Apparent CIA front didn't offer much cover (Plamegate)

Boston Globe ^ | 10/10/2003 | Ross Kerber and Bryan Bender

[Lorianne]

At first glance, 101 Arch St. seems like the perfect setting for a spy story: an elegant office building downtown with an upscale restaurant, lots of foot traffic, and a subway entrance to stage a getaway

"It's a great place to blend in," said Rob Griffin, regional president of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., the real estate firm.

The CIA may have thought so too. Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative once listed as her employer Brewster Jennings & Associates. A company by that name has a listed address but no visible presence at the 21-story office tower.

Plame's exposure as an intelligence operative has become a major controversy in Washington. Former intelligence officials confirmed Plame's cover was an invention and that she used other false identities and affiliations when working overseas. "All it was was a telephone and a post office box," said one former intelligence official who asked not to be identified. "When she was abroad she had a more viable cover."

That's a good thing, considering how little work seems to have gone in to establishing the company's presence in Boston, intelligence observers said. While the renovated building houses legal and investment firms, current and former building managers said they've never heard of Brewster Jennings. Nor did the firm file the state and local records expected of most businesses.

Both factors would have aroused the suspicions of anyone who tried to check up on Brewster Jennings, said David Armstrong, an Andover researcher for the Public Education Center, a liberal Washington think tank.

[Lorianne]

Check the year of this article, 2003

[Cicero]

Miss Moneypenny could not be found at 101 Arch Street?

[MEG33]

June or July, before the article..

[johnny7]

This is written in October, Novaks column came out in June.

[ScaniaBoy]

Vince Cannistraro, the CIA's former counterterrorism chief, said that when operating undercover outside the United States, Plame would have had a real job with a more legitimate company. The Boston company "is not an indicator of what she did overseas," he said.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but is not this the man who has said often afterwards that the revelation of Brewster Jennings Associated has put several CIA agents in severe danger?

At least I'm certain that the Mel Goodman, another former CIA man with a leftwing agenda, has said so repeatedly.

[ScaniaBoy]

I just pointed out yet another left-wing CIA/cya lie!

[BIGZ]

Where are Plames W-2 forms?

[MilleniumBug]

[Just mythoughts]

There did seem to be a Kerry style to Wilson's NYTimes article Wilson waited a year to write.

[fantom]

How apt. Fitz needs to look at sites like this. He is the one who has been unmasked. Is it possible that he does not know how ridiculous he now looks ? Anything he comes up with will be refuted quicker than the Rather Laugh fest, now that the blogs are up to speed. Man this is embarrassing.

[Sacajaweau]

Wonder what Joe's cut of Valerie's pension will be. Hope she was smart enough to have a pre-marital agreement....but then, any "secret agent" who outs herself on a third date has "something over her head", doesn't she.

I'll bet she never told the CIA about her third date with Joe and her 5 years was computed from the day after their marriage (April 23, 1998)....which amazingly makes April 24, 2003 fit the whole outing affair quite well. Joe thought he was "safe" when he published his article except he didn't know that Valerie had been written up as the "go between" on BOTH Niger trips.

Joe made an idiotic mistake when he published the "minutes" of their third date.

How many others did Valerie reveal herself to over the years? No wonder they never sent her overseas again. She should have been terminated years ago. They had to keep her to watch her, not because they needed her. This caper might have been her revenge. IMHO

[HawaiianGecko]

	If this twit was a NOC, the CIA would disavow any knowledge of her existence rather than whine about it in the press.