Help me out with the analyst versus operative question

[MissB]

I'm sure this has been covered in the last few days, but I've scanned through and not found what I'm looking for in the pages and pages of posts.

I'm trying to point out to someone that the analyst versus operative issue isn't important. Now that Plame has been confirmed as an operative, it is really a moot point. But after listening to NPR this morning, I'm a bit confused. Someone on the radio show this morning said that whether or not she was an analyst or an operative is a moot point. They are all CIA "officers" and if they travel overseas they are encouraged to go undercover, if not outright ordered to do so.

So is it a crime to out her if she was "only" an analyst? Or would it have been a crime regardless?

[Jackpine Radical]

1. It's a crime to expose any intelligence worker who is undercover.

Operative or analyst--no difference. Only the issue of being undercover matters. By saying she was an analyst, they were trying to imply that she wasn't really undercover.

[MissB]

2. Thank you!

That is the distinction I needed. Thank you!

[seoigh]

6. 'Analyst' is her cover

That the CIA is going after the administration indicates that the CIA thinks she is undercover. The story that'll come out in the next few days is that she actually is a Directorate of Operations on the team that was preventing terrorists from obtaining WMD.

[newyawker99]

8. Hi seoigh!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Capn Sunshine]

3. and she DID have a cover.

She was a State Dept. liason, not CIA officer blank. The CIA does not announce their presence overseas for obvious reasons.

[dpbrown]

4. They have to have spent some time overseas in last 5 years

I don't think that's a problem in Ms. Plame's case.

[plcdude]

5. here is a good discussion

to your question http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/media/july-dec03/leaks_09-30.html

[Qutzupalotl]

7. I saw this on News Hour last night!

I wish I had taped it. His delivery is impeccable.

LARRY JOHNSON: I say this as a registered Republican. I'm on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear of an individual with no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it. His entire intent was correctly as Ambassador Wilson noted: to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy and frankly, what was a false policy of suggesting that there were nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend that it's something else and to get into this parsing of words, I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this.