Sooner Be Blue

Valerie Plame, the CIA operative at the heart of a political scandal, told Congress yesterday that senior officials at the White House and State Department "carelessly and recklessly" blew her cover to discredit her diplomat-husband.

Who will play her in the movie? Sharon Stone would have been perfect a few years ago ...

Oh, I wish I had the movie rights .. and I hope she rakes in the dough from her book and any movie they make. We owe it to her.

From Valerie Plame Wilson's opening statement to Congress yesterday:

"I served the United States loyally and to the best of my ability as a covert operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency.

I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14, 2003, after a leak by administration officials.

Today, I can tell this committee even more. In the run-up to the war with Iraq I worked in the counter proliferation division of the CIA -- still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified.

....While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/03/16/plame.statement/index.html

I was glad to finally "meet" her .. she's quite a woman, this beautiful intelligent spy who had to come in from the cold .. unwillingly. I'm glad she was out there working for us for those two decades, and very angry that her career was cut short.

That a vital security asset was compromised for political reasons outrages me. I want them in the White House to pay .. but I'm not holding my breath.

When she was asked how she felt about Rove telling Chris Matthews that she was "fair game" .. she didn't get personal. She just said she felt awful hearing of the outing of *any* CIA agent.

She was asked if anyone who was involved in outing her -- risking her life and the lives of her team -- has apologized or expressed any misgivings. No, she said.

She must have been expendable because her husband had the audacity to speak truth to power about what he didn't find in Africa. Cheney was incensed and all that mattered was punishing that bastard Joe Wilson. The welfare of the nation be damned.

The covert-or-not-covert argument should be put to rest now.

There would have been NO investigation if she wasn't covert. Period.

The CIA itself authorized a statement that she was, in fact, covert to be entered into the record. And if she were misrepresenting herself, wouldn't it have been easy enough for the CIA to issue a statement saying she wasn't covert?

Also, Plame was testifying UNDER OATH .. so if she were misrepresenting herself, she could be charged with perjury and lying to the Feds .. just as Libby was.

The Director of the CIA back then -- George Tenet -- thought she was covert. The current DCIA also said she was covert. But what would they know?

I thought the whole reason Fitzgerald was appointed in the first place was because the CIA raised a stink about her outing and requested an investigation?

This "she wasn't covert" controversy was utterly bogus from the get-go. The only reason it got so much play was because the righty-tighties figured out if they could repeat this lie often enough, people would think it was true.

Their BS tickles me -- on the one hand they say she was just a desk jockey counting paper clips .. on the other hand she had enough authority to send her husband on the mission to Niger .... LOL

And it really did my heart good to see Sen. Waxman finally put the odious neo-con mouthpiece Victoria Toensing in her place.

Plame's testimony establishes clearly that she, AND the CIA, thought it important for identity and status as a CIA operative to be kept secret. That secrecy was destroyed by the Bush White House for their own political gain .. not the good of the country. It's that simple, and that reprehensible.

Fitzgerald didn't prosecute them because of the difficulty in showing intent .. because the law in question requires not only that a person leak a name, but that they do so with the intent of harming the National Security of the US. In other words, you're also required to PROVE intent.

Intent. Intent. Intent.

It would also have been absolutely necessary for Fitzgerald to PROVE that the leakers knew that Plame was a covert agent in order for him to be able to prosecute. And, since the leakers were all insiders who fell either into the "clamming up" group or the "outright lying" group, it was not possible for him to get any proof about what the leakers knew.

Too bad there was no Kyle Sampson in this case .. helpfully explaining everyone's motives in a series of e-mails.

To amuse myself, in such cases I always apply the WICDI rule .. the "What If Clinton Did It" rule. Can you imagine if Bill Clinton's Administration had outed a CIA agent .. whether he/she was covert or not .. purely for political reasons? Republicans in Congress would have gone frothy at the mouth demanding a special prosecutor and millions of our tax dollars to investigate it.

Abso-freakin'-lutely .. no doubt.