Valerie Plame: 'It Wasn't Me'

[Nbadan]

Wilson: I did not recommend husband for Niger trip


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson testified Friday that it was not her idea for her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, to make a trip to Niger to investigate an allegation that Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium.

"I did not suggest him. I did not recommend him. There was no nepotism involved," she said, adding, "I did not have the authority."

It was the suggestion of another CIA officer who knew that Joe Wilson had previously gone on other CIA missions "to deal with some other nuclear matters," she said.

Later, she was asked to write an e-mail summarizing the discussion that included the possibility of her husband going. A portion of that e-mail was later taken out of context to make it seem that she had suggested her husband go, she said.

CNN (http://www.cnn.com/POLITICS/blogs/politicalticker/2007/03/wilson-i-did-not-recommend-husband-for.html)

Now let's get Rush and Insannity and all these other wing-nut gas-bags in front of a jury and let them tell us under oath, like Plame, just how she came up with the whole idea to send her hubby to Niger.

[Nbadan]

Meanwhile, like OJ and his wife's murderers, the WH is out to find the real leaker...or not....

BOMBSHELL: White House Security Chief Reveals -- No Probe of Plame Leak There


NEW YORK Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, told a congresisonal committee today that he was aware of no internal investigation or report into the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame.

The White House had first opposed Knodell testifying but after a threat of a subpoena from the committee yesterday he was allowed to appear today.

Knodell has testified that those who had participated in the leaking of classified information were required to attest to this and he was aware that no one, including Karl Rove, had done that.

He said that he had started at the White House in August 2004, a year after the leak, but his records show no evidence of a probe or report there: "I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office," he said.

Media Info (http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003559300)

Of course, the M$M already knew the WH was lying about their involvement in the leak, but why did they choose to look the other way after Bush specifically said that the WH would investigate who leaked and hold them accountable? The questions for WH security chief today about the promised investigation shouldn't have had to be asked by congressman Waxman today - it should've been asked EVERYDAY throughout 2003 and 2004 by the WH presscorps.

[Nbadan]

Friday, March 16, 2007
Disclosure of CIA Agent Identity
Waxman Questions White House Security Practices


Rep. Waxman asks White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten to explain why the White House failed to conduct any investigation following the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA employment. The letter follows the testimony of the Director of the Office of Security at the White House, James Knodell, that the White House Security Office did not follow the investigative steps prescribed by Executive Order 12958.

Letter to White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten (http://oversight.house.gov/Documents/20070316154127-11403.pdf)

[ChumpDumper]

Pretty easy. When a president or vice-president leaks classified information, it isn't classified anymore. Sleazy, but legal, but sleazy enough to lie about to the FBI to protect your boss.

[boutons_]

dubya "vowed" he would investigate any leak. But as with dubya's numerous other "vows", when he manages to utter an intelligible (short) sentence, his vows are hollow, pure bullshit.

[ggoose25]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/18/AR2005071800689.html

Bush added, "I would like this to end as quickly as possible so we know the facts. And if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

In June 2004, Bush replied "yes" when asked if he would fire anyone who leaked the agent's name.

In other statements, Bush has pledged to "take the appropriate action" if anyone in his administration leaked classified information.

-------------------------------

I guess its not a crime when Dick Cheney does it.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

nbaDan this whole story was mad confusing when it first surfaced a year ago now its still confusing

can you please explain to me just what the fuck is going on and why we're supposed to be mad?

[clambake]

You're supposed to be mad because Bush and his cabinet were trying to crush 2 people for not going along with their lie.

[SRJ]

If it wasn't Valerie Plame and it wasn't Shaggy, then who the fuck was it?

[Nbadan]

If it wasn't Valerie Plame and it wasn't Shaggy, then who the fuck was it?

It was the CIA, but don't tell any of the local wing-nuts that, okey-dokey?

[Yonivore]

Why would the White House investigate a non-crime?

[TheThinkingMan]

I think she's hot.

[SRJ]

Yeah, she's a solid 7.

[Nbadan]

Pretty easy. When a president or vice-president leaks classified information, it isn't classified anymore. Sleazy, but legal, but sleazy enough to lie about to the FBI to protect your boss.

Well, maybe not quite legal...

That pesky Executive Order 12958



Following up on an item from yesterday, I continue to be fascinated (and more than a little disgusted) by the White House’s negligence on the Plame leak. The revelations from yesterday confirmed our worst fears — and then some.

Let’s be clear about the big picture. When it comes to handling of classified information, there are a series of administrative rules that govern federal agencies, including the White House. These are not optional. They can’t be ignored for political convenience. They are not suggestions for employees to consider.

One of them is Executive Order 12958, which includes specific requirements that must be followed to prevent leaks from occurring and for investigating and responding to leaks after they occur. Includes all kinds of provisions, including a mandatory investigation, and revoked security clearances for those who mishandle — accidentally or deliberately — classified information.

Officials from the Bush White House, after the Plame scandal broke, insisted that existing rules were being followed. Bush said he was anxious to get to the bottom of what happened. The White House declared, “There is a process that the administration has in place to address the leak of classified information.” The president’s chief spokesperson assured the nation, “There is a process that the administration has in place to address the leak of classified information. Make no mistake about it, the President has always held the view that the leaking of classified information is a very serious matter. And the process was followed.”

There’s no way around the simple fact that White House officials were lying, blatantly and without shame. But even more importantly, we learned yesterday that these same officials were legally obligated to follow administrative rules, but decided to ignore them altogether. There was a process in place, but Bush’s aides decided not to follow it.

The Carpet Bagger (http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10238.html)

[Nbadan]

nbaDan this whole story was mad confusing when it first surfaced a year ago now its still confusing

can you please explain to me just what the fuck is going on and why we're supposed to be mad?

This article articulates who the real target of the administration was in the leak and why we should all be puking...

Plame's Brewster-Jennings, not Wilson, True Target
by Crede Calhoun


It is now clear that the Bush Administration committed treason with Scooters conviction. With RICO the man at the top is responsible.

It is also coming out that plans to destroy Plame’s covert CIA operation Brewster -Jennings was the real target and decided upon before Joe Wilson even wrote his article. The Joe Wilson smear spin is just that, spin that the MSM has swallowed hook line a sinker.

Brewster-Jennings was our Nations most important intelligence operation tracking Nuclear and WMD acquisition and development in the Middle East. Cheney and Bush wanted this destroyed so there would be no ‘pissant’ cia trying to meddle in their Iran and Iraq war plans.

It is also rumored that Plame's Brewster-Jennings just prior to Plames exposure had been instrumental in stopping a load of WMD headed for Iraq through Turkey, and it has been conjectured that this was the shipment and Bush operation to plant the WMD’s in Iraq.

When Brewster-Jennings was destroyed, people were killed as a result and a multi-year and multi-million dollar covert front company was destroyed. Covert front companies are the most complicated covert operations to create, and maintain, and they historically provide the best intelligence.

Bush and Cheney destroyed our nation’s most important and primary WMD/Nuclear proliferation intelligence efforts in the Middle East. And for this they should be tried, impeached and perhaps put to death for treason.

This is the most disgusting and reprehensible thing that has ever been done to our country. Sy Hersh published some wiffs on this awhile back.

Plame's outing was a heinous and treasoness conspiracy with no equal. The Joe Wilson smear angle was BS from the start and is pure Rovian mis-direction. It may even be the case that Cheney's office sent Wilson to Niger to get the conspiracy and mis-direction rolling.

Opednews (http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_crede_ca_070306_plame_s_brewster_jen.htm)

[Nbadan]

Borrowed from another blog:

Defense of last resort


With Valerie Plame's testimony before congress essentially disintegrating the Right's talking points -- yes, her status was covert; yes, she had been on overseas missions in the last five years; no, her husband had not paraded his "CIA wife" on the cocktail circuit; no, she had not recommended him for the Niger mission -- team slander, otherwise known as the GOP, has found themselves without even their own self-iterated fantasies to fend off the obvious. They have as a result turned to the utterly vaporous. We're not culpable for our own actions because the CIA didn't try hard enough to stop us.

"This looks to me more like a CIA problem than a White House problem," spake Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia, pointman as one of only two of the seventeen Republicans on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee who bothered to show up for Plame's testimony.

"Here was the important thing… Basically, my testimony was Shame on the CIA because if they thought she was actually covert, it was the sloppiest trade craft I have ever seen," spat Victoria Toensing, the creaky Republican operative who followed Plame before the same committee.

This is a particularly astounding rationalization being marketed as a talking point of last defense. The administration and its mouthpieces knew of Plame's status, knew her background, knew the details of her work in the counter proliferations office of the CIA -- to the extent of noting "CP" on their internal memos -- while it is *common* Capitol Hill knowledge that counter proliferations is the most classified, most sensitive office at CIA, and still made a determined, extensive effort to reveal that information to the world and expose her and her work on behalf of the nation to any and all enemies of America -- and yet we are to believe the onus is not on the traitors who outed her but on the CIA for not trying more diligently to read their minds, determine their motives, and urge them strongly enough to dissuade them??? Wow. That is a workaround of staggering proportions. It's utterly defenseless idiocy to go down that path, and those on the right who take that position would do themselves better to find some other bunghole in which to retreat.

The fact of the matter is that the CIA did contact Robert Novak, suggest the sensitivity of the information, and ask that it not be printed. Most journalists would take the hint. Most journalists are responsible enough to take the mere fact that the CIA was concerned enough to contact them as reason enough to hold a story and consider its implications. Novak is not stupid. He knew exactly what counter proliferations meant, and he still went forward with it as a scurrilous lackey of the administration.

What is often missed in press accounts is that Novak also named Brewster-Jennings, the CIA cover company under which Plame was "employed." He outed an ENTIRE operation, which even if dormant at the time, still had countless other covert agents and their contacts connected to it.

As Ms. Plame testified before congress, the disclosure "jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence. Lives are literally at stake."

This was an act of people whose loyalty resided not with the nation but with their own political machine. Brewster-Jennings slipped loosely on the same tongues that damned Plame. It was known to them, and by that very fact, they were intimate with what their petty political bitchslap meant -- and it didn't matter to them one whit. Now that same political machine wants to defend that act of premeditated betrayal by some pathetic reasoning that it was the CIA's fault for not stopping them??? The most telling thing about such a defense is how much that machine strategizes on an absolute belief in the stupidity of America. It is the central engine of their policy.

The testimony of Valerie Plame extinguished years of the noise machine lying points. It is time for accountability and to silence that machine's last ridiculous refuge. We owe that to Valerie Plame and Ambassador Wilson. We owe it to ourselves. Call the vice president. Put him under oath. Force him to testify. Make him claim the fifth or executive privilege. Expose him either way.

[xrayzebra]

Ah, dan, does the name Armitage ring a bell. Wonder why he
wasn't charged with a crime? Could it be none was committed?
And could it be the the good dimm-o-craps Plame and Wilson,
known Kerry supporters, could be lying. So get off your soap box
and crawl back under you rock and read the daily talking points
from your party. No crime here!

[clambake]

Tell that to scooter.

[ChumpDumper]

Well, maybe not quite legal...

That pesky Executive Order 12958I read the order, and it pretty much exempts the entire office of the president, including his staff and advisors, from any review before declassification. Just another poorly researched blog.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

Bush and Cheney committed treason??

[ChumpDumper]

Ah, dan, does the name Armitage ring a bell. Wonder why he
wasn't charged with a crime? Could it be none was committed?As I said, probably not technically speaking. It was merely one of the many reckless slimeball exercises this administration is known for.
And could it be the the good dimm-o-craps Plame and Wilson, known Kerry supporters, could be lying.Well, one of the new attorneys Bush hired after firing the others in another slimeball move could try Plame for perjury now that she has testified in front of Congress.

You and Yoni let me know when that happens.

[ChumpDumper]

Bush and Cheney committed treason??They have committed dangerously stupid offenses that have hurt this country for the sake of petty politics.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

chumpdumper, i am still confused

does anyone here have a link that explains this whole thing?

[ChumpDumper]

That pesky Executive Order 12958was a Clinton order also amended by Executive Order 13292 from Bush, that largely gave the vice-president the same discretion as the president when it came to classified information.

[ChumpDumper]

chumpdumper, i am still confused

does anyone here have a link that explains this whole thing?Wikipedia explains it well enough.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair

The big thing to understand is that the leak itself was probably not illegal since the president and vice-president and their respective staffs can do pretty much whatever they want with classified information. Armitage seemed to make his leak independent of the others (though there is no accounting from where his memo mentioning Plaime originally came), but he had no knowledge of her covert status, so he was off the hook.

Libby was convicted for lying to the FBI and a grand jury about Cheney's role in the leak. That part is very simple and very disgusting.

[Cant_Be_Faded]

thanks dump :tu

[Nbadan]

wrong thread

[Nbadan]

The big thing to understand is that the leak itself was probably not illegal since the president and vice-president and their respective staffs can do pretty much whatever they want with classified information. Armitage seemed to make his leak independent of the others (though there is no accounting from where his memo mentioning Plaime originally came), but he had no knowledge of her covert status, so he was off the hook.

Andrew C. McCarthy of the National Review explains (http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200507180801.asp) who really blew Plames cover and why Fitzgerald figured that Plames covert status was no longer a secret and no law was broken. (It wasn't the Pres., V.P. or Armitage).

[Nbadan]

Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer


Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09 Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.

"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."

The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.

Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html?referrer=emailarticle)

Looks like Plame and Wilson are a smokescreen to the bigger espionage story going on here. The exposure of Plames former CIA covert agency Brewster-Jennings.

[ChumpDumper]

Andrew C. McCarthy of the National Review explains (http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200507180801.asp) who really blew Plames cover and why Fitzgerald figured that Plames covert status was no longer a secret and no law was broken. (It wasn't the Pres., V.P. or Armitage).The link to the media brief conveniently doesn't work. That explains virtually nothing though. It's not like everyone knew her name and job at those times.

[Nbadan]

I don't know, those articles really seem to bring into question Val's credibility about whether or not she recommended her hubby for the gig, and if she's not credible there, then the rest of her story just falls apart. Also, If her identity had already been compromised to the Russians and Cubans, then her covert status really comes into question...

[ChumpDumper]

I'll wait for the perjury charges then.

[101A]

I'll wait for the perjury charges then.

Don't hold your breath.

[ChumpDumper]

Why not? It's not like the DoJ is controlled by Democrats. If she lied to Congress so egregiously, it'll be a slam dunk.

I haven't even seen a column use the P-word, though I admit I haven't read too many.

[Nbadan]

A Judge ruled in 2005 that Plame was qualified as a 'covert agent', so I doubt we'll see any suit...

"My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior officials in the White House and State Department," Valerie Plame said.


WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Valerie Plame told Congress Friday the leak of her identity as a CIA covert operative "has jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents."

For the first time since the 2003 leak, the central figure of the resulting scandal revealed her side of events that led to the conviction this month of a former vice presidential aide....

Novak's column destroyed her position and classified status, she told the committee.

The disclosure also damaged U.S. intelligence efforts, she said. "If our government cannot even protect my identity, future foreign agents who might consider working with the Central Intelligence Agency in providing needed intelligence would think twice."

Plame testified her work involved gathering intelligence on weapons of mass destruction.....

CNN (http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/16/cia.leak/index.html)

[xrayzebra]

Oh, such an impartial witness. Yeah, right!
New York Post

HILLARY'S REUNION WITH VICIOUS SID

By ROBERT D. NOVAK

March 17, 2007 -- SEN. Hillary Rodham Clinton raised eyebrows among Democratic insiders when The Washington Post's Al Kamen reported that she dined last week at the 701 restaurant in downtown Washington with former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, his wife, Valerie Plame, and left-wing journalist Sidney Blumenthal.

Leading Democrats have stayed away from Wilson since a Senate Intelligence Committee report in 2004 discredited him. Blumenthal was known as a vicious attack man when he worked as an aide to President Bill Clinton late in his administration.

Clinton's choice of dining companions casts doubt on her attempted image modification into a centrist Democrat who wants to avoid the politics of personal destruction.

*

[xrayzebra]

And then you have:






March 19, 2007, 0:00 a.m.

Senate Intel Committee: What Valerie Plame Didn’t Tell Us
The differences between her House testimony and the Senate’s findings.

By Byron York

During her testimony Friday before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, former CIA employee Valerie Plame told how her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, came to travel to Niger to investigate claims Iraq had tried to buy uranium there.

It started in February 2002, Mrs. Wilson testified. “A young junior officer who worked for me came to me very concerned, very upset. She had just received a telephone call on her desk from someone, I don’t know who, in the Office of the Vice President, asking about this report of this alleged sale of yellowcake uranium from Niger to Iraq.”

It was not clear from Mrs. Wilson’s testimony why the junior officer was upset. But as the young officer told her story, Mrs. Wilson continued, an element of chance intruded. “As she was telling me what had just happened, someone passed by, another officer heard this. He knew that Joe had already — my husband — had already gone on some CIA missions previously to deal with other nuclear matters. And he suggested, ‘Well, why don’t we send Joe?’” That, Mrs. Wilson testified, was the beginning of her husband’s mission to Africa.

As Mrs. Wilson told her story, some members and staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee watched with great interest. As part of its probe into pre-war intelligence, the committee interviewed Valerie Plame Wilson for the portions of the committee’s report dealing with the Niger uranium matter. At that time, as now, the question of how the CIA chose Joseph Wilson for the Niger trip was a subject of great interest. But Missouri Republican Sen. Christopher Bond, vice chairman of the committee, says Mrs. Wilson did not tell the committee about the young junior officer, the call from the vice president’s office, or the passing CIA official who suggested Joseph Wilson’s name.

“Friday was the first time we have ever heard that story,” Sen. Bond said in a statement to National Review Sunday evening. “Obviously if we had, we would have included it in the report. If Ms. Wilson’s memory of events has improved and she would now like to change her testimony, I’m sure the committee staff would be happy to re-interview her.”

For those who followed the Senate investigation, the young-junior-officer story was not the only surprise in Mrs. Wilson’s House testimony. In addition to saying that her office received a call from the vice president’s office, Mrs. Wilson flatly denied playing a role in choosing her husband for the trip to Niger. “I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him,” she testified. The Senate Intelligence Committee report, which concluded that she had indeed suggested her husband for the trip, was simply wrong, Mrs. Wilson testified. In particular, what she called a “quick e-mail” describing her husband’s qualifications for the trip was “taken out of context” by the committee to “make it seem as though I had suggested or recommended him.”

In response to an inquiry from National Review Online Friday, Sen. Bond disputed Mrs. Wilson’s memory. “We have…checked the memorandum written by Ms. Wilson suggesting her husband to look into the Niger reporting,” Bond said in a statement. “I…stand by the Committee’s finding that this memorandum indicates Ms. Wilson did suggest her husband for a Niger inquiry. Because the quote [the portion of the memo quoted in the Senate report] obviously does not represent the entirety of the memorandum, I suggest that the House Government Reform Committee request and examine this memorandum themselves. I am confident that they will come to the same conclusion as our bipartisan membership did.”

In addition, Mrs. Wilson testified that a CIA reports officer, who the Senate committee says told investigators that Mrs. Wilson had “offered up” her husband’s name for the trip, later told her, Mrs. Wilson, that the committee had got it all wrong. “He came to me almost with tears in his eyes,” she testified. “He said his words have been twisted and distorted.” She testified that the reports officer wrote a memo to correct the record — it is not clear to whom the memo was given — but that the CIA would not let him speak to committee investigators a second time.

Bond responded to that description of events, too. “We have checked the transcript of the comments made to the committee by the former reports officer and I stand by the committee’s description of his comments,” the senator said. “If the reports officer would like to clarify or change his remarks, I’m certain that the committee would welcome his testimony.”

Finally, Bond said flatly, “I stand by the findings of the committee’s report on the Niger-Iraq uranium information, including the information regarding Mr. and Mrs. Wilson.”



On other issues relating to the CIA-leak affair, in her House testimony Mrs. Wilson provided sketchy information, but the fault lay not so much with her as with listless questioning by the two Republicans who showed up for the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing. For example, she was asked briefly about her presence, before her CIA identity was revealed publicly, at a May 2003 conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. “I attended that conference simply as a spouse of my husband who was invited to speak,” Mrs. Wilson testified. “I had no discussions other than purely social in nature.”

Mrs. Wilson was not asked anything else about the conference. Who did she meet? What did she say? What did they say? What did her husband say? No Republican — and needless to say, no Democrat — asked.

She was questioned a bit more extensively about a breakfast she and her husband shared with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. She had been at the breakfast “briefly,” Wilson testified. “I had nothing — I was not speaking to Mr. Kristof.” She said she “can’t imagine” that she could have been a source for Kristof on the Niger uranium matter because “I did not speak to him about it.” No one on the House committee asked what, if anything, she did say to Kristof, or what her husband said during the breakfast.

Finally on Friday, Mrs. Wilson, as well as California Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman, the committee chairman, addressed the issue of her status within the CIA. “I’ve served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency,” Mrs. Wilson testified. “In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified.”

At the hearing, Waxman said that he had spoken with CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, who approved a statement Waxman read to the committee. “During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was undercover,” Waxman said. “Her employment status with the CIA was classified information…At the time of the publication of Robert Novak’s column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information.” A CIA spokesman later told National Review Online that Waxman’s characterization of the matter was “entirely correct.”

On a personal note, there have been accusations from supporters of the Wilsons that I have, at various times during the CIA-leak affair, declared that Mrs. Wilson was not a covert agent. I did report extensively on CIA leak prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s avoidance of the word “covert,” his refusal to say what Mrs. Wilson’s status was (beyond “classified”), the Libby trial judge’s declaration that he did not know if Mrs. Wilson was covert, classified, or other, and the testimony at the Libby trial from top officials in the CIA and State Department that they did not tell anyone in the vice president’s office that Mrs. Wilson was covert, classified, or anything else. I also reported, as the pre-trial phase of the Libby case got underway, that Libby defense lawyer Ted Wells asked, “Was she just classified because some bureaucracy didn’t declassify her five years ago when they should have?” On February 27 2006, I wrote:

Wells’s speculation about Wilson’s status matches up with descriptions of Wilson’s employment offered by some knowledgeable sources. There appears to be no doubt that Wilson was a covert CIA agent at the beginning and during much of her career; people who trained with her and who served with her attest to that. But there are questions about whether Wilson was in any practical way operating undercover in the years leading up to her exposure in the Novak column. The Libby team seemed to be suggesting that Wilson’s classified status, if that is what she had, was vestigial — that her undercover days were over and she only retained that status on paper.

One knowledgeable source suggests that might be the case, but maintains that being technically undercover was still being undercover. “She was definitely undercover by agency standards at the time in question,” the source says. “That was a classified bit of information, and is sufficient as far as the agency is concerned to bring it to the attention of the Justice Department. You can argue whether she should have been, but as far as the agency was concerned it was classified.”

There have been reports that Valerie Plame Wilson was changing jobs — and job status — at the CIA when the leak of her identity occurred. In their book Hubris, David Corn — a reporter for The Nation who has worked closely with Joseph Wilson — and Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff wrote that

Prior to the leak, [Valerie Plame Wilson] had started to change her status from nonofficial cover to official cover. She was in the process of leaving the Joint Task Force on Iraq to assume a personnel management position within the CIA. After sixteen years in operations, she wasn’t relishing the new job. But others at the agency had advised her to put in some time as an administrator to rise through the ranks. She wanted to maintain official cover so she could return to operations. But her need for deep-cover NOC [nonofficial cover] status had passed. The paperwork for this transition was in motion when Novak’s column hit.

That passage, if correct, suggests that Mrs. Wilson was not performing in any deep-cover capacity, and perhaps not in any classified capacity at all, when the Novak column was published. But she nevertheless maintained a classified status, with the possibility — perhaps made somewhat remote by her husband’s increasingly high-profile actions — of returning to covert work in the future. That, together with her own actions like attending the Senate Democratic Policy Committee or meeting with Nicholas Kristof, fueled confusion and enormous controversy about her status. I think that, given all of what we know today, my description of her status was accurate.

— Byron York, NR’s White House correspondent, is the author of the book The Vast Left Wing Conspiracy: The Untold Story of How Democratic Operatives, Eccentric Billionaires, Liberal Activists, and Assorted Celebrities Tried to Bring Down a President — and Why They’ll Try Even Harder Next Time.
National Review Online -

[Yonivore]

Unfortunately, for Ms. Plame, the facts just don't jibe with her version of events.

Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reported almost three years ago that Ms. Plame's "cover" had apparently been blown not once, but twice, and long before Bob Novak printed his column in 2003.

Who rememers this blast from the past (http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200507180801.asp):


THE MEDIA TELLS THE COURT: PLAME'S COVER WAS BLOWN IN THE MID-1990s

As the media alleged to the judges (in Footnote 7, page 8, of their brief), Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a spy in Moscow. Of course, the press and its attorneys were smart enough not to argue that such a disclosure would trigger the defense prescribed in Section 422 because it was evidently made by a foreign-intelligence operative, not by a U.S. agency as the statute literally requires.

But neither did they mention the incident idly. For if, as he has famously suggested, President Bush has peered into the soul of Vladimir Putin, what he has no doubt seen is the thriving spirit of the KGB, of which the Russian president was a hardcore agent. The Kremlin still spies on the United States. It remains in the business of compromising U.S. intelligence operations.

Thus, the media's purpose in highlighting this incident is blatant: If Plame was outed to the former Soviet Union a decade ago, there can have been little, if anything, left of actual intelligence value in her "every operation, every relationship, every network" by the time anyone spoke with Novak (or, of course, Corn).

THE CIA OUTS PLAME TO FIDEL CASTRO

Of greater moment to the criminal investigation is the second disclosure urged by the media organizations on the court. They don't place a precise date on this one, but inform the judges that it was "more recent" than the Russian outing but "prior to Novak's publication."

And it is priceless. The press informs the judges that the CIA itself "inadvertently" compromised Plame by not taking appropriate measures to safeguard classified documents that the Agency routed to the Swiss embassy in Havana. In the Washington Times article — you remember, the one the press hypes when it reports to the federal court but not when it reports to consumers of its news coverage — Gertz elaborates that "[t]he documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but [unidentified U.S.] intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them."

Thus, the same media now stampeding on Rove has told a federal court that, to the contrary, they believe the CIA itself blew Plame's cover before Rove or anyone else in the Bush administration ever spoke to Novak about her. Of course, they don't contend the CIA did it on purpose or with malice. But neither did Rove — who, unlike the CIA, appears neither to have known about nor disclosed Plame's classified status. Yet, although the Times and its cohort have a bull's eye on Rove's back, they are breathtakingly silent about an apparent CIA embarrassment — one that seems to be just the type of juicy story they routinely covet.

And, on the matter of her involvement with the assignment of Joseph Wilson to the Niger junket?

In her testimony to the Recent Committee on Administrative Witch-Hunting:


"I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him. There was no nepotism involved. I did not have the authority..."
Poor Val. Apparently, she's unfamiliar with the final report of the Senate Intelligence Committee on pre-war intelligence in Iraq. On page 50 of that document, the committee concludes that Ms. Plame led the efforts to dispatch Joe Wilson to Niger, based on the notes and memoranda of a State Department intelligence analyst who attended the meeting.


(U) On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO’s Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst’s notes indicate that the meeting was “apparently convened by [the former ambassador’s] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue.” The former ambassador’s wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Unfortunately, for Ms. Plame, the facts just don't jibe with her version of events.

Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reported almost three years ago that Ms. Plame's "cover" had apparently been blown not once, but twice, and long before Bob Novak printed his column in 2003.

Who rememers this blast from the past (http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200507180801.asp):



And, on the matter of her involvement with the assignment of Joseph Wilson to the Niger junket?

In her testimony to the Recent Committee on Administrative Witch-Hunting:


Poor Val. Apparently, she's unfamiliar with the final report of the Senate Intelligence Committee on pre-war intelligence in Iraq. On page 50 of that document, the committee concludes that Ms. Plame led the efforts to dispatch Joe Wilson to Niger, based on the notes and memoranda of a State Department intelligence analyst who attended the meeting.



Oh goody we have Yoni telling someone what they actually said..even though they denied saying it..

[xrayzebra]

Gee, GGA, got to say one thing. You folks never let truth stand
in the way of a chance to blame Bush.

[George Gervin's Afro]

Gee, GGA, got to say one thing. You folks never let truth stand
in the way of a chance to blame Bush.


Plame said under oath she had nothing to do with it... I say let's get Bush under oath?

[Yonivore]

Plame said under oath she had nothing to do with it... I say let's get Bush under oath?
Well, considering President Bush wasn't in the room, I'd settle for all the CIA pricks that were...first.

[Nbadan]

someone's lying....we have two conflicting stories as to who really recommended Wilson for the Niger trip. Really, I think the WH would like this whole Plame-matter to just go away and that's why they aren't persuing it more aggressively, most republicans haven't even bother to show for the hearings. They wouldn't want to let the Brewster-Jennings story, which I think was the bigger revelation, out of the bag and force the M$M to actually do their jobs, investigative reporting.

[ChumpDumper]

I'm sure one of those newly appointed US Attorneys -- maybe Rove's crony -- would be happy to indict Plame on the numberous counts of perjury Yoni accuses her of.

Why isn't anyone doing that, Yoni?

[xrayzebra]

Plame said under oath she had nothing to do with it... I say let's get Bush under oath?

Before which committee are we speaking. She has two
stories, both under oath.

[xrayzebra]

I'm sure one of those newly appointed US Attorneys -- maybe Rove's crony -- would be happy to indict Plame on the numberous counts of perjury Yoni accuses her of.

Why isn't anyone doing that, Yoni?

You mean like the followed-up on Burglar, the stocking
stuffer. He only stole classified documents, more than
likely altered other documents and only lost his
clearance for a few years. DOJ still want demand he
take a lie detector test. Maybe Bush bends over
backwards too much trying to "get along" with the
dimm-o-craps.

[clambake]

Drag'em all in, repubs and dems. Who gives a shit. Let the chips fall. Would you settle for that Ray?

[xrayzebra]

Yeah, I go along with that, bringing both Plame and Burglar in
along with Wilson.

[clambake]

So that's a yes? Bring them all in, including cheney and rove, under oath?

[xrayzebra]

^^I didn't say that. Rove and Cheney have done nothing wrong
that I am aware of, except being Republican and not taking any
crap from the dimm-o-craps. Of course that is a crime in your eyes
and the dimm-0-craps eyes. I told you the three folks I was
talking about.

[clambake]

Why not question everybody? What are you afraid of?

[xrayzebra]

^^Nothing

[ChumpDumper]

You mean like the followed-up on Burglar, the stocking
stuffer. He only stole classified documents, more than
likely altered other documents and only lost his
clearance for a few years. DOJ still want demand he
take a lie detector test. Maybe Bush bends over
backwards too much trying to "get along" with the
dimm-o-craps.That's bullshit. Bush never did anything to accomodate Democrats. Why are you trying to change the subject to something completely unrelated here?

[clambake]

Why not bring them all in, Ray? Including the 30 fictitious prosecuters? All of them under oath? It wouldn't change any ideas for you, so where's the harm?

[Nbadan]

Plames contridictions are coming back to haunt her credibility....


WASHINGTON - The public testimony of former CIA officer Valerie Plame before a House committee last week conflicts with what she told a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee three years ago, a government source told The Examiner this week.

...

Before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee last week, Plame testified under oath that a CIA colleague, whom she did not name, first mentioned her husband as a trip candidate during a discussion at Langley headquarters. She denied recommending her husband, as Republicans have reported in their attempt to show why Bush officials discussed her occupation.

According to a U.S. government source, who spoke to The Examiner this week on condition of anonymity, Plame did not mention this incident when she provided secret testimony to the Senate Intelligence committee in 2004.

...

“We have checked the transcript of the comments made to the committee by the former reports officer and I stand by the committee’s description of his comments," said Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Mo., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “I stand by the findings of the committee’s report.”

Bond said he was willing to re-interview witnesses. Melvin Dubee, spokesman for committee chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he has heard no such talk on the Democratic side.

Examiner (http://www.examiner.com/a-634742~Plame_s_testimony_shifting__source_says.htm l)

The "Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq" contains the following:


Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife “offered up his name” and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12,2002, from the former ambassador’s wife says, “my husband has good relations with both the PM and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.”

A copy of the Committee (http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/13jul20041400/www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/s108-301/sec2.pdf)

[ChumpDumper]

And?