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The first part of the story quotes a few lines from the fawning piece in the Wa Post that was featured on MSN for a day or so. I understand the frustration and anger in having covers blown for many people. BUT - she put herself at risk by first marrying a diplomat/politician who couldn't keep his mouth shut, and secondly getting him and her involved in this trip to Africa where he didn't know to really look for what there was to find. Finding nothing, he took the political view of some in the CIA and went public in a weird partisan way, inviting scrutiny into what he did and why he did it. So the CIA outed itself, with her blessing!

Some of the reasons for this not making sense include the fact that US citizens simply don't do that stuff.

Covert intelligence ain't like Alias or JAG; the US types are there to find, recruit, train, control, locals who do the shaky stuff. It's pretty simple, 007 was clearly a Brit, Ms Plame is clearly an American, US born Chinese are clearly not Taiwanese or Shanghainese ... to borrow a quote from "Patton", the idea is to get the other poor dumb (citizen) to risk his or her life. In the mean time, maintain plausable denial for the US asset.

It is fairly rare for a US person to unload a dead drop or do much more than provide bonafides for the locals. And in those cases the US person is either a) tightly bound to diplomatic immunity or b) in so deep that their cover would be have required more years than this lady ever spent in one spot. The idea is that the local asset, such as the guy lost when Toricelli blew his name, is either at risk or placed so highly that the risk to our guy is worth it (and there is a back door available).

She might have been a courier, or some other transient actor, but I really, really, doubt she had to prove she was "a hell of a shot with an AK-47,...(or)...skilled in throwing hand grenades".

On the same note, she and her hubby might well have been "assets" in the business of providing information they picked up along the way. (That's pretty common and I think some of the rules have been liberalized - journalists and doctors etc. being more in use than before.) For that matter, she might have had Mr. sweet tea assigned an asset number without his even knowing about it. Still, not risking a US citizen with any retribution other than the risk of a hasty persona non grata type departure from those "messy places".

At least on the surface, this thing looks like a couple of (typically) self serving and ambitious bureaucrats overplayed their combined hand and slipped into overt partisan politicsl: and were 'outed' for that.