Plame Was “Out” A Long Time Ago — Refresher
Here are two of the many reasons why Fitzgerald couldn’t charge anyone with the original crime. It wasn’t committed! (Hat tip: TheMalcontent)
CIA Scandal Tars Everybody – Nicholas Kristof, Oct. 14, 2003
First, the CIA suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson’s name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his arrest for espionage in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.
Second, as Mrs. Wilson rose in the agency, she was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from “noc” – which means non-official cover, like pretending to be a business executive. After passing as an energy analyst for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a CIA front company, she was switching to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having “CIA” stamped on her forehead.
Nevermind that Ambassador Wilson was introducing her as his “CIA Wife” long before June, 2003. So why did Libby lie?
-Bruce (GayPatriot)
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Keep trying guys. Unfortunately, you’ve got one fine, upstanding special prosecutor who just rendered your post as the BS it is.
Comment by Queer Patriot — October 28, 2005 @ 5:05 pm - October 28, 2005
Perhaps Ms. Wilson’s activites worked against the interests of Marc Rich.
I was struck by Fitgerald’s use of the name Wilson instead of Plame. Did anyone else notice this?
Comment by anon — October 28, 2005 @ 5:17 pm - October 28, 2005
What exactly should they “keep trying” about, QP? If anything, GP and GPW have been very charitable to the special prosecutor, something that (the vindicated) Ken Starr never got from your side of the aisle.
And Plame’s status is entirely germane, so your comment makes no sense.
Comment by The Malcontent — October 28, 2005 @ 5:51 pm - October 28, 2005
Don’t worry about it, Mal….just save this comment of QP’s for future reference. Take my word on it.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — October 28, 2005 @ 6:31 pm - October 28, 2005
#1
Could you possibly be a bigger lying dick?
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 28, 2005 @ 8:39 pm - October 28, 2005
No. 5 — well yes. I could be you.
Comment by Queer Patriot — October 28, 2005 @ 9:07 pm - October 28, 2005
If Plame shares her husband’s politics and there are many in the CIA like her, I’ll never trust as legitimate anything the CIA says.
Comment by Jack L. Allen — October 29, 2005 @ 1:09 am - October 29, 2005
So one has to be Republican to work at the CIA?
Comment by Pussy Patriot — October 29, 2005 @ 5:23 pm - October 29, 2005
From Novak’s column:
“That’s where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein’s wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed “the stuff of heroism.”
Libby, like many warmongering neocons, is a former leftist with no military experience. Also, he worked for Marc Rich. Marc Rich is the world’s largest arms dealer.
Comment by anon — October 29, 2005 @ 9:39 pm - October 29, 2005
If we’re voting for “The Biggest Lying Dick”….I vote for ThatGayConservative….with V the K a close second.
Comment by monty — October 29, 2005 @ 10:51 pm - October 29, 2005
#8
No, but neither do they have to leak cherry picked information like a sieve for political retribution.
Comment by ThatGayConservative — October 30, 2005 @ 2:23 am - October 30, 2005
So, Anon, honey, if I’m reading you right in #8 when you say that “Libby, like many warmongering neocons, is a former leftist with no military experience”, then this guy Libby is just another of the, what do they call them, chicken-hawks? I was reading over at another blog that the whole Neo-Con cadre (and their supporters like Jonah Goldberg and the like) all like to dream up wars for other people to go fight for them. It only increases the disdain many of us feel for those people in the WH — top, down. Which is why some people have started that “Yellow Elephant” movement to shame those people (especially those wild-eyed young republican nuts) into actually signing up to serve in the wars they support so heartily.
Love, Pussy.
Comment by Pussy Patriot — October 30, 2005 @ 8:45 am - October 30, 2005
It is entertaining to watch lefties (who have always hated the CIA anyway) to get worked into hysteria because Libby told a reporter that a woman who, every weekday for the past eight years has driven her car to CIA headquarters, parked in the CIA parking lot, and then spend the hours between 9 and 5 pm in an office inside CIA headquarters — worked for the CIA.
Are you guys also surprised when you find out men with combovers are actually bald?
Comment by V the K — October 30, 2005 @ 4:45 pm - October 30, 2005
It’s their big chance to play “We can about national security.”
Which we all know they don’t, which is why it falls flat every time.
Comment by Calarato — October 30, 2005 @ 7:54 pm - October 30, 2005
oops – “We CARE about national security”…
Comment by Calarato — October 30, 2005 @ 8:16 pm - October 30, 2005
In case if anyone cares about facts. This is the rest of Nicolas’ article which clearly state that the leaking of Plame’s name is inexcusable!!!!
“If Democrats have politicized the scandal and exaggerated it, Republicans have inexcusably tried to whitewash it. The leak risked the security of all operatives who had used Brewster-Jennings as cover, as well as of all assets ever seen with Mrs. Wilson. Unwitting sources will now realize that they were supplying the CIA with information, and even real agents may fear exposure and vanish.
CIA veterans are seething, and rightly so, at the betrayal by their own government. Larry Johnson, who entered the agency at the same time as Mrs. Wilson, is a Republican who voted for President Bush – and he’s so enraged that he compares the administration leaker to the spies Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen.
“Here’s a woman who put her life on the line,” Johnson said. “But unlike a Navy Seal or a Marine, she didn’t have a gun to fight back. All she had to protect her was her cover.”
We in journalism are also wrong, I think, to extend professional courtesy to Robert Novak, by looking beyond him to the leaker. True, he says he didn’t think anyone would be endangered. Working abroad in ugly corners of the world, American journalists often learn the identities of American CIA officers, but we never publish their names. I find Novak’s decision to do so just as inexcusable as the decision of administration officials to leak it.”
Comment by from SF — October 31, 2005 @ 12:32 am - October 31, 2005
That’s Kristof’s opinion.
Just because Kristof says Plame was undercover (she wasn’t) and leaking her name was inexcusable, doesn’t make it so.
Plame’s cover was blown in the early 90s – by Aldrich Ames in fact. And her hubbie, who’d call her “my CIA wife”.
What’s inexcusable is her husband’s lies to the American people.
What lies? Mainly the ones about his intelligence report, which supported (not debunked) the Iraq-Niger connection.
There a backdrop to all this which you might not notice.
The CIA is a bureaucracy, with its own political interests – wanting to “stay on top” and run the country – just like the others (Defense, State, NSC, what have you).
With so many dire intelligence failures the last 5 years, they have been exposed as needing reform.
But they have longstanding, symbiotic relationships with New York Times reporters, providing a great bullhorn.
Just because they all holler together about something, doesn’t mean you should buy it, or stop looking for the rest of the story.
Their outrage is calculated. Their slant on the story is as self-interested as Libby’s or anyone’s.
Comment by Calarato — October 31, 2005 @ 1:41 am - October 31, 2005
#17 raises a good point. It is rather odd to see leftists suddenly up in arms about protecting the sanctity of the CIA after bashing it for so many years. It’s also worth nothing that before Plamegate, the CIA was under attack for totally screwing the pooch with regard to the intelligence on both 9-11 and WMD. The career bureaucrats of the CIA are also livid about Porter Goss shaking up the organization.
It’s kind of convenient, is it not, that this whole scandal has deflected criticism off the CIA’s incompetence, and suddenly made the CIA a paragon of integrity and a bulwark of national security in the eyes of the left and the MSM.
Comment by V the K — October 31, 2005 @ 6:40 am - October 31, 2005
Just because Kristof says Plame was undercover (she wasn’t) and leaking her name was inexcusable, doesn’t make it so.
Just because you say she wasn’t undercover, unless you too are CIA, hardly qualifies as a valid sentiment. She officially was, so beyond the rumors of her identity known by the “cocktail circuit” in DC, which I’ve still yet to hear authentication on, she’s still considered covert.
There’s not really any questioning left on this except for conservatives desperate to exonerate their leaders.
In fact, it would be pretty revealing to hear from Libby where he knew of her, wouldn’t it?
Mainly the ones about his intelligence report, which supported (not debunked) the Iraq-Niger connection.
That’s conservative clap-trap. The Republicans on the senate hearings committee attempted to bully the Democrat members to sign off on this piece of nonsense who completely disagreed with this assertion.
I think their motivation is entirely clear. They even went beyond bullying to write further statements attempting to condemn Wilson’s findings which clearly showed a lack of credible connection between Niger and Iraq. And it all makes sense. No yellowcake, no WMDs, no Al Qaeda et al. no reason for war. Republicans have a vested interest in making the invasion seem a logical and foregone conclusion.
Comment by gaycowboybob — October 31, 2005 @ 2:08 pm - October 31, 2005
Look, I stumbled onto this site. In fact, a couple of my dearest friends are gay Republicans. So, I used to think that gay Republicans are just oxymorons, I have to say after reading this site, I have to gay Republicans are morons. A couple of things I want to say here:
1. The only reason I quoted the rest of Kristof’s article on 16 above was because it contradicts what Bruce selected to quote in his blog. Sure, it is Kristo’s opinon, it is the SAME opinon that Bruce quoted to make his point, however the rest of the article contradicts Bruce’s quote.
2. The paragraph that Bruce quoted said that “the CIA suspected …” but they don’t know for sure, but everyone know for sure after Novak outed Plame, including her neighbors. This is actually one of the points that Fitzerald made, which is Plame was uncover.
Look guys, I am not looking to argue for the sake of argument. If you are really gays, you really take a second look of what is going on in the WH and the far Rights. Whether you support gay marriage or not, the far Rights are not your friends. They truly believe in the evil of men loving men. You can conservative, which I think I am, but you can never be one of the far Rights if you like men!!
Comment by from SF — November 1, 2005 @ 2:10 am - November 1, 2005
Oh, SF honey, you DON’T know how we’ve tried to tell the so-called gay “patriots” all that for some time now. They sort of know they’re not welcome in the GOP, but most of them had party loyalty so imprinted on them at birth that they can’t let go of it, no matter how bitch-slapped they are by that party. It’s a real anomaly in American politics (and probably in human psychology): to have a group so detested by their political party remain so loyal to it. Try this and you’ll see what I mean: say “George Bush proposed a Constitutional Amendment to forever write anti-gay bigotry into the U.S. Constitution” and watch the fur fly. It’s like throwing a little red meat to an ever circling pack of starved hyenas.
Pussy
Comment by Pussy Patriot — November 1, 2005 @ 7:38 pm - November 1, 2005
LOL….go right ahead and see what this gay conservative says.
Then you can go see what Pussy and her fellow gay liberals do when their party pushes forever writing antigay bigotry into state constitutions — call it “pro-gay” and “gay-supportive”.
This is why I find tremendous and amusing irony in her statement about being blinded by party loyalty. Sort of a case of the pot calling the kettle chartreuse.
Now let’s all sit back and watch as Pussy hurls insult after insult rather than simply admit that John Kerry praised and supported amendments in multiple states to forever write antigay bigotry into their constitutions.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — November 2, 2005 @ 2:11 am - November 2, 2005
#20
SF,
It all boils down to Gay Republicans being a hated minority in their own party (no matter how well they are tolerated in Blue States) and are reviled by their own kind. Everytime someone has the gall to make this assertion, NoDick30mm prints the last paragraph as above. It is so knee jerk.
Comment by chandler in hollywood — November 3, 2005 @ 3:42 am - November 3, 2005
And unfortunately for you, Chandler, so devastatingly true.
It must be hell to be constantly reminded of the fact that those of you who bash conservative gays love to support antigay politicians yourself.
Comment by North Dallas Thirty — November 3, 2005 @ 9:11 pm - November 3, 2005