Plamegate: 25 Lingering Questions

Original FReeper review of Michael Isikoff and David Corn, "Hubris" | 02/07/2007 | Fedora

[Fedora]

Thanks. Hopefully a future official statement or declassification will resolve the WINPAC issue.

[PhilDragoo]

CIA officer named prior to column

By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a news column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation, U.S. officials say.

Mrs. Plame's identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a Moscow spy, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.

I have my copy of Pete Earley, Confessions of a Spy: The Real Story of Aldrich Ames, Berkeley, 1997. It's easy to see Ames compromising everyone he could. Such a schmuck.

And speaking of Agee, you note Michael Isikoff’s relationship with Philip Agee’s associate Mark Hosenball.

I read Philip Agee, CIA Diary: Inside the Company years and years ago--what a drama queen, then, what a traitor.

That Isikoff works for the grandson of the perennial Socialist candidate for president and has contacts with an Agee associate is certainly special.

The major trouble with the recent wilderness of mirrors is its total corruption to the political ends of such flimflams as the So-Important Wilson.

Surely Deutch replaced Woolsey with his famous boast "we're going to f--- them" and 17,000 compromised files later we have to credit his effort.

To be sure, no one in or out of government or journalism has put as much impartial effort into clarifying the facts as you continue to do.

Long may you wave.

[Fedora]

Thanks, Phil. I had either not read or had forgotten about the second compromising of Plame's identity Gertz mentions. The grandson of the Socialist candidate you mention would be Evan Thomas, grandson of Norman Thomas. Thomas' historical books suggest to me that he has some connection to a liberal element in CIA. Regarding Agee, there are links between his old network and that of VIPS through David MacMichael.

[freema]

bookmark

[PhilDragoo]

Running back through these names, running across Anthony Lake, recalling the beginning chapter of Robert Baer, See No Evil, in which he is pulled off his hot trail of the bomber of the Beirut Embassy in 1983, an operative of IJO, "a term of art for Iran", to answer Tony Lake's accusation he'd conspired to assassinate Saddam Hussein.

Absurd interference which I marked as intentional disruption, begging the question who benefits.

Certainly not America in all of this.

Regarding liberal elements of CIA, had seen some newsletters of AFIO WINs ed. Jonkers a few years ago and remarked to my friend they seemed all of a liberal slant.

"Yes," he confirmed, "which is why I quit taking them."

Beyond the political hijacking of intelligence is that which is truly treasonous. The muzzling of Notra Trulock by Elizabeth Moler was ostensibly to protect Clinton's China policy. But when examined, what was that policy?

From Wen Ho Lee to Charlie Trie to Schwartz and Armstrong it appeared to address Albright's insistence that the U.S. not be the world's sole superpower.

Now comes the serial leaking by the New York Times (abetted by Jay Rockefeller's evil twin, or perhaps ectoplasmic projection) to sabotage the U.S. effort to garner intelligence on islamoterrorist cells and operations.

There's a great deal of disloyalty that no amount of new tone will ameliorate.

[Parrot_was_devastating]

About that 500 tons of yellow cake...

We interrupt this scandal to ask a question that, due to it's 'explosive' nature was never asked when the story broke almost exactly a year ago... What were 500 tons of yellow cake uranium still doing at the nuclear research center of Al—Tuwaitha in Iraq when American tanks rolled into Bagdhad? [Exc/American Thinker]

Five hundred tons of yellowcake uranium ore stored at Saddam Hussein's al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons research laboratory near Baghdad could have been enriched to produce 142 nuclear weapons, a prominent British physicist has determined. Addressing the claim by British intelligence last year that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger, Norman Dombey, professor of theoretical physics at the University of Sussex, argued, "Iraq already had far more uranium than it needed for any conceivable nuclear weapons programme." In an op-ed piece for London's Evening Standard, Professor Dombey explained that standard yellowcake ore consists of 99 percent Uranium 238 [U238], "which is radioactive but is not used in normal nuclear weapons as it cannot sustain a chain reaction." To cause a nuclear chain reaction, he noted, "you need U235, which only makes up less than 1 percent [0.7] of natural uranium." After doing the calculations, Professor Dombey explained, "You have a warehouse containing 500 tons of natural uranium; you need 25 kilograms of U235 to build one weapon. How many nuclear weapons can you build? "The answer is 142." Parrot:..At this point....its to be concluded that somebody's arse is getting covered,

Wilson and Plame are known feeds*...
Therefore.....who will nibble at the Fish?

Just how did France,Russia ....North Korea react to this?

500 Tons....How many Plane loads is that?
If by Ship....whom? : )

Does China get a pass by saying it only Supplied Saddam with Fiber optic repeater stations for his SAM grid?

[freema]

I haven't finished reading it all.

But want to say this now.

The Wilson's, IMHO, pushed this on what I consider a technicality that doesn't count...and, of course, did that for political purposes. In their way of thinking, any one who works for the CIA is undercover. The Wilson's wanted everyone to think she was a 'spy' because it gave them more credibility in his mind. And, IMHO, he had to cover his ass etts.

Now, that said... something occurred to me as I was reading. If we were to consider a pregnant 'spy' or a 'spy' with small children we'd consider the woman a fruitcake for putting her babies at risk.

I
mean
really,

women who leave their children in the car are arrested.

Inquiring minds want to know if they actually consider any of us stupid enough to believe that she would put her babies at such risk as to be a spy while pregnant or with small children

or

are she and her hubby stupid enough to have endangered those babies when they saw an opportunity to become famous.

My guess is she was too damn dumb and such an attention seeker to have been an effect spy so they slapped her behind a desk hoping to minimize that damage and then,

there's my suspicion hubby had some ground to cover (literally and figuratively) she and he screwed up by hooking up the equally spotlight loving hubby with a "secret mission" to cover his ass etts.

[freema]

WHY would the CIA have a woman who was suffering from severe Post Partum Depression working as a spy, for heaven's sake.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A58650-2003Oct7?language=printer

[freema]

This article is new, don't miss the pictures -under blue header STORY RESOURCES on the right is a photo essay. You know, it just screams hypocrisy on the part of the UN/IAEA team in crying when they were locked out after the invasion, how they needed to get in there to keep WMD out of terrorists' hands.

Tackling Tuwaitha´s Radioactive Ruins
IAEA Asked to Help Clean Iraq "Hot" Spots
Staff Report
24 April 2006
Tuwaitha

The Iraqi Government has requested the IAEA's assistance to prepare plans and programmes to decommission contaminated facilities in the country.

Some 1000 Iraqi men, women and children in a village near the former Tuwaitha nuclear site are living inside an area contaminated by radioactive residues and ruins. A project to clean-up the site, and other contaminated facilities in Iraq, was kick-started earlier this year at IAEA headquarters.

Inhabitants of the Ishtar village, based within the Tuwaitha site boundary, some 20 kilometres south of Baghdad, are living in an area where levels of radiation are known to be higher than normal and prolonged exposure could prove risky over time. US authorities have supplied the IAEA with photographs of the Tuwaitha reactor that show crumbling facades and interiors of rubble, spray-painted with warnings like "radioactive" and "HOT". (See Photo Essay).

Once at the heart of Iraq´s nuclear programme, the Tuwaitha complex was inspected and largely dismantled during IAEA-led weapons inspections in the 1990s and subsequently bombed in the 2003 war. It is one of a number of sites in the country identified as needing decommissioning or remediation where radioactive material was used or waste are buried.

The Iraqi Government has requested the IAEA´s assistance to prepare plans and programmes to decommission contaminated facilities in the country. The project´s groundwork was set at an IAEA meeting in Vienna in February 2006, attended by the Iraqi Minister for Science and Technology, representatives from sixteen countries, including the US, and the European Commission.

"This is a huge task, one that could take many years," says Mr. Dennis Reisenweaver, the IAEA safety expert in charge of the effort. Among the first steps is to identify, cordon off, and prioritise contaminated areas that pose the most risk to the public.

Some of the challenges facing the clean-up effort include determining now unknown locations where contaminated equipment and materials might be buried, and recovering lost records about the contents of radioactive materials stored in waste containers.

"Given the magnitude of the task ahead, the project needs to be carried out through a combined effort between Iraq organizations and the IAEA´s Member States," Mr. Reisenweaver says.

Background: The Tuwaitha facility was looted in 2003, making media headlines in April shortly after the war broke out, when barrels containing low-level uranium ore concentrate known as "yellowcake" were stolen. The barrels were emptied and sold to local people who used them for storing water or food, or to wash clothes. Under its nuclear safeguards agreement with Iraq, the IAEA inspected the site, reporting its findings in July 2003. The report noted that the missing material posed no proliferation concern and that efforts were required to recover the dispersed material.

Initial efforts by Iraqi and US teams to collect environmental and radiological data have already started, as have studies on the health effects for people living in Ishtar village. During the project´s first phase, it is expected the IAEA will assist with training, equipment and analysis of data to prioritise sites and facilities that need to be decommissioned first on radiation safety grounds.

The IAEA also is assisting Iraq in several areas related to radiation safety and waste management. They include regional technical cooperation projects to upgrade capabilities for controlling radiation sources and responding to radiation emergencies.

http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2006/tuwaitha.html#
___________________________________________________________

And then there's sweet Mr. Blix:

Iraq repeatedly clashed with previous UN envoys, but Mr Blix avoided this.

He brought his famous qualities of calm to bear when confronting Baghdad and conveying the message that it must do something to demonstrate it is telling the truth about its weapons programmes or face war.

Mr Blix appeared to walk a middle ground during the Iraq crisis.

Initially he was keen to show his independence from Washington, even refusing to hide his frustration with the Bush administration over key intelligence he wanted it to share.

Now that the war has finished, he has made clear his feeling that the US and UK had exaggerated, or "over-interpreted" - as he put it - the case for war.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2268819.stm

[PhilDragoo]

Yes and why would France want to derail our intelligence and our credibility by floating forged documents.

To obscure its complicity in supplying Iraq with prohibited weapons and weapons-related material, and to keep the Oil For Food gravy train running on time.

Russian generals in Baghdad but not to drink coffee.

Planes and trucks to the beautiful Bekaa Valley.

[PhilDragoo]

Some of the challenges facing the clean-up effort include determining now unknown locations where contaminated equipment and materials might be buried, and recovering lost records about the contents of radioactive materials stored in waste containers.

But Hans Blix assured us all was well--except with our cowboy president. Ditto Scott Ritter.

Idea: Send Hans and Scott into these contaminated areas along with several busloads of the White House press corps and the current crop of congressional peace Democrats.

Leave them for the duration.

[freema]

Ahhhhhhhhh...it's been handled. But they'd have fine company, Phil:

http://deploymenthealthlibrary.fhp.osd.mil/products/Tuwaitha%20Nuclear%20Research%20Center%20(79).pdf

[Fedora]

I believe the Lake/Clinton faction of the intelligence community has played a major role in Plamegate. Baer's versions of various events rarely match anyone else's, though (compare with the passages where he's quoted minus last name in Andrew Cockburn's Out of the Ashes), so I don't know what the story is regarding his allegation against Lake, which sounds fishy to me.

[Fedora]

Yes, those are all important questions that have never been publicly answered. The intelligence commmunity had information that Russia was transferring Iraqi WMD to Syria in the days before the war, but this never received much publicity, I suspect for diplomatic reasons (though this may be revisited if relations with Syria and Russia continue on the path they're on). Likewise China kept a low profile but had a role in Oil-for-Food. So did some US companies who would probably prefer no one delves too deeply into this. Regarding Iraq's uranium stocks, I always thought the real question which the Niger controversy diverted attention from was the status of Iraq's centrifuge program.

---

CIA Statement on Recently Acquired Iraqi Centrifuge Equipment

• The head of Iraq’s pre-1991 centrifuge uranium enrichment program, Dr. Mahdi Shukur Ubaydi, approached U.S. officials in Baghdad and turned over a volume of centrifuge documents and components he had hidden in his garden from inspectors since 1991. Dr. Ubaydi said he was interviewed by IAEA inspectors - most recently in 2002 - but did not reveal any of this.

• Dr. Ubaydi told us that these items, blue prints and key centrifuge pieces, represented a complete template for what would be needed to rebuild a centrifuge uranium enrichment program. He also claimed this concealment was part of a secret, high-level plan to reconstitute the nuclear weapons program once sanctions ended.

• This case illustrates the extreme challenge we face in Iraq as we search for evidence of WMD programs that were designed to elude detection by international inspectors.

[Fedora]

I agree it would've been ill-advised for Plame to remain undercover for the reasons you mention, as well as the Ames issue and Wilson's blabbermouth tendencies. But sometimes CIA does things that make no sense to me, so who knows.

[deadmenvote]

ping O rue
long read, late night

[piasa]

Ubaydi = Obeidi :

1991 : ("OFFICIAL END" OF IRAQ'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM - BUT IRAQI SCIENTIST OBEIDI CONTINUED WORKING ON CENTRIFUGE PROJECT THROUGH 1997 - See IRAQI SCIENTIST OBEIDI) While Saddam's nuclear program officially ended after the first Gulf War, the reality, says Dr. Obeidi, was far different. "I was developing the centrifuge for the weapons" right through 1997, he now admits. In an interview with WABC Radio's John Gambling, the Iraqi centrifuge scientist [in late 2004] said he was ordered to keep his nuclear bombmaking research concealed from U.N. weapons inspectors.
And even after 1997 - when Saddam's nuke program went dormant - Obeidi says he continued to keep his centrifuge plans in safe storage - in a cardboard box buried beneath a lotus plant in his front yard.
"I had to maintain the program to the bitter end," Obeidi explained, saying his only other choice was death. All the while the Iraqi physicist was aware that he held the key to Saddam's continuing nuclear ambitions. "The centrifuge is the single most dangerous piece of nuclear technology," he writes. "With advances in centrifuge technology, it is now possible to conceal a uranium enrichment program inside a single warehouse."
The nuke plans he buried included "the full set of blueprints, designs - everything to restart the centrifuge program - along with some critical components of the centrifuge."
Writes Dr. Obeidi: "Would Saddam have tried to build nuclear weapons again? One can only imagine he would have. For the time being, however, the core knowledge for rebuilding the centrifuge program lay buried in my garden, waiting for the order from Qusay Hussein or his father." ------ "Iraqi Physicist: Saddam Funded Nuke Program Till 2003," With Carl Limbacher and NewsMax.com Staff , Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2004 12:02 a.m. EDT , citing quotes from WABC Radio interview of Obeidi

[Fedora]

Thanks! I was going to ping you to see if you had any updates on that :-) It looks like "Ubaydi" and "Obeidi" reflect alternate ways of transliterating the same Arabic vowel sounds into English. When I search on what I believe is the Arab equivalent I also get some hits on "Obaidi".

[Fedora]

Italics off! :-)

[Parrot_was_devastating]

I always thought the real question which the Niger controversy diverted attention from was the status of Iraq's centrifuge program.

Why Yes!.....Has it not allways** been,.....The Holy Grail : )

Did you know that the *Centrifuge system in its base form is actually origin to Nazi Germany?
Not many do : )
This is just one** of the secret packets that went out with Bormann and others...some fortunate to be Rat lined to U.S. or South America,..[Others to a miserable fate.....but a few decent meals at least in Russia : )]

Where did Khan of Pakistan get his centrifuge and portable nuke program from?
Well...he got it second hand of course....something known for decades.....not really breakthru.

Iraq and WMD is all about holding tantalizing info which hangs like Saddams noose over others
For all it seems are at Play.....In the Fields of the Lord : )

One of the reasons I so enjoy Fr ...well ya...for the talent that exists in the post Insurance fire claim assessment skill...as it were
You have brought up key points which Phil D has enlarged....inviting me into the fray.
The Nazi atomic program has been reduced to a shadow ibid on Wikipedia in comparrison to where it really was in reality.
The Nazi's used...shall we say...shocking weapons on the Russian's in 1945....[one example being....Fuel Air explosives]
They deffered using them on the U.S. in hope of a resolution...and for those bargaining their future,..as a sureity of a western outcome for their own fate : )
The U.S. stockpile of U 235 suddenly doubled after the Germans surrendered,...or rather..after Bormann made his trip out.
I'm teasing you with something that appears over the top ..but it isn't.
The next gift the U.S. got from Germany was the infrared triggers : )
The past is still with us in so many ways....
Like Henry Kissinger who was an Army Translator and worked for Allen Dulles....[Paper Clip : )]

The past entwines with the present.
Considering the intrigues at hand......and those that have been
we should count our selves lucky this has not all melted down.
Iran,....Iraq,...they well know they are in over their heads to be sure
when sleve's are rolled up and nations arsenals pressed into motion,....they would be swept aside like an after thought.
All it would seem are engaged to play at the table of fortune,.....to roll the dice and risk.

My only complaint is that the U.S. Military has been used improperly......Phil and others would readily agree.
Mexico and Azatlan inside the wire has been more offensive than Iraq and IED's from Saudi whore's and Iran.

That something Noble and Just would arrise from all of this.

That...We could be proud once more......like we were in Tokyo Bay : )

Israel has struggled as its Senior Military is turned over and over,....They stumble now in Battle.

The U.S.....much the same,...as **others tamper to keep the Amazing ability,

Nominal.

America is not Nominal.......God Forbids its! : )