Anatomy of a scandal

[emad]

"White House scandals tend to have their beginnings at a smaller, more human level"......


The fallout from the outing of a CIA agent could prove to be extremely damaging to George Bush's presidency, writes Julian Borger
in the UK's Guardian:



Washington dispatch In The Recruit, a Hollywood film earlier this year about CIA folk, there is a discussion among the agency's trainers of who, if any, of that year's intake of eager recruits would make the grade of NOC - the crème de la crème who take the deepest undercover, most dangerous jobs. Most of the film was inevitably a fanciful romp, but that little detail from the spying trade turns out to be true. NOCs exist. The initials stand for "non-official cover", which means that such agents do not pose as diplomats or government officers in more conventional roles.
They operate outside the embassies, in the roles of businessmen, or students or tourists, and so do not have diplomatic cover if they are caught. Valerie Plame, the woman at the centre of Washington's scandal of the moment, is an NOC and a specialist in weapons of mass destruction. At least she was, until she was outed by a conservative columnist, Robert Novak, on a tip from "two senior administration officials". In their eyes, Plame had the poor taste to be married to Joseph Wilson, a retired ambassador who had blown the whistle on at least one of the White House's spurious claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The naming of Plame, and the consequent ruin of her career, was intended either as a deterrent to other would-be whistleblowers, or simple revenge, or both. It was also a serious crime, now being investigated by the FBI, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years.

Those are the basics this particular story. The irony is that the real scandal, the falsification of "intelligence" about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq invasion, is far more serious. But in a sense it is too big. There are too many people involved and they are too important to be "caught". The idea that the nation was tricked into backing the war is also possibly too much for many Americans to come to grips with right now while they are still in a patriotic post-September 11 frame of mind. There has been little of the sense of outrage that has inflamed public life in Britain for much of this year. But the sense of disillusion is clearly corroding its way into the president's ratings. White House scandals tend to have their beginnings at a smaller, more human level. Watergate began with a little-noticed burglary; Whitewater, with an Arkansas land deal, "progressing" to furtive Oval Office encounters with an intern. So it is with Wilsongate, although the issues at the heart of this scandal are a good deal more serious than real estate sales or oral sex.

Plame posed as a consultant for a little known energy firm called Brewster Jennings & Associates, which the world now knows is a CIA front company. So any and every foreign intelligence service will presumably be carrying out a search of any contacts its citizens have had with Valerie Plame and-or Brewster, Jennings & Associates. That is bad news for the CIA's witting and unwitting foreign contacts, who will now be under suspicion as spies. It is also bad news for Washington's attempts to track weapons of mass destruction around the world, having failed to find them in Iraq. Undercover forays into the murky world of arms deals and supposedly civilian nuclear contracts are a more subtle and almost certainly a more efficient way of finding them than an invasion. White House staff had until Tuesday this week to hand over any relevant email or correspondence over the affair while investigators are going over the phone logs. Meanwhile, the administration is in denial mode. At least, it is denying that Karl Rove, the president's political brain, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's top lieutenant, are guilty of leaking classified information.

EDITED BY ADMIN: COPYRIGHT

From:http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1057857,00.html

[BQueen]

1. Excellent Find, but you need to use excerpts, not entire text

It's a copyright issue.