Posted on 07/18/2005 3:34:55 PM PDT by Incorrigible
"It must be fun to be privy to the secrets of the CIA. But a man who ignores a secrecy oath and instead uses national secrets to make a big splash on the front page might be accused of putting his love for publicity above such tawdry interests as national security." ...
In Torricelli's case, the spin was that the CIA source in question had killed an American. He hadn't, but even if he had that would not have justified naming him.
In Rove's case, the spin is that the release of the agent's identity did no great damage to national security. ... But it's not true, according to Larry Johnson, a former CIA official who served in Central America during the war years and therefore has some insight into both the Torricelli and Rove leaks.
The damage in the Rove case, Johnson told me last week, stems from the fact that in outing Valerie Plame, Rove also outed Brewster- Jennings, the CIA shell company that was her cover.
"Once that company was outed, any hostile power can backtrack by following bread crumbs in reverse," said Johnson. "Anyone who had any dealings with that company could be seen as a CIA operative." ...
While we're on the subject of hypocrisy, how about the New York Times itself? In 1995, it ran that CIA source's name on Page One along with Torricelli's baseless accusation that he'd killed an American. But when it was Republicans that outed a CIA source, the Times editorial page applauded the naming of a special prosecutor because the public needed to know "whether someone at the White House, perhaps acting with institutional sanction, had revealed the name of a C.I.A. operative for political reasons." ...
(Excerpt) Read more at nj.com ...
This is from July 12:
Larry C. Johnson
The misinformation being spread in the media about the Plame affair is alarming and damaging to the longterm security interests of the United States. Republicans' talking points are trying to savage Joe Wilson and, by implication, his wife, Valerie Plame as liars. That is the truly big lie.
For starters, Valerie Plame was an undercover operations officer until outed in the press by Robert Novak. Novak's column was not an isolated attack. It was in fact part of a coordinated, orchestrated smear that we now know includes at least Karl Rove.
Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover--in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport--i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card.
A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed.
The lies by people like Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, and P. J. O'Rourke insist that Valerie was nothing, just a desk jockey. Yet, until Robert Novak betrayed her she was still undercover and the company that was her front was still a secret to the world. When Novak outed Valerie he also compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company and with her.
The Republicans now want to hide behind the legalism that "no laws were broken". I don't know if a man made law was broken but an ethical and moral code was breached. For the first time a group of partisan political operatives publicly identified a CIA NOC. They have set a precedent that the next group of political hacks may feel free to violate.
They try to hide behind the specious claim that Joe Wilson "lied". Although Joe did not lie let's follow that reasoning to the logical conclusion. Let's use the same standard for the Bush Administration. Here are the facts. Bush's lies have resulted in the deaths of almost 1800 American soldiers and the mutilation of 12,000. Joe Wilson has not killed anyone. He tried to prevent the needless death of Americans and the loss of American prestige in the world.
But don't take my word for it, read the biased Senate intelligence committee report. Even thought it was slanted to try to portray Joe in the worst possible light this fact emerges on page 52 of the report: According to the US Ambassador to Niger (who was commenting on Joe's visit in February 2002), "Ambassador Wilson reached the same conclusion that the Embassy has reached that it was highly unlikely that anything between Iraq and Niger was going on." Joe's findings were consistent with those of the Deputy Commander of the European Command, Major General Fulford.
The Republicans insist on the lie that Val got her husband the job. She did not. She was not a division director, instead she was the equivalent of an Army major. Yes it is true she recommended her husband to do the job that needed to be done but only after fielding a request from her supervisor asking for her husband's bona fides. The decision to send Joe Wilson on this mission was made by her bosses and was in response to a request relayed to the division Valerie worked in by the Presidential daily briefer.
At the end of the day, Joe Wilson was right. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the Bush Administration that pushed that lie and because of that lie Americans are dying. Shame on those who continue to slander Joe Wilson while giving Bush and his pack of liars a pass. That's the true outrage.
And here's a quote from his latest column: MR. BUSH, HAVE YOU NO SHAME?
What is really laughable and sad about the White House smear of Valerie Plame is that it is insinuating that the bad news Joe Wilson brought back regarding the absence of any evidence that Iraq was trying to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger was part of a devious plot hatched by Ms. Plame a full year before President Bush made the mistaken speech claiming that such evidence did exist. Val was a great case officer but not even she could pull off such a sly plan. Moreover, even if she had the authority to send her husband Joe to, she could not guarantee he would return with confirmation that such a plot existed.
There's also a PBS News Hour interview in 2003:
Mr. Johnson portrays the Iraq front of the War on Terrorism in a very negative light from which I conclude he does not agree with President Bush's military efforts there. I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt that he is genuinely concerned about how her name came to be public but I think he may be barking up the wrong tree in terms of who to blame.
I have seen Larry Johnson not only on news talk shows misconstruing the war in Iraq...
but he has been on some of the dems bogus (all dem) hearings about Iraq...so I don't pay attention to anything he says...
He is the CIA equivalent of Scott Ritter...IMHO
Plame's exposure as an intelligence operative has become a major controversy in Washington. Former intelligence officials confirmed Plame's cover was an invention and that she used other false identities and affiliations when working overseas. "All it was was a telephone and a post office box," said one former intelligence official who asked not to be identified. "When she was abroad she had a more viable cover."
That's a good thing, considering how little work seems to have gone in to establishing the company's presence in Boston, intelligence observers said. While the renovated building houses legal and investment firms, current and former building managers said they've never heard of Brewster Jennings. Nor did the firm file the state and local records expected of most businesses.
Both factors would have aroused the suspicions of anyone who tried to check up on Brewster Jennings, said David Armstrong, an Andover researcher for the Public Education Center, a liberal Washington think tank.
At the least, a dummy company ought to create the appearance of activity, with an office and a valid mailing address, he said. "A cover that falls apart on first inspection isn't very good. What you want is a cover that actually holds up . . . and this one certainly doesn't."
Why is Val herself so silent?
Was Joe Wilson previously married? If so, to whom? Does she/he want to talk on the record?
Where does Joe's dough come from? Was he on the dole from Saddam? Oil for food?
How does he support himself now? Book sales? Speeches? Hillery Rodam? Joe, just show your 1040's so we'll understand where you are coming from.
There's plenty to investigate.
"He is the CIA equivalent of Scott Ritter...IMHO"
In my younger, more-wild-eyed days, I posted to an anarchist board, frequented by someone claiming to be French, "trapped" in the US by fascist conservatives. "She" used an e-mail address from a university server, and the address was larryjohnson@(whatever school it was, can't remember now).edu.
Strange, huh?
I will never forget who Larry Johnson is because he is another version of Joe Wilson - a pompous, strutting, vapid careerist who asserts more than he can know about what he does not begin to understand. He wrote what should be one of the most notorious Op-Ed columns in history, appearing in the NY Times July 10, 2001, claiming that terrorism was a sharply declining phenomenon which should be far down the list of priorities for US policy makers. I recall reading this column that very morning and thinking "this guy is an utter fool and he is supposed to be one of the key US counter-terrorism experts!" It was a time of increasing alerts and terror threats before 9/11, though the focus of attention was mainly overseas, yet Larry Johnson's mission was to pooh-pooh any attempts to ratchet up our concerns. He was one of the clowns who helped the country to sleep before 9/11, and he was supposed to be the great expert on terrorism.
"Who is Larry Johnson? He's the author of one of the more poorly timed op-eds in history. On July 10, 2001, he wrote in the New York Times under the headline "The Declining Terrorist Threat" that "Americans have little to fear" from terrorism unless they travel or work in a few of the world's hotspots."
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/994402/posts
http://www.berg-associates.com/newpage11.htm
I beleive in either July or August 2001, this clon wrote an op ed in either the NYT ir WSJ opinioning that Al Qaeda wasnt a threat to the average american citizen
In other words, he's about as useful to the CIA and our national security as Valerie Plame and Michael Scheuer. Total incompetents all.
Yup. I will never forget reading that column of his on 7/10/2001 because even as a non-expert I could see how absurd it was to try to judge the scope and significance of the Al Qaeda threat from a numerical analysis of annual deaths due to terrorism - it should have been obvious at least since WTC 1993, if not much earlier, that there are plenty of deranged Islamo-fascists eager to slaughter us, and that the means & opportunity could converge at any time. Further, one terror cell with access to WMDs would blow all of Larry Johnson's numbers right out the window and "off the charts." Larry Johnson was a prime purveyor of nonsense before 9/11, and unfortunately he is still at it.
bttt
Larry Johnson is a fruit nut !
Gee whiz, but Mr. Johnson had all those nifty charts to make his point in the Summer '01 piece...
I hope our government doesn't rely on such freshman level analysis. Ah heck, gotta stop kidding myself.
Karl Rove: "Look it's the Useful Idiots"
bump
Thanks for that link to the WSJ article. I suspected there was more to Larry Johnson and I'm not surprised that Mulshine chose him to quote for this article.
wasn't she driving to the cia building every day in a flashy quite noticeable sports car?
i wonder if that was part of her cover too...the cia building and the sports car.
"To: Howlin
That's interesting. She donated $1,000 to the Gore campaign using her CIA-supplied cover company! From the Opensecrets.org political donation database:
Total for this search: $1,000
Contributor
WILSON, VALERIE E MS WASHINGTON,DC 20007
Occupation
BREWSTER-JENNINGS & ASSOC.
Date
4/22/1999
Amount
$1,000
Recipient
Gore, Al 66 posted on 07/12/2005 3:13:35 AM EDT by FreedomCalls (It's the "Statue of Liberty," not the "Statue of Security.") "
Doesn't seem like she was TOO concerned with her "cover" or her "partisanship"....I guess she OUTED herself!
Just like I thougt, the Marxist Stream Media has NO ability to do ANY research...it is the FReeper Nation that IS the new 4th Estate!
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