Posted on 10/30/2005 8:26:05 PM PST by TheEaglehasLanded
The 'dumb blonde' who excelled as a spy
Helena Smith Sunday October 30, 2005 The Observer
Long before Valerie Plame became America's most famous spy, she learnt Greek and moved to Athens. It was 1990, her first foreign posting and not long after graduation from Penn State University - and recruitment to the CIA - nearly everything she dreamed of. Ambitious, blonde and beautiful, Plame, then 27, took to the job with alacrity. With 'State Department Cover' at Athens' US embassy, the secrets of her trade were easy to conceal. Greece, under the unpredictable governance of Andreas Papandreou, a former US citizen turned anti-American populist, was an interesting place. But the first Gulf war was about to happen, making the country's proximity to the Middle East critical.
As a junior operative, determined to rise through the bureaucracy, Plame would be remembered as unusually diligent and unusually good. So good that even if, privately, she displayed remarkable dexterity with an AK-47 machine gun, publicly she would use charm and good looks if it meant maintaining the interest of a potential recruit.
'She was willing to dress the part of a dumb blonde,' one colleague told The Observer. 'To let yourself be underestimated in a trade craft that is secret is not at all stupid. It shows a lot of skill.'
Her next move was to the London School of Economics, where she began 'being laundered' and going undercover. After gaining a degree, she was sent to the College of Europe, an international relations school in Bruges, before moving to Brussels and into the energy business.
There, she worked out of the now closed consulting firm Brewster-Jennings, frequently traveling to Africa and other far-flung areas as an intelligence agent under non-official cover (NOC).
By then none of her friends, and not even her family and father, a retired military officer, knew of her real identity. With no diplomatic protection, the cover she had taken years to build as an energy business consultant would be all-important. Strip it away and, like any other NOC out in the field, she'd be open game for potential enemies - expendable without any official repercussion.
When, in 1997, the CIA began to fear Plame had been given away - along with other covert overseas operatives - to the Russians by the double agent Aldrich Ames, she was brought back to Washington. There, at a reception given by the then Turkish ambassador, her eyes drifted across the room to meet those of retired US ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.
He was 13 years older than her, successful and ruggedly handsome. For both, it was love at first sight.
Within weeks, an unusually nervous Plame felt she had something to say. The couple were in bed, making love, as Wilson would later recall. But her husband-to-be had to know: she was an undercover agent.
How come no Repubicans have brought up this issue, along with the political contribution with her front company listed on FEC.gov, Judy Miller's book Germs about WMD's, chem, and bio weapons from 2001 and the likelihood she talked to Valerie Plame to get info.
Last but not least send a non CIA agent to get info and not expect anyone to question why he was sent?
Even if Ames outed her, that does not allow anyone else (such as Libby) to do the same. Only those in her chain of command can make that decision.
How can a person be un-outed?
*Shrugs*
Her actions clearly marked her as a traitor - she deserved worse than she got.
"The couple were in bed, making love, as Wilson would later recall."
Too much information.
And Wilson replied, "Does that mean I'm under arrest?"
Does the CIA have any type of policy regarding agents carrying on affairs with married individuals and divulging their status?
Same way you get your virginity back I suppose.
Zackly. So Wilson was porking her and she got chatty. Some spy. Wonder what she was like when she was drunk?
Pass me another Reformation day brewski.
Anybody see any of 60 minutes tonight? Looked like they rolled out the whole agency to cry over Plame. That arm of the government is really hanging it out, trying to use something like this to take down the Administration.
"How come no Repubicans have brought up this issue..."
Keeping their powder dry, perhaps?
The suave, admitted doper -- outing his own wife as a premarital roll in the hay..
Is the cad trying to prove he's a cockster, or that Plame was a slut..
Semper Fi
I believe it. They are all leftwing over there, they are recruited from those east coast schools and are firm in their blue state attitudes as well as leftwing ethics. Cry us a river. Don't like working for the CIA? Then don't sign up. Nobody makes anyone work for the CIA. Try doing something competent while you are at it, I'm dang sick of this overpaid Post Office With Guns that can't get anything right. Lay them all off and force them to get real jobs.
The CIA's been a nest of liberals for ages.
In the 1970's they drove out everyone good on the domestic side - particularly James Jesus Angleton and then, in the 1980's and 1990's they managed to get rid of most of their decent fighters on the operations side, for fear of getting our hands dirty.
The CIA's as much a nest of Ivy League liberals as the State Department is.
Of course, it shoudn't come as that big of a surprise: the OSS was full of communists.
There is nothing illegal about mentioning the name of an employee of the CIA. Dropping the name of a covert agent may be illegal, but evidently Fitzgerald must have decided that she wasn't covert since no charges were brought concerning her role and her name being mentioned to the press.
So, if Plame was removed from being a covert operative/agent in 1997, then how could anyone (Rove, Libby, Novak, whomever?) revealed her as a covert operative/agent in 2003?
Doesn't every reference to "the Bush administration blowing the cover of a covert CIA operative" or "Rove has purposefully blown an undercover CIA officer's cover" need to be withdrawn?
Oh, no, that would require thinking, reason, and, worst of all for these leftist scumbags, truth.
Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame and all of your leftist kook friends...GET STUFFED!
"Even if Ames outed her, that does not allow anyone else (such as Libby) to do the same. Only those in her chain of command can make that decision."
If that were true then Libby would have been doing the correct thing by lying to the grand jury. He wouldn't have wanted to 'out' her to the GJ.
"The couple were in bed, making love, as Wilson would later recall. But her husband-to-be had to know: she was an undercover agent."
lol, this statement alone indicates that it was Valerie that outed Valerie.
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