Exploding Liberal Myths 10 The Plame Name Game

Once again, the Liberal media is trying to ramp up hysteria over the "outing" of Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame. The problem with their frenzy is that there's no substance to the charge, once all the angry flailing and faux outrage are done with.....
In his 2004 book, Wilson revealed that "It was Saddam Hussein's information minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, often referred to in the Western press as 'Baghdad Bob,' who approached an official of the African nation of Niger in 1999 to discuss trade -- an overture the official saw as a possible effort to buy uranium." ................
....Apparently, Valerie Plame ceased to be a covert agent when her cover was blown years earlier. The CIA believed that Aldrich Ames evealed her role, along with many other operatives, to the KGB before his arrest in 1994...............
...What no one talks about is the reason Wilson was picked to go to Niger...... Plame wanted Wilson to investigate the British claim because of his vocal antipathy to President Bush and his staunch opposition to the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. He was sent not to gather evidence and form a conclusion, but because his conclusion was foreordained. Whoever sent him was attempting to exert an undue influence over America's foreign policy by sending someone who would ignore evidence contrary to his opinion.
Do we really want former secret agents playing political games to determine the outcomes of investigations before they're even begun? Investigations the outcomes of which may determine the nation's course in wartime?
Once again, Liberals and their pet Democrats have chosen the wrong hill to die on. While ignoring the real problem we narrowly avoided, they try to whip us into an attack on someone who, even if their accusations are true, commited no crime.
Joe Mariani

I'm not positive. But I had heard, and now I read this in Mark Levin's latest article in the National Review:

Now, Wilson didn't have an intelligence background. Indeed, the committee revealed that Wilson didn't have a "formal" security clearance, but the CIA gave him an "operational clearance." The fact is that there was little to recommend Wilson for the role, other than his wife’s persistence.

Now, this addressed his "clearance" while he was on the trip to Niger, I imagine. But I don't know what job he would have had in the government in 1998 when he married his wife, or why he would have known to check her status back when he might have had such clearances.

Wilson isn't cavalier about his wife's employment -- usually. He often says he can't answer questions, but it seems more of an act. When you get on national TV and say that Karl Rove should be frog-marched out of the White House for outing a CIA operative, it is hard to later claim that you never actually SAID she was a covert agent.

The terms probably have some formal definitions that aren't commonly adhered to. The general point is that CIA spooks don't work out of CIA HQ in Langley. People who drive in and out of that compound are known to be CIA employees, no way or reason to keep that fact covert.

They can and do if they are reassigned back to headquarters on a domestic assignment. Thousands of people work there and unless a specific individual is being tracked by a hostile power inside the US, it would be difficult to sort out who does what.

There are many levels and kinds of cover. Many CIA personnel are declared to host governments when they are assigned abroad and attached to the Embassy. It facilitates host country protection and working with intelligence officials abroad.

Pfame's usefullness to the Agency as a covert operative was severely damaged when her husband declared in his Op-Ed piece that he was on a mission for the CIA to Niger. His association with the CIA and his new high public profile would make it difficult for his wife to be assigned overseas with her family. She was now Mrs. Wilson, wife of CIA operative, Joseph Wilson.

I appreciate the comments and description, and you are right, it is possible to be a spook and work at Langley. It depends on the function of the spook, as a spook.

Pfame's usefullness to the Agency as a covert operative was severely damaged when her husband declared in his Op-Ed piece that he was on a mission for the CIA to Niger.

The disclosure of HIS association with the CIA compromised her ability to function as a spook.

Many CIA personnel are declared to host governments when they are assigned abroad and attached to the Embassy.

But Wilson and the DEMs are trying to plant the false meme that Plame functioned as undeclared. Funny that "covert" has a range of meaning too, as in how many people or which bureacracies know the "secret."

She may have been in a covert assignment overseas, i.e., not associated with the Embassy or other USG agency, but once she returned to the US, she was no longer covert, but rather, a domestic CIA employee. If the Agency had wished to keep her in deep cover, she would never have worked at the CIA.

If the Agency had wished to keep her in deep cover, she would never have worked at the CIA [at Langley].

That fact is what causes the disconnect on folks trying to make a rational analysis of the DEM charge that Rove (or anybody else for that matter) could have "outed" Plame in 2002 or 2003.

Does "covert" equal "deep cover?" How deep does the cover have to be before an agent is covert? How covert do they have to be before they have deep cover? Hehehehehe. All that is set out, from a criminal prosecution point, in 50 USC 426.

TITLE 50 : CHAPTER 15 : SUBCHAPTER IV--PROTECTION OF CERTAIN NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION 50 USC 421 - Protection of identities of certain United States undercover ...
50 USC 426 - Definitions

Cover overseas has been a real problem. The Foreign Service Nationals can identify most of the American employees who work for the Agency. Being integrated into another USG agency or working for an overseas commerical company help, but there are plenty of telltale signs that foreign intelligence agencies can use to figure out who is who. The Agency is constantly working on ways to improve cover.

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