Val, We Hardly Knew Ye...

Dennis Hans delivers the Scoop - Bob Woodward is Valerie Plame.

Stop smiling, he is serious - his title is a metaphor, get with it!  Mr. Hans delivers lots of background on Valerie Plame's status at the CIA (including quotes from Dana Priest!).

Mr. Hans also notes this about the damage done by the Plame leak:

As for the fallout from Plame being named by Robert Novak in July 2003, here’s what the Los Angles Times reported on July 16, 2005:

“Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said it was unlikely Plame was in danger as a result of being identified. An internal CIA review concluded that her exposure caused minimal damage, mainly because she had been working at headquarters for years, former officials familiar with the review said.” http://www.latimes.com/

Let's add that to the Bob Woodward and Andrea Mitchell reports noted here, along with an explanation - the CIA does not prepare a formal damage assessment in order to avoid a court fight and discovery by the defense.

We care because we see today that Valerie Plame is leaving the CIA.  Larry Johnson, who can tell you why a sunrise in the east implicates Rove in the Plame leak, blames (surprise!) her decision to retire on the Novak column which outed her.

Johnson said that although Plame still had allies at the agency, her ability to function effectively was irreparably harmed after her status became publicly known.

"She is either a non-entity or radioactive," Johnson said. "Getting connected with her is not something that is going to enhance your career. She has been something of a leper."

The bit about her being crippled by her public status is essentially BS - she had not been operating as a clandestine agent for years, and was moving towards an interagency liaison function (hence her appearance at the meeting with the INR chaps who duly outed her internally).  Sources for the change in her NOC status include Nick Kristof and Vanity Fair.

However, she may well have become radioactive.  One of the many enduring mysteries of this case - why did Ms. Plame take a leave of absence (an "enforced" leave of absence, per the Daily Telegraph) around the time the SSCI report came out?  This Times story dates her leave from June 1, 2004.  The SSCI came out in early July, but the cognoscenti would have been aware of its contents by June.

And a quick stroll through the SSCI suggests that the Senate (and yes, I am looking at the bipartisan section voted out by the full committee) was critical of the Wilson trip in ways that may have reflected badly in Ms. Plame.  Excerpts to follow.

Or, for more vigorous bashing of Wilson and wife, let's enjoy some unexpected help from Kevin Drum, who once speculated that Wilson timed his leaks based on internal CIA evaluations passed to him by his wife (my reax here).  Who knows? 

p. 39 of report (p. 49 of .pdf):

The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him "there's this crazy report" on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq.

p. 44 - who talked, if anyone?:

Second, the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium transaction. In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal. The only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former Prime Minister Mayaki. Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the information was the H B intelligence service. The DO reports officer told Committee staff that he did not provide the former ambassador with any information about the source or details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and, noted that there were no "documents" circulating in the IC at the time of the former ambassador's trip, only intelligence reports from | | ^ | intelligence regarding an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal.

Meeting notes and other correspondence show that details of the reporting were discussed at the February 19, 2002 meeting, but none of the meeting participants recall telling the former ambassador the source of the report.

P. 74 (Call me "crazy", but I think this counts):

(U) Conclusion 15. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Directorate of Operations should have taken precautions not to discuss the credibility of reporting with a potential source when it arranged a meeting with the former ambassador and Intelligence Community analysts.

And from p. 25:

(U) Problems with the Intelligence Community's HUMINT efforts were also evident in the Intelligence Community's handling of Iraq's alleged efforts to acquire uranium from Niger.

The Committee does not fault the CIA for exploiting the access enjoyed by the spouse of a CIA employee traveling to Niger. The Committee believes, however, that it is unfortunate, considering the significant resources available to the CIA, that this was the only option available.

Nice of them to not find fault so publicly.

Look, any of the analysts might have let slip some of the classified details about the documents to Wilson.  But evaluating the possibilities becomes a bit more difficult when everyone denies it and his wife is part of the mix.

Comments

[kim]

I persist in believing she may be as much a victim of Joe as the rest of us are.
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[kim]

I mean, for all the villainy I ascribe to Joe, he must have his good points. What villain, besides the sinister ones, aren't at least a little loveable, and he may be a lot so. He may be a good father. Speaking of sinister villains, Kerry and his campaign may have perverted him in spring, '03; then, when they dumped him ofter the public shaming of SSCI, Val had a hard time. I'd really like to know her true point of view. California is desperate flight and uncertain refuge for what are now refugees. I'm sorry. I said it would get grand, C.
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[Patrick R. Sullivan]

What's interesting about the Dennis Hans piece is that he's a 'Bush lied...people died' lefty. Yet, he's honest enough to say that the Joe Wilson theory of his wife's outing is a total crock.

Very unusual, in my experience with the type.

[boris]

He may be a good father.

So kim, Joe and Val are sorta like Mary Matalin and James Carville. Well ok ... still Val set the game afoot and it's hard not to suspect that the existence of CIA factions hostile to the W admin played a part.

[dorf]

Wow, so she was undercover. How did she master that midwestern accent?

[Dwilkers]

You can bet our gal Val has been radioactive at Langley ever since her and Joe's little breakfast with Kristoff became known it not before then. I have to believe that's a (metaphorical) firing squad offense at the CIA.

[topsecretk9]

This what her friend, the another CIA retiree Melissa Boyle Mahle had to say about her career.

""This situation has been very hard on her, professionally and personally," said Melissa Boyle Mahle, a former C.I.A. case officer and a friend of Ms. Wilson. "Not only have you removed from the playing field a very knowledgeable counterproliferation officer at a time when we really need her services. But before this she was on a fast track as a candidate for senior management at the agency. With something like this, her career will never recover."

[owl]

Kim, sorry can't agree with victim for Val. This has to be a very capable woman. She KNEW what she was doing when she sat for breakfast and backed up hubby for his political hit. She knew some of it was classified. I started out saying Wilson 'outed' his wife. Nope, Val is my #1.

[topsecretk9]

I have no idea about this, very, very ODD!

[BurkettHead]

Just think where Val's career would have gone if Kerry had won, though. She wouldn't be nearly as radioactive as she apparently is now.

[topsecretk9]

the previous link is so tin foil and strangely interesting and more wacky tin foil -- all the same time.

[noah]

TS9:

I find it very difficult to believe that a graduate of Cal Tech (one of the most selective science/engineering schools in the country) would be unemployed for such a prolonged period of time unless he is mentally ill, which is often quite obvious.

[paul]

Any truth to the story that Plame has taken an advisory position on the Kerry 08 ticket?

[owl]

ts...think someone wants to be a fiction writer...

[TP]

I'm not sure the Wilsons would have found work with Kerry. Wasn't he fired when the SSCI report came out? They were already radioactive with Kerry. Kerry was entering in to his second phase of supporting the war. Joe might be an occasional useful fool, but let's face it, he is radioactive to everybody as an inside operator. At some point, I wouldn't be surprised to see him spew inside info he has from the Kerry campaign.

[cathyf]

Yeah, the tinfoil thing was certainly fascinating. Where do you find these things, tsk9?

cathy :-)

[Sue]

TS9,

Why would the outing have anything to do with her in a management position? I suspect the circumstances surrounding her outing, especially the Vanity Fair article, had more to do with her not grabbing a management position than someone finding out her name.

[Sue]

TS9,

LOL. I have an idea. An overactive imagination and a penchant for mystery/spy novels.

[Gabriel Sutherland]

Kerry would have made the final call on appointments, but Rand Beers would do the evaluating of the potentials. Beers likely would have put Wilson high on the list. It was that very reason that people lined up with Beers to provide expert analysis for the Kerry Campaign.

President Bush and President Clinton each had teams of experts that, for the most part, were appointed to high level positions in the executive branch.

I read that Valerie Plame was on the fast track to become CIA station chief in Rome. I think I recall reading that at AJ Strata's blog. It was something related to the phony Niger documents getting into the US Embassy in Rome in order to spike the CIA station chief already there.

[topsecretk9]

Sue
I totally agree.

On the tin foil link,
particularly since all the "contact" have some how made a name for themselves (i.e. google search). Apparently the author spends his time posting his 7 year novel on websites alot.

[TP]

TS9. This is another guy that will have a hard time finding a job. Poor soul. : ^ (

[owl]

OT but I learned something yesterday that you all probably knew from a link clarice put up over at macs. It was a link to fredora's "Woodwardgate: Deep Throat or Shallow Reporting". A commenter (12/06/05 sacajaweau) pointed out the TIME/Henry Grunwald/Mandy Grunwald/Matt Cooper connection.

Guess the reason it caught my attention, I was familar with Mandy being a DNCer and I have been pointing to the wives behind all of these reporters on Plame. I would never believe Cooper because of his actions and now I see it really is a small world. Good article also.

[TP]

Forrest Gump with an engineering degree?

[topsecretk9]

This just in..."Fitzgerald did not comment on the nearly-three-hour grand jury session where the prosecutor was accompanied by three deputies and an FBI agent."

Not sure WHY the AP bothered since that paragraph is the only news.

[r flanagan]

Of course Libby couldn't have known , then ,
that he was causing minimal damage.

[topsecretk9]

Forrest Gump with an engineering degree?

People are like a box of Chocolates too you know!

[TP]

I have a friend who told me that he believes that the Niger forgery letter was a practical joke cooked up by CIA employees and sent to friends in Italy. They never expected it to get any further than their pals in Italy, but it got way out of hand. Anybody ever hear this?

[Sue]

Why couldn't Libby have known then he was causing minimal damage? Isn't it the argument from the Wilson camp that Libby knew everything about Plame?

[owl]

Patrick, Hans is a "Bush lied" kind of guy. Before it is over, he repeats the MSM chant of why we went to war. You know the MSM/DNC decided the 'why' and then they forced fed it everyday until now they quote it as if they were not the ones that wrote it. I even think they now believe it. Tinfoil land.

[danking]

"I'm not sure the Wilsons would have found work with Kerry. Wasn't he fired when the SSCI report came out? They were already radioactive with Kerry."

TP, It's not so obvious.

I know the Senate Report on Intelligence stopped short of calling Wilson, and I'm paraphrasing, "a fucking liar", but I'm sure the Kerry campaign had a myriad of other good reasons to let Joe go.

I mean if it was obvious wouldn't the MSM already have connected that dot?

[cathyf]

I've spewed forth my comprehensive Plame theory before, so what the heck, I'll bore you again.

I think that Valerie (whom I call by her first name because she is the same age as me, and applied at the CIA a few months after me) did journeyman intelligence work for nearly a decade, probably spying in eastern europe in the waning days of communism. In 1994 the FBI caught Ames, and so the CIA had to assume that she (along with everybody else who spied on the Russians and eastern europeans) was compromised.

But there was also a lot less work for her specialty -- the eastern europeans are now our friends, and while yes, we spy on our friends, but we don't put nearly the resources that we put into spying on enemies. Besides the CIA had completely bungled the fall of communism. They missed the coming revolutions, and even missed accurately collecting the not-particularly-secret economic data which would have given us more clues as to how close the eastern bloc was to collapse.

So she basically bums around Europe (based in Brussels) for the next 2-3 years, without a lot to do. Then she meets Joe Wilson, they have a pretty whirlwind courtship. They return to DC, he retires from the State Dept. with a $50,000/year pension, she gets a Langley desk job, he sets up a "business development" consulting company, specializing in assisting the uranium trade make sales, they get married, have twins. The uranium trade is not necessarily arms trading -- the bread-and-butter of these guys is selling yellowcake to electric utilities running nuclear power plants.

Then they have twins, so Valerie has a maternity leave. They live an expensive lifestyle in Washington (it's hard not to -- the cost of living there is pretty wild.) We know how much Joe's pension is ($50K) and that is nowhere near enough for their lifestyle. We also know that Valerie spent her year-long "leave of absence" working with a group providing support for mothers with post-partum depression.

So I think that in 1999 and again in 2002 Valerie's CIA friends decided to help the couple out by sending Joe to Niger. There he could drop hints about how important he was, so that the Niger government would think that they wanted to buy a little of that mojo, and throw some consulting fees his way. This is probably illegal because the CIA is a government agency and taking home a paperclip is a crime, but I'm of the opinion that it was not unethical, because after all Valerie was a long-time dedicated employee whose career had been ruined through no fault of her own, and before the Clinton budget cuts the CIA would have taken care of her much better than they were able to after the DoO's budget was cut 20%.

So everything is ok, until spring of 2003 when Joe decides to recycle the 2nd Niger trip into a position in the Kerry campaign and Kerry administration. I suspect that Joe, after a lifetime on the public teat looking down his nose at the money-grubbing capitalists and thinking that what they do is so simpleminded, had a very rude awakening when he discovered that succeeding in business means adding something of monetary value, and he never brought in much money in his business.

Certainly mac and AJ have lots more ominous interpretations of events l'Affaire Plame than I do. I think that Joe Wilson is a mediocre guy who was having trouble making ends meet, and he has a huge ego and delusions of grandeur, and he thought that he could control the whirlwind he started and profit from it. And I'm not sure that they didn't -- they have his pension, her pension, whatever he made off the book and the TV appearances. If they were modest people they could move to some rural red-state town and by a big house for $80,000 and raise the twins in comfort, but not wealth, just on their combined pensions. But they probably won't...

cathy :-)

[owl]

I guess I should give Hans credit for a slightly different twist, even though it ends the same.

Have you ever noticed that when you read these articles, they all state 'such and such' as facts. Reasons for war, Valerie was 'outed', smears by the WH, we are torturers, Bush polls bad, we will lose in Iraq. You read it, you see it quoted, and then treated as fact after a couple of years.

[JM Hanes]

TP

"Forrest Gump with an engineering degree?"

ROTFLMAO!

[owl]

cathyf....you thinking the DNC/MSM just took control of it?

[cathyf]

Forrest Gump with an engineering degree?

Nah, more like Rainman... He's a lot like our Aspergers posters here who claim that it is impossible for Rove to have forgotten something after "merely" three months. He makes these astounding claims of memory without the slightest intuition that this is not the way normal people's brains function.

Hey, I've been a software geek for 20 years. Even us normal functioning with good jobs types are a couple of standard deviations out from the mean. Our friend Tom is just a couple standard deviations more. No surprises here that he has an engineering degree from Caltech!

cathy :-)

[cathyf]

cathyf....you thinking the DNC/MSM just took control of it?

Not even that well-organized. It was a bombshell, people responded. I think Joe's a bit of a self-absorbed narcissist (aren't we all?) and he just simply did not look ahead and imagine how people would react. The WHIG people took him by surprise -- I think he had this vague sense that "those guys will be sh**ing in their pants and I'll be crowing and the Kerry people will be so impressed" and then when they, and the MSM, did all sorts of things he wasn't prepared for he took it as a personal attack and lashed out.

cathy :-)

[maryrose]

Cathy,
Itotally agree with your analysis of Wilson and Plame. Ithink they really wanted to be players and fortunately for us it backfired on them. It's too bad someone as dedicated asLibby had to become ensnared in this web because a Times reporter doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut and be a stand-up guy instead of a wuss.

[narciso]

So where is the BND's sources that
contradicted Curveball, who they
didn't allow to be interviewed. He
was still a BND source. The story
of "Joe" was mentioned in the Washington
Post st the time, however, did the CPD
have any actual sources, or was this conjecture; as well; Did they have an
Iraqi Penkovsky. Unlikely, with the
way the Iraq Division, having been
characterized; like a broken toy chest,
according to Woodward. Memo to Dennis,
Saddam wasn't supposed to have aluminum
tubes for rockets, or reactor rods, or
Marconi command and control systems; that
was part of the accursed Safwan accord.

[Jonathan]

Cathy,

I don't know enough background detail to know whether your analysis is correct, but it's interesting, compelling and well-articulated. Thanks for taking the time to set it forth [again].

[submandave]

Cathy,

I'd add in to your scenario a modicum of "look at me, I've got a secret" attention seeking. In the VF piece it is recouted how VP, on the third date reveals her big secret of being an undercover operative to JW. Like many people, I think these two liked the attention of being somebody and I've always contended the most likely original source for outing VP was either herself or her husband.

[AST]

I'm still convinced that she was known by several reporters before any of this started. But don't cry for Valerie. She's now a celebrity.

[Pat]

I cant understand why high ranking officials risked their jobs and reputations to out somebody who was already outed, or never in, whichever the case may be.
If she was in, or if she was out, if her husband was intellegent, or if he was stupid is so yesterday . Was it worth lying about? Whats the question here any way? I lost track.

[Dave]

Sad to say, these tinfoil guys are all over the place.

Not long ago, I stopped in at a little hole-in-the-wall eyeglass repair place for an unscheduled repair on my 10 year old's eyes. After the guy started work, he began to explain to me in full detail how he got regular business from the local Spec Ops and CIA guys. (News to me. I didn't know Winston-Salem had a presence for either of those groups.) Then he began to let me in on the real secret. That would be about the "Platform" located on the 7th subterannean floor of the BB&T bank headquarters building. You know, the "Platform" is the facility they built from alien technology to beam themselves around the country and to receive alien visitors. Sure you know (wink). You wouldn't doubt this guy, would you (wink).

It was the longest 10 minutes I have experienced in some time. Finally, he finished and I bolted. The man was vehemently sincere and full of details, some of which almost made sense, in a really weird sort of way.

The man was a functioning member of society, but several settings out of standard adjustment. The poor guy TS9 linked to is on a similar wavelength, in my opinion. He just has the misfortune to be looking, at least that's his story, for a job in a mainstream area, instead of repairing eyeglasses.

[kim]

So the gate's in Winston-Salem, eh?
===========================================

[BurkettHead]

danking said: "I mean if it was obvious wouldn't the MSM already have connected that dot?"

There's a fundamental difference between obvious enough for the MSM to connect the dot & so blatantly obvious that they have no choice but to report that they've connected the dot.

[kim]

Their error is really more of omission than commission. They just omit the truth, from laziness, bias, whatever.
==================================

[Super Pablo]

Was Plame really a NOC agent? I have seen reference to this several times now and but I did not think it was right. Maybe she was.

There are two types of undercover status - Non-offical Cover (NOC) and Official cover. NOCs - to the best of my knowldege - tend to be people who have no open association with the government - they act as business people or in some non-government related role. Official cover people tend to work in some government role but secretly work for the CIA -in an embassy or something.

So, if Plame was a NOC, I think it would have been a really bad idea to be dating and marrying a high profile government official like Wilson, an ambassador. That by itself could possibly compromise her NOC cover. If she was under official cover, the relationship would probably not have raised an eyebrow. But if she was a NOC, seems she was careless in her personal life with her cover.

[HEX]

This was a triple hit.

US did the job on two French double agents - Wilson/Plame.

And Ms. Miller.

Check the connections:

What ties did Miller have to Mossad? Yitzhak Rabin personally requested her presence at a terrorist interrogation. Huh?!?

Who helped out the Holy Land Foundation, the Global Relief Foundation, and the Benevolence International Foundation?

Who was the prosecutor on cases? Oh, look it's Fitz!

What ties did Wilson have to French mining interests?

This Wilson guy is dirtier than an ally cat. No way you'd find untraceable funds in a French mining company in West Africa. C'mon people.

Which country planted the fake Nigerian documents "found" by Wilson?

Hmmm...Survey says France (Italy agrees).

Give Plame-Wilson some hanging rope via a VP follow up item from PDB, then out Plame and her crooked husband to a Mossad agent. When the hammer drops, put in Miller's mortal enemy and step out of the way.

Now they are all "radioactive". I guess they should all be happy there were no "gun cleaning" accidents.

That's called good tradecraft, folks.

[kim]

Heck, Sam, right away I can tell webiness. Francophonic, Bankofrancic, Over his head is not so tonic.

Watch for a sympathy ploy, whether faked, opportunistic, covering something else, or true reprisal. Trouble ahead, trouble behind.
===========================================

[richard mcenroe]

Patrick R. Sullivan — That sound you hear is cut-outs being cut out. The smarter lefties are warming up the "How could you have deceived us like that, Joe?" meme...