Why isn't the harm to Brewster Jennings being stressed more?

[Frustratedlady]

Have I missed it or has the damage to Brewster Jennings and those connected to the cover been downplayed? I don't think the general population realizes the consequences of exposing Valerie Plame or how much we lost in intelligence and cover because of that exposure. I should think that loss would warrant charges of treason or at least impeachment.

[kansasblue]

1. some background....

Brewster Jennings & Associates was a front company set up in the mid-1990s by the CIA for Valerie Plame, a classified status employee for the Agency whose identity was revealed by Richard Armitage.

http://www.answers.com/topic/brewster-jennings-associates

A spokeswoman for Dun & Bradstreet, a New Jersey operator of commercial databases, said Brewster Jennings was first entered into its records on May 22, 1994, but wouldn't discuss the source of the filing. Its records list the company, at 101 Arch St., Boston, Massachusetts, as a "legal services office," which could mean a law firm, with annual sales of $60,000, one employee, and a chief executive identified as "Victor Brewster, Partner." <2>

Company name

The front company likely took its name from the late Brewster Jennings, a president and founder of the Socony-Vacuum company, which would later become Mobil Oil, and then merged to become part of Exxon-Mobil.

Physical address

101 Arch St. is a multi-tenant, class A, high rise, 21-story, 389,000 square foot (36,000 m²) office building located in the Boston financial district that houses a number of law firms, though there was no visual indication of Brewster Jennings being centered there. "All it was was a telephone and a post office box" a former intelligence official was quoted as saying <3>, although the company was listed in an online database of law firms. <4>.

[Kagemusha]

2. The CIA hasn't confirmed the damage from this stuff & for a simple reason...

It's secret.

They're not supposed to confirm or deny anything about this, to not add to damage and to not draw even more attention to covert operations, and certainly not for the purpose of US domestic politics. It's secret, and the CIA isn't telling for that very simple reason.

[TomInTib]

3. The principals will just go on to something else...

under a different name.

It is all too easy.

[grasswire]

4. I'm afraid the spinners have won this aspect.

Remember how the "16 words" dominated all the fracas around the State of the Union address and contained the story?

I'm afraid that a similar framing has happened here. The "Cheney punishing Joe Wilson" is the current "16 words" --- a limited narrative to hide a larger story.

The larger story is Brewster Jennings and whether Cheney attacked Wilson-Plame to stop her work on weapons proliferation. Would she learn about the forgery? Would she learn that weapons were to be planted? Would she learn that there were NO WMD in Iraq?

Why did they stop Brewster Jennings? Why did they expose CIA assets and cutouts? What is the deeper, larger story?

[blm]

15. And now we are all supposed to 'move on' just as we were supposed to pretend that

IranContra, BCCI and Iraqgate were over - and as it turns out, they NEVER ENDED just because a new administration took over in 1993.

[kansasblue]

5. 'potential damage to the agency and its operatives'

The inadvertent disclosure of the name of a business affiliated with the CIA underscores the potential damage to the agency and its operatives caused by the leak of Plame's identity. Intelligence officials have said that once Plame's job as an undercover operative was revealed, other agency secrets could be unraveled and her sources might be compromised or endangered.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40012-2003Oct3?language=printer

[babylonsister]

6. I googled, and found only Rush mentioning Brewster Jennings:

Rush Defense #2: No crime was committed because Valerie Plame wasn't a covert operative

This is a semantic argument, and it's one of Rush's favorites. Because Valerie Plame wasn't wearing a trench coat hanging out in a dimly lit parking garage with a cigarette in one hand and a plain, manila envelope stamped "secret" in the other, then how can she be harmed by being 'outed?' "She was a desk jockey! She wasn't in any danger!" Rush likes to point out that Plame had "Non-Official Cover" status, so how can you get in trouble for outing someone who wasn't undercover in the first place?

Don't get sucked into an argument about the status of her cover. Whether or not Plame was buying a suitcase nuke from A.Q. Kahn at the time of the outing is irrelevant. The point isn't the harm done to Valerie personally, but what damage was done to the operatives of the company that she worked for - Brewster Jennings & Assoicates. I've never heard Rush mention Brewster Jennings before. Maybe he's addressed it, maybe he hasn't. But I've yet to find a dittohead who's heard of it, so I think they'll be surprised to learn that Plame didn't work alone in her basement. She worked for front company with the CIA looking into the proliferation of 'non-conventional' weapons.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-derych/rushs-entertaining-apopl_b_42807.html

[Peace Patriot]

7. Here's an interesting time-line...

May 22, 2003: David Kelly, the British WMD expert, begins whistleblowing anonymously to the BBC, about the "sexed up" prewar WMD intel. He is mysteriously outed to his bosses in late June (circa Libby/Miller clandestine meeting about Wilson/Plame--Miller was a friend of Kelly's), and interrogated at a "safe house" and threatened with the Official Secrets Act in the first week of July.

July 6, 2003: Wilson publishes his article debunking the Niger/Iran nuke allegation (--after trying for months, internally, to get the Bushites to disavow that claim).

July 7, 2003: Tony Blair is informed that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things" (--could say, not had said) (Hutton Report)

July 14, 2003: Plame outed by Novak.

July 18, 2003: Kelly found dead, under highly suspicious circumstances; his office and computers are searched.

July 22, 2003: Novak ADDITIONALLY outs the entire Brewster-Jennings WMD counter-proliferation network, by naming the front company in his newspaper column--so that if bad guys in foreign countries hadn't figured out the identity of deep cover agents/contacts from the 7/14 column, they had extra help in searching files and interrogating people--and in disabling or killing people who were tracking and stopping illicit WMD proliferation.

--------------------

The Wilson publication on July 6 may have gotten over-emphasized in everyone's understanding of the trigger for the Plame outings. That trigger may instead have been what Tony Blair learned the next day, July 7--that Kelly knew something more than what he had already said to the BBC. If what Kelly knew was of a plan to plant the WMDs in Iraq--for a phony "discovery" by the U.S. troops who were "hunting" for them after the invasion (notably accompanied by Judith Miller)--this would better explain the Bush Junta actions, especially the panicky nature of their highly risky outing of Plame (top Bushites calling six reporters in one week to get her outed or to spread the cover story that "everybody knew"), and their hasty concoction of the absurd story that Wilson's trip to Niger was "nepotism" and the apparent initial effort by Cheney/Libby to throw blame on Rove (Rove did it for political revenge--so believable). Also, if this is what really happened--cover up of a plan to plant the WMDs in Iraq (probably nukes, followup to the Niger nuke forgeries--a plan that was foiled, obviously)--then this crime points to Rumsfeld and his Pentagon Office of Special Plans (created to circumvent the honest professionals at the CIA), as the operational end of the conspiracy, with Cheney/Libby and the WHIG as the political end of it. Rumsfeld's failure to get the nukes planted in Iraq has caused no end of political and legal headaches for Cheney--and the fear of exposure of such a scheme--if the Bushites got word from Blair on July 7 that Kelly knew--would help account for their panic. They expected Wilson's article. But Kelly's knowledge of this nefarious scheme may have come out of the blue. They may have felt under siege, not knowing how far the knowledge had gotten, and thus took a shotgun approach--so appropriate to Cheney--by outing EVERYBODY in the network (taking extra pains to get the B-J name published).

Destroying this CIA network clearly suited their purposes, but how they did it was particularly sloppy and amateurish, and indicative of panic. And only this--threatened exposure of such a nefarious plot--explains how they thought they could get away with outing CIA agents, that is, that they just WEREN'T THINKING of its illegality and treasonous nature, nor of the CIA's potential fury. Too much was at stake. Their whole gig was on the line.

I suspect that there was a long term plan to "get" the CIA, which starts with the easily detectable Niger forgeries, which were intended to be exposed as forgeries, thus drawing the CIA into a known 'no nukes in Iraq' position, that was to be followed up with the planting and "discovery" of the nukes in Iraq, to discredit the CIA forever, and also to cement Bush's and Blair's political positions with a justification for the war. But something went wrong. The planting of the nukes got foiled, and Cheney got left with the tattered end of the rope--the obviously phony Niger nuke forgeries (which had been planted in Bush's SOTU speech as a critical component of the plot--the allegation had to be official, and highly prominent--against all reason). The long term plan to "get" the CIA is where all the other reasons for the Plame/B-J outings that people have raised come into play--a plan to frame Iran on nuke or bio-weapon use (part of PNAC's "grand scheme"), the AQ Khan nuclear Wal-Mart, illicit Cheney arms/drugs dealings, the 9/11 money trail, the CIA opposition to torture and assassination of foreign leaders (a legacy of the cleanup of the agency after the Iran/Contra scandal and other bloody dealings in Latin America). The Bush Junta wanted to use torture, assassination, dirty money and foul schemes of every kind to further its greed and power goals. The CIA stood in its way. But in July 2003, the Junta, a) saw one of its dirtiest schemes (framing Iraq on WMDs, after the fact) going down, along with its plan to discredit the CIA, and b) the threat of exposure of that particular scheme, with its high-profile media component (--Miller planting the WMDs lies in the NYT, Condi and the "mushroom clouds," Bush/SOTU speech, etc.)--a major PR disaster, which would have brought down the Blair government in England, and would likely have meant a landslide for Kerry in 2004 big enough to blow the rigged Diebold/ES&S voting machines out of the water.

And guess who's gone? Rumsfeld. With no change of policy in Iraq.

[Frustratedlady]

8. Oh, my! How interesting...

I didn't know of the Miller/Kelly connection, nor was I aware of the tight timeline to Kelly's suicide to the exposure of Plame. This case is so bizarre, it sounds like a movie script.

I hope the Wilson/Plame civil trial brings out more information for the public to peruse. The Libby trial should have been aired for the people to see for themselves what we have running this country.

Thank you so much for posting the information.

[Sir Jeffrey]

10. I have a question for you re: Rumsfeld...

Our posts say essentially the same thing. What always got me was why they kept Rumsfeld in office so damned long. If his job was to plant WMDs/uranium in Iraq, he failed miserably.

So why do you think they kept Rumsfeld in office so long?

[Sir Jeffrey]

9. People seem to forget this story...

Posting the entire story with my commentary at the bottom.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/2286597.stm

Turkish police seize smuggled uranium

Turkish police say they have seized 100 grams of weapons grade uranium, which had been smuggled into the country from Eastern Europe.

At first officers announced gave the quantity as 15 kilograms (34.5 pounds) but later explained that this included the weight of a lead container.

Two men have been arrested for questioning in the south of the country, close to the Syrian border.

According to the Turkish state news agency, the uranium was being transported in a taxi, concealed beneath the seats.

The taxi was intercepted near the south-west town of Sanliurfa, after police received a tip-off.

Smuggling route

It is not yet clear where the uranium, estimated to be worth $5m on the black market, was being taken, but it is unlikely there would have been a market for it within Turkey.

The Turkish media have been speculating that the alleged smugglers, both Turks, may have planned to take the weapons grade material through Syria and on into Iraq.

The seizure is the biggest of its kind in recent years.

Since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Turkey has been a transit route for smuggled nuclear materials, many of which have found their way onto the black market in Istanbul.

Last year two men were arrested in the city after trying to sell a kilo of uranium wrapped in newspaper to undercover police agents.

While the Turkish authorities will welcome this latest seizure, they will be uneasy about the international focus on Turkey as a smuggling route for such dangerous materials.

(End of article)

Isn't it obvious? The Bush Administration had procured the uranium to plant in Iraq to retroactively justify the war. The plan was to smuggle it from eastern Europe through Turkey into Iraq via the PKK (Kurdish spearatists operating in Turkey and Northern Iraq). The Turkish authorities, acting on Brewster Jennings intel, stopped it.

Since this was planned out way in advance, and since acquiring weapons grade uranium is difficult to impossible once your cover is blown, the WMD farce blew up in their face.

Brewster-Jennings blew their cover, so Cheney blew their cover. The article even states, albeit unintentionally, why WMDs were never planted:

"While the Turkish authorities will welcome this latest seizure, they will be uneasy about the international focus on Turkey as a smuggling route for such dangerous materials."

How the hell else are they going to plant WMDs/weapons grade uranium in Iraq? Through Russia? Think Putin would let that happen? Saudi Arabia? Think the Royal Family wants to risk a psycho Wahhabi getting their hands on Uranium? Ditto Kuwait. Iran? Yeah right. Think they trust anyone in the military to do it now without leaking? Think anyone in the CIA would do it without leaking after Cheney just blew Brewster Jennings' cover?

[Auntie Bush]

13. We should bookmark this excellent thread for information on BJ

and why the Administration was in such a panic about Plame. All the answers are here.

[yodermon]

17. TURKEY? This ties in with Sibel Edmonds then. n/t

[Sir Jeffrey]

20. Although she has been gagged...

her story would probably sync with information presented in this thread and elsewhere. I hope she will be able to tell her story in the near future.

[lukery]

22. new campaign for sibel hearings!

We have a new campaign calling for new hearings for SIbel - supported by ACLU, POGO, CREW, GAP etc.

details here
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x362953

and call waxman and conyers tomorrow!

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Because it exists only in the left-wing blogosphere as speculation?

:shrug:

[blm]

12. Because even some of our bigname Democrats would be aware of the operations

that have long been part of BushInc.

Does anyone really believe that Poppy Bush and his cronies woke up one day in 1993 and decided to STOP running drugs and arms and moneylaundering operations for global terror networks?

Does anyone really think Marc Rich was really just pardoned because he was a tax evader?


The Clintons' Real Trouble with Truth

By Robert Parry
February 24, 2007



Hollywood mogul David Geffen touched a raw nerve with Hillary Clinton when he told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd that “everybody in politics lies, but they do it with such ease, it’s troubling.”

The Clintons’ trouble with truth, however, is not just the petty political lying nor is it their quibbling over what “is is” or what “mistake” means. It’s that they have never shown any real reverence for the truth. Too often, they see it as something to be traded away for a transitory tactical advantage.

If a future historian is ever to understand what happened to the United States in this era – how the world’s greatest power so disastrously lost its way – that scholar should look back to the first Clinton-Bush transition in 1992-93, when Bill Clinton could have grasped a unique historical moment but didn’t.

Clinton was the first U.S. President to take office after the end of the Cold War. He could have ordered a long-needed historical review of what nine U.S. presidents had done, often behind opaque cloaks of government secrecy.

This review also could have assessed what damage those decades of secrecy, propaganda and deception had done to the core values of the American Republic. By revealing the truth, both the good and the bad, Clinton could have helped restore vibrancy to the democratic process by giving the voters the means to again be an informed electorate. ......(more)

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/022307.html

[Uncle Joe]

14. Excellent question Frustratedlady

Kicked and recommended

[leftofthedial]

16. this isn't (yet) about truth or justice

it's about politics

[LonelyLRLiberal]

18. Valerie Plame is writing a book - being reviewed by CIA

Don't know if it talks about her work or just concentrates on her outing by the Bush Mafia.

[tex-wyo-dem]

19. I'm glad someone else was wondering about this...

I think the ONLY person I've heard discuss this in any depth is Randi (maybe others on AAR have as well), but no one in the MSM that I know of. Whenever I get into a discussion re: Plame with my friends or others, I usually get nothing but blank stares when I mention B-J.

[lala_rawraw]

21. because the actual damages are classified

so not much can be said other than the few little snips here and there

[Cha]

23. I was looking for their name

a little while ago so I could bring attention to that..on another thread. I finally found something when I googled "valerie plame's covert company"..

"The leak of a CIA operative's name has also exposed the identity of a CIA front company, potentially expanding the damage caused by the original disclosure, Bush administration officials said yesterday.

The company's identity, Brewster-Jennings & Associates, became public because it appeared in Federal Election Commission records on a form filled out in 1999 by Valerie Plame, the case officer at the center of the controversy, when she contributed $1,000 to Al Gore's presidential primary campaign.

After the name of the company was broadcast yesterday, administration officials confirmed that it was a CIA front. They said the obscure and possibly defunct firm was listed as Plame's employer on her W-2 tax forms in 1999 when she was working undercover for the CIA. Plame's name was first published July 14 in a newspaper column by Robert D. Novak that quoted two senior administration officials. They were critical of her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, for his handling of a CIA mission that undercut President Bush's claim that Iraq had sought uranium from the African nation of Niger for possible use in developing nuclear weapons."


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40012-2003Oct3?language=printer

[C_U_L8R]

24. what's with brewsterjennings.com

some entrepreneuring gamer ?

[cascadiance]

25. And what they are now calling a murder and not a suicide of Dave Kelly is also being downplayed too!

And his last email was sent to Judith Miller which was likely totally tied to this mess!