Posted on 10/05/2003 4:32:15 AM PDT by billorites
IF AMBASSADOR Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was indeed a covert agent for the CIA (and not just an analyst), and if a Bush administration official did expose her, a 1982 federal law may have been broken and someone should pay. But considering the many ironies of this story, Wilson’s allegation that Bush’s administration “outted” his wife to punish him (by risking her death, implicitly) just doesn’t figure.
Wilson wrote a New York Times op-ed faulting the White House for suspecting that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger. (An ambassador in both the George H.W. Bush and Clinton administrations and a long-time friend of and former aide to Al Gore, Wilson admits he became anti-George W. Bush after the 2000 South Carolina primary. He is now a big supporter of John Kerry’s Presidential campaign.)
Irony No. 1: The Bush administration allegedly released the name of a CIA officer as political payback against the officer’s husband. Doesn’t the Bush administration need the help and high morale of the CIA right now to help prosecute the War on Terror? What would it have to gain by putting a CIA operative’s life in danger? One must assume the leaker knew he wasn’t endangering Valerie Plame’s life.
Irony No. 2: Columnist Bob Novak was the journalist who printed Plame’s name. Novak opposed the war against Saddam Hussein because he, like Wilson, did not believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to the United States. Was Novak used by the administration? Was he callous about Plame’s safety?
Having worked for Novak for five years, I know him to be an exceptionally savvy journalist who doesn’t allow himself to be used as a pawn of any administration. He is a patriot who cares deeply about the safety of men and women defending our country, and he is a recent convert to Catholicism who takes ethics and human life seriously.
Novak explained in his Oct. 1 column how Plame’s name ended up in his July 14 column. After Wilson’s predictably anti-Bush New York Times piece appeared, Novak probed into the matter of why the CIA would want a Kerry supporter to go to Niger to investigate possible “yellowcake” uranium sales in the first place. Administration officials said the reason Wilson was sent was because his wife, a CIA officer, pushed for him to go.
Here’s where a law may have been broken by administration officials, but here is where it also is necessary to digest a few facts.
The fact that Wilson’s wife was a CIA officer is newsworthy, because it tells Americans that even after the massive intelligence failure of September 11, the CIA may be making decisions based on politics and personal ties instead of what’s best for the country.
Was former ambassador Joe Wilson the best person to send to Niger to search for uranium dealers? Maybe not, given his strong anti-Bush bias and the implausibility of thugs from Niger revealing anything noteworthy to an official ambassador who grandstands in the New York Times about his CIA connection. Why did the CIA not send a qualified investigator in Wilson’s place?
Secondly, it is important to realize this: Lots of people in Washington work at the CIA, and most of them are not glamorous secret agents whose lives would be endangered if their identities were revealed. In fact, columnist Maureen Dowd has revealed that Plame blabbed to Wilson about her CIA work around the time of their first kiss. She was apparently as casual as the administration about her “cover.”
In the 10 years I spent in Washington, I met three people who rather off-handedly told me they had done work for “Langley,” the Virginia neighborhood where the CIA is openly situated. When Novak called the CIA to confirm his sources’ allegation, he wrote, the CIA confirmed it but asked him not to print Plame’s name. The CIA did not say that printing Plame’s name would endanger her. Instead the official said it could make traveling overseas more difficult for her, Novak reported.
Here’s where a journalist makes a decision about motives: Is it likely that the CIA asked that Plame’s name not be printed because her life or health would be jeopardized as an analyst? Or is it more likely that the CIA is embarrassed that someone found out the politics and personalities behind its post September 11 decision making?
Irony No. 3: Who are the fiercest defenders of CIA operatives and fiercest critics of “freedom of the press” now? U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Harvard officials, and the editorial pages of the liberal Washington Post and New York Times.
If a law was broken, whoever broke it should pay the price. But let’s not be naive and accept Joe Wilson’s tripe about the White House wanting to endanger his wife as payback for his criticisms. The more likely motivation is administration concern that even after the CIA fell down on the job before 9/11, it continues to take short-cuts in the War on Terror.
Bernadette Malone is the former editorial page director.
Irony No. 1: The Bush administration allegedly released the name of a CIA officer as political payback against the officer’s husband. Doesn’t the Bush administration need the help and high morale of the CIA right now to help prosecute the War on Terror? What would it have to gain by putting a CIA operative’s life in danger? One must assume the leaker knew he wasn’t endangering Valerie Plame’s life.
The Bush administration, or someone within in it, could have very well decided that it was worth the risk of alienating the CIA if it thought that Plame's exposure would prevent Ambassador Wilson from revealing anything else he knew about the yellowcake affair.
Secondly, any White House leaker didn't have to know that Valerie Plame was undercover in order to leak her name to Robert Novak. All he had to believe is that she was a simple 'analyst', and that exposing her would have no significant consequences. An assumption that turned out to be wrong.
Irony No. 2: Columnist Bob Novak was the journalist who printed Plame’s name. Novak opposed the war against Saddam Hussein because he, like Wilson, did not believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction that were a threat to the United States. Was Novak used by the administration? Was he callous about Plame’s safety?
Obviously he was being callous about her safety, as he deliberately printed her name and work status despite being asked not to. As to whether or not he was being used by the White House, your guess is as good as mine.
Having worked for Novak for five years, I know him to be an exceptionally savvy journalist who doesn’t allow himself to be used as a pawn of any administration.
No, he prefers to allow himself to be used by FBI spies named Robert Hanssen. Not only that, but he's been used by Karl Rove in the past to plant false stories.
The fact that Wilson’s wife was a CIA officer is newsworthy, because it tells Americans that even after the massive intelligence failure of September 11, the CIA may be making decisions based on politics and personal ties instead of what’s best for the country.
So it's now okay to expose CIA operatives on the basis of newsworthiness?
The fact that Plame might have been involved in sending her husband to Africa in no way justifies deliberately exposing a CIA operative to possible harm. And if Novak had wanted to, he could have easily avoided mentioning Plame's name and status and still drawn attention to the fact that someone at the CIA with close personal ties to Wilson had been involved in sending him to Africa.
Why did the CIA not send a qualified investigator in Wilson’s place?
On what basis is the former ambassador to Niger NOT qualified to investigate the matter? And how exactly was the CIA supposed to have known about Wilson's supposed 'anti-Bush' attitude in the first place? Prior to his New York times article, it was hardly public knowledge.
She was apparently as casual as the administration about her “cover.”
Absolute nonsense.
The CIA did not say that printing Plame’s name would endanger her. Instead the official said it could make traveling overseas more difficult for her, Novak reported.
No, this CIA official merely asked that her name not be used at all, and then gave Novak some rather broad hints that her actual status was undercover.
Keeping in mind, we currently only have Novak's word for this. Earlier reports had him stating that administration officials came to him for the story, not the other way around.
Here’s where a journalist makes a decision about motives: Is it likely that the CIA asked that Plame’s name not be printed because her life or health would be jeopardized as an analyst?
Again, completely and utterly irrelevant. It doesn't matter motives Novak had in exposing Plame, the fact remains that HE DID.
Irony No. 3: Who are the fiercest defenders of CIA operatives and fiercest critics of “freedom of the press” now? U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., Harvard officials, and the editorial pages of the liberal Washington Post and New York Times.
"I'm a registered Republican and I'm sickened by this," he added. "I've spoken with four colleagues who have since left the agency who worked with her. And they are livid."
Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst.
"[Bush] needs to get this behind him" by taking a more active role. "He has that main responsibility to see this through and see it through quickly, and that would include, if I was president, sitting down with my vice president and asking what he knows about it,"
Senator Chuck Hagel, R-Nebraska.
The more likely motivation is administration concern that even after the CIA fell down on the job before 9/11, it continues to take short-cuts in the War on Terror.
So, the argument is that the administration was trying to get the CIA to clean up its act by deliberately exposing one of its operatives at a time when, by the editor's own admission, needed it badly in the war on terror?
This is pure garbage. And if you guys think that the CIA is simply going to take this one sitting down, you're delusional.
The CIA HUMINT depends on its field operative. Under no circumstances will it ever allow the deliberate leaking of the name and work status of one of its agents by some political official to go unchallenged?
Why? Because if it did, no potential agent would ever, in their right mind want to work for the CIA, knowing that some White House bureaucrat could expose them publically on nothing more than a whim.
There is NO motive to out Plame.
First of all, if the administration wanted to kill her career, they could have done so quietly by having her re-assigned to the desk that monitors activity in Antarctica.
Secondly, quite a few people in DC knew that Plame was CIA. There have been several articles on this story.
Third, President Bush, whose father was a CIA director, values the CIA and has been quite supportive of their efforts, both publicly and in the budget. To think that he would use the CIA for political advantage, and a small one, is silly.
Given Mr. Wilson's attitude and background, I think it far more likely that he used his wife's position to prove his insider knowledge, and that Novak checked with both the CIA and an administration official, who verified it.
Why would Bush go after one ambassador and his wife over this story, when he has tolerated and worked with people such as Ted Kennedy, who have said and done much worse things? It is out of character for him and makes no sense.
Sorry, but I don't buy your long list of comments, since many of them are simply YOUR opinion.
I agree with you that Bush had nothing to do with this. However, that doesn't mean that someone in his administration didn't do this out of a foolish desire to play hardball. I very much hope that is not the case.
\ And I tend to believe Kristol when he says that the CIA in open revolt against Bush.
That's my question, too.
Especially since this CIA source over-hypes the importance and depth and scope of Wilson's trip.
Just like Wilson, this CIA "official" acted like Wilson's trip was the defining moment in the investigation into Iraq/uranium/Niger. Like Wilson, this CIA official ignores other contact Wilson had experienced with officials aware that Iraq was seekig to re-open trade with Niger a few years ago.
The CIA official was peddling half-truths, at best, anonymously, and meant to undermine the war on terror and this president.
Very curious. (But I have a feeling you share my suspicion of who it was).
LOL
The Bush administration isn't seeking to prevent Wilson from doing a damn thing. The fact is Wilson did withhold additional information when he wrote his famous op-ed....the "It was I, Joseph Wilson, who went to Niger" op-ed.
What a buffoon.
The fact is, Wilson and his wife were very open about her employer, and a dem told Cliff May about Plame before Novak's column was written. The dem was trying to convince May that Wilson wasn't a partisan hack (wrong--he is) and as proof this dem offered up Plame working at the CIA as evidence of how patriotic they are.
Really, nobody in this administration was out to reek revenge upon the idiotic (and treacherous) Wilsons.
Absolute nonsense.
Hmm. By all accounts, that is exactly right, and not the "nonsense" you state without supplying any reasoning behind your pronouncement.
Well, at least for me, the clicher was that Mr. Wilson himself acknowledged, his so-called "investigation" was nothing more than, in his own words, "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" at the U.S. embassy in Niger.
Yep. I can picture it in now........
"So, tell me the truth, Jamal, did Saddam Hussein ever try to buy yellowcake from you guys?"
"Why, of course not, Joe!"
"I didn't think so. Here ya go, Jamal, have some more mint tea."
So the double naught spy agency is starting to take Jefthro Bodines ideas to heart.
Could it possibly have been the wife of the "former diplomat" who published an op-ed in the New York Times just three days later?
Or was it the wife's superior...???
I.e., Foley. Who has since resigned...
A very good question. Novak's column was published on July 14. It has since been determined that a routine request for investigation was filed by the CIA within a week (evidently this is common practice, the DOJ receives about fifty such requests a year).
However, the request was not "publicized" (read "leaked") until a week ago Friday (Sept 26) -- by which time Ashcroft had appointed an investigative team and an orderly investigation was already underway.
Too orderly for some, evidently...
Would that have been General Weasly Clark, by any chance...???
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