Washington Post: The Spy Next Door

[Cush]

A Big three page article on Mrs PLame, Analyst? What Analyst?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58650-2003Oct7.html

Couple of bits:

"Little is publicly known about the career of Valerie Plame (rhymes with "name"), and she did not respond to a request for an interview made through her husband. The CIA also declined to discuss her.

Plame underwent training at "The Farm," as the facility near Williamsburg, Va., is known to its graduates. As part of her courses, the new spy was taken hostage and taught how to reduce messages to microdots. She became expert at firing an AK-47. She learned to blow up cars and drive under fire -- all to see if she could handle the rigors of being an undercover case officer in the CIA's Directorate of Operations, or DO. Fellow graduates recall that off-hours included a trip to the movies to watch the Dan Aykroyd parody "Spies Like Us."

Plame also learned how to recruit foreign nationals to serve as spies, and how to hunt others and evade those who would hunt her -- some who might look as harmless as she herself does now as a mom with a model's poise and shoulder-length blond hair. "


So, will this get any airplay or not???

[tinnypriv]

1. Jesus Christ

She sounds like a true patriot.

And these fuckers outed her? :grr:

[Vitruvius]

7. Outed by chickenhawks.

Obviously Little Sir AWOL and his well-born chickenhawk crew think they're BETTER than Ms. Plame.

[Rose Siding]

2. Bush's cover up

just can't work. Isn't it apparent that the Central Intelligence Agency of the USA, able to overthrow entire govts, could root out ONE gangster pol?

[coldwatercyn]

3. Bush will regret this.

This one will not go away. Wonder what kind of “gate” they will tag this one? It’s disingenuous for Bush to say he doesn’t know if they will find who leaked this information. He knows how to find out, if he doesn’t, shame on him and he shouldn’t be running our country.

[newyawker99]

8. Hi coldwatercyn!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[MidwestTransplant]

4. Here's what really PISSES ME OFF...

Bush talks about how people all over Washington leak and he hates leaks. That is obviously meant to imply that this is the run of the mill leak and happens all the time. Obviously he is trying to downplay the significance. He can't acknowlege that this is sabotage and treason.

[SimpleMan]

5. This is too simple...

According to the article, she is a NOC.

Quote:
__________

"Her activities during her years overseas remain classified, but she became the creme de la creme of spies: a "noc," an officer with "nonofficial cover." Nocs have cover jobs that have nothing to do with the U.S. government. They work in business, in social clubs, as scientists or secretaries (they are prohibited from posing as journalists), and if detected or arrested by a foreign government, they do not have diplomatic protection and rights. They are on their own. Even their fellow operatives don't know who they are, and only the strongest and smartest are picked for these assignments."
__________

My thoughts:

1. If she was a NOC, only a very small handful of people at the very top would even have clearance to have access to that information: Bush, Cheney, Tenant. Any more?

2. If she was a NOC, and even her fellow operatives don't know who she is. That said, Novak couldn't have possibly gotten the CIA to affirm her employment with the agency. Am I wrong here?

The list of suspects is extremely small folks. This is huge!

[roguevalley]

6. some CIA guy said that she's probably target number one

in the world right now for foreign governments/agents.

She has little kids. Imagine. Never being able to go
out of your own country ever again. Never being able
to truly believe your husband and little children are
safe.

Looking over your shoulder for the rest of your natural
life and wondering if your parents, siblings, etc are
safe.

Those bozos are below scum for this.

[Greyskye]

10. In an NPR interview...

...her husband stated that there was a small number of people who knew of her role as a CIA operative. Although he refused to state specific numbers, the interviewer said that he had recieved the impression that it was somewhere in the neighborhood of a dozen people. When asked if he could confirm this, he said that that figure was in the ballpark. (not his exact words, but that was the meaning). Remember, the chain of command for the CIA goes directly to the White House. An undercover operative has an extremely limited number of people who know their actual identity.

So yeah, all of this rhetoric coming from the White House about "not interviewing the entire White House staff" is entirely disingenuous. How hard can it be to investigate a dozen or so people?

[Resistance Is Futile]

21. Levels of cover

There's a problem here.

It's believable that perhaps a dozen people knew Plame/Wilson was a field agent under NOC. These will be her superiors, any in-country turncoats she may have been controlling, and other assorted close contacts.

A lot more than a dozen people, however, will have known that she worked for the CIA. This category will include anyone who recognized her as Joe Wilson's wife and happened to see her in any of the CIA's buildings, or in any situation where a reasonable person could be expected to put two and two together. Given Joe Wilson's prominence, and depending on Plame/Wilson's visibility to the power structure, this category could include a lot of people.

It's possible, and IMO likely, that whoever blew Plame/Wilson's cover knew she was CIA but didn't know she was a NOC.

[Resistance Is Futile]

20. Secrecy

Information on the identities of CIA agents is likely channelized top secret information available only on a need-to-know basis. There is no security pyramid where persons at the top are entitled to know all less privilaged information. Cheney et el couldn't log in to some database and query the names of all CIA agents. Further, there are limits to what information senior members of the executive can order the security services to turn over. For example, a president can demand the nuclear launch codes or the cypto keys used to communicate with other governments but he's not going to get the answer he wants.


I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that I have a hunch whoever outed Plame/Wilson probably had no idea what she did above and beyond the broad brush of 'CIA employee.' The number of people who knew she was CIA is going to be be much larger--and therefore much more leaky--than the number of people who knew she was a NOC field operative.

[bobthedrummer]

9. Analyst not. She was in the field bigtime. NOC.

The real deal spy.

[Spazito]

11. Geez

This is so awful! I don't even know what to say anymore:-(

[grasswire]

12. look at this....

"We feel like the peasants with torches and pitchforks," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who was in Plame's officer training class in 1985-86. "The robber barons aren't going to be allowed to get away with this."


Just in case you thought this story was going away.

[Spazito]

13. Kick

*

[Spazito]

14. I cannot believe that this article has gotten so LITTLE response so...

I am going to kick it one more time. It is a MUST read!

[jab105]

15. Agreed//

n/t

KICK!

[lostnfound]

16. What kind of response are you looking for..

After all, a previous thread had already discussed that she was a NOC. It's great that the Post decided to actually humanize her, as opposed to some other papers like the Financial Times which insist on simply making derogatory comments about her husband and minimizing the damage done by the UNPATRIOTIC TRAITORS in the BUSH ADMINISTRATION who did this.

But hey, we already know that we've got a president willing to bomb innocents and to lie about why; we already know that these people are VICIOUS and UNPRINCIPLED and SELFISH..so what's news? She's just one spy to them...no, not even one spy..she's just a tool to get back at one of Rove's enemies, a way to clear obstacles by sending a message.. And this administration likes to send messages.

[Spazito]

17. The "humanizing" is one good reason to read it.......

and the other is this is THE issue that needs to be in the forefront, imo.

[gauguin57]

18. ripple effect

Time Magazine's interesting article about Leakgate details the ripple effect of the outing of this one CIA operative. What a mess.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/printout/0,8816,493240,00.html

An excerpt:

"At a time when good intelligence and successful spying has never been more essential to the nation's defense, the deliberate unmasking of a spy sent shudders through the secret web of spooks worldwide. When a U.S. operative is unmasked, foreign spy agencies go back, retrace his steps, review his contacts and try to figure out how the CIA operated in their country. "Anyone who was seen with her overseas is tainted now," warns a former officer who knew Plame. "If she went to the grocery store and talked to the grocer, people will say, 'I wonder if he was working for her?'"

"In Plame's case, the damage may go even deeper. Plame was an NOC, meaning she did her job overseas under nonofficial cover and not out of an embassy or government office. Many in her family did not know she worked for the agency. Such unofficial covers are often with private companies to further disguise an operative's real work. Plame had worked with Brewster Jennings & Associates, an obscure energy firm that may have been a CIA front company. Deep covers take time, luck and work to develop; the outing of an NOC also blows the cover of the involved business or private entity." "

[AnnitaR]

19. Madame Secretary Albright comments on "leak"

Loved what the Madame Secretary had to say about the "leak" on Olberman tonight. She said she wished everyone would quite calling this just a "leak" she said it is a CRIMINAL offense. You could tell Keith loved it when she said that.

I totally agree with her. It is beyond pissing me off that the media is downplaying the criminal aspect of what those bastards did!