The Phony Plame “Outing” Story

Miscellaneous | August 4, 2005 | Self

[Cautor]

Okie, thanks. I agree with everything you say. If you haven't already, you ought to read what Clifford May at National Review Online says about the Plame-Miller-Wilson triangle. I have no doubt Miller and Plame knew each other and that Plame herself--or her gabby hubby--may have sourced Miller, and also David Korn.

[SolidSupplySide]

I'd make that 10 years at the least

I think you mean 10 years at the most. And I think the 10 year timeline you reference is for non-official cover. She may have traveled outside the US with some sort of other cover in the past ten years. But that wouldn't trigger the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

[Cautor]

You are absolutely right. I stand corrected. I certainly meant 10 years at the most as I certainly do not count anything beyond 1994 as covered by the IIPA. Thanks for clarifying my comment.

[okie01]

Cautor has added some new entries for Plame's biography...

[ken5050]

Kudos...

[Cautor]

Thanks Ken, and I agree with your tagline completely. We can't get enough of either smart women or beautiful women on our side. And Lord knows they're all on our side. If you don't believe me, just look at the nags of NARAL or the rest of that lot.

[Sam Hill]

Great research, Cautor! Kudos!

I think the Vanity Fair piece and others indicate Plame was educated at the London School of Economics on the CIA's dime. I can't think of much else to add.

"They paid $735,000 for the home which records show had previously sold for a mere $44,000."

Man alive, does that ever jump out. It reminds me of so many Clintonite deals, like George Stephanolpolis's. Very fishy.

[Sam Hill]

"A fact worth recalling is that Wilson was on the payroll of the Kerry campaign until he was thoroughly discredited by revelations proving he had lied about how he garnered the Niger trip."

Technically, I believe he was an "unpaid advisor," just like Sandy Burglar. But he was certainly expecting some kind of payment for his services, should Kerry be elected, in the form of a plum job.

[Cautor]

Thank you sir. Looks like Wilson and Plame were not hurting in the income department. I doubt they made enough on civil service salaries (or CIA equivalent) to live the life of Riley in the Foxhall area of DC. If you know the area, and I lived there for a while, it's not cheap.

[Cautor]

You are certainly right about how Wilson was described--unpaid advisor--a fact that slipped my mind. I agree with you that his service to JFK was not entirely to be pro bono.

[nightowl]

You are absolutely correct and I have posted my thoughts serveral times on Free Republic. Fitzgerald needs to wrap this sucker up and indict Miller for criminal contempt and obstruction of justice and throw the book at the crooked Wilson's. That would be true justice in this case.

[Rockingham]

This is a good piece of work. I offer two comments.

First, US intelligence officers commonly use covers that cannot survive close scrutiny. The risks are monitored and covers are abandoned and created as need arises. Good covers and the associated personal "legends" that can stand intense scrutiny are expensive, difficult, and time-consuming to create.

Plame's cover seems to have been of the first type, useful and necessary, but inherently insecure and temporary. Most likely, Plame's undercover career was mostly over before Novak's column ran, with her cover perhaps still useful in limited instances, such as servicing prior contacts.

The loss of Plame's cover due to Novak's column, if that can even be said to have taken place, does not seem to have made for any appreciable danger to Plame and other CIA officers and agents. There would have been perhaps some minor scurrying by the CIA to wind up a blown cover, a matter about as consequential or unexpected as the Chicago police having to replace a worn out patrol car.

Second, the controversy that Wilson and Plame have worked so hard to generate and promote reeks of CIA and State Department incompetence and obstructionism as to Bush's foreign policy, as well as that Wilson and his wife are Democrats seeking to get a few licks in for their team. But are those explanations fully adequate for Wilson and Plame's conduct? There is a disturbing and little explored Saudi dimension to the entire controversy.

To put it bluntly, is the Wilson/Plame controversy in some part a Saudi operation designed to weaken Bush and subvert US Iraq policy? Wilson's current gig is in an organization funded by Saudi cash and sympathetic to Saudi foreign policy. Plame's work for the CIA also seems to have been in regard to the oil industry and Aramco, which necessarily means involvement with vital Saudi interests. And, on present knowledge, the possibility cannot be ruled out that Plame's CIA work could have been in immediate alliance with Saudi intelligence.

If this was the middle or late stages of the Cold War and there were similar associations and actions benefiting a Warsaw Pact country, the persons involved would have fallen under close investigation by US counterintelligence. Of course, this is not the Cold War, but a new war on terror, with the Saudis no more reliable a US ally than De Gaulle was or Vichy France would have been in WW II. Indeed, the Saudi regime and the extended royal family so fractured that Saudi Arabia and the Saudis are best regarded as both allies and enemies, essential for their oil but otherwise unworthy of any trust.

We are only in the early stages of the war on terror, with US strategy and policy hotly contested and in flux, just as in the early years of the Cold War. The US government and its foreign policy and intelligence communities are riddled not so much by neocons as with vast numbers of Arabists and Saudi sympathizers and hirelings. Saudi cash has bought them a great many friends in the US. We know that Joe Wilson and his institute receive substantial funding from the Saudis. Is there more of a Saudi connection than that? And is the sum of all such connections essential to explaining what Wilson and Plame have been up to?

[AZ_Cowboy]

Superb. I would love to see some footnotes or endnotes, though.

I have suspected for some time that the Plame Game is some sort of a ruse. I suspect that a lot of us here in the FR community have our theories. Quite a number of pundits on the right do as well, apparently.

There are just too many oddities in the whole thing for the reality of what happened to be what has been presented to the public via MSM coverage.

First and foremost, we have the highly improbable situation where Judith Miller is sitting in jail to protect Karl Rove. Matt Cooper almost took the fall, too. I find it very hard to believe that either of the companies these folks respectively work for would retain employees that were willing to go this far to stick up for the Bush Administration, expecially when it might involve bagging Karl Rove.

I am also bothered by the fact that there is very little to show for this alleged Niger trip by Joe Wilson. To add further suspicion, we have the fact that both Wilsons apparently had a certain animosity toward Bush and the Iraq war. Lastly, we now have the report that memos suggesting that this was a nepotistic venture getting Wilson over there in the first place.

The other previous "leaks" of Plame were new to me. I missed the original work sone on FrontpageMagazine by Ben Johnson.

Frankly, I remain committed to my original theory that Wilson is the origin of his wife's own leak, staging it with the knowledge that it would keep him out of the hot seat for an obviously bungled mission, keep his wife employed, all the while damaging the Administration and the Iraq War.

[AZ_Cowboy]

Here are some dovetailing pieces to the puzzle, at least as I see it:

Joseph Wilson's Amazing Left-Wing Dreamland

Wilson Lied, Kids Died!

I am sure more is to follow. I wish we could pull more out of Novak. Novak and Miller must know more.

[palmer]

apparent_cia_front_didnt_offer_much_cover (Boston Globe 10/10/03)

[palmer]

nice summary of the facts.

[cricket]

"I am fairly pessimistic myself over whether the truth will out. I hope you are not correct in your analysis that the truth will not matter."

Well, when the MSM gets the 'synopsis' of Plame/Wilson right . . .or they feed that 'elephant in the livingroom'; I will more optimistic.

[cricket]

"I am sure more is to follow. I wish we could pull more out of Novak."

Cannot figure that either. . .surely Novak has pulled the magic thread by now. . . (Drudge carrying ap story (yesterday/today) of Novak's 'snapping' with James Carville on air. . .and earning himself a 'forced vacation'. . .as they moved into Plame/Wilson territory. . .

[Miss Marple]

Cautor, where did you get the information on the prior purchase price of the house ($44,000)? That would not be unusual if the property had been owned by someone for 30 years before the Wilsons bought it. I tend to think that is so, because the area they live in is a very expensive neighborhood.

On the other hand, I still want to know how they had enough money to buy that house (as well as the other expensive components of their lifestyle) right after Wilson retired. His company was just getting started, Plame was still on the government payroll, and he had no other source of income other than his pension.

[Wiseghy]

I'm sure Novak is jumping out of his skin to discuss the Plame/Saudi angle, but the legal agreements force him to keep silent and look like he's stonewalling. He's ethical and has built a decades long reputation as straight shooter. Must be tough to get baited by Carville and everyone else.

Hard to blame him for being upset about the situation.