Outing CIA Agents - Valerie Plame Meets Philip Agee

[reprehensor]

(I'm all for the legal dismemberment of Team Shrub. Posting this article as a reminder that the CIA does some very nasty shit, so bear that in mind when you consider that there are ex-CIA agents (like Philip Agee) who exposed all sorts of CIA operatives out of purely moral reasons, not political. And it's sure to happen again. -r.)

Outing CIA Agents - Valerie Plame Meets Philip Agee

By Steve Weissman via TomDispatch.com

As we approach the week when Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury will undoubtedly issue indictments against White House officials, the seldom considered 1982 CIA shield law under which the Plame case was first launched deserves some attention. When Karl Rove, I. Lewis Libby, and possibly others decided to reveal the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame, they clearly wanted to punish her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, for undermining administration claims that Saddam Hussein sought "yellowcake" uranium from Niger to build nuclear weapons. But by publicly ruining Plame's undercover career, they were undoubtedly also sending a very personal message to CIA types and other insiders not to question Mr. Bush's rush to war in Iraq.

As despicable as this White House treachery may have been, those of us who oppose it need to regain some lost perspective. Being bashed by Team Bush does not turn the Central Intelligence Agency into the home team or necessarily make Valerie Plame a modern-day Joan of Arc; nor should her outing stop journalists or anyone else from blowing the cover of her fellow agents when they are found engaging in kidnappings, torture, or attempts to overthrow democratically elected governments.

snip

The current scandal over Plame's outing raises an even tougher issue for those of us who work as journalists. Do we have any obligation to refrain from publishing the identity of undercover CIA operatives engaged in such activities? Or, when we write about their dirty work, do we tell the whole story without leaving out the leading characters?

Back in 1975, former CIA officer Philip Agee published Inside the Company: CIA Diary, an international best seller in which he revealed what the CIA was doing, especially in Latin America where he had worked. He also named every CIA officer he knew -- an indication of just how complete a break he had made with the Agency. The contrast with Michael Scheuer or Valerie Plame is obvious.

more@link

[Kagemusha]

1. Contrast? They wrote the law on revealing ID's as a result of this.

Just for the record there.

[reprehensor]

2. Philip Agee never exposed Richard Welch.

From the article;

"Then came the crisis. Two days before Christmas in 1975, assassins shot and killed Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens. The agency quickly used the killing to escalate its attacks on Agee, even though he had never known Welch or identified him in his book (or anywhere else). No doubt Agee would have, but he played no part in the outing, as the CIA knew.

His only contact was peripheral. In January 1975, the American magazine CounterSpy identified Welch as the CIA station chief in Lima, and also carried an essay by Agee. But the magazine, which was funded by author Norman Mailer and his Organizing Committee for a Fifth Estate, had found Welch's identity in a Peruvian journal and then confirmed it with the spook-spotting techniques from the Washington Monthly.

Welch's name also appeared in the English-language Athens News in November 1975, along with nine other CIA officers working in Greece. Many months later, the press revealed that the killers had stalked Welch even before the list appeared. The CIA had reportedly warned him not to move into the house which the stalkers knew as the CIA chief's residence. For whatever reason, Welch refused to heed the warning.

But Agee's vindication came nearly twenty years later when former First Lady Barbara Bush repeated the old libel that he had played a role in Welch's death in her memoirs. Agee sued, and Mrs. Bush was forced to remove the passage from the paperback edition of the book. She also had to send him a letter of apology, acknowledging that her accusation had been false."

That is the genesis of the law. It should be called the 'Anti-Counterspy Act'.

The contrast is; 'Anonymous' remained an employee while espousing his criticism, 'Judy' and Novak singled out one CIA operative for political retaliation; Agee felt he was doing a moral service by revealing tradecraft, and the dark underbelly of the CIA that the public never really saw until he came along.

[PhilipShore]

3. Spooks and non-violent principles

I read that article--about what should be ones principles--and ethical obligations in light of present situations, and problems such as blowback.

I am of the opinion, that each individual must decide what is the moral thing to do-- but that they should use the ethical and political masters as guides. Gandhi, King, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy, are such modern day masters to guide us.

Gandhi said that we have a moral obligation to not cooperate with evil and unjust laws.

Therefore, I personally think that Philip Agee the former spook had a moral obligation, to reveal the names of his former colleagues, because they were breaking the universal common law principles of law and justice. Generally, these conventions are inherent in all the major religions, spiritualities, and governments that make up our current system, from the beginning of the world to present.

Republicans make it a point to ignore, these basic principles of non-violence, taught by the masters in the East and the West, as to how to make our world more civilized.