Three Solid Sources: Valerie Wilson Was a Covert Agent When Team Cheney Outed Her

[babylonsister]

http://www.pensitoreview.com/2007/07/07/three-solid-sources-valerie-wilson-was-covert/

Three Solid Sources: Valerie Wilson Was a Covert Agent When Team Cheney Outed Her
Posted by Jon Ponder | Jul. 7, 2007, 12:00 pm

snip//

Here are three solid sources that make it clear that Valerie Wilson was a covert CIA agent in July 2003:

1. In a court filing in May, special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald stated Wilson was covert:

An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame’s employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was “covert” when her name became public in July 2003.

If Fitzgerald submitted false documents to the court, we can assume the jackals on the right would have found this out by now and his head would be on a pike.

2. Valerie Wilson’s sworn testimony before the Oversight Committee of the House of Representatives:
VIDEO at link~

* ThinkProgress also has video of Wilson’s testimony.

I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified.

Same as above. Wilson would be facing prison right now for lying under oath, if Republicans had evidence that this statement was false.

3. The CIA has said Wilson was covert — twice:

At the Oversight hearing in March, Chairman Henry Waxman, D-West Hollywood, read a statement that had been approved by the head of the CIA, Gen. Michael Hayden, a Bush appointee:

“During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was undercover. Her employment status with the CIA was classified information, prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958. At the time of the publication of Robert Novak’s column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information. Ms. Wilson served in senior management positions at the CIA in which she oversaw the work for other CIA employees and she attained the level of GS-14 — Step Six under the federal pay scale. Ms. Wilson worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA. Ms. Wilson served at various times overseas for the CIA.”

Two months after she was outed, the CIA described Wilson as being an “undercover operative” in a letter to the Dept. of Justice:

On September 16, 2003 the CIA sent a letter to the US Department of Justice, asserting that Plame’s status as a CIA undercover operative was classified information and requesting a federal investigation. Knowingly leaking the identity of a covert agent is a criminal violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), and the CIA is required by law to report any such possible criminal violation.

Leaving IIPA aside, the Bush officials who publicized Wilson’s name clearly violated the terms of their high level security clearances, the penalties for which include losing the clearance. But both Armitage and Libby kept their clearances until they resigned. Rove still has his.

[aquart]

1. If the Republicans would stop lying about it,

we wouldn't have to keep telling the truth about it, day in, day out.

[WinkyDink]

2. There was never doubt, only sand in the umpire's face.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

3. Here's a LINK w MSM background on covert agents in general and on Valerie Plame

in particular.

From http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.plame17jul17,1,7262205,print.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

"From the Baltimore Sun

Plame case shines a light on the value of CIA operatives' cover, By Greg Miller; Los Angeles Times July 17, 2005

The Plame case ... has ... called attention to the precious, concealing commodity the intelligence community calls "cover." The term refers to the amalgam of lies and props, from false names to front companies, that disguise a spy's identity and purpose. Although often cast in binary terms - an operative is either under cover or not - there are distinct categories of cover that CIA operatives use, and an almost endless list of components. Some cover is tissue-thin and disposable. Other arrangements are so layered and deep that they anticipate hostile probing of every facet of a person's life. Plame's cover - in which she posed as a private energy consultant while working for a CIA department tracking weapons proliferation - was somewhere in the middle of those extremes.

...Clandestine service: As many as one-third of the CIA's approximately 20,000 employees are under cover or have worked in that capacity at some point, according to former CIA officials. The agency declined to comment for this article. The majority of the agency's undercover officers work in the clandestine service - the branch that operates stations around the world, recruiting spies, tracking terrorists and carrying out covert missions designed to influence events or even topple governments.

The vast majority of the agency's overseas officers are under what is known as "official cover," which means they are posing as employees of another government agency. The State Department allows hundreds of its positions in embassies around the world to be occupied by CIA officers representing themselves as diplomats. A more rare and dangerous job category is "nonofficial cover" - or NOC - in which CIA officers pose as employees of international corporations, as scientists or as members of other professions. Such covers tend to provide a plausible reason to work long periods overseas and come in contact with foreign nationals the agency wants to recruit.

Plame worked under official cover early in her career but moved to nonofficial, commercial cover during the 1990s, maintaining that status even after she returned from overseas to work at CIA headquarters. Federal election records show that in 1999 she listed as her employer a Boston firm named Brewster-Jennings & Associates, which former agency officials acknowledge was a front company.... In recent years, she has worked in the counter-proliferation division of the agency's clandestine service. ..."

[Frustratedlady]

7. What did Rove say? If you say it often enough...

Isn't that how he works the spin?

[ProgressiveEconomist]

8. And before Rove, George Orwell, and before him Josef Goebbels, and ...

[Richard Steele]

4. It was never truly in doubt. That claim was a deliberate repub lie from the get-go. nm

[Canuckistanian]

9. Not even the administration would contadict this

This whole "Valerie Wilson wasn't covert" meme was NEVER uttered by ANY member of the Bush administration.

Not even Scooter's lawyers. It wasn't even MENTIONED as a defense.

Does that even give them a clue?

[Old and In the Way]

5. Thanks for posting!

Nice to have a concise explanation of the pertinent facts handy to cut and paste in response to the lies of the RW trolls who will never admit that their pResident and his war-mongering/war-profiteering VP committed treason. I'm bookmarking the link for easy access.

[Catherine Vincent]

6. I wish I could email every dumb republican that call into CSPAN

yapping about Ms. Plame not being a covert agent. Everytime the topic comes up, they all repeat that same damn lie that she was not covert.

[TheBaldyMan]

10. Did Victoria Toensing change her testimony to the Oversight Committe after the record was kept open?

IANAL but I think it was to give her the chance to avoid being held in contempt.

Has anybody any info on this?

[ProgressiveEconomist]

11. Here's a hard-to-find MSM LINK: Exposing Plame exposed her whole covert network

of "Brewster Jennings" WMD nonproliferation "energy consultants".

I did a "Google News" search for "Brewster Jennings" just now and got only 9 "hits", none this informative or mainstream:

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801988_pf.html :

"CIA Yet to Assess Harm From Plame's Exposure, By Dafna Linzer, Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, October 29, 2005; A09

More than Valerie Plame's identity was exposed when her name appeared in a syndicated column in the summer of 2003. A small Boston company listed as her employer suddenly was shown to be a bogus CIA front.... At Langley, officials in the clandestine service quickly began drawing up a list of contacts and friends, cultivated over more than a decade, to triage any immediate damage. There is no indication, according to current and former intelligence officials, that the most dire of consequences -- the risk of anyone's life -- resulted from her outing.

But after Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's column, the CIA informed the Justice Department in a simple questionnaire that the damage was serious enough to warrant an investigation, officials said. The CIA has not conducted a formal damage assessment, as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted. Yesterday, after a two-year inquiry into the leak, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald issued a five-count indictment against Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements during the grand jury investigation. Fitzgerald has not charged anyone with breaking a law that protects the identities of undercover operatives.

Nonetheless, intelligence specialists said the exposure of Plame -- who operated under the deepest form of cover -- was a grim reminder of the risks spies face. "Cover and tradecraft are the only forms of protection one has and to have that stripped away because of political scheming is the moral equivalent to exposing forward deployed military units," said Arthur Brown, who retired in February as the CIA's Asian Division chief and is now a senior vice president at the consultancy firm Control Risks Group. 'In the case of the military, they can pack up and go elsewhere. In the case of a serving clandestine officer, it's the end of that officer's ability to function in that role.'

Plame entered the CIA 20 years ago as a case officer at age 22. She spent several years in intensive training at home and abroad, and traveled widely, often presenting herself as a consultant. Her official employer, listed in public records, was a Boston firm, now known to have been fictitious, named Brewster-Jennings & Associates.... "Blowing the cover of a CIA officer is the cardinal sin in the intelligence business: It could wipe out information networks and put lives at risk," Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House intelligence panel, said in a statement. ... "It's possible that no damage was done but she can never overseas again," said Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March. Lowenthal said he was unaware of the extent of damage that may have been caused by exposing Plame, who worked in the Counterproliferation Division at CIA headquarters in Langley. "You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources," Lowenthal said.

Intelligence officials said they would never reveal the true extent of her contacts to protect the agency and its work. "You'll never get a straight answer about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were," said one intelligence official who would speak only anonymously.

[babylonsister]

12. Thanks for that! I'm bookmarking for the a.m., but think it's worthy of

its own thread.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

13. Feel free to start one on it--I tend to disappear from DU for weeks on end

and may do so again soon.

[babylonsister]

14. I will, thanks. Yes, I see you come and go, but you have a wealth of

info; you like to dig, and that's a good thing!

[ProgressiveEconomist]

15. I just tried google news archives for the first time and '"brewster jennings" plame'

got 104 hits.

Google keeps coming up with new features. I just tried '"brewster jennings" plame' at http://news.google.com/archivesearch and got 104 hits, because unlike google.com/news the new feature goes back more than a month.

Try it: : http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=%22brewster+jennings%22+plame&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

[DeSwiss]

16. And what was the response from the DOJ to the CIA's letter?

"On September 16, 2003 the CIA sent a letter to the US Department of Justice, asserting that Plame’s status as a CIA undercover operative was classified information and requesting a federal investigation. Knowingly leaking the identity of a covert agent is a criminal violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA), and the CIA is required by law to report any such possible criminal violation."

Why hasn't Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and the "Yellow Journalist" Robert Novak been arrested and charged with treason by the DOJ? They have both publically admitted to a violation of the law. And the failure of the Attorney General to investigate and charge those who are guilty of these violations in almost 4 years since the notice of the violation was tendered to the DOJ, is more than sufficient grounds for his impeachment.

So my question is: Why hasn't Congress begun the hearings to impeach Alberto Gonzalez for what is already public knowledge???? Until jail time looms, no one will publically tell the truth. And if * uses his commutation and/or pardon authority in these cases, it only tightens the noosed around his own neck.

K&R