"Plame was not covert"

Really?

"her name was not leaked"

It was leaked. Fitzgerald said that the CIA was actively trying to conceal the ID of plame when it was first reported she was a CIA agent. Libby and Rove told reporters she worked for the CIA on the condition of anonymity. That's a leak.

"The MSM should not have been so eager to jump on the Plame bandwagon - all it ever amounted to was the Administration demonstrating that a critic - Wilson - was lying."

Mark, how exactly did telling the media that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA demonstrate that Wilson was lying?

Tom,

How do you "out" someone who had previously been "outed". Plame's identity as an employee of the CIA was revealed by Aldrich Ames in the mid 90's, then again by the Cubans after a CIA message was mis-handled.

As I understand it, and this is only from what I have read, Rove replied to a reporter when the reporter mentioned that Plame worked at the CIA, "that's what I heard". In your mind, that is outing the individual. For the rest of us, that acknowledging something that was alrady widely know in DC social circles. For God's sake, Wilson listed her on his Who's Who entry. That's keeping great operational security.

Rove's follow-up comment was to warn the reporter off what Wilson was saying because they were lies. If you put your hatred of all things Bush aside, and open your eyes, you will see what really happened:

Plame got Wilson the gig to Niger. They both opposed the liberation of Iraq and saw this was a way to undermine our efforts. Wilson didn't get the information he was sent to find, came back, told one story to the CIA, then wrote an op-ed in the NYT which was filled with lies. Then he claimed that Plame had nothing to do with him getting the assignment, when he admits that she mentioned him to her superiors. If she wasn't trying to get him the assignment, why did she even mention him?

I do not think that anyone in the administration had any intent of "outing" Plame to get at Wilson. First, because she was already "out". Second, because their motives were to counter the lies that he was spewing and the MSM was repeating. Third, if she was covert (and she wasn't), how can "outing" her put Wilson and her at risk when her identity was well known and she spent her days as a desk-jockey at the CIA?

"As I understand it, and this is only from what I have read, Rove replied to a reporter when the reporter mentioned that Plame worked at the CIA, "that's what I heard":

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - White House political aide Karl Rove was the first person to tell a Time magazine reporter that the wife of a prominent critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy was a CIA agent, the reporter said in an article on Sunday.

Time correspondent Matthew Cooper said he told a grand jury last week that Rove told him the woman worked at the "agency," or CIA, on weapons of mass destruction issues, and ended the call by saying "I've already said too much."

Plame got Wilson the gig to Niger:

"A Senate committee report would later say evidence indicated Plame suggested Wilson for the trip.

Over the past months, however, the CIA has maintained that Wilson was chosen for the trip by senior officials in the Directorate of Operations counterproliferation division (CPD) -- not by his wife -- largely because he had handled a similar agency inquiry in Niger in 1999. On that trip, Plame, who worked in that division, had suggested him because he was planning to go there, according to Wilson and the Senate committee report....

Wilson maintains that his wife was asked that day by one of her bosses to write a memo about his credentials for the mission--after they had selected him. That memo apparently was included in a cable to officials in Africa seeking concurrence with the choice of Wilson, the Senate report said.

Valerie Wilson's other role, according to intelligence officials, was to tell Wilson he had been selected, and then to introduce him at a meeting at the CIA on Feb. 19, 2002, in which analysts from different agencies discussed the Niger trip. She told the Senate committee she left the session after her introduction.

Senior Bush administration officials told a different story about the trip's origin in the days between July 8 and July 12, 2003. They said that Wilson's wife was working at the CIA dealing with weapons of mass destruction and that she suggested him for the Niger trip, according to three reporters."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/10/AR2005081001918.html

Who needs to open their eyes?

And, regardless of whether Plame got Wilson the job, which according to the CIA she didn't, how would providing that info to the public prove Wilson to be a liar?

"How do you "out" someone who had previously been "outed". Plame's identity as an employee of the CIA was revealed by Aldrich Ames in the mid 90's, then again by the Cubans after a CIA message was mis-handled.":

But special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald found that Plame had indeed done "covert work overseas" on counterproliferation matters in the past five years, and the CIA "was making specific efforts to conceal" her identity, according to newly released portions of a judge's opinion.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11179719/site/newsweek/

"how would providing that info to the public prove Wilson to be a liar?"

You already know the answer to that question. Wilson declared in response to Novak that Plame had NOTHING to do with his assignment. And you do yourself a misservice relying on Fitzgerald. He has had to "revise and extend" his public pronouncements as well as supposed leaks from his team all along. Bottom line is, we will find out at trial or not at all these pesky details. I'm betting the trial by media will be a dire dissappointment to Plame obsessives like yourself... like your late pronouncements on Karl Rove. But in the geopolitical sense, it is all moot. Saddam had large quantities of U ore AND low-enriched U in his possession whatever its source in addition to gas centrifuge technology. And that was the initial assertion of Wilson, that the war was based on a lie. But THAT is the lie. Sorry Joe. Sorry Tom.

"Wilson declared in response to Novak that Plame had NOTHING to do with his assignment."

First, I'd like to see this quote if you have it.

Second, if that was in response to the administration leaking that Plame was a CIA agent, it doesn't answer my question.

Why was it necessary for the administration to disclose that Plame worked for the CIA and claim she got Wilson the Niger assignment to prove Wilson was a liar?

We have no proof that someone in the administration deliberately disclosed Plame's CIA link in an effort to smear her husband. That is the claim of Joe Wilson that has been repeated in the MSM. That is what Fitzgerald has been investigating for several years, and has spent several millions of dollars, and has yet to show any such proof. He has yet to show that Plame had "covert" status, regardless if she had traveled overseas in the past five years.

If this ever goes to trail, my guess is we will see a parade of "journalist" to the witness stand to testify whether they knew of Plame's CIA employment before anyone in the administration ever mentioned her to someone in the press. Based on what I have read, there were hundreds of people who knew about her CIA employment, so it was no secret. How can you "out" someone whom hundreds knew she worked at the CIA?

Additionally, the release of unclassified information contained in the October 2002 NIE at a "background brief" to reporters was designed to provide information about the decision to enforce the UN Resolutions, as authorized by Congress, to counter the lies being spread by Joe Wilson.

Rather than own up to his lies, as proven by the Senate Intelligence Committee, Joe Wilson and his appologists on the left, keep bringing up the "outing" of Valerie Plame to deflect and change the story.

A-10,

All the reporters involved in this have already testified that they first heard about Plame being a CIA agent from sources in the administration.

The sources told reporters about Wilson's wife shortly after Wilson's op-ed in the New York Times. Libby testified that Cheney directed him to speak to reporters about Wilson's op-ed.

Again, I'll ask, what lie does revealing that Plame worked for the CIA and got him the job (the latter being untrue) disprove?

"He has yet to show that Plame had "covert" status, regardless if she had traveled overseas in the past five years."

This, I agree with. There has been no difinitive answer whether Plame was covert or not. But a couple rulings in related court cases (including the one I cited above) seem to show that Fitzgerald will be able to show this once the investigation is over.

Tom,

To repeat what I said earlier, I do not think anyone in the administration deliberately "outed" Plame. There is no political benefit in doing so. I believe they were repeating a belief they had heard elsewhere.

I was talking about reporters and others within the intelligence social scene who knew Plame worked at the CIA. When they are paraded to the witness stand, any "outing" charge will fall apart.

It was the release of the declassified NIE that was being used to counter Wilson's claims.

Let me restate the way I read all this, and you tell me if it makes any sense.

There are rumors that Saddam is continuing to seek to obtain yellowcake. The White House is eager to know if these rumors are true. The British and other intelligence agencies believe they are true. The White House asks the CIA to confirm.

Valerie Plame works in counter-WMD at the CIA. Her husband has ties to Africa. Both are liberals, opposed to the President. Plame suggests to someone that her husband might be a good one to send to Niger to see what is going on. (Personally, I would have no problem with her suggesting he go, with the exception of their anti-Bush bias).

Wilson heads to Niger, asks a couple of questions, and sips a few cocktails by the pool. He fails to question some of the people having knowledge of a Iraqi trade delegation that had made inquires about conducting business with Iraq (the only profitable export of Niger being yellowcake). He then returns to the CIA and gives them a report that bolsters their belief that Saddam is still seeking uranium.

Wilson gets involved with the Kerry campaign and writes an op-ed in the NYT claiming that he completely debunked the Saddam-Niger connection. He further claims that he had proven the documents tying Saddam to Niger to be fakes. Only problem is, the documents were not yet in US hands when he claimed to have discredited them. He then backtarcks on his document story.

Some reporters talk to administration officials about Wilson's claims. They are told not to believe him. They tell the reporters that they think his wife, who works at the CIA, got him the job.

The President declassifies part of the October 2002 NIE and authorizes it to be released on background to reporters (This is not a leak. It was an actual briefing!!!!!) The release was done to show that the administration had information that supported the decision to enforce the UN Resolutions and that countered what Joe Wilson was saying.

To me, end of story. The guy lied about his trip and what he discovered. The administration tried to warn off the reporters.

The next thing you know, Joe Wilson is running around claiming the administration has "outed" his wife in retaliation for his criticism of the Iraq war. He figures the best defense of his claims is to go on offense and claim the administration has jeopardized National Security by outing his wife.

The Senate Intelligence Committee finally releases its report that proves that Joe Wilson's claims are wrong. False. Lies.

I don't think they deliberately "outed" her. I don't think she was even covert. The whole mess is a political battle between Joe Wilson and his enablers in the MSM and the administration. It is a detraction from the War on Terror and should have never have been elevated to the level it did.

What say you?

Well, first off, I still don’t know who the hundreds of reporters who already knew Plame was a CIA agent are.

If you have their names and/or them going on the record, let’s see it.

First off, Wilson didn’t lie about anything. The one incorrect thing in his op-ed was that he assumed Cheney was briefed about his report. He later admitted he may have been wrong about that.

But, the gist of his op-ed is that based on what he found in Niger, he did not feel that the uranium reference should have been used in the State of the Union. He then asked the administration that if they based that line on other information, to share it.

Soon after, Tenent and the White House said that line should not have been used in the State of the Union. As Novak stated in the same column where Plame was allegedly outed, Wilson then stopped taking media requests as he felt the matter was settled… until Novak’s column, in which Plame was exposed by White House officials as a CIA agent.

Wilson then reemerged in the media feeling the White House exposed his wife as an agent in retaliation for his op-ed. It has been shown that Libby and Rove spread that his wife worked for the CIA, even as there is no real relevancy of this information to Wilson’s trip.

As you say, who cares if she got him the assignment? It looks like she didn’t, which makes her involvement in this even less relevant.

We do know that as a result of Plame being named as a CIA operative, she no longer works at the CIA. We do know that she is a former covert agent who worked on WMDs. We do know she served her country honorably.

If she was covert, it was either an illegal act by the administration or gross negligence. We’re still waiting for Fitz’ investigation to end to find out exactly what happened.

Tom,

I didn't say hundreds of reporters. I said hundreds of people. The ones Valerie and Joe hung out with on the DC cocktail circuit.

Joe wilson didn't lie? How come he claimed that he had been recommended by Vice President Dick Cheney, when his wife actually put forth his name?
The Senate intelligence Committee report stated: "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip." In Wilson's own words: "My wife served as a conduit..."

The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. So I guess you could characterize that as a lie.

The CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger. So his NYT op-ed claiming to completely debunk that suspicion was also a lie.

Wilson Claimed The Vice President And Other Senior White House Officials Were Briefed On His Niger Report, when in fact the White House was never briefed. Another lie.

So I count at least four documented lies by Joe Wilson. Yet you say: "Wilson didn’t lie about anything". I have proof that he did. Proof from the words of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Are you tellme that they are all wrong?

You also state that Wilson "did not feel that the uranium reference should have been used in the State of the Union. He then asked the administration that if they based that line on other information, to share it." Just who in the hell does Joe Wilson think he is? Just because he is a former ambassador who was on the Kerry election team that doesn't give the the right or power to share at the time classified information. Sure, he's entitled to his opinion, but that's all he's entitled to.

You claim that "It has been shown that Libby and Rove spread that his wife worked for the CIA". So, Rove spoke to one reporter and confirmed what the reporter already knew, and that's "spreading" the word? No wonder conservatives and liberals don't see eye to eye. You call a casual conversation with one reporter spreading the word. I call it incidental contact. You call it a "leak", I call it "released as background information in a briefing".

You don't think its just a little bit fishy that the CIA would send a vitrulent anti-Bush liberal activist, who later became an advisor to the Kerry campaign, on a sensitive mission to Africa to determine something as important as Iraq's attempts to acquire yellowcake? You don't think somethings amiss when he tells the CIA one thing, and writes an op-en telling the exact opposite?

Now if you want to talk about illegal activity, let's talk about members of the intelligence community leaking classified information to reporters and the reporters printing classified information, both of which are in violation of Federal Law. Where is your outrage over this serious breach of national security? Oh, I forgot...If the release damages a Republican Administration its ok, even if the information released shows no illegal activity. It's only when the release damages a Democrat administration will you show outrage.

The first time I heard of the Plame issue was in a televised interview with Robert Novak in which he said that at one time he had been complaining about Joe Wilson to a highly-placed Democratic Party official who, trying to defend Wilson, said something to the effect of "Oh, Joe's not so bad---and his wife works for the CIA, you know."

Andrea Mitchell has tried to duck out of this quote, claiming she was misquoted, then claiming she was taken out of context. Seems pretty hard to imagine a context which would change what she said:

""Do we have any idea how widely known it was in Washington that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?" she was asked by host Alan Murray in an Oct. 3, 2003 interview on CNBC's "Captial Report."
Mitchell replied: "It was widely known among those of us who cover the intelligence community and who were actively engaged in trying to track down who among the foreign service community was the envoy to Niger. So a number of us began to pick up on that."

"(Major General Paul) Vallely says, according to his recollection, Wilson mentioned his wife's job in the spring of 2002 – more than a year before Robert Novak's July 14, 2003, column identified her, citing senior administration officials, as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."

"He was rather open about his wife working at the CIA," said Vallely, who retired in 1991 as the Army's deputy commanding general in the Pacific."

"Vallely said, citing CIA colleagues, that in addition to his conversations with Wilson, the ambassador was proud to introduce Plame at cocktail parties and other social events around Washington as his CIA wife.

"That was pretty common knowledge," he said. "She's been out there on the Washington scene many years."

(Valley's comments have been discredited by liberal kool-aid drinkers because he is vague about the exact dates of his conversations with Wilson in which Plame was mentioned. but he can place the general time, as they were often on the same show, waiting in the green room to go on.)

A-10 has done an excellent job of listing some of Wilson's lies.

Oh, and if Plame was so undercover, why did she accompany Wilson during an interview with Nicholas Kristof in May of 2003, in which Wilson discussed his Niger visit in detail?

I liked this analysis by Christopher Hitchens, a formerly liberal writer who has come to see that conservatives are not all bad.

"Mr. Fitzgerald, therefore, seems to have decided to act "as if." He conducts himself as if Ms. Plame's identity was not widely known, as if she were working under "non official cover" (NOC), as if national security had been compromised, and as if one or even two catch-all laws had been broken. By this merely hypothetical standard, he has performed exceedingly well, even if rather long-windedly, before pulling up his essentially empty net.
However, what if one proposes an alternative "what if" narrative? What if Mr. Wilson spoke falsely when he asserted that his wife, who was not in fact under "non-official cover," had nothing to do with his visit to Niger? What if he was wrong in stating that Iraqi envoys had never even expressed an interest in Niger's only export? (Most European intelligence services stand by their story that there was indeed such a Baathist initiative.) What if his main friends in Niger were the very people he was supposed to be investigating?
Well, in that event, and after he had awarded himself some space on an op-ed page, what was to inhibit an employee of the Bush administration from calling attention to these facts, and letting reporters decide for themselves? The CIA had proven itself untrustworthy or incompetent on numerous occasions before, during and after the crisis of Sept. 11, 2001. Why should it be the only agency of the government that can invoke the law, broken or (as in this case) unbroken, to protect itself from leaks while protecting its own leakers?"

I have said all along that it was my impression that Wilson was considered such a minor player, essentially a gnat buzzing around, annoying but not important, that the administration really did not look too deeply into his history---they asked around, found out his wife worked as a CIA analyst who was trying to do a lateral move into the State Department and had used her connections to get Wilson the Niger gig, wanted to make it clear that Cheney had nothing to do with it, and merely pointed out that it was Plame and not Cheney. It was Wilson who needed to portray himself as sooooo important that the President himself became OBSESSED with him.

“How come he claimed that he had been recommended by Vice President Dick Cheney, when his wife actually put forth his name?”

Yet AGAIN, here’s what Wilson wrote in his NYTimes op-ed.

“In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.”

From the start, Wilson correctly stated who sent him to Niger. I’m still trying to figure out what the relevancy of his wife working for the CIA is.

“when his wife actually put forth his name?”

As I just posted, the CIA says Plame did NOT put forth his name for this assignment.

“In Wilson's own words: "My wife served as a conduit..."”

Yes, she did serve as a conduit. Once he was picked by higher ups at the CIA, she helped out by writing a summary of Wilson for the CIA and introducing him to those he’d be working with. You know, what a conduit would do.

“The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. So I guess you could characterize that as a lie.”

Again from the NYTimes:

“While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.”

And again:

“As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors — they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government — and were probably forged.”

Now, this I’m not quite sure about. It looks to me that Wilson mistakenly thought the memorandum that inspire the trip was the same as the forged Italian documents.

“Wilson Claimed The Vice President And Other Senior White House Officials Were Briefed On His Niger Report, when in fact the White House was never briefed. Another lie.”

Wilson admitted he may have been wrong about this. He assumed that since the office of the vice president asked for this matter to be looked into, that the CIA briefed the office on the trip.

“So his NYT op-ed claiming to completely debunk that suspicion was also a lie.”

Wilson does not claim to completely debunk that suspicion in the NYTimes op-ed.

Again, I don't see any inaccuracies in the NYTimes op-ed that, in order to be rebutted or cleared-up, made it necessary to talk about his wife's employment at the CIA.

Tom,

Its obvious that you are fixated on the admininstration deliberately ("necessary") talking about his wife's employment at the CIA. This is no proof that anyone within the administration deliberately mentioned her in retaliation for Wilson lying about his Niger trip. Until we see that proof, the question is still up in the air.

Tom,

OK, I just re-read Wilson's NYT Op-Ed. A couple of things jump out at me.

1. He states: "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." I assume he is talking about the transaction mentioned in the forged documents. Fine. But President Bush never claimed that the transaction ever took place. He stated that British intelligence believe that Iraq was continuing to seek uranium from Africa.

2. He never mentions whether he investigated the 1999 vist to Niger by Wissam al-Zahawie, Iraq's representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency—Iraq's senior public envoy for nuclear matters. It was this visit that many intelligence agencies believe was to initiate discussions into the purchase of yellowcake. Why else would he go to Niger? To buy cowpeas, one of Niger's other export items. Don't be naive.

3. Wilson states: "I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program — all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions." He then asks: "But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about?"

Duh. That's exactly the dangers the administration told us about. That question, immediately following the paragraph about Saddam WMD programs is perhaps the most stupid question I have ever heard. He is basically saying: "Yep, Saddam has WMD, has used them, and was in violation of UN Resolutions." Then he asks: "But are they the same WMD and programs that violate UN Resolutions that President Bush keeps talking about and are in the Authorization for the Use of Military Force against Iraq?" What other WMD are there?

So basically, Wilson went to Niger, and confirmed that there hadn't been a recent sale. But he failed to determine if Iraq was indeed continuing to seek yellowcake from Africa as the British maintain. That is what the President Bush referred to in the SOTU.

What Wilson did in his book, was to expand his limited-scope factfinding mission into a wide-ranging indictment of the intelligence used to justify the War in Iraq. That is what the administration was fighting back against.

But Wilson's claims are ludicrous. There are 17 UN Resolutions outlining how Saddam had failed to live up to his obligation in destroying or declaring his WMD, WMD programs, and other porhibited weapons systems. Were the UN Resolutions wrong? Saddam was found in material breach of the Resolutions on a number of occasions by the UN inspectors. Were the UN inspectors wrong? The 1998 Iraqi Liberation Act details no less than 10 reasons why regime change was made the official US policy and further declares Iraq to be in material breach of the UN Resolutions. Was Congress and President Clinton wrong? The 2002 Authorization for use of Military Force against Iraq contained a litany of reasons justifying our actions. Were the 296 Represenatives (including Gephardt and Murtha) and 77 Senators (including Biden, Durbin, Kennedy, Kerry, Clinton, and Reid). Were they all wrong? Unless you answered yes to all of the above, how can you claim that Bush lied and was wrong?