9/11 Panel Outs CIA Spymaster

NewsMax.com ^ | 4/15/04 | Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff

[kattracks]

Raising further questions about whether it's doing more harm than good, the commission probing the Sept. 11 attacks has revealed the identity of the CIA's top spymaster, a position considered so sensitive that in the entire history of the agency the anonymity of the person who holds it has never before been breached.

Called to testify on Wednesday, James L. Pavitt, head of the CIA clandestine operations unit, told the panel, "I am not a public person."

In a story headlined "Clandestine, Or at Least He Was Until Yesterday," the New York Times noted that the decision to out Pavitt by having him testify in public was so extraordinary that even some panel members expressed reluctance about the move.

"My stomach's been turning as Mr. Pavitt's been answering questions here this afternoon," 9/11 commissioner former Sen. Bob Kerrey said.

Kerrey urged the White House to issue a legal opinion saying that Pavitt's appearance did not set a precedent, the Times said.

Asked if being outed by the 9/11 panel made him uncomfortable, Pavitt answered cryptically, "Yes and no ... no one in my position has ever testified publicly."

[Travis McGee]

And the Gorelicker still sits on the commission. Amazing.

[mewzilla]

Oh, boy. Bet it was Gorelick's idea. She excells at damaging national security.

[Dutchgirl]

I don't know how private a person he is when google provides this many hits...

prWeb Results 1 - 10 of about 166 for "James L. Pavitt". (0.24 seconds)

[isom35]

whether Pavitt is gay or not should not matter to the commission.

[mewzilla]

That's not all she sat on apparently. Gorelick spent some time at DOD before going to Justice. According to Limbaugh today she worked to gut some special ops programs while there. She also belonged to something called the Threat Reduction Advisory Committee. Wonder what she did on that?

[Dianna]

And just a few weeks ago it was a major sin for Kristol to mention Valerie whats-her-face?

[JimVT]

Kerrey urged the White House to issue a legal opinion saying that Pavitt's appearance did not set a precedent, the Times said

That's the best Kerrey can come up with?

A guy who got a CMH for serving his country should have stood up in front of the cameras and resigned over this one.

This damned "panel" is more like a pack of rabid hyenas!

[mewzilla]

Valerie Plame. Well, I won't hold my breath waiting for the same folks who got hot and bothered about that to hit the roof over this.

[beckett]

Valerie Plame. And it was Robert Novak, not William Kristol.

[Focault's Pendulum]

She also belonged to something called the Threat Reduction Advisory Committee. Wonder what she did on that?

Ted Kennedy's diet advisor.

[Krodg]

Who asked for him to testify publicly? The same person that decided Clinton and Gore would be given special treatment?

[Steely Tom]

She also belonged to something called the Threat Reduction Advisory Committee. Wonder what she did on that?

Let me guess. She took written material, reports, memos, documents, CD-ROMs and other electronic media describing various threats to the security of the United States, and reduced them by shipping them to recycling plants in Russia and China.

(steely)

[Lancey Howard]

Another "9-11 Commission" disgrace.

And Jamie Gorelick, the single person most responsible for the onerous security conditions that allowed the terrorist attacks of 9-11-01 to happen, sits on the Commission and won't testify. Meantime, scumbags the likes of Richard Ben-Veniste and Bob Kerrey are given free reign to turn this political witch-hunt into a partisan charade of a$$-clowns.

Un-friggin'-believable.
Shut down this foul, stinking, "9-11 Commission" farce NOW!

[mewzilla]

I wouldn't be surprised. For what the committee was up to, click here (it's in PDF). Wonder what Gorelick did while serving on it.

[lonewacko_dot_com]

He seems to have been outed 5 years ago in a WaPo interview: http://www.davidignatius.com/121299WashingtonPost.html

"Okay, James L. Pavitt. You've just been named deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, which means you're the guy who runs the so-called "clandestine service..."

Only these deep-cover officers, it's argued, can get close to the targets that really matter, such as terrorist groups in the Middle East, or rocket scientists in North Korea, or nuclear engineers in Iran."

[beckett]

James L. Pavitt

From The New York Times (registration required)

Clandestine, or at Least He Was Until Yesterday

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: April 15, 2004

WASHINGTON, April 14 — The broad-shouldered man wearing the charcoal gray suit and silver-rimmed spectacles did not look much different from the other government officials who have, in solemn succession this week, raised their right hands and sworn to tell the truth before the commission investigating the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But as soon as James L. Pavitt opened his mouth, it became clear that he is hardly an ordinary bureaucrat.

"I am not a public person," Mr. Pavitt told the panel on Wednesday. "Indeed, in the history of the C.I.A., no one in my position has ever testified publicly."

That is because Mr. Pavitt runs the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine service. He is, in effect, America's chief spy.

His appearance was so extraordinary that one commissioner, Bob Kerrey, suggested that the White House do for Mr. Pavitt what it did for Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser: issue a legal opinion saying that the appearance did not set a precedent. "My stomach's been turning," Mr. Kerrey said, "as Mr. Pavitt's been answering questions here this afternoon."

Mr. Pavitt, who joined the agency in 1973 as a career trainee, hardly seemed as if his stomach was turning. He read confidently from a prepared statement, printed in capital letters and bearing the kind of imperfections that suggested it was produced on a typewriter. Asked if his moment in the spotlight made him uncomfortable, he thought for a moment, then said, "Yes and no."

But on the typewriter question, his lips were sealed. A spy, after all, must keep his secrets.

A G-Man, Not an ABCD-Man

"The F.B.I. computer system was considered the joke of Washington, D.C.," the agency's former acting director, Thomas J. Pickard, said in written testimony submitted to the panel on Tuesday.

It was a startling admission, but then Mr. Pickard confessed he had not mastered one of the fundamentals of computer work: the keyboard. Under questioning, he testified that he sent an annual message by e-mail to all F.B.I. employees urging them to share their concerns. His secretary printed the replies.

"She'd print it out each night and say, `Here's your homework. Do it tonight and bring it back tomorrow,' " Mr. Pickard reported. "Because I don't type."

All for One and One for All

With five Democrats and five Republicans, the commission has been accused of partisanship. But when Jamie S. Gorelick, a Democrat, questioned George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence, on Wednesday, she made what can only be described as a sisterly reference to a Republican commissioner, John F. Lehman.

"You had a very interesting exchange with brother Lehman," Ms. Gorelick told Mr. Tenet.

Mr. Lehman, the Navy secretary under President Ronald Reagan, proved his brotherliness later in the day, when Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., chairman

[HiJinx]

The job of the TRAC is to identify threats and make them less threatening.

I personally have no experience with it, but have worked with officers who did. Their experience is that it added a layer of bureaucracy to valuable military function.

[piasa]

Except it wasn't Novak who said she was 'covert' - that honor went to NEWSDAY, as I recall, with some help from the Wash Post.

[beckett]

Except it wasn't Novak who said she was 'covert' - that honor went to NEWSDAY, as I recall, with some help from the Wash Post.

Ah---is that how it played out? OK.

Any way you look at it, it's a non-scandal scandal. Plame was not a field operative and did not have foreign contacts who might have been exposed as a result of her exposure. A statute may have been violated (although Novak's source or sources probably honestly believed he, she or they were talking on background), but the spirit of the law was not. Nobody was put in danger as a result of Ms. Plame's new found fame, and, in fact, in an open society I am not so sure I like the idea of a bunch of gov't employees running around the country with an unjustified cloak of secrecy protecting them from the hurly-burly of politics.

Plame and Wilson put themselves into the game when Wilson wrote his column. She was a source for her husband and probably convinced her superiors at CIA to send him to Nigeria in the first place. Why exactly is she supposed to be able to do all that and still have her identity remain a secret?