administration’s first-priority issue: Weapons of mass destruction.”

>McGovern further elaborated on the damage done when such an agent has their cover blown. “This causes a great deal of damage,” said McGovern. “These kinds of networks take ten years to develop. The reason why they operate under deep cover is that the only people who have access to the kind of data we need cannot be associated in any way with the American intelligence community. Our operatives live a lie to maintain these networks, and do so out of patriotism. When they get blown, the operatives themselves are in physical danger. The people they recruit are also in physical danger, because foreign intelligence services can make the connections and find them. Operatives like Valerie Plame are real patriots.”

A diffrent kettle of fish. Is stinky.

Ragdrazi, see my little rule about intelligence revelations: IF he realy is in a position to know, and IF Plame (sorry I got the name wrong before) really was running an informant network, then Ray McGovern just dropped "sources and methods" -- lots more sensitive than the name of a CIA employee.

On the point about the sensitivity of being a CIA employee, it was once considered very sensitive, just like emplyment by the NSA. That was in the days when the CIA HQ sign said something about the Department of Agriculture. Nowadays it says "Central Intelligence Agency" and who works there isn't considered all that sensitive. (Note that when Novak called CIA, they said "yes, she works for us, and we'd prefer this not be spread around." This is exactly what CIA would say if someone called about employment verification for a car loan. If she were covert, they'd say "Sorry, never heard of her", and a well-placed source would extend that to "No, she works for a thinktank on the beltway somewhere.")

(Question: How do I know this? Answer: because I've been there. I'm not really free to talk about the details.)

On the third point, the supposition that CIA wouldn't refer the matter to DOJ unless they were concerned is simply false: Pejman has lots of detailed discussion about this, but I will point out that (1) being accused of a crime doesn't make it true, and (2) CIA might do the referral specifically to get someone at DOJ to validate the conclusion that it wasn't illegal.)

"The 16 words wasn't of such important in our case for war." (Then why include it in the SOTU speech ?)

That's what this is about. The 16 words are back.

Note: no one died when Clinton lied.

Thanks for the forum.

Ross: "No one died when Clinton lied"? Does the phrase "aspirin factory in the Sudan" ring any bells?

Look. Get it strait. Novak was the first person to call her an operative. Who knows, it might have just been a slip of the pen. I don't see how anyone could confuse analist with operative, but he was the first person to out her. McGovern is just confurming that she was, because the moment her name hit the papers, she wasn't any more.

As to why an operative would use her real name, see this article:

http://www.maconareaonline.com/news.asp?id=4113

"Unlike in the movies, CIA officers who work overseas for long stretches do so under their real names because it is too difficult to keep an alias for years. They would never be able to receive family e-mails or phone calls, and if working at a U.S. Embassy they could run into someone from home. An alias is generally used for short-term missions."

Why couldn't Valerie Plame have been raking in the intel by throwing parties in the embassy and gossiping with all the wives of the ministers of state or industrialists or merchants? What better way to find out who has travelled where and who left the family shopping or skiing or whatever while they took care of 'business' in the city.

It ain't all secret cameras and clandestine meetings. A huge part of the spy business is simple info like newspaper clippings and local gossip. You don't have to hide the fact that you're gossiping, but if your contacts find out you work for the CIA they won't talk to you any more, or they'll be told not to.

Covert can be as simple as "Don't advertise what you're doing."

Unfortunately, the above posts were made prior to Nightline's Oct 3 report wherein 5 Republican CIA agents and x-agents were outraged by the Bush WH and all agreed that the exposure of covert agent Plame was politically motivated. Of course, you can be certain that some flunky will pay the price
for the Cowboy's infatuation with right-wing fanatics.

"William M. Cooper" wrote:
Subject: This is the letter Is sent the New York Times

.... I think that even if you don't find as much as a
primer to a bullet cartridge, you have still found
thousands of body parts of the thousands of innocent
civilians who were butchered at the hands of a madman.
You have unending stories of the victims coming
forward and testifying of the brutality that they
lived in every day. You have the Kurds who were
gassed to death. Not soldiers, but women and
children. You have the jubilation of the freed people
as they tore down the statues of their tormentor and
beat the head of it with the bottom of their shoes;
which for them was the highest insult to offer up.
You do the President, Great Britton's Prime Minister,
the military forces from differing contries and their
sending nations a great injustice by calling the war a
bad move to have taken. To clarify this position;
what if Hitler hadn't been grabbing all the countries
he did, but kept to all his secret projects and his
genecidal activities. Would we not had gone after him
once we learned just how brutal he was and how
murderous his power over the peoples of Europe had
become? Perhaps you would have wrote then something
like: "well it's only Jews, Gypsies, Retards,
Handicappers, Elderly, Ministers and a mixed group of
nonGermans, so why waste the fuel and manpower?". I'm
so sick to my stomach to say, that the way the news
and Democrats are using airtime and prose for nothing
better than showing the world your total contempt for
the suffering masses around the world. A very
obnoxious and macabre way to slam the integrity of a
man you obviously want to loose the next election,
while doing it over the tombs of those whose blood
cries out for some justice, and protection to those
they leave behind. The media was so biased against
the then, Governor Bush during Bush's election that it
really opened the eyes of a lot of people who saw your
tactics. But you still didn't learn anything. When
the war started, the networks started the propaganda
machinery all over again and lost ratings, because of
their baseless cries of destruction to the American
Military and other such nonsense. Now you're at it
again with slam articles about not finding weapons of
mass destruction.
I think you and every body else who has verbated all
the parties previously mentioned, owes President Bush
and Prime Minister Blair, and all the other noble men
and women who freed the multiple people groups who
were brutalized in Iraq a huge and resounding pat on
the back for what they did do and not what a madman
with ample warning was able to successfully ship
accross his borders and hide before the war started.
The intelligence that the President used was also from
previously found items that were found before the war
by UN inspectors who saw the illegal hardware with
their own eyes. So continue the antiBush/Blair
stance you seem to be insanely devoted to, but you'll
not find a sympathetic ear from me, because it is
obvious that your minds are so polluted with
prejudice, that every thing appears evil in your eyes,
even when good is all around and in clear sight.
I say this to your shame.
For our noble President, England's Prime Minister, the
troops, the victims, the grieving mothers, fathers,
children of Iraq.
William M. Cooper
1227 W. Kenedy #52
Kingsville, TX. 78363
http://www.1stbooks.com/bookview/8857
coopr2000@yahoo.com

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