A Bad Day to Be Scott McClellan

[SpencerH]

Originally posted by Ramo
That's assuming anybody would believe any such attempts to recast her as an analyst. If foreign intelligence services have had contacts with Plame's assets during this time, they know that their intelligence is compromised anyways. They're not going to believe any half-assed cleanup operation recasting her as an analyst. Besides, I don't think that the Agency would use rightwing opeds trying to protect the Admin as a vehicle for such a recasting. It's a blatantly ludicrous idea.

There's no need to try to 'recast' her as an analyst. It's already unclear what she was. As I said, I have some doubts about Johnson and Cannistraro's motives in this. They shouldnt have said what they apparently have said. I sure wouldnt have done so. For example, I have seen a authentic codeword used in a fairly recent 'spy movie'. Despite that it was clearly in the open, I wouldnt comment on it nor would I confirm it to anyone who asked. Most people will believe it to be made-up. Some will know it to be fact and some who might want to know will wonder about its authenticity by virtue of the fact that it was 'out in the open'. Intel is a funny business.

[SpencerH]

****

[Ramo]

There's no need to try to 'recast' her as an analyst. It's already unclear what she was. As I said, I have some doubts about Johnson and Cannistraro's motives in this. They shouldnt have said what they apparently have said. I sure wouldnt have done so. For example, I have seen a authentic codeword used in a fairly recent 'spy movie'. Despite that it was clearly in the open, I wouldnt comment on it nor would I confirm it to anyone who asked. Most people will believe it to be made-up. Some will know it to be fact and some who might want to know will wonder about its authenticity by virtue of the fact that it was 'out in the open'. Intel is a funny business.

Again, it's not unclear to any who have dealt with her and her fake company under cover. They wouldn't have dealt with her if she were an analyst. The relevant assets are compromised, period. It makes not a whit of difference what Johnson and Cannistraro (and others) are saying after the fact.

Besides, I don't think we'd have this deluge of information in the first place if Plame's assets weren't already compromised.

[Ramo]

And there simply is no comparision between outing a CIA operations runner as CIA, and displaying a code word for something in some spy movie.

[Vanguard]

It's already unclear what she was.

It is not in the least unclear what she was. She gathered information for the CIA while working as businesswoman.

All that is happening is that Rove apologists are attempting to spin it as being unclear.

Again, if this is not a crime or an improper action, then why did Rove feel the need to provide the information only on a highly secret basis? Why not have Scott McClellan provide the information straight to everyone?

And why not own up to it immediately when the hunt for the leak began instead of allowing suspicion to fall on innocent people? Why waste millions of taxpayer dollars on the leak investigation? Why didn't Rove simply say that he was the leak, if, as you suggest, Plame was only an analyst?

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Rufus T. Firefly
What I really want to know is what kind of genetic technology was used to allow the press corps to grow new spines...

The solid, unmistakeable scent of fresh blood in the water.

It reminds me a lot of Ron Ziegler's press conferences back in the day.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Vanguard

It is not in the least unclear what she was. She gathered information for the CIA while working as businesswoman.

All that is happening is that Rove apologists are attempting to spin it as being unclear.

The clarity matters little to me concerning Rove's mistake in mentioning her, but it will matter a great deal when the prosecutor decides whether to charge him. He won't do so. Even if Rove did this with considerable malice aforethough (which from what we've learned so far seems unlikely) it would be very difficult to convict him due to the weak law.

Originally posted by Vanguard

Again, if this is not a crime or an improper action, then why did Rove feel the need to provide the information only on a highly secret basis? Why not have Scott McClellan provide the information straight to everyone?

How often does Rove make himself available for attribution about any subject? Rarely.

Originally posted by Vanguard

And why not own up to it immediately when the hunt for the leak began instead of allowing suspicion to fall on innocent people? Why waste millions of taxpayer dollars on the leak investigation? Why didn't Rove simply say that he was the leak, if, as you suggest, Plame was only an analyst?

Because Rove isn't the target of this investigation, at least not now. That's clear as he's testified for the grand jury twice and didn't take the fifth, and he released the journalist from Time from his promise of confidentiality. The reason he did this is that he feels that the journalist's testimony will get him off the hook. And he's right about that (legally) if what has been said so far turns out to in fact be true. The real target at this point is whomever Novak's second source was. Why say you are the leak when you were simply an unwitting corroborator?

[Berzerker]

Also, Rove told Chris Matthews that Plame was "fair game." And the Washington Post reported in 2003 that two admin officials had shopped the Plame info around to 6 journalists. That, to me, looks very much like their intent wasn't anything so noble as warning a paper, but rather deliberately spreading information to undermine Wilson's credibility.

Because Joe Wilson said Cheney authorised the Niger investigation. They caught him in a mistake (or lie) and used the media to expose it.

Doesn't look like Larry Johnson will be making any more appearances as an expert on Fox. I tend to trust him...

[Ramo]

But Plame had nothing to do with authorizing the investigation of Niger's uranium industry. She merely pointed out to her superiors that Wilson would be qualified for the (needed) job.

What we have here is Rove dealing in personal attacks against those who disagree, and Plame and her assets got burned as a (perhaps unintended) consequence.

[Ramo]

What Wilson has to say about this:

First conclusion: "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee."

That is not true. The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife sent to her superiors that says "my husband has good relations with the PM (prime minister) and the former Minister of Mines, (not to mention lots of French contacts) both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." There is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides. The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD reports officer stated the "the former ambassador's wife `offered up his name'" (page 39) and a State Department Intelligence and Research officer that the "meeting was `apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch him to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue."

In fact, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. Neither was the CPD Reports officer. After having escorted me into the room, she departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip I had previously taken to Niger to look at other uranium related questions as well as 20 years living and working in Africa, and personal contacts throughout the Niger government. Neither the CPD reports officer nor the State analyst were in the chain of command to know who, or how, the decision was made. The interpretations attributed to them are not the full story. In fact, it is my understanding that the Reports Officer has a different conclusion about Valerie's role than the one offered in the "additional comments". I urge the committee to reinterview the officer and publicly publish his statement.

It is unfortunate that the report failed to include the CIA's position on this matter. If the staff had done so it would undoubtedly have been given the same evidence as provided to Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce in July, 2003. They reported on July 22 that:

"A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked `alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

"But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. `They (the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story) were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,' he said. `There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,' he said. `I can't figure out what it could be.'
"We paid his (Wilson's) airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there,' the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said. he was reimbursed only for expenses." (Newsday article Columnist blows CIA Agent's cover, dated July 22, 2003).

In fact, on July 13 of this year, David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, did call the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed my account that Valerie did not propose me for the trip:

"'She did not propose me', he [Wilson] said--others at the CIA did so. A senior CIA official said that is his understanding too.'"

[Vanguard]

How often does Rove make himself available for attribution about any subject? Rarely

Cooper called the level of secrecy Rove demanded on this attribution "Double super secret background". Sounds like he really, really didn't want it known where the information was coming from, doesn't it?

Would he do this if he were only providing information available to the general public? Or only providing information that people had a right to know?

You don't leak stuff that is public information. You just give it to people. Rove knows what he is doing. He wasn't trying to "convince reporters not to trust Wilson". He was giving them secret information to attack Wilson on his behalf, information that the reporters could not get in any other way, hoping that they would confirm this information from another source, but, if they couldn't do that, that they would use it as is from "an unnamed source".

Probably what Rove intended was that Cooper and Novak would use the information, then once it was out in the open, Republican attack dogs would use it to discredit Wilson.

being caught in a lie

The person caught in a lie here is Rove. After all the Republican blovination and hypocrisy about Clinton's "equivocation" about "not having sex" and "never inhaled", we now have Bush's right hand man saying that he didn't leak the woman's "name". And that is supposed to be an excuse?

[SpencerH]

I wont bother trying to continue explain my doubts about Plames status. I should've known better I guess.

As my final contribution, heres a piece by a reasonably non-partisan reporter (New York Times) that confirms what I guessed, she was not 'a NOC' but merely NOC i.e. not truly covert but with a nominal cover (which many CIA employees have). I agree with his conclusions but not with every detail i.e. Kristof doesnt seem to understand the subtleties of non-official cover; i.e. what covert means and what it doesnt.

NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
The New York Times
Oct. 11, 2003
Like any good spy story, the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson is far more complex than it seems on the surface.

I know Mrs. Wilson, but I knew nothing about her C.I.A. career and hadn't realized she's "a hell of a shot with an AK-47," as a classmates at the C.I.A. training "farm," Jim Marcinkowski, recalls. I'll be more careful around her, for she also turns out to be skilled in throwing hand grenades and to have lived abroad and run covert operations in some of the world's messier spots. (Mrs. Wilson was not a source for this column or any other that I've written about the intelligence community.)

Those operations remain secret, but there are several crucial facts that can be made public without putting anyone at risk — and together, they leave everybody looking bad. The C.I.A. is now conducting a damage assessment, which will determine what networks and operations it will have to close down. But my sense is that Democrats exaggerate the damage to Mrs. Wilson's career and to her personal security, while Republicans vastly play down the enormity of the security breach and the danger to the assets she worked with.

And now a few pertinent facts:

First, the C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.

Second, as Mrs. Wilson rose in the agency, she was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from "noc" — which means non-official cover, like pretending to be a business executive. After passing as an energy analyst for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a C.I.A. front company, she was switching to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having "C.I.A." stamped on her forehead.

Third, Mrs. Wilson's intelligence connections became known a bit in Washington as she rose in the C.I.A. and moved to State Department cover, but her job remained a closely held secret. Even her classmates in the C.I.A.'s career training program mostly knew her only as Valerie P. That way, if one spook defected, the damage would be limited.

All in all, I think the Democrats are engaging in hyperbole when they describe the White House as having put Mrs. Wilson's life in danger and destroyed her career; her days skulking along the back alleys of cities like Beirut and Algiers were already mostly over.

Moreover, the Democrats cheapen the debate with calls, at the very beginning of the process, for a special counsel to investigate the White House. Hillary Rodham Clinton knows better than anyone how destructive and distracting a special counsel investigation can be, interfering with the basic task of governing, and it's sad to see her display the same pusillanimous partisanship that Republicans showed just a few years ago.

If Democrats have politicized the scandal and exaggerated it, Republicans have inexcusably tried to whitewash it. The leak risked the security of all operatives who had used Brewster-Jennings as cover, as well as of all assets ever seen with Mrs. Wilson. Unwitting sources will now realize that they were supplying the C.I.A. with information, and even real agents may fear exposure and vanish.

C.I.A. veterans are seething, and rightly so, at the betrayal by their own government. Larry Johnson, who entered the agency at the same time as Mrs. Wilson, is a Republican who voted for President Bush — and he's so enraged that he compares the administration leaker to the spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.

"Here's a woman who put her life on the line," Mr. Johnson said. "But unlike a Navy seal or a marine, she didn't have a gun to fight back. All she had to protect her was her cover."

We in journalism are also wrong, I think, to extend professional courtesy to Robert Novak, by looking beyond him to the leaker. True, he says he didn't think anyone would be endangered. Working abroad in ugly corners of the world, American journalists often learn the identities of American C.I.A. officers, but we never publish their names. I find Mr. Novak's decision to do so just as inexcusable as the decision of administration officials to leak it.

This scandal leaves everybody stinking.

© 2003 The New York Times Company

[Wezil]

From the Kristof article:

We in journalism are also wrong, I think, to extend professional courtesy to Robert Novak, by looking beyond him to the leaker. True, he says he didn't think anyone would be endangered. Working abroad in ugly corners of the world, American journalists often learn the identities of American C.I.A. officers, but we never publish their names. I find Mr. Novak's decision to do so just as inexcusable as the decision of administration officials to leak it.

I've asked before...

Why isn't Novak in big doodoo as well?

[DinoDoc]

He squealed.

[Wezil]

But didn't he do exactly what the WH is being accused of - knowingly outing an agent?