I still cannot see how you can expose a covert operative if he or she is not covert. Be like me saying that so and so works down at Wal-Mart and being hung out to dry for it. Am I missing something here or not?
Liberals still maintain that she was covert.
Am I missing something here or not?
If you're not paying close attention you're missing a political lynching. That's all though. There's nothing of substance here.
"I still cannot see how you can expose a covert operative if he or she is not covert. Be like me saying that so and so works down at Wal-Mart and being hung out to dry for it. Am I missing something here or not?"
I've avoided posting on this topic but I'm going to don my asbestos suit and weigh in.
#1 - There have been conflicting stories about her exact status at the time of the leak. We may not know the real answer right now, but you can be assured that Fitzgerald does. It disturbs me that people just state with certainty that 'she wasn't covert for 6 years'. It seems to me that the CIA was very angry that her name was made public (since they originally requested the DOJ investigation that started this) so my guess is that she might have been covert. I heard a credible report that she was home temporarily because she had recently given birth to twins. It's not unusual for covert agents to take a break for family reasons and then go back to overseas work after a year or two.
#2 - It also disturbs me greatly that some folks on this board seem to be willing to forget their principles in the rush to defend Libby & Rove.
I don't care what the technicality of the narrow 1982 law says. I don't care if they broke the law or not. What they did was unethical at best.
Valerie Plame was a covert agent at some point in her career and she worked on WMD issues. The CIA set up a front company overseas for her. Other CIA agents worked in that company as well. Plus the civilians in that country who did business with that front company...some unknowing and some that were giving us valuable information.
By outing her they compromised national security, they put at risk every civilian who had business ties to that company, they outed every other CIA agent who worked there, they undoubtedly made it more difficult for our agents to get cooperation from civilians in other countries because they might fear being carelessly exposed, and they gave a roadmap to how the CIA sets up operations in foreign countries.
No CIA or FBI agent should ever be outed...ever. Former or current...doesn't matter. Libby & Rove had top secret security clearance and with that comes a great deal of responsibility to be extremely careful when discussing ~anything~ to do with our intel agencies.
Period.
If this was happening during the Clinton years everyone on this board would be baying for blood. Everything I hear tells me that the folks who work in the CIA are extremely angry and feel betrayed. The Bush administration would do well to take a lesson from Nixon. Don't mess with your spies.