On what do Freepers base their claim that Plame was....

[Fiona]

not an undercover operative? They repeat it often and loudly, but I've never heard one explain WHY they seem to know what her official status was. Any ideas?

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. Because she hadn't been out of the country in five years or less for

one thing.

[Fiona]

2. But where is that fact

cited anywhere?

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Check here

http://www.mahablog.com/2005.07.17_arch.html#1121686039939

[Fiona]

10. well

it says that in 97, she moved back to washington. But that doesn't mean she never LEFT Washington.

[TahitiNut]

15. Since when did her assignments become UNCLASSIFIED?

It's the height of intellectual bankruptcy to make the claim that her purported(!!) lack of travel in the prior five years (1998-2003) makes the IIPA inapplicable. Have these people read the report from the CIA's investigation prior to their request that the Justice Department convene a Grand Jury investigation?

(sheesh!)

The most disgusting thing about "know-it-alls" is how abysmally unaware of their own unfathomed depths of ignorance they are.

[Baconfoot]

22. Her whereabouts during the last 5 years (UNKNOWN) are irrelevant

Thanks for playing.

(By UNKNOWN I don't mean that there's a minute or year or month that couldn't be accounted for by OH I DON'T KNOW say things Joe Wilson wrote in his book (hint: prior to the leak). Rather I mean there is a significant portion which WE the news junkies don't KNOW about at the present time. It's just that that wouldn't fit in the header.)

[mcctatas]

3. I honestly heard one of them say...

"She drove to work everyday"....Stupid assholes!:wtf:

[GreenPartyVoter]

4. To Langley, no less

[Fiona]

5. LOL

And undercover operatives do what? Use their jetpacks?

[mcctatas]

8. Astral projection maybe??

:silly:

[proud patriot]

6. Hannity , Rush , etc ........

:crazy:

[rodeodance]

11. you are right--they were saying it over and over last weekend. Seems

they think that if she goes to an ofice she is not undercover.--she is not the spy movie type.

[The_Casual_Observer]

9. It takes the heat off of bush, that's what they base it on.

If rove were a child molester, they would say that the child asked for it. Those people live in a sick broken world where bush is the "good guy" no matter what shitty thing he does.

[flowomo]

12. some of the confusion was from the screwed-up AP story

quoting Wilson saying she was not undercover when Rove leaked her name.... by which he meant she ceased being undercover as soon as he leaked her name. But it took a while for AP to correct the story and the right jumped all over the original.

[Fiona]

13. Yes

but their constant refrain that she was not undercover started LONG before last week.

They began by saying that it was an open secret that she worked for the CIA. They all acted like it was a common topic of discussion at DC cocktail parties:

"Oh, Valerie? BIG spy. Everybody knows that."

[Lindacooks]

14. They're opening their mouths.

Therefore they are lying.

[skids]

16. There are many layers.

One of them is that her cover was broken due to a major internal CIA leak in the 90's. But the CIA only withdrew her because it was possible that she was on the list of agents who's names were divulged, not because they were sure. They were just being careful.

More importantly, the majority of names on that list were fake. In other words, it is most likely that if her cover was blown, that cover was a fake name. So although her physical appearance may be on file in a hostile intelligence agency's basement, her real name most probably was not. (And as we know physical appearances can be altered.)

So the CIA recycled her cover as they deemed appropriate. Freepers fail to understand this. They also fail to understand that there are tons of laws that Rove could have broken, not just the the one in the news. Those won't have the "five years" provision. It's also not clear, based on the date of the leak, whether five years had actually passed or not.

[93ncsu]

17. I don't think they she was not undercover ...

I think they say she did not meet the definition of "covert" as put forth in the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. According to that law, "covert agent" is defined as :

A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency—

(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, AND

(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States; or

(B) a United States citizen whose intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information, AND—

(i) who resides AND acts outside the United States as an agent of, or informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency, or

(ii) who is at the time of the disclosure acting as an agent of, or informant to, the foreign counterintelligence or foreign counterterrorism components of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; or

(C) an individual, other than a United States citizen, whose past or present intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information and who is a present or former agent of, or a present or former informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency.

Ms. Plame does not qualify as a covert agent under any of those definitions. According to Ambassador Wilson in his book The Politics of Truth, he says that she never left the country for work after they came back in 1997. And this was after she was outed. So if we are to believe him, and I don't see why we wouldn't, then there is no definition of "covert agent" that fits Ms. Plame under that law.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[93ncsu]

20. I am just pointing out the law ...

and what Ambassador Wilson has said. I don't think Ambassador Wilson is a dishonest man, so why would I not believe him ?

Somebody asked a question, and I replied. Simple as that.

[Fiona]

21. Fair enough

but I still don't see how people believe everything Wilson says is a lie except for this one factoid.

[crispini]

23. Yep, it's the five years thing and the IIPA act.

But as someone else in this thread has said, there are OTHER laws that could have been broken. Like the freakin' Espionage Act, for one. Read this blog posting, it's good:

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/valerie_plame_/2005/07/the_plame_game_no_its_not_all_about_the_intelligence_identities_protection_act.php

Edited to add: It's also the "she was going to work at Langely" every day crap, and that's also BS, because if you've read Joe Wilson's book, you know that some people KNEW she was working for the government as an "energy analyst" -- very few people knew her true role as working on WMD.

[Fiona]

24. and...

as I've said before, they don't KNOW that she didn't do any work out of the country for five years. On THIS they take Wilson's word? And further, I haven't seen a citation about Wilson's claim.

[crispini]

27. I believe some posters have said it's in Wilson's book....

haven't looked for it myself.

[sandnsea]

18. There's a hearing on Friday

That's what intelligence analysts and others are going to discuss.

http://www.lightupthedarkness.org/blog/default.asp?view=plink&id=1273

[Oilwellian]

25. If she wasn't covert...

She wouldn't be marked as "secret" by a State Department memo and there wouldn't even be a freaking grand jury investigation. Sheesh.

[moondust]

26. Does it really matter?

Suppose that two years after you retire from doing undercover work for many years your old targets/enemies/subjects find out that you indeed were doing undercover work for all those years. Is anybody or anything that you touched back then going to be safe? I think not.

[leftchick]

28. Why would we be having an Investigation and spending millions

of Dollars if she wasn't a NOC? Uh HELLOOOooo!