Posted on 03/09/2007 10:29:39 PM PST by TheBridge
What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA
(excerpt)
Her specific position at the CIA is revealed for the first time in a new book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, by the author of this article and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. The book chronicles the inside battles within the CIA, the White House, the State Department and Congress during the run-up to the war. Its account of Wilson's CIA career is mainly based on interviews with confidential CIA sources.
The Novak column triggered a scandal and a criminal investigation. At issue was whether Novak's sources had violated a little-known law that makes it a federal crime for a government official to disclose identifying information about a covert US officer (if that official knew the officer was undercover). A key question was, what did Valerie Wilson do at the CIA? Was she truly undercover? In a subsequent column, Novak reported that she was "an analyst, not in covert operations." White House press secretary Scott McClellan suggested that her employment at the CIA was no secret. Jonah Goldberg of National Review claimed, "Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already."
Valerie Wilson was no analyst or paper-pusher. She was an operations officer working on a top priority of the Bush Administration. Armitage, Rove and Libby had revealed information about a CIA officer who had searched for proof of the President's case. In doing so, they harmed her career and put at risk operations........
(Excerpt) Read more at thenation.com ...
Can of Corn.What a sniveling little weasel.
Rubbish.
I think she was the lady that gave the working guys at the CIA coffee, back rubs and blow jobs.
bttt
And I'm really the original James Bond.
didn't this covert agent drive everyday from her driveway through the front gate of CIA headquarters?
But there's at least 5 gates at Langley. So, who would know? Her neighbors didnt' know until Novak's article. So I'm wondering.........
Well, if David Corn says it's so, it must be so. Who could refute such a reputable source as The Nation?/sarc
Horse manure. She was brought in and given a desk to stop her from causing problems.
Obviously that gambit didn't work.
all these reporters say they knew and others did too
> But there's at least 5 gates at Langley. So, who would know? Her neighbors didnt' know until Novak's article. So I'm wondering.........
Come on, that's just silly. The existence of 5 gates isn't a countermeasure for someone who is intent on identifying CIA employees. The vast majority of people working at the CIA probably take the same gate every morning.
I don't bye it either! This is one of those Big Lies that the MSM repeats like a Creed (and the Bushies have been completely incompetent at dismantling).
Novak said the administration official told him in July that Wilson's trip was 'inspired by his wife,' and that the CIA confirmed her 'involvement in the mission for her husband.' ... 'They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else,' he said, adding that a source at the CIA told him Plame was 'an analyst -- not a covert operator and not in charge of undercover operators.'"
Another issue was whether Valerie Wilson had sent her husband to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Iraq had sought uranium there. Hubris contains new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been.
Byron York covered the trial and wrote this piece: Is Everything We Know About Joe Wilson’s Trip to Niger Wrong?
The accepted version of events is that Vice President Dick Cheney got things started when he asked for information about possible Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium in Africa. After that request, CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson suggested sending her husband to look into the question, and after that, the CIA flew Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate. But the new documents suggest that Mrs. Wilson suggested her husband for the trip before the vice president made his request. In other words, Joseph Wilson’s visit to Niger, which everyone believes was undertaken at the behest of the vice president, was actually in the works before Dick Cheney asked his now-famous question. And if that is true, our current understanding of the chronology of events is wrong.
The problem for Isikoff and Corn is that either Plame was a high ranking operational officer and then her suggestion to send Wilson would be the same as "arranging" it. If, however, she was just a "paper-pusher" then her suggestion would be treated as just that, a suggestion. Of course, given the fact that Wilson had been sent to Niger before, and that the CIA was in a hurry to make sure that they didn't loose points to the DIA, the likelihood that her suggestion would be acted on was very high.
I was under the impression that she was just another worthless bureaucratic parasite. What am I missing here?
"A covert agent is defined as an agent who had worked abroad in a covert status in the preceding five years."(from 'World News Net' article)
"In 1997 she returned to CIA headquarters and joined the Counterproliferation Division."(from 'The Nation' Article)
1998=1 1999=2...2003=6
Please check my math? Do the rules of arithmetic apply only to one side of the aisle and not both?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.