I need help with Wilson/Plame question.

[haymaker]

I listened to some hate radio today and it seems their message, and they are screaming it, is that Plame is a "desk jockey" and everyone in Washington knew she was CIA and she is not under cover.

Is she a under cover, or is she just a desk jockey, like Michael Medved so condescendingly put it? I think this will determine alot when it comes down to brass tax.

[Oilwellian]

1. Here's what a coworker of Plame's said....

Larry Johnson, a retired CIA agent who worked with her said the following on PBS Newshour last night:

"The reporters who did not file a story and promised, or given assurance to these individuals that they would be protected, they need to come forward. To hear bob Novak parsing words like a Clinton lawyer defining sex is outrageous. Sure, they didn't call him, he called them but they volunteered the information. They took the initiative to divulge the CIA officer's name. And that is outrageous."

"Let's be very clear about what happened. This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not as Bob Novak suggested a CIA analyst. But given that, I was a CIA analyst for four years. I was undercover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency until I left the agency on September 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it."

"So the fact that she's been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised. When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised. For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that well, this was just an analyst fine, let them go undercover. Let's put them overseas and let's out them and then see how they like it. They won't be able to stand the heat."

"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."

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

[BlueCollar]

10. if she was undercover for three decades

or thirty years...and some are saying she's only forty years old...how does that work?

Do we have an age for this lady? I know it's not polite to ask a woman her age.

[Oilwellian]

11. If she started working for the CIA in the 80's

She's been under cover for 3 decades.

[BlueCollar]

12. I get the three decades...

I'm looking for an age to debunk the local right wing radio...

[salin]

17. I am 40... and have worked (post college) for three decades

I worked in the 80s, in the 90s and in the 00s. Across three decades - not 30 years. literalists.

[alcuno]

19. Are you asking her age?

I looked for his age and couldn't find it, but he's not 40. If Joe Wilson was assigned to Iraq in 1988 at the age of 35, that would make him 50 now. I'd say his wife is closer to 50 than to 40. She was CIA throughout the 80's, 90's, and the new decade the 00's. Seems right to me.

[MissB]

20. I've read somewhere that she is his third wife

It may have been here, but I don't recall. But it is possible that she is younger than he is. I think her twin kids are quite young still.

[BlueCollar]

21. Thanks for your input

Greg Knapp is our local afternoon shift right-wing white house spokesman here in N. Texas. I really want to put this one to him.

[w13rd0]

2. ex-Bush Counterterrorism Republican Johnson...

...says no, she was not a "desk jockey". This is just more slander of the messenger. If "everyone knew" she was CIA, surely someone could produce something predating this controversy? Oh what, they can't? Then they are full of shit.

[Bucky]

3. Yes, she had contacts in the field

I doubt she wore a trench coat and shot lasers out of her garter belt, but the people that she contacted in the field were foreigners and many of them will lose their own jobs and contacts because of what "Fatthroat" told to Novak. Hopefully no one will lose their life, but we can't be sure of that.

The angry Republican CIA guy who went on the Lehrer Report yesterday made it clear she was in the field and talking to knowledgeable external contacts to gather primary field intel. They are now vulnerable.

Perhaps she's working a desk now. But all her work record includes overseas work and her past contacts are ALL compromised. Whoever did this has exposed us to the next terror attack. This is unambiguously illegal.

edit to add PS:

PS: White House counsel Gonzales in his memo to WH staff ordering them to not destroy evidence in this case called Plame an "operative." These are Republican Gonzales's words, not some Democrat's.

[haymaker]

6. It utterly astonishes me that Medved can get away

with thses kind of lies. He is literally COMPLICIT in the cover-up and should be treated as such.

[molly]

4. Novak is trying to spin that she was a "secretary"

in his outdated pug mind, women do not hold positions of power. It does not matter what her exact duties were, she worked for the CIA.

[Caution]

5. Info on Wilson Affair?

http://news.google.com/news?num=30&hl=en&edition=us&q=cluster:www%2ecrosswalk%2ecom%2fnews%2fweblogs%2fkmc%2f1222638%2ehtml

1390 articles on this particular story so far.

Somehow i don't think this one is going away any time soon.

[robbedvoter]

7. Josh Marshall debunks this meme very well here:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/oct0301.html#100103952am
people who knew the family were told Valerie works for some company.
Wilson was not exactly a celebrity - so his wife's profession was not cocktail conversation or buzz in DC.
And the WH counsel called her an operative in the letter asking for cooperation. Nice try.

[Must_B_Free]

8. zIf she was a desk jock

then what was Novak printing that for? and how does Wilson's wife being a desk docky compromise the integrity of the Niger info? Was't that the intended implication of the leak?

their story doesn't add up completely.

[Redbear]

9. Read the earlier threads.

There was a great link to Slate about why the "operative" or "analyst" question is hooey.

The main thing is not that Valerie Palme herself is endangered by this (she may or may not be) but there is no question but that people in foreign countries who dealth with "Valerie Palme" are in great danger.

[grasswire]

13. she was undercover...

...for 12 years, spanning three different decades. That's what Larry Johnson said moments ago on MSNBC.

[Octafish]

14. She was an OPERATIVE working the WMD beat.

From what's been published: her work, since the late 1980s, was to get a handle on which countries had what nuclear-chemical-biological warfare technologies and organizing people to monitor the shenanigans. Perhaps she also did some work to stop the spread of these technologies, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Either way, she has been at it long enough to make clear that she was a good field agent, otherwise she would have been kicked upstairs, behind a desk. She worked under deep cover, meaning she had a "job" with a real American company when overseas that gave her a plausible reason for being in-country. That way, she could meet contacts on business. When her name was leaked by Rove or Cheney or Bush or whomever, all the people who had supported her work were compromised.

[remfan]

15. CIA confirmed she was an operative in July

http://www.nynewsday.com/news/ny-uscia0722,0,2289800.story

Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday yesterday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity - at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.

[Junkdrawer]

16. Bottom line: Justice wouldn't investigate if she wasn't undercover.

She's undercover and still works for the undercover part of the CIA.

[Snellius]

18. If she weren't undercover, why would anyone bother to name her

Novak's original story -- that Wilson got his assignment to go to Niger because of his wife's suggestion -- was meaningless in itself. Who cares? So what? The only point was as an excuse to leak the maiden name of his wife. Her operative name. There was no reason for Novak to include the name at all if that were the case. Even to say "Wilson's wife, a CIA operative" would have somewhat changed the focus. Novak was specfically using this story as a pretext for leaking the name. And what is the point of leaking the name unless the name exposes her. And intimidates her husband.