Plame hadn't been "covert" for some time


Overlooked by the mainstream press in their eagerness to nail a high ranking Bush staffer
Stephen Dinan and Joseph Curl wrote in the July 15, 2005 Washington Times that Valarie Plame Wilson had not been a covert operative for years.

"Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren't minding the store here. ... The agency never changed her cover status."

Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under "nonofficial cover" -- also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson -- also said that she worked under extremely light cover.

In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn't been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday.

The distinction matters because a law that forbids disclosing the name of undercover CIA operatives applies to agents that had been on overseas assignment "within the last five years."

"She was home for such a long time, she went to work every day at Langley, she was in an analytical type job, she was married to a high-profile diplomat with two kids," Mr. Rustmann said. "Most people who knew Valerie and her husband, I think, would have thought that she was an overt CIA employee."

Even assuming that Karl Rove or Scooter Libby were the source (and that hasn't been established), just what was the law that was broken?

More recently, Mark Davis weighed in.

As right-hand men for the president and vice president, Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby were properly involved in countering an effort by Joe Wilson, a disgruntled diplomat, to smear the war effort.

A bipartisan Senate committee has now discredited much of the story Mr. Wilson has paraded all over television on his way to becoming an anti-war hero, details ranging from who sparked his trip to Niger to what he found there.

But as the stories were breaking, it was thoroughly understandable for the Bush team to try to question the purity of Mr. Wilson's motives. Once the possibility arose of his CIA wife as a key advocate for his ideologically charged journey, one can additionally imagine a flurry of conversations about the significance of that angle.

Again, please tell me what the crime was here.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Thu - October 27, 2005 at 04:51 AM  Tag


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