Exposing Valerie Plame BADLY damaged National Security

[DemsUnited]

The rightwing is in overdrive, trying to make a case that exposing Valerie Plame is nothing but "a tempest in a teapot". They've tried everything from "she's just a clerk" to "she wasn't undercover at the time so what's the big deal?"

Exposing Valerie Plame immediately put at risk any colleagues and contacts known to have worked with her. Any national or international "anonymous sources" she may have cultivated will certainly no longer talk to her.

The leak also exposed the identity of a CIA front company, Brewster-Jennings & Associates because, in 1999, Valerie Plame filed a Federal Election Commission 1999 disclosing that she contributed $1,000 to Al Gore's presidential primary campaign and listed herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates.

Exposing Brewster-Jennings & Associates in turn exposes any other CIA agents using it as a cover. And again, the colleagues, contacts and sources of those agents are also put at risk.

The ripple effect is huge, and it may be only the beginning.

Brewster, Jennings & Associates may not have been the only cover Valerie Plame used. According to the Boston Globe, she may have used other(s) when working overseas, covers that were even deeper than the Brewster one. Again, the potential ripple effect is huge:

1) the overseas cover organization used by Valerie Plame is exposed
2) the colleagues, contacts and sources she had while under that cover are compromised, and
3) the colleagues, contacts and sources of any other covert agent using the same overseas cover organization are put at risk

Exposing Valerie Plame was and is a big deal. It compromised National Security and damaged the intelligence community during a time of war.

No matter what they say in public, unless Republican leaders are as brain dead as poor Terry Schiavo, they know full well how bad this leak really is.

And so does the Grand Jury.

Sources to look at:
www.wikipedia.com
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40012-2003Oct3?language=printer
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/10/10/apparent_cia_front_didnt_offer_much_cover/

[indepat]

1. If the choice is a badly damaged national security or fruition of a far RW

agenda, wonder which choice will prevail?

[SteppingRazor]

2. While I don't agree with the right wing's spin, of course..

Neither am I ready to say that exposing Plame BADLY damaged national security. This is not Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. But it did have the possibility of damaging national security, and that should be enough for any reasonable person.

[tabasco]

4. Do you have any idea how long it takes to build a network ..

of intel gatherers like this???? YEARS.

We will never recover from this compromise and if we get hit with a nuke or a dirty bomb, we can thank KARL ROVE.

Compromising Plame and her operation WAS an extremely harmful breach of our security. :mad:

[SteppingRazor]

5. No I don't have any idea. You do?

In fact, do you even know what Plame was doing in her undercover work? Or have you just imagined a massive, web-like network of informants all reporting to her?

Look, we're all on the same side here. I'm just saying we need to be realistic.

[DemsUnited]

9. The point is that the leak doesn't just involve Valerie Plame.

It's the ripple effect.

Any cover agency used by Valerie Plame is now compromised. We know of at least one, Brewster-Jennings & Associates. She may have used more.

Cover agencies are used by multiple covert agents, so any operative using Brewster-Jennings & Associates is also compromised. Same is true for other cover agencies used by Plame in the past.

While undercover, Plame cultivated colleagues, contact and sources who are now compromised. Same with the colleagues, contacts and sources of any other operatives who used the same cover agencies as Valerie Plame.

No, Valerie Plame maybe not have been the spider queen. But the ripples which began with exposing her may well end up compromising the identities of those who are.

[tabasco]

10. Read and learn.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/13/04720/9340


PS - If you have no idea, how can you claim that it is not a serious breach? You don't need experience as an operative to understand how long it takes to build an intel gathering operation.

[calimary]

3. I read somewhere here (lost the link) that some 90 - repeat NINETY

agents and operatives in the Ukraine have all been killed since Valerie Plame's cover was blown. The entire contingent was apparently rubbed out. That was presumably part, if not all, of the network of contacts she painstakingly assembled over her twenty-and-some year career. Gone. NINETY more deaths directly resulting from kkkarl rove's arrogant, pissy little vendetta. Nice, 'eh?

[Igel]

6. The number's questionable, as is the

term used: 'liquidated', in the originating source that was linked to in a thread last week (with a long discussion of what liquidating something could, vs. must, mean).

And where her contacts are/were is more of a question. One source linked the front company to Aramco, which is Sa'udi, not Ukrainian.

CIA's not talking, nobody else is either.

[grumpy old fart]

8. Gonna need more than "I read somewhere" to back that one up......

Sorry, but being a liberal also means that we don't buy everything we hear, even if we want to believe it. If there was a solid source for this assertion, I would hope we'd be hearing it loud and clear.

[Name removed]

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