Posted on 03/11/2006 6:36:52 PM PST by rightwingintelligentsia
WASHINGTON - The question of whether Valerie Plame's employment by the Central Intelligence Agency was a secret is the key issue in the two-year investigation to determine if someone broke the law by leaking her CIA affiliation to the news media.
Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald contends that Plame's friends "had no idea she had another life." But Plame's secret life could be easily penetrated with the right computer sleuthing and an understanding of how the CIA's covert employees work.
When the Chicago Tribune searched for Plame on an Internet service that sells public information about private individuals to its subscribers, it got a report of more than 7,600 words. Included was the fact that in the early 1990s her address was "AMERICAN EMBASSY ATHENS ST, APO NEW YORK NY 09255."
A former senior American diplomat in Athens, who remembers Plame as "pleasant, very well-read, bright," said he had been aware that Plame, who was posing as a junior consular officer, really worked for the CIA. According to CIA veterans, U.S. intelligence officers working in American embassies under "diplomatic cover" are almost invariably known to friendly and opposition intelligence services alike.
"If you were in an embassy," said a former CIA officer who posed as a U.S. diplomat in several countries, "you could count 100 percent on the Soviets knowing."
(Excerpt) Read more at duluthsuperior.com ...
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Where have these people been? According to Fitzgerald, it doesn't matter whether there was harm done to the country by the revelation, her classification status is immaterial, it's all about Libby lying about where he learned that she worked at the CIA and if he told anyone and then didn't tell Fitz that he did so.
I'm glad the press is finally waking up to what the bloggers have been saying for over a year.
Of course. I just think it ironic that for months the drumbeat in the press was that "tremendous damage" was done by leaking Plame's "covert" status, and now that it's irrelevant they are finally willing to admit that she may not have been so covert after all.
thinly veiled, yes. that term certainly appllies when your husband tells andrea mitchell at a DC cocktail party - "andrea, my wife Valerie from the CIA. pass the shrimp."
You are absolutely right. The irony just screams. This was nothing but a "harm Bush" campaign.
So NOW the press figures out she wasn't covert? A little behind Freepers. By about a year plus some months.
No news to anyone who has been following this story at FR. But it's amazing that a leftist newspaper like the Chicago Trib would publish it.
The horse is dead already!
Give it a decent burial and move on!
One thing that may be new in this story is that Plame was declared a covert agent AFTER she had worked in an embassy and become known to all and sundry.
And later, she was supposed to be covert yet was sitting at a desk in Langley.
What does that suggest? Either incompetence or, more likely, that someone was setting this whole thing up from the start. Plame appears to have had connections with the rogue element in the CIA, and the whole Plame Wilson thing was carefully engineered as an attack on Bush and the war against Iraq.
I keep waiting for an announcement that Joe Wilson is under investigation.
If CT would pursue JW then we might have something interesting to read about. This is old news -- and could have simply been deduced from her outing when she married a FSO with ambassadorial rank. Only the media could be astonished at Plame's "hiding in plain sight".
I have always thought that about this whole Plame thing from the get-go.
HF
I think Fitz is about to find out about the wheels on the bus going round and round.
WHAT?!!! Why cant they make scandals like they used to?
The identity of the spy in question of course is secret in that only petty bureaucrats such as the infallible Joseph C. Wilson IV and Democratic partisans such as the rightful President John F. Kerry can reveal it. White House officials (Democrats excluded) are NOT entitled to know her status, let alone reveal or authorize the revelation. The President does not have a security clearance to know such information; he must get his understanding through the filter provided by The New York Times and various other media outlets.
Cheney, Rove, and Libby all violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 by revealing this spy. We know this Truth because Joseph C. Wilson IV said it, and the American people regard the inestimable Ambassador as infallible. Howard Dean and various Democratic partisans also agree.
[This explanation reflects the contents of the Truth, the Whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth--as printed on the pages of The New York Times.]
For Fitz to convince a jury that Fitz lied, rather than merely misspoke out of confusion (Libby's defense), he needs to demonstrate that Fitz had a reason to lie. Once the defense shows that Plame was known by friends, neighbors, and journalists all across the countryside to be an employee of the CIA, and NOT covert for at least five years prior to the time period of Novak's column, then the jury should reach the obvious conclusion that Libby had no reason to lie. Why would he lie?
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