Maintaining cover no easy task for CIA

[maddezmom]

Recent data leak puts more pressure on White House

GREG MILLER

Los Angeles Times


WASHINGTON - Several months after her identity as a CIA operative was exposed in a newspaper column, Valerie Plame had dinner with five of her classmates from the agency's training academy.

Four had already left the CIA, and they spent the evening catching up on what they'd done during their clandestine careers, as well as the jobs and moves that followed. But even though Plame's "cover" had been cracked wide open, her dinner companions didn't pry for details. Even in that tight circle, no one wanted to spill any more secrets.

"Cover is a mosaic, it's a puzzle," said James Marcinkowski, a former CIA case officer who attended the dinner. "Every piece is important (to protect) because you don't know which pieces the bad guys are missing."

The Plame case brought intense new scrutiny on the White House this week amid disclosures that President Bush's chief political adviser, Karl Rove, is a central figure in the controversy surrounding the "outing" of Plame to the press.

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