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SANTA FE – A prominent member of Temple Beth Shalom says former CIA operative Valerie Plame, contrary to what she recently told an Israeli journalist, is not a member of the Jewish congregation in Santa Fe. Plame, now a New Mexico congressional candidate, continues to draw criticism for retweeting an anti-Semitic article headlined “Jews are Driving America’s Wars” in 2017. But she said in the recent interview that she’s drawn to her own Jewish heritage and that she has joined Temple Beth Shalom. One of her opponents in the race for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. House seat in...

Former CIA operative Valerie Plame, who has launched a Democratic run for Congress in New Mexico, raised nearly $450,000 last quarter, nearly double her total from the previous filing period. Plame's campaign said in a Monday statement that it raised $446,749 between July 1 and Sept. 30 from more than 16,600 individual donors. The average donation was $26.87. The campaign has raised a total of more than $683,000 since Plame announced she was running for Congress in May. “It’s encouraging to see all the thousands of supporters who want to be a part of this team and agree with our...

The Washington Post "Fact Checker" column gave former CIA operative and current Democratic New Mexico congressional candidate Valerie Plame three "Pinocchios" for her claim that former George W. Bush administration official I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby leaked her identity. Plame blamed Libby for the leak in a campaign ad released Monday, but according to the Post's fact-check, there is no evidence he disclosed her role to columnist Robert Novak. Novak wrote the piece that reported that Plame, identified as a CIA operative, suggested sending her husband, Joe Wilson, to Niger to look into a report that Saddam Hussein had sought uranium...

Most of the establishment press's coverage of President Donald Trump's pardon of Scooter Libby has not mentioned Richard Armitage, the person who admitted that he first leaked allegedly covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to journalist Robert Novak in 2003. This pervasive failure includes items at the Associated Press, New York Times, the Washington Post, and over 80 percent of Google News stories about Libby. A 5:41 p.m. Friday AP story by Chad Day and Catherine Lucey also assumed that Trump engaged in nefarious timing: President Donald Trump issued a pardon Friday to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, suggesting the former...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage acknowledged Thursday that he was the source who first revealed the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak back in 2003, touching off a federal investigation. Armitage told the CBS Evening News that he did so inadvertently. "I feel terrible," Armitage said. "Every day, I think, I let down the president. I let down the secretary of state. I let down my department, my family, and I also let down Mr. and Mrs. Wilson." In a column published on July 14, 2003, Novak, citing two senior...

.. At a security conference this week, the director of the C.I.A., Mike Pompeo, criticized The New York Times for a recent article about an officer who was tapped to run the agency’s Iran operations, a newsworthy promotion because it was an indication of the hard line against Iran that President Trump promised during his campaign. Mr. Pompeo said that the publication of the official’s name, Michael D’Andrea, was “unconscionable” and put his covert status in jeopardy. Mr. Pompeo’s comments led to a wider discussion about the publication of Mr. D’Andrea’s name, and some readers wrote to us to express...

Clinton’s email included Holy Grail items of American espionage, true names of Agency intelligence officers serving overseas under non-official cover. At the business end if the business.

Editor's note: Peter Bergen, CNN's national security analyst, is a director at the New America Foundation and the author of the new book, "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for Bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad." (CNN) -- On Monday, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney called for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate a series of recent leaks that critics charge are designed to bolster the national security credentials of the Obama administration. Investigations by special prosecutors can take on a life of their own. Recall that the investigation of the Whitewater real estate deal in Arkansas -- in...

Minutes after Naomi Watts, movie star, arrived at the CIA’s secret Virginia training center called The Farm, she was thrown to the ground in a way that left bruises. When she cried out in pain, her instructor glared and informed her, “Don’t say 'ow’ again unless you need to go to the hospital.” During the days that followed, she was “stripped of everything that cloaked her in specialness,” said director Doug Liman. The actress chose the rough treatment, Liman said. He chose Watts to play Valerie Plame Wilson, the spy who was outed in one of the most controversial episodes...

It is always a challenge to describe legal proceedings for a general audience and accurately capture clearly the gist of the arguments without oversimplifying them or making them utterly boring and incomprehensible to non-lawyers. Having said that, I believe that while the clock is rapidly ticking on Libby's effort to remain free pending the resolution of appeal, the papers he filed Tuesday need to satisfy so little and his arguments are so compelling, that I will be surprised if the Court of Appeals does not agree with his position. As I noted yesterday, there are three general arguments he makes...

In a court filing today, Patrick Fitzgerald provides a summary of Valerie Plame Wilson's status with the CIA's Counterproliferation Division at the time she was outed to the press by members of the Bush administration. Guess what? She was covert: While assigned to CPD, Ms. Wilson engaged in temporary duty (TDY) travel overseas on official business. She traveled at least seven times to more than ten countries. When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity — sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias — but always using cover — whether official or non-official cover (NOC) —...

So let me get this straight: Scooter Libby is going to jail for not remembering who he told what. He didn't lie, evidently. He didn't remember right, and that is a federal crime, of course, if you happen to be speaking to a FBI agent when your memory fails. But at the same time, the same Justice Department has taken the case of a high government official who lied, who stole classified documents, who destroyed those documents, and he's walking around free as a bird. They won't even ask him to take a lie detector test to determine if he...

(CBS/AP) Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus testified at the Scooter Libby perjury trial Monday that former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, not Libby, was the first to tell him the identity of Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife in 2003, reports CBS News Justice Department reporter Deirdre Hester . Pincus was one of the first reporters to learn the identity of Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and prominent Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson. Pincus said he learned her identity July 12, 2003 but did not immediately write about it. Plame was outed by syndicated columnist Robert Novak two days...

NOBODY knows what is going to happen in the perjury trial of Scooter Libby, the one-time chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Every day, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's team presents evidence that Libby lied to a grand jury. Every day, Libby's defense effectively pokes holes in the prosecution's case. ...snip.... I have no doubt that Fitzgerald gets up in the morning and looks in the mirror and sees a righteous man. But alas, his eyes deceive him, and his mirror shows nothing but Narcissus.

Two journalists were sentenced last September for refusing to testify about who leaked secret grand jury testimony to them about Barry Bonds' use of steroids. (They had written a series of articles and a popular book exposing steroid use in the major leagues.) There is a parallel between that travesty and the CIA leak fiasco which resulted in both the indictment of Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff - for obstruction of justice and perjury, and the jailing of yet another journalist who refused to testify about sources. In the Bonds matter, baseball lovers were highly...

A former White House aide, I. Lewis Libby, may have disclosed conclusions from a highly classified government report on Iraq to journalists before the report was declassified by President Bush, federal prosecutors said in a new court filing. snip.... On Monday, Judge Walton ruled that the government was being too stingy in crafting descriptions that jurors could be shown of the classified security matters Mr. Libby handled. However, the judge withdrew that ruling yesterday, citing a problem with its legal rationale. Mr. Libby's trial is set to begin in January.

WASHINGTON - Without ever mentioning him by name, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, in a court filing Monday, argues that a jury in the CIA/Leak trial should not consider evidence concerning why he did not charge former State Department official Richard Armitage with leaking Valerie Plame's name to reporters. It is a crime to intentionally disclose the name of a classified CIA operative. Fitzgerald writes, "The fact that no other person was charged with a crime relating to the disclosure of classified information says absolutely nothing about whether defendant Libby is guilty of the charged crimes."

WASHINGTON - Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald took on the first witness in the CIA leak case Thursday, dissecting an expert witness until she acknowledged errors and misstatements in her research. Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, hoped the hearing would persuade a judge to let him call a memory expert at his obstruction and perjury trial in January. At the outset of the procedural hearing, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton indicated that he was not inclined to allow a memory expert to testify at the trial. Still, he allowed Libby's lawyers to present a...

I'm looking for a female Freeper singer who can imitate the style of Shirley Ellis singing the "Name Game." In this case it will be a parody of the "Name Game" called the "Plame Game," written by that famous Tin Pan Alley songmeister and Freeper, Charles Henrickson. Whoever can sing and record this song parody in a satisfactory way can expect it to at least get wide play on the Web via my DUmmie FUnnies Blog and other places. Perhaps a radio station might even play it such as part of a talk radio show. Who knows? Anyway, here is...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 1 — An enduring mystery of the C.I.A. leak case has been solved in recent days, but with a new twist: Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, knew the identity of the leaker from his very first day in the special counsel’s chair, but kept the inquiry open for nearly two more years before indicting I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, on obstruction charges. Now, the question of whether Mr. Fitzgerald properly exercised his prosecutorial discretion in continuing to pursue possible wrongdoing in the case has become the subject of rich debate on...