Cynthia McKinney's CIA Agent Involved in Plame Letter

Revisiting the issue that helped spur her ouster from Congress three years ago, Rep. Cynthia McKinney led a Capitol Hill hearing Friday on whether the Bush administration was involved in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The eight-hour hearing, timed to mark the first anniversary of the release of the Sept. 11 commission's report on the attacks, drew dozens of contrarians and conspiracy theorists who suggest President Bush purposely ignored warnings or may even have had a hand in the attack — claims participants said the commission ignored.

That, in and of itself, is nothing unusual for Cynthia McKinney. But, the story gets more interesting as you read on:

The commission's report was not a rush to judgment, it was a rush to exoneration," said John Judge, a member of McKinney's staff and a representative of a Web site dedicated to raising questions about the Sept. 11 commission's report.

The White House and the commission have dismissed such questions as unfounded conspiracy theories.

McKinney first raised questions about Bush's involvement shortly after the attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, generating a furious response from fellow Democrats in Washington and voters in Georgia, who ousted her in 2002.

"What we are doing is asking the unanswered questions of the 9/11 families," McKinney, a DeKalb County Democrat who won back her seat in 2004, said during the proceedings.

She rebuffed a reporter's repeated attempts to ask her why she would so boldly embrace the same claims that led to her downfall.

"Congresswoman McKinney is viewed as a contrarian," panelist Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official, said. "And I hope someday her views will be considered conventional wisdom."

Who is Melvin Goodman? Why, one of the signatories to this letter regarding the Plame leak. The letter that has been widely trumpeted by Josh Marshall and others.

Assuming there is only one former CIA official named Mel Goodman, it appears Mr. Goodman has been very busy lately. His inclusion as a signatory also makes the letter from former 'outraged' CIA officials look less like straight talk than it did initially. That in and of itself does not invalidate the letter, but it makes it look much less like the pristine indictment against all things Bush that Mr. Marshall would have you believe.

In continuing our examination of Josh Marshall's favorite letter, we're moseying on down the list of signatories, and their credibility ain't exactly improving.

Ray McGovern, for instance, contributed an article to the ultra-left truthout.org arguing that the Downing Street Memo conclusively proves that Bush deliberately forged intelligence to get us into war in Iraq. Now, are we to believe that he just innocently and in a non-partisan manner became concerned about what happened to poor old Valerie Plame? If you're still unconvinced, read his hysterical rant at DemocracyNow about what a right-wing rag the WaPo is. You might also be interested to know that McGovern thinks that the reason 9/11 happened was because of "gross ineptitude and gross malfeasance" on the part of the Bush administration. They should have paid more attention to Sandy Berger. I'm serious, it's all in there.

One of the other signatories to the letter, David MacMichael, also belongs to McGovern's group, Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which has been virulently anti-war since well before the Plame situation exploded. Observe some of the quotes from MacMichael during an interview with lefty host Amy Goodman:

It is all happening because there are lies upon lies, deceit upon deceit that have been used to justify this illegal war on against an unprovoked enemy, or an enemy that does not provoke us.

AMY GOODMAN:Now one of the things we are talking about a lot and seeing a lot is that the same people that were there during the Reagan-Bush years and even before, the Wolfowitzes the Rumsfelds, Cheneys were there then. What was George Bush’s view of these people then?

Those were 1981-1983 under Reagan and under William Casey. In fact I embarked on that job the day Casey came in. I can assure you that the way in which the National Intelligence Council and the National Intelligence officers, the directing officers in there were stacked during the Casey years, meant that intelligence was designed, and I focused principally on Central America, the whole Iran Contra thing later, truthful analysis was not the highest priority there. The determination was to produce analyses that would support the previously decided upon policy so for me, getting back involved with Ray McGovern here and VIPS dealing with this current situation, its kind of like déjà vu all over again. It’s a familiar process.

Additionally, several of the other signatories had been outspoken critics of the administration's decision to go to war before the incident with Plame erupted, including Col. Patrick Lang. Vince Cannistraro was part of the group of CIA officials who suspiciously began speaking critically about the Bush administration in the month before the general election, rather than at a time when it might have been practically useful (such as, before the war).

This letter becomes less credible by the minute. We are still looking for a signatory that didn't have an axe to grind with Bush BEFORE the outing of Plame.

"I think we should classify the CIA as a subversive organization and have done with it." ~ browardchad

Did you see this?

The American Thinker
Spy Valerie and the rogue CIA July 18th, 2005
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles.php?article_id=4656

Hold on to your hat. The plot is about to thicken.

Behind the scenes, the single most important reason for the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson farce is that [the new] CIA Director Porter Goss has finally started to clean house at Langley. Goss's long-overdue shake-up is clearly backed by the White House, the top levels of the Pentagon and State Department, and the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte.

Judging by Director Goss's remarks at his Senate confirmation hearings, those whose jobs are most in danger include the CIA "experts" in WMD proliferation – Valerie Plame's outfit – who completely failed to anticipate the Indian and Pakistani nukes, and just couldn't figure out what was going on with Iraqi WMDs.

Valerie Plame's bosses are facing the axe for decades of failures.

And it's about time, because Iran is within sight of its first nukes. You don't suppose that has anything to do with the Plame/Wilson publicity stunt, do you?

Clearly the CIA managers who failed the United States so terribly on 9/11 should have been fired four years ago.

Others now worried about their careers include officials who have long resisted the onerous task of building a topnotch human intelligence capability in the most dangerous parts of the world.

Porter Goss's new broom should also sweep away:

1) personnel who utterly failed to thwart critical technology theft by China during the Clinton years;

2) those who constantly undermine the war on terror;

3) the ones who make a regular habit of dropping media stinkbombs against the White House.

4) Finally, there is the faction that supported Saddam Hussein's hold on power, as Joe Wilson did.

It could be a bloodbath, and the Permanent Establishment knows it.

The farcical Plame/Wilson assault on Karl Rove is a shot across the bow of the White House.

The spook bureaucracy is fighting for its perks, hand-in-hand with the Democrats and the media. This is exactly the same iron triangle that destroyed Richard Nixon.

The charge against Rove is based on a blatantly forged document, purporting to show that Saddam tried to buy Niger yellowcake uranium. We now know that the document was forged by the French government to embarrass Secretary Colin Powell, and undermine the American case against Saddam at the UN.

It was classic disinformation bait.

Powell flourished the Niger forgery at the Security Council, and the very next day "European intelligence agencies" leaked word that it was a laughable fraud.

Months later, the London Telegraph published the fact that it was all a French disinformation ploy.

The CIA has to know all about the French forgery, just as it knows that Joseph Wilson's famous trip to Niger was pure bilgewater.

Nobody sends a has-been diplomat to Africa to drink mint tea with corrupt old President Tandja Mamadou, expecting to discover whether Mamadou has secretly been selling nuke materials to Saddam.

That's pure Inspector Clousseau.

Valerie Plame's CIA bosses took care not to ask Mr. Wilson to sign a confidentiality agreement, routine in such cases, almost as if they wanted him to make a public fuss. They were not surprised, one might think, when Mr. Wilson promptly took his story to New York Times Op-Ed Editor Gail Collins, one of the great Bush-haters of all time.

As Joseph DiGenova, former US Attorney for DC, recently said, "The CIA isn’t stupid. They wanted this story out."

It was a publicity stunt from the get-go.

Wilson's "confidential trip" to Niger gave him the superficial credentials to publish his "expose" in the Times. He'd gone there, talked to the top officials face to face, and by gum, they told him it was all a lie! Not even Gail Collins could possibly believe this banana sauce, but Wilson's charges provided a useful stick with which to beat the White House.

What Karl Rove apparently did was to hint to reporters about the fraudulence of the whole Wilson stunt, and for that the media mob wants him drawn and quartered. No good deed goes unpunished.

Everything else Wilson has been saying on his two-year speaking tour around the country has been shown to be lies, but well-designed lies --- lies that fit right into the mad-dog world of the Democrat Left.

Telling lies to confirm somebody's paranoid beliefs is a classic disinformation gambit, right out of Spy School 101.

But such gambits would be far more usefully employed against al Qaeda, our opponent in war.

If the United States is attacked again by terrorists, one reason will be that our CIA has wasted time fighting the White House rather than the enemy.

Given Wilson's Niger trip, set up by wife Valerie for Joe Wilson to publicly show that a blatant forgery was, well, a forgery, the current media attack on the White House was completely predictable.

The Permanent Establishment had a perfect dress rehearsal last year with the uproar about Richard Clarke, who also worked in the Clinton White House, possibly next door to Joe Wilson. The barely-disguised message to George W. Bush was: if you try to get rid of us, we may pull a Deep Throat on you. J. Edgar Hoover would have seen through it instantly.

When the Twin Towers exploded in 2001, President Bush did not touch the FBI or the CIA.

By comparison, after the Japanese decimated the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in 1941, FDR and George Marshall churned the commanding ranks of the Army and Navy, elevating talented officers like Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton. They created Wild Bill Donovan's OSS, the seed of the CIA. Donovan in his turn brought street spooks to the top, political correctness (of the day) be damned.

A lot of careers were broken, and the new talent skyrocketed. It worked like a charm. The infusion of new blood into a stale bureaucracy was the key to victory in World War II. The old crew had allowed a deplorable situation to develop, and were obviously incapable of recognizing what needed to be done.

So why didn't Mr. Bush clean out the dead wood at CIA?

A reasonable guess is that his father warned against it. George Bush, Sr. is a former CIA Director, after all, and is intimately familiar with its ways. He was a GOP Congressman during Watergate, when Mark Felt destroyed Richard Nixon for thwarting his lifelong ambition to succeed J. Edgar Hoover.

Paraphrasing LBJ's immortal words, it was smarter to keep the CIA inside the tent pissing out rather than the other way around.

So George Tenet wasn’t fired, and as far as we can tell, neither was anybody else. Instead, the President met with Tenet every day for five years to get the latest about al Qaeda, and surely gained a deeper understanding of the intelligence maze at the same time.

The White House has played a very careful poker game since then, picking its cards one by one until it was ready to make the big move.

Today, George Tenet is out, State and Defense are in the hands of Bush loyalists, the House and Senate have GOP majorities, and the new CIA Director is not an insider.

The CIA itself is now subordinate to the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte, a no-nonsense diplomat in the Kissinger mold.

When Goss became Director, Agency bureaucrats complained bitterly to the press. Mr. Bush now holds all the cards, and it is time to play them.

All this isn't just fun and games.

It casts a deadly light on internecine warfare in Washington at a time of great national danger.

We know that Hoover blackmailed four successive Presidents by threatening to reveal confidential FBI secrets.

We know that Hoover's fair-haired boy, Mark Felt, destroyed the Nixon Presidency – a virtual coup d'etat that the media tell us was a victory of Democracy over the Secret Government. With the media as destiny’s servant.

We know that Nixon taped visitors to the Oval Office without their permission, but that FDR, LBJ, and Kennedy did the same, without facing media exposure.

And during the unbelievable Clinton years we know that Bill and Hillary abused presidential power in a dozen egregious ways, and may still control copies of raw FBI files to use against their domestic enemies.

But it was Richard Nixon alone who got caught by a rogue FBI bureaucrat.

Deep Throat showed how a president can be destroyed by a bureaucrat.

The farcical "outing" of Valerie Plame therefore raises a genuinely frightening monster from the swamp: A subversive alliance between the intelligence bureaucracy, the Democratic Party and the media.

The common thread among all the characters in this low-brow comedy is hatred of President Bush and American power.

Joe Wilson's eyebrows go ballistic when he talks about the White House. Just watch him sometime.

The sneering media mob is on display on C-SPAN whenever the White House holds a press briefing. The Left is apoplectic: "Karl Rove + traitor" brought up 97,000 entries on google three days ago, and 124,000 this morning.

But Karl Rove is merely today's target for a permanent state of rage so deep and hot that it is always seeking new witches to burn.

As for the failed CIA spooks who are now living in fear of losing their perks, one can only imagine the steam blowing from their ears, as the day of reckoning draws closer.

I'm cheering for the good guys.

James Lewis

Mel Goodman, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and former CIA analyst,Mel Goodman, online Tuesday, June 10 at 1 p.m. ET, discussing the issues surrounding the intelligence community and Bush administration's reports of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons before the war.

The credibility of the intelligence community and the Bush administration is being scrutinized by critics who question the grounds for invading Iraq. Were intelligence reports flawed, exaggerated or manipulated by the administration? Where are the banned weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

The transcript follows.

Snipped!

Mel Goodman: I don't expect intelligence analysts to go public with their stories but they could go to the Senate and House intelligence committees and their own Inspector Generals with stories of misuse and abuse of intelligence material. NSA analysts leaked material when the KAL 007 documents were abused by the Reagan administration, and the Tower Commission on Irancontra documents misuse and abuse in the 1980s as well. This is serious business and the integrity of the intelligence community is the Holy Grail for intelligence analysts.

Mel Goodman: Our intelligence has been so wrong and so politicized over the past twenty years (since Bill Casey and Bob Gates) that the integrity of the CIA has been hurt badly. It started with the CIA paper on the so-called Soviet role in the Papal Plot (1981), which was a fabrication. CIA tergiversation on NMD contributed to the image of politicization and now this. Once credibility is challenged it is hard to regain it.

Then Mel turned angry when confronted:

Cumberland, Md.: I am stunned by the idea that you consider this SERIOUS -- you must be a Democrat trying to make political capital for 2004.

I can think of lots of really plausible reasons why we can't find the weapons IMMEDIATELY which means we will eventually find them.

1. He could of disposed of them before the attack.

2. They could have been spirited out of the country by Baath loyalists.

3. They could be buried somewhere in Iraq and since many involved in these weapon production are subject to war crimes trials they are not anxious to tell us about them.

4. We did find Mobile weapons labs.

5. Saddam never accounted for tons of WMD such as Sarin, VX, Mustard gas and Anthrax.

6. He was obviously hiding something else why would he decide to fight the US rather than "bare all" to the UN Weapon's Inspectors.

7. WHy did he insist on "minders" or "tape recordings" for interviews of scientists with the UN?

8. What was he doing the 4 years when there were no inspections in the country?

9. Ties to Al-Quaeda have been proved -- Ansar-al-Islam in the North and harboring and treating of al-Zarqawi.

I could go on and on and on -- you seem to have a political agenda and are using this forum to advance it.

I am sure you want publish this as it would embarrass you too much!!

Mel Goodman: Of course, I'm going to respond to your question because this is the classic apologist list of items to defend the Bush administration. But the burden of proof is on you. Where is the WMD? Where are the agents? Where are the nukes? Taken to a third country? You must be kidding. You are all hat and no cattle, as they say in Texas.

________________________________________________

Larry Johnson, former CIA analyst on NewsHour, September 30, 2003:
I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades....she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised.... she's a woman of great integrity....This is a woman who is very solid, very low key and not about show boating.

CNN, October 1, 2003:
Sources told CNN that Plame works in the CIA's Directorate of Operations -- the part of the agency in charge of spying -- and worked in the field for many years as an undercover officer. "If she were only an analyst, not an operative, we would not have filed a crimes report" with the Justice Department, a senior intelligence official said.

(An earlier version of this story quoted CNN reporter David Ensor saying, "This is a person who did run agents. This is a person who was out there in the world collecting information.")

Mel Goodman, former CIA analyst, Washington Post online Q&A, October 1, 2003:
....I've worked in Washington for the past 38 years, including 24 years at the CIA...and I know Ambassador Wilson....and I did not know that his wife was an agency employee. Let's face it....this was targetted information as part of a political vendetta....a pure act of revenge.

New York Daily News, October 2, 2003:
Two former senior intelligence officials confirmed that Valerie Plame, 40, is an operations officer in the spy agency's directorate of operations - the clandestine service.

Plame "ran intelligence operations overseas," said Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA counterterrorism operations chief.
Her specialty in the agency's nonproliferation center was biological, chemical and nuclear weapons and "recruiting agents, sending them to areas where they could access information about proliferation matters, weapons of mass destruction," Cannistraro said.

Ex-CIA employees are now on the record saying Plame was undercover and ran a network of informants, and another knew Wilson and had 24 years at the Agency says he didn't know Plame worked there.

Newsday, July 21, 2003:
Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday Monday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity -- at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

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

Hmmm....These same Grackles have been flying together for some time now. Where there is one, another of the same takes roost..and CROWS (for use of no better term) about Plume.(Grackles — large, aggressive birds — soared into the headlines when they started attacking passersby in downtown Houston in an attempt to protect a chick.) ;)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2003_10/002318.php

This says the meeting will be re-broadcast on the 25th. To: From: "Scoop Outgoing News" Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 12:33:41 +1200 (NZST) Subject: [UQ-Wire] UQ Wire: Briefing on 9/11 to Air on Web, TV Posting to International Wire of Scoop Press Release: www.UnansweredQuestions.org Date: Monday, 25 July 2005 Time: 12:33 pm NZT UQ Wire: Briefing on 9/11 to Air on Web, TV Distribution via the Unanswered Questions Wire http://www.unansweredquestions.org/ . FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Forwarded upon request of the office of Congresswoman McKinney (D-GA) Congressional Briefing on 9/11 to Air on Web, TV and Radio For the World to Hear - Reps. Cynthia McKinney (GA) and Raúl Grijalva (AZ) to host Title: 'The 9/11 Commission Report One Year Later - A Citizens' Response - Did They Get It Right?' What: Congressional Briefing for Members of Congress and their staffs to hear testimony from family members and experts appraising the 9/11 Commission Report Where: Room 345, Cannon House Office Building, Independence Ave & First Street SE, Washington, DC When: July 22, 2005, from 9 am to 5 pm EST. The following media coverage has been confirmed: --C-SPAN TV is taping the entire event for rebroadcast on Saturday, July 23rd, after 5 pm EST (station TBA); check for scheduling at http://www.c-span.org; click on 'TV schedules' in the black box. --The INDEPENDENT RADIO NETWORK and the dcradiocoop.org are airing a webcast of the briefing during the day on their websites: dc.indymedia.org and the global indymedia.org for the world to hear. The webcast will either be live, or delayed by no more than 2 hours. Keep checking these websites for updates. They will rebroadcast it all day Saturday, starting at 9 am EST, and will make it available on demand thereafter at dc.indymedia.org. --The PACIFICA RADIO NETWORK will redistribute the stream on their KU Satellite Right channel for their 5 stations and more than 75 affiliates to air at their discretion during the day on Friday, July 22nd, and will later provide it for them on demand on audioport.org. --INN Report on FREE SPEECH TV (FSTV) will run two 20 minute broadcasts of the highlights of the morning session at 6:30 pm EST on Friday, July 22nd, and 1 am Saturday, July 23rd. Find FSTV affiliates via Satellite at: http://www.innworldreport.net/html/schedule.html --In New York City the MANHATTAN NEIGHBORHOOD NETWORK (MNN) will air a rebroadcast of parts of the briefing at 7:30 am EST on Monday, July 25th. One year after the release of the 9/11 Commission Final Report many questions about what transpired on September 11, 2001 and who should be held accountable still remain unanswered. At this briefing, family members will address questions about 9/11that remain unanswered, and the shortcomings of the 9/11 Commission. Other experts and authors will explore the omissions and errors in the Commission's Final Report, will provide historical perspective not found in the Report and will review its recommendations and offer alternatives. A partial list of the panelists who will speaking: Lorie Van Auken and Mindy Kleinberg, widows of 9/11 victim, 'Jersey Girls' & Family Steering Committee Robert McIlvaine, father of 9/11 victim, member of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Marilyn Rosenthal, mother of 9/11 victim, professor at U. of Michigan, expert on forewarnings to 9/11 Nafeez Ahmed, author of The War on Truth, Director, Institute for Policy Research & Development Loretta Napoleoni, economist, author of Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks Paul Thompson, author of The Terror Timeline Melvin Goodman, Fellow, Center for International Policy, former CIA John Newman, Ph.D., professor University of West Virginia, former National Security Agency analyst William Michaels, author of No Greater Threat Contact: Seema or Adrienne 202-225-1605 UQ Wire: Review - Confronting the Evidence ******************** STANDARD DISCLAIMER FROM UQ.ORG: UnansweredQuestions.org does not necessarily endorse the views expressed in the above article. We present this in the interests of research -for the relevant information we believe it contains. We hope that the reader finds in it inspiration to work with us further, in helping to build bridges between our various investigative communities, towards a greater, common understanding of the unanswered questions which now lie before us. ----------------------------------------------------------------- The Scoop website is at http://www.scoop.co.nz/ This Story is at http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO0507/S00392.htm For more information: http://www.unansweredquestions.net/ Post message: UQ-Wire@yahoogroups.com Subscribe: UQ-Wire-subscribe@yahoogroups.com Unsubscribe: UQ-Wire-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com List owner: UQ-Wire-owner@yahoogroups.com <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UQ-Wire/

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