Corn Denies Charge in 'WSJ' That He Outed Plame

[kskiska]

(snip)

On his Web site, Corn, the Washington editor of The Nation, writes that he has long been friendly with Toensing, and so, "I am disheartened to see her embracing a rather idiotic conservative talking point and ignoring basic facts to tag me as the true culprit in the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson. It is an argument that defies logic and the record. But it is an accusation that pro-Bush spinners have used to defend the true leakers and columnist Bob Novak, the conveyor of the leak.

"This is a canard that has been previously advanced by other conservatives--all to absolve Novak and the actual leakers (mainly Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, not Richard Armitage). And you see the suggestion: that Joe Wilson told me that his wife was an undercover CIA officer and that I then disclosed this information to the public. I've debunked this before. But for Toensing's benefit, I'll go through this again--though I doubt it will do much good."

The full explanation can be found at www.davidcorn.com. In a nutshell, Corn notes that Novak had already described Plame as a "CIA operative," which essentially means she was covert.

"At this point," he adds, "her cover--whatever it might have been--was blown to bits. The fact that Novak did not state she was a 'covert' operative is utterly meaningless. (Does the CIA employ non-secret 'operatives'?)"

more…
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003123296

[rodeodance]

1. here is Du thread for that one. I do recall Ms Vicky saying that.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2149665&mesg_id=2150673

[Kagemusha]

2. No, the CIA does not employ non-secret 'operatives'.

Especially not according to the precedents of Novak's own writing.

[patrice]

3. Okay, so you're saying the CIA would have employees

who are not secret; someone would work for the CIA and other people would know that fact, because they are simply employees (administrative, clerical, custodial etc.)

And then there would be another class of employees who are in Operations, i.e. Operatives, and these would be secret employees; they would be doing whatever they do and others would not know they were CIA employees at all?

So the question about Plame is: Didn't people know she worked at the CIA? I've heard it said people did know she was a CIA employee. They just didn't know what she did there? So what was revealed by Armitage and others was that she was an Operative not just an administrative or other non-secret type of employee?

[Kagemusha]

4. We have no idea what the hell Armitage revealed.

He and Novak are not singing the same story at all. However, it was reported in the past that while the document Armitage's information about her would've come from may not have spelled out that she was covert, it was classified at a level at which no non-American should be allowed to see the information to not expose what they like to call sources & methods (methods like, Plame being involved in counter-WMD proliferation intelligence), which sure as hell meant he shouldn't have just told a reporter about this. But from that, he wouldn't know that she was an "operative".

Bottom line is, people only knew she worked at the CIA through information they received through government security clearances, until you get to the reporters.

Just clarifying because the gist of your questions & comments is quite correct. We just can't know for sure who revealed the "operative" part to Novak because of all the dust kicked up by lying and half-truths.