Whitehouse leaked so & so's name...

[ARperson]

Do you have any links for that info? Not doubting it, just couldn't find it on my own and would like to know more about it.

No, sorry. Regrettably, I have to admit to nothing more than hearsay on this one. But I have heard it from two different sources that weren't related. One said that the husband published this info in his biography or some such book. One of the sources I usually find credible enough to believe on the surface (though never taken as Gospel truth), the other I don't know from Adam. Just thought it curious that both said the same thing.

 

[Chris Rhines]

First off, the wife is not an agent. She is an officer. Agents (assets) are foreign nationals who are paid for information.

Second, it is still not clear whether she was an undercover officer. Probably, she was not (and it would be a simple matter to find out, as the majority of CIA overseas employees are declared openly.) If she was undercover, odds are overwhelming that she was operating under State cover (pretending to be a State Dept. employee), being as how she was married to a State Department diplomat. I would be amazed if she were actually working under non-offical cover, as at least one source has claimed.

Third, we still don't have much of a clue what her job description was, but I doubt strongly that she was running agent networks, for the simple reason that the CIA doesn't run agents anymore. It is whispered in some circles that the DO never ran an agent that wasn't a walk-in, and I tend to believe them.

So, a weird situation, at best. It's questionable how much threat this officer was actually exposed to, if any. Still and all, whoever leaked her status broke a contract, and as such needs to be drummed out toot sweet. What I can't figure out is why. If the Bush administration wanted to punish a dissenting voice (and I don't for a second put it past those twits) why not just re-assign him to Iceland and be done with it?

Strange stuff...

- Chris

 

[ACP]

Wow. The conservative Bush double standard raises its ugly head again. If this was the Clinton administration and George Stephanpoulos was named as a potential leaker, you'd be calling for his head on a platter and for Clinton's impeachment. Instead, we just figure Bush is TOO STUPID to know what's going on.

 

[Flynt]

The CIA formally requested the Dept. Of Justice to consider this a criminal matter.

 

[DaveB]

Screwing with the CIA

Funny piece from http://www.counterpunch.org/tripp10112003.html

...Let us recap:

Bush's people, and I use the word 'people' loosely, decided to make the CIA take the fall for the one canard out of several thousand that a slumbering nation happened to catch on its way into the swamps of the Mesopotamian desert in the name of anti-terrorism. This canard also happened to be one of the few that the CIA specifically suggested Bush not espouse as an excuse for his little camping trip to hell, so we have a painful insult/injury compound already, vis-à-vis the CIA.

Shortly thereafter, same Bush people, in a moment of good-natured backstabbing retribution, exposed one of the CIA's own assets, and by extension all the other assets to which she can be connected by a reasonably bright foreign intelligence agency with access to a telephone. I'm just guessing here, but it seems to me that an agency willing to overthrow the government of Guatemala in the name of banana imports ought to have no problem saying "screw you right back" to a bunch of venal, inbred frat boys blundering their way through their last terms in public office.

You don't play dirty tricks on the folks who invented them. Expect events in the next few months to get very interesting as political revelations start to occur at the most embarrassing moments, policy notions don't get properly cooked intelligence to back them up, and personal secrets float into public view for no apparent reason, drifting down the cloaca publicum to the delight of scandal-mongers everywhere. The CIA has officially been dicked with...

db

 

[TexasVet]

Well, as the ranting raged on TV, every reporter I saw interviewed about it said that, "well, yeah, we all knew she was CIA for years." Seems to be a typical tempest in a teapot.

 

[Khornet]

Latest thing I've seen

is a comment from some official that her cover was blown by Aldrich Ames, and she was recalled from any 'covered' work......in 1994.

DaveB, you may or may not have a point. I may or may not have one either. But if your sources are places like counterpunch, your point needn't be taken seriously. That's like citing an editorial as data.....come to think of it, that's what your links were.

To review, we have a man whose wife is CIA. He keeps it shady by attacking the administration on the hottest issue of the day....in an editorial in the NYT. Which will naturally lead to inquiries about who he is, who he's married to, etc. A man who in fact has been a Dem partisan all along, not just after his trip to Niger.

And when he made his big play in the NYT, people (e.g. Novak) naturally wanted to know how he was selected for his mission. What qualified him? How did he get chosen? And one of Novak's sources said his wife was CIA. A fair answer to a fair question, hardly the deliberate outing people claim.

I'd say if Plame really was at risk, CIA would never have let her husband go on the Niger mission. If she really was at risk, a good husband would have never made himself a big public figure. I say Wilson and CIA outed her, either carelessly or in some calculated manner. Relations are strained between the Admin. and CIA, and many in CIA appear opposed to Bush doctrine. It looks like they tried to trip Bush up and wound up with egg on their faces.

That's a more dispassionate analysis, starting from the premise of asking how and why would all the players do what they did, instead of from the premise that Bush stinks and therefore whatever was done was a dleiberate Bush dirty trick.

 

[w4rma]

Wilson … said … would be a violation … by the officials, not the columnist

CIA seeks probe of White House

WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate allegations that the White House broke federal laws by revealing the identity of one of its undercover employees in retaliation against the woman’s husband, a former ambassador who publicly criticized President Bush’s since-discredited claim that Iraq had sought weapons-grade uranium from Africa, NBC News has learned.
…
http://www.msnbc.com/news/937524.asp?0cv=CB10
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=135657

Rice 'Knew Nothing' About CIA Agent Leak

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Sunday she knew "nothing of any" White House effort to leak the identity of an undercover CIA officer in July, a charge now under review at the Justice Department.

On the "Fox News Sunday" program, the top aide to President Bush said, "This has been referred to the Justice Department. I think that is the appropriate place for it."

Rice said the White House would cooperate should the Justice Department, headed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, decide to proceed with a criminal investigation of the matter, which centers on the alleged public disclosure of the wife of former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

Wilson was sent by the CIA to Niger in 2002 to investigate a report that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Niger, but returned to say it was highly doubtful.
…
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm.../iraq_intelligence_probe_dc&cid=564&ncid=1480
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=136932

A White House smear

Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security—and break the law—in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?

It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted.
…
The sources for Novak’s assertion about Wilson’s wife appear to be “two senior administration officials.†If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what’s known as “nonofficial cover†and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson’s wife is such a person—and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her—her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, “Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames.†If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good.

This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in prison. Journalists are protected from prosecution, unless they engage in a “pattern of activities†to name agents in order to impair US intelligence activities. So Novak need not worry.

Novak tells me that he was indeed tipped off by government officials about Wilson’s wife and had no reluctance about naming her. “I figured if they gave it to me,†he says. “They’d give it to others....I’m a reporter. Somebody gives me information and it’s accurate. I generally use it.†And Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials.
…
http://thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=823
http://www.arbiteronline.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/07/23/3f1f5fa79c206
http://www.democraticunderground.co...&forum=102&topic_id=18072&mesg_id=18072&page=
http://www.democraticunderground.co...ic&forum=108&topic_id=5913&mesg_id=5913&page=

…
Novak, in an interview, said his sources had come to him with the information. “I didn't dig it out, it was given to me,†he said. “They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.â€

Wilson and others said such a disclosure would be a violation of the law by the officials, not the columnist.

Novak reported that his “two senior administration officials†told him that it was Plame who suggested sending her husband, Wilson, to Niger.
…
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uscia0722,0,2346857.story?coll=ny-top-headlines
http://www.democraticunderground.co...ic&forum=103&topic_id=2326&mesg_id=2326&page=

A War on Wilson?
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,465270,00.html
http://www.democraticunderground.co...&forum=102&topic_id=18113&mesg_id=18113&page=

White House striking back?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/942095.asp?0cv=CA01

Schumer Urges FBI Probe Into Iraq Leaks
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030724/ap_on_go_ot/schumer_agent_1

Probes Expected in ID of CIA Officer
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationw...23,0,5461415.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-print

The Bush Administration Adopts a Worse-than-Nixonian Tactic: The Deadly Serious Crime Of Naming CIA Operatives by John W. Dean
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030815.html

 

[bountyhunter]

But the Punch Line is...

Amidst all the democrtats crying "bias" in the case of the Justice Department investigating the White House... given that Bush appointed the leader of the J.D....... Bush opens his big mouth last week and declares publicly that he believed the identity of the leak would never be revealed. Seriously... and he apparrently had no clue how that would make people react (?)

Honestly... you just couldn't write stuff that funny.

And on top of that, the promised "full cooperation" of the white house with the investigation is manifested when they notified the JD that all surrendered documents would first be screened by the White House Counsel (LAWYER) before the JD could look at them. Next time the police come to your house with a warrant looking for something, don't open the door but tell them that you and your lawyer will look through the house and give them whatever is applicable (HONEST!).... but it will take a week. That should make them go away (?)


I'd be rolling on the floor laughing if it wasn't a case of a bunch of people who run my country not even bothering to tell me BELIEVABLE lies... kind of insulting.

 

[w4rma]

Leak of Agent's Name Causes Exposure of CIA Front Firm

The leak of a CIA operative's name has also exposed the identity of a CIA front company, potentially expanding the damage caused by the original disclosure, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

The company's identity, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, became public because it appeared in Federal Election Commission records on a form filled out in 1999 by Valerie Plame, the case officer at the center of the controversy, when she contributed $1,000 to Al Gore's presidential primary campaign.

After the name of the company was broadcast yesterday, administration officials confirmed that it was a CIA front. They said the obscure and possibly defunct firm was listed as Plame's employer on her W-2 tax forms in 1999 when she was working undercover for the CIA. Plame's name was first published July 14 in a newspaper column by Robert D. Novak that quoted two senior administration officials. They were critical of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for his handling of a CIA mission that undercut President Bush's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from the African nation of Niger for possible use in developing nuclear weapons.

The Justice Department began a formal criminal investigation of the leak Sept. 26.

The inadvertent disclosure of the name of a business affiliated with the CIA underscores the potential damage to the agency and its operatives caused by the leak of Plame's identity. Intelligence officials have said that once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered.

A former diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said yesterday that every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities.

"That's why the agency is so sensitive about just publishing her name," the former diplomat said.
…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40012-2003Oct3.html

Some historical context:
…
4. There is no doubt, however, that this is the course the State Department are, in fact, following. Hoover said that he had spoken to Brewster Jennings, President of Socony-Vacuum, and persuaded him to maintain his company's level of imports at approximately their 1954 level by cutting back imports from the Middle East, while maintaining the planned programme of increased imports from Canada. In the short run this decision would involve some financial sacrifice for Socony-Vacuum both because of the low cost of crude oil from the Middle East and the high profits to be gained from its exploitation. However, Hoover had found that Socony-Vacuum put such a high value for the future on their Canadian interests that Jennings did not need much persuasion to agree to the method of implementing the policy of voluntary restriction that Hoover had suggested.
…
http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/department/history/dcer/details-en.asp?intRefid=1446

 

[bountyhunter]

A former diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity said yesterday that every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities.

And the contacts she had with field agents (those the CIA employs who are citizens of other countries) will be "interviewed" and then quietly slaughtered. That really is the point: the total damage both in intelligence lost and field agents killed can never possibly be known.