How Covert Was Valerie Plame (IV)?

We have asked before, how covert was Valerie Plame?  But let's add a second question - how much of a clown show is the CIA?  John Crewdson of the Chicago Tribune offers interesting evidence on both questions.

First, on the broader question of the CIA covert clown show:

Internet blows CIA cover

It's easy to track America's covert operatives. All you need to know is how to navigate the Internet.

By John Crewdson

WASHINGTON -- She is 52 years old, married, grew up in the Kansas City suburbs and now lives in Virginia, in a new three-bedroom house.

Anyone who can qualify for a subscription to one of the online services that compile public information also can learn that she is a CIA employee who, over the past decade, has been assigned to several American embassies in Europe.

The CIA asked the Tribune not to publish her name because she is a covert operative, and the newspaper agreed. But unbeknown to the CIA, her affiliation and those of hundreds of men and women like her have somehow become a matter of public record, thanks to the Internet.

Sidebar: Notice how that works - the CIA asked the Chi Trib not to publish her name and they withheld it.  Funny how the CIA press office couldn't find the magic words ("Please"?) with Bob Novak on the line.

Right, then - on to the specific question of Valerie Plame, also addressed by the intrepid Mr. Crewdson in a different story:

Plame's identity, if truly a secret, was thinly veiled

BY JOHN CREWDSON

Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON - The question of whether Valerie Plame's employment by the Central Intelligence Agency was a secret is the key issue in the two-year investigation to determine if someone broke the law by leaking her CIA affiliation to the news media.

Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald contends that Plame's friends "had no idea she had another life." But Plame's secret life could be easily penetrated with the right computer sleuthing and an understanding of how the CIA's covert employees work.

When the Chicago Tribune searched for Plame on an Internet service that sells public information about private individuals to its subscribers, it got a report of more than 7,600 words. Included was the fact that in the early 1990s her address was "AMERICAN EMBASSY ATHENS ST, APO NEW YORK NY 09255."

A former senior American diplomat in Athens, who remembers Plame as "pleasant, very well-read, bright," said he had been aware that Plame, who was posing as a junior consular officer, really worked for the CIA.

According to CIA veterans, U.S. intelligence officers working in American embassies under "diplomatic cover" are almost invariably known to friendly and opposition intelligence services alike.

"If you were in an embassy," said a former CIA officer who posed as a U.S. diplomat in several countries, "you could count 100 percent on the Soviets knowing."

That last bit about the porous cover of CIA officers ties in with this article by Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer now with the AEI.

Let's have a second sidebar on behalf of the "Keep hope alive" gang that believes Special Counsel Fitzgerald is still working on the Really Big Case with Impending Momentous Revelations - just because an online subscription service had this Plame info in 2006, it does not follow that they had it in 2003.  Just saying.

What else does Mr. Crewdson offer us?

Two years later, when Plame made a $1,000 contribution to Vice President Al Gore, she listed her employer as Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a Boston company apparently set up by the CIA to provide "commercial cover" for some of its operatives.

Brewster-Jennings was not a terribly convincing cover. According to Dun & Bradstreet, the company, created in 1994, is a "legal services office" grossing $60,000 a year and headed by a chief executive named Victor Brewster. Commercial databases accessible by the Tribune contain no indication that such a person exists.

Another sign of Brewster-Jennings' link to the CIA came from the online resume of a Washington attorney, who until last week claimed to have been employed by Brewster-Jennings as an "engineering consultant" from 1985 to 1989 and to have served from 1989 to 1995 as a CIA "case officer," the agency's term for field operatives who collect information from paid informants.

On Wednesday the Tribune left a voice mail and two e-mail messages asking about the juxtaposition of the attorney's career with Brewster-Jennings and the CIA. On Thursday, the Brewster-Jennings and CIA entries had disappeared from the online resume. The attorney never returned any of the messages left by the Tribune.

"Not a terribly convincing cover".  The Boston Globe had similar reporting in Oct 2003, headlined "Apparent CIA front didn't offer much cover".

As to the "now you see it, now you don't" online resume, that almost surely refers to this story (dredged up by TS9):

Plame's employer, Brewster-Jennings, apparently has never tried very hard to hide its activities. Former employees like Jean C. Edwards and Robert Lawrence Ellman even advertise their association with the company on the Internet! They were doing so before Brewster-Jennings and Valerie Plame came to light and they still are.

...Plame's employer, Brewster-Jennings, apparently has never tried very hard to hide its activities. Former employees like Jean C. Edwards and Robert Lawrence Ellman even advertise their association with the company on the Internet! They were doing so before Brewster-Jennings and Valerie Plame came to light and they still are.

Edwards, in her resume on the website of the Washington, D.C., law firm Akerman Senterfitt, says she worked for "Brewster-Jenning [sic] and Associates" in Boston as a consultant from 1985 to 1989.

She worked for Brewster-Jennings from 1985 to 1989?  Per both Mr. Crewdson and the Globe, the firm registered with Dun and Bradstreet in 1994.

As to her resume - here is the Google cache of the non-airbrushed version with the Brewster-Jennings reference; here is the revised version (PollyUSA provides links and commentary, and says she saved a screenshot of the oldie - that cache won't last forever.)

Robert Ellman apparently revised his bio as well - here is the cached version (via MayBee), and the current effort.

Hmm, did these two really react that quickly to a few hits on the traffic monitor (noticed only by the site administrator), and a bit of publicity in a nearly-invisible outlet?  Or might someone be spoofing someone else - the original story is at what would normally be considered a left-wing site.  Trust No One.

Well, these two disappearing resumes are an interesting sidelight, but hardly critical to the main theme.  We will let Mr. Crewdson tell us what it means:

Libby's lawyers, who now question whether Plame's CIA employment really was secret at the time Novak's column appeared, have asked a federal judge to provide them with documents that bear on that issue.

If Plame's employment was not a legitimate secret, and if the national security was not harmed by its disclosure, Libby's lawyers argue, their client would have had no motive to lie about his conversations with reporters.

Fitzgerald has told the court he does not intend to introduce evidence showing that Plame's career, the CIA's operations or the national security were harmed by the disclosure of her CIA affiliation.

Nor, apparently, does Fitzgerald intend to charge the secret source who leaked to Woodward in mid-June, leaked to Bob Novak in July, and forgot to mention the Woodward conversation to investigators or in his testimony.  Mightn't one think that such a man obstructed the investigation and harmed national security with his repeated leaking?  Presumably Fitzgerald knows best.

As to the identity of the secret source, here is some forensic typesetting analysis of a redacted court document suggesting that Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State, is a good fit.

UPDATE:  Mr. Crewdson was involved in outing some secret CIA planes in Jan 2005 (the Times provided a comprehensive summary).

And the ubiquitous Larry Johnson responds to the ""Internet blows CIA cover" article, apparently without even reading it:

Okay Mr. Crewdson (the author of this nonsense). Please search the internet and identify 100 CIA officers for me. Go ahead. Give it a shot. Oh, I forgot, first you need a name. You do not just enter a random name and come up with a flashing sign that says, "this guy is CIA".

Well, Mr. Crewdson claims to have identified over 2,600 CIA officers (not all of whom are covert).  Is it Mr. Johnson's view that he winnowed this down from a list of 20,000 or 30,000 random names in the news?  Per the article, the actual process seemed much simpler - the online service had apparently compiled a database of CIA employees:

When the Tribune searched a commercial online data service, the result was a virtual directory of more than 2,600 CIA employees, 50 internal agency telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret CIA facilities around the United States.

As to the specific case of Ms. Plame, any intel service that was intrigued to learn, via his July 6 op-ed, that Joe Wilson did consulting work for the CIA would have been likely to do a bit of research into the background of both Wilson and his wife. Such an investigation would have led quickly to the mysterious Brewster-Jennings, thanks to Ms. Plame's on-line filing with the FEC.

BATTLE ROYALE:  Larry Johnson and Chi Trib deputy managing editor Jim warren slug it out on "Scarborough Country" on March 13.  From LexisNews:

SCARBOROUGH: No doubt about it. It`s certainly a long way from what we see on TV when we watch "24." Larry Johnson, you are skeptical, why?LARRY JOHNSON, FORMER CIA AGENT: It`s a goofy article. What they imply in "Tribune" is that just go onto Google, go on to Lexis-Nexis, go onto Choicepoint autotrack. And just pick a name out and all of a sudden, it will tell you that they`re with the CIA.The methodology they used, and ask Jim about this, they were able to take, for example, the indictments that were handed down in Italy that identified about 24 people. And admittedly that was lousy tradecraft on the part of the CIA. But using that information backwards to identify companies, individuals. But at no time are you able to go anywhere on the Web and find somebody that says, hey, this is an undercover CIA operative.The way these operatives are outed is what happened in the case of Valerie Plame. She was outed by the administration. Once her name was out there and the company she worked for, it then enabled people to go out and do some of the work that Jim .

SCARBOROUGH: Larry, we got 2,600 CIA employees that are out there. You have some undercover people out there.

JOHNSON: Joe. Joe. No, Joe, what you have 2,600 employees, most of whom are not undercover.

SCARBOROUGH: But there are some covert people, according to the "Chicago Tribune". And Jim, let me ask you about it .

JOHNSON: How do they know they know they are covert? Because here`s nowhere on the Web. Joe, hang on for a second. There`s nowhere on the Web that you are going to find a list of people that says, "Hi, I`m an undercover operative."

SCARBOROUGH: Well, of course, you are not! That`s why you have Pulitzer Prize winning guys piecing things together. That`s not what I`m saying. And that`s not what the "Chicago Tribune" said. Jim Warren, how do you respond to these attacks?

WARREN: Well, obviously, we could not, for a variety of grotesquely obvious reasons get into the specific methodologies we used. There was a substantially greater amount of information and discoveries that we made that we did not put in the newspaper and having been involved in the editing of this and knowing the amount of time that the lawyers spent on this, I can assure you everything that we wrote in the stories is absolutely correct. And in due respect to Mr. Johnson, he simply doesn`t know what`s talking about.

JOHNSON: No, sir. You are absolutely wrong.

WARREN: He doesn`t know what he`s talking about when he raises criticisms of the piece.

JOHNSON: That`s absolutely wrong. I do know what I am talking about. I work with these databases on a daily basis. I defy you. Come out and give me a name right now of somebody that`s not undercover that you can just pick out and automatically go there without having that name first divulged by a public source.

WARREN: Joe, Joe, I mean, that sounds dramatic, as a challenge but obviously one for lots of reasons that we`re not going to do that.

Well, does Larry Johnson thinks the Admin leaked the name of Brewster-Jennings?  He
says this:

The way these operatives are outed is what happened in the case of Valerie Plame. She was outed by the administration. Once her name was out there and the company she worked for, it then enabled people to go out and do some of the work that Jim .

The more prosaic truth is that Ms. Plame identified her employer as Brewster-Jennings on a publicly available FEC filing detailing a 1999 contribution to Al Gore.

MORE:  Mr. Crewdson got two other bylines on Saturday:

The murder that sparked Identities Protection Act

Thirty years ago, the murder of Richard Welch, then the CIA station chief in Athens, shocked the nation. The eventual result was the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the statute governing the current investigation into whether Bush administration officials illegally revealed to reporters that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA.

Six months before he was slain by masked gunmen outside his home, Welch was among several purported CIA operatives named by a left-wing U.S. magazine called Counter-Spy, which ceased publication following his death.

And:

A shift from real firms to false fronts

By John Crewdson
Tribune senior correspondent
Published March 11, 2006, 12:20 PM CST

WASHINGTON -- Almost from its founding in 1948, the CIA has used American, and occasionally foreign, corporations to provide "non-official cover" for its activities abroad.

In the 1960s, the agency used patriotic appeals to recruit legitimate firms for cover purposes. A major Illinois corporation that did extensive business abroad had CIA officers hidden among its overseas staff. A large Chicago law firm allowed CIA officers who were trained as lawyers to "join" its overseas offices.

... Companies began to shy away from such cover arrangements following the congressional investigations of the CIA in the mid-1970s, which left the CIA with no alternative but to set up its own dummy corporations. Corporate information available on the Internet makes such paper companies relatively easy to spot.

The basic details of these companies, like those of virtually any company doing business in the U.S., can be called up with the click of a mouse. The first tip-off is that there are not many details.

CIA front companies identified by the Tribune typically do not list any directors, officers or other employees--usually just a single CEO who, upon further investigation, appears to have no spouse or family, no mortgage history, no prior addresses, no driver's license or auto registration. In short, no existence.

Comments

[clarice]

The Crewden story is most interesting to me, TM. Do you recall another story where there were CIA agents (present or ex) poohpoohing the "covert" claim? I don't. Indeed, all I recall from the time David Corn penned the storyline is a succession of VIPs (open or anon) peddling it.

If so, what's changed?

[TM]

Well, the Gerecht story poo-poohs covert status generically, but not specifically to Ms. Plame.

Otherwise, no, I don't recall other reporters having dug up sources who said, yeah, I knew her when (other than the ubiquitous Larry Johnson).

[larwyn]

Is the Trib story the foreshadowing for what Clarice has already reasoned out - that Plame was kept at NOC designation to not penalize her pay grade?

They report "in early 90's" her address was Embassy P.O. - so when did Cubans see her dossier?

There is a certain beauty in getting this story out in this way, as most Americans would agree that an employee shouldn't be punished with lower renumeration when fault lies with the employer.

It begins with a mistake, very similar to the mistake of Fitz's team in providing documents that should not have been released in another case.

There is definitely egg on faces, but long ago faceless faces.
And if this is the case, that this will be the denoument, can we then be certain that it is Goss's CIA talking with the reporters?

There must also be several other ways to look at this development.

[topsecretk9]

"covert" claim? I don't. Indeed,

Not directly, but windandsea would attest...sneakily

[topsecretk9]

"If you were in an embassy," said a former CIA officer who posed as a U.S. diplomat in several countries, "you could count 100 percent on the Soviets knowing."

Um, ---POSE---???????

[topsecretk9]

Full reading. Gee, TM. THANKS, If you'd like me to stop commenting, directness would be appreciated.

[E.D.]

Alot of people were angry that Plame was not acknowledged as a psychologially diasabled federal employee at the awards, but its standard for operations officers to use this way out of covert operations(keep the pay grade-GSG) .

As far as the mystery person; Sarah Shayes-sicChayes?

[topsecretk9]

E. B.

Umm, did you think your (SIC) would be that sneaky? Tom Christianson uses UV Florescent Marker dye.

But heck, Sarah Chayes, comes up quite quick, I am thinking "DougJ" gets full TM credit.

[topsecretk9]

MJW
As a "Home Grown" expert, and since you didn't get it... you deserve a PERSONAL shout out for all the work you put in. MJ ----you did a great job. On behalf of JOM commenters, you the man!

[ordi]

Here is a reference about her status from July 15, 05

A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an "undercover agent," saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency's headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.

"She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat," Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.

"Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren't minding the store here. ... The agency never changed her cover status."

Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under "nonofficial cover" -- also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson -- also said that she worked under extremely light cover.

Maybe this is the reference you seek

[MayBee]

Full reading. Gee, TM. THANKS, If you'd like me to stop commenting, directness would be appreciated.

Are you kidding, missy? You found us the Indymedia article! What would the rest of us do without you??

[MayBee]

about what e.d. said though- I do have to say that the postpartum has to be the 500-lb gorilla in the room. I can't imagine the CIA would put someone suffering from depression out in the field, but you can't take her job from her either.

[Kate]

Could this represent the beginning of the pullback of the media from this story. The enthusiastic coverage of this was always a little strange to me. Indictment Day was covered 24 hours as breaking news.

Now the media sees that a trial may be far more harmful to them than the Bush Administration. Or they believe that the Bush Adminsitration is damaged enough on other stories (Katrina, the Ports) and they don't have to risk having their journalists on the stand looking, at best, foolish.

[Bill]

For XYZ Inc to remain a cover organization it has to be shown on the resume. However, XYZ Inc has to be a real company and not a tissue thin cover.

Here is the catch 22:
A is known to have worked at XYZ Inc from 1990 to 1995 and for the CIA from 1995 to 2003 to have the resume show that A worked for the CIA from 1990 to 2003 is to blow the cover for XYX Inc.

[Beto Ochoa]

Well I guess we can bury the "Outed Spy" hyperbole along with the "Bush warned levees would break" BS and the Arabs will own the ports crap.

[boris]

I guess we can bury the ...

Mox nix, why do you think they call it Democratic Underground ???

[E.D.]

I thought they all came from Morrocco; one on the Intelligence Committee and one running a heavily A.I.D. funded 'charity' group in Afghanistan. The assisinations kinda follow that route, unless you go with Plame in Iraq.

[windansea]

Not directly, but windandsea would attest...sneakily

the aspens at Cottons are turning

[Lew Clark]

I'm not so sure the Tribune story so much proved that the CIA does not protect the identity of it's true covert agents as it puts a lie to the Corn/VIPs/Larry Johnson scenario about Plame. Remember, this all started when Corn did his "She works for the CIA? Well she must be a super duper undercover 00 spy, because everyone that works for CIA is obviously a 00 spy". What the internet search service is picking up is public records on CIA employees that are not covert. They use mortgage records, tax filings, credit card applications, etc. If a non-covert CIA employee put down CIA as their employer on any of these records, it would show up in a search.
The whole Brewster Jennings thing. It may have once been a CIA cover company, but it isn't anymore, or, it was a phony cover company from day one. The CIA will establish phony cover companies to distract enemy agents. If your watching Brewster Jennings like a hawk, you aren't watching XYZ Company, the real cover company.
This whole Plame thing, with the help of Mr. and Mrs. Wilson was created in the bowels of "Get Bush INC." And a lot of VIPs belong to that organization. They played on the ignorance of the general public as to how CIA is actually organized and how they work. The "get Bush" crowd helped and MSM did their part to promote the lie. The real intelligence community didn't want to get involved because they do have "covers" to protect. But it does appear that push back is starting. I had wondered how long the real intelligence community would sit back and let this bunch of "traitors" own the dialog.
One thought I had way back. With Niger being a prime producer of "yellowcake" we had to have real covert agents in there. We would not let that link to nuclear proliferation go unwatched. So I've always wondered how pissed the real agents were when Joe Wilson went on his little junket(s) to Niger.

[Beto Ochoa]

If you took all the false ledes and headlines from the NYT, WaPo and LAT and laid them end to end (With proper grammatical form of course. Which means you would need to repair most of them.)
Ahem,
If you took all the false ledes and headlines from the NYT, WaPo and LAT and laid them end to end the line of bull***t would circle the planet at least four times, take a spin around the moon(bats) and back and contain more secret code than every genome sequence in the universe.

[Beto Ochoa]

Que pasa windansea. Cottons? ¿Dónde?
You must be in Arizona then?

[windansea]

beto...estoy en Vallarta Mx

Cottons is a surf break below Nixon's old western White House....Val and Joe may retire there...can't say more as I might blow Tsk9's cover!!

[clarice]

E.D. I haven't a clue what you are talking about.

Here's what the Wilson Gambit relied upon:
(a) A press corps willing to play their game;
(b) A mobilizing corps of liars with seemingly reliable credentials (the VIPs) to spread the tale;
(c) A public utterly unsophisticated in intelligence matters and easily led to believe the Corn/Wilson?VIPs lies;
(d) A candidate who clearly had the motive to press this;
(e) book publishers working with him and one network (CBS) tied to those publishers by common interest if not ownership;
(f)The utter lack of a written record in the Agency which would have permitted a fast response (not on the payroll;no written report;)
(g) charges that could not , moreover, be responded fullt to without disclosing classified information at a critical moment in the invasion.

All together a filthy black op.

[richard mcenroe]

Whatever happened to solid, effective covers like "Global Import and Export?"

[Beto Ochoa]

Clarice,
Succinct be thy name.

[clarice]

Thank you, B O.

[Patton]

On top of that Clarice..it appears Wilsons trip was never designed to get to the bottom of the story...it was just designed to give him credibility to talk about the issue.

When he went to Niger, he wasn't briefed on any of the available intelligence by the agency.

When he went to Niger, he first met with the Ambassador and AGREED that he wouldn't meet with anyone CURRENTLY in the government or CURRENTLY in charge of the
Yellowcake operations.

The ONLY provable fact he brought back was that Iraq HAD INDEED sent a delegation to Niger in 1999 and that the man he talked to believed that delegation was interested in pursuing yellowcake. Or maybe Niger makes some killer IPODs we are all not aware of.

So Wilson couldn't possibly have 'blown the whistle' on anything of substance, all he needed was credibility with the press and the freedom to speak.

[Cecil Turner]

The whole Brewster Jennings thing. It may have once been a CIA cover company, but it isn't anymore, or, it was a phony cover company from day one.

Unfortunately, the difference is significant, and from the available data, it's impossible to tell which is true. It certainly doesn't appear to've been a very good cover, but unless some of those resumes with B-J/CIA were out there prior to July '03, it's not dispositive. Absent any such showing, I think Polly's point remains valid.

[Patton]

I think due to Valeries ties with the State Dept, and States view on the issue, Wilson was simply a push back by State.

The CIA would have already had:

Its own assets in country, in the embassy and most likely in the yellowcake operations they would be paying someone for information.

The CIA would have had ties in France to monitor the yellowcake distribution.

The CIA would not have any good reason to find some retired ambassador who couldn't talk to anyone in the current government.

[SteveMG]

What a timely story by the Tribune (oy).

You gotta' give enormous credit to Wilson and Corn for peddling this. Granted, a compliant press helped along the way (go back and read the New Republic cover piece by Judis and Ackerman - The First Casualty: The Selling of the Iraq War - it's a howler, but Fitzgerald actually references it in the Libby indictment). One would think that among the first things a reporter would do is find out exactly what Plame's status was.

But Corn and Wilson were very sharp in presenting things to a gullible press.

Here's a link to the role the TNR piece played in the Libby indictment. Interesting read, although we now know most of the details.

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0RMQ/is_8_11/ai_n15897811

SMG

[clarice]

Funny isn't is to see when the press is "gullible" and when (Cheney's hunting accident, i.e.) they are "hard hitting"? Clowns.

[clarice]

That, too, Patton. I don't think this was a DoS op though some of her pals there may have played a role.

I wonder if in the investigation of the NSA leaks, the FBI isn't picking up some details about this operation as well.

[clarice]

Everytime I look at this stuff something else pops out. Look at para 8 of the indictment . It indicates that Libby didn't ask about Wilson until AFTER Pincus started asking questions. Doesn't this underscore his belief that it was reporters calling and asking that triggered his interest in this issue?

[boris]

I wonder if in the investigation of the NSA leaks, the FBI isn't picking up some details about this operation as well.

If so one might expect to see some CYA in the MSM. Is that happening?

[clarice]

Last night Larwyn indicated she saw signs in Russert's treatment of a guest supportive of the Administration.

I'd expect if the FBI is picking up some details the biggest CYA might come from the agency itself..Does that explain the sudden truth tsunami in the Chicago Tribune?

[boris]

Works for me ...

[Cecil Turner]

A mobilizing corps of liars with seemingly reliable credentials (the VIPs) to spread the tale;

The only winge I have with that is that I think the VIPS bubbas came first, and specifically requested the leak (from March '03):

VIPS say their appeals to CIA staff are an attempt to evoke another Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret study on U.S. involvement in Vietnam.

This assumes the Wilsons didn't plan his disclosure from before his trip--which admittedly isn't a certainty.

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

If one were looking at a coconspirator charge under 798 one might look around for something to trade to the investigators or prosecutors. 798 has some real teeth (and a recent conviction plus a current prosecution). DoJ may be able to assemble a nice canary choir - who knows what songs will be sung?

If I were a prosecutor I would much prefer to have 798 to work with, rather than IIPA.

[clarice]

Cecil, I think the VIPs were working their black magic all along, but until May of 2003 Joe was publicly simply toeing the Scowcroft line as far as I can see. The utterly magical confluence of Clarke and Beers' defection and Wilson's volte face seems to have occurred then.

That doesn't mean that Joe was not a sleeper, but it may well have been that his trip was really a boondoggle or cover for something else that was reworked into a Mission. I just haven't enough evidence to say it was a set up from the first.

[clarice]

I would, too, Rick.

And don't foget the Senate Intel staff and Rocky and Durbin's staffs..Go back and read the Rocky ememo where Wilson was clearlypart of his plan. And then read the majority SSCI report on Wilson and the Roberts' report where he notes how odd it is that Rocky refused to endorse the much tougher--warranted by the facts--excoriation of Wilson in his report.

Wilson was part and parcel of the Rocky operation and his staff knows it. Moreover, they know that Rocky is a betrayer and I doubt they'll risk jail for a rich Fifth Columnist who'd do nothing to help them. Not if they've a brain in their heads.

[clarice]

Roberts and Bond (eat our shorts, Rocky) statement(excerpt):

Despite our hard and successful work to deliver a unanimous report, however, there were two issues on which the Republicans and Democrats could not agree: 1) whether the Committee should conclude that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's public statements were not based on knowledge he actually possessed, and 2) whether the Committee should conclude that it was the former ambassador's wife who recommended him for his trip to Niger.

Niger

The Committee began its review of prewar intelligence on Iraq by examining the Intelligence Community's sharing of intelligence information with the UNMOVIC inspection teams. (The Committee's findings on that topic can be found in the section of the report titled, "The Intelligence Community's Sharing of Intelligence on Iraqi Suspect WMD Sites with UN Inspectors.") Shortly thereafter, we expanded the review when former Ambassador Joseph Wilson began speaking publicly about his role in exploring the possibility that Iraq was seeking or may have acquired uranium yellowcake from Africa. Ambassador Wilson's emergence was precipitated by a passage in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address which is now referred to as "the sixteen words." President Bush stated, " . . . the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The details of the Committee's findings and conclusions on this issue can be found in the Niger section of the report. What cannot be found, however, are two conclusions upon which the Committee's Democrats would not agree. While there was no dispute with the underlying facts, my Democrat colleagues refused to allow the following conclusions to appear in the report:

Conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee.
The former ambassador's wife suggested her husband for the trip to Niger in February 2002. The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on behalf of the CIA, also at the suggestion of his wife, to look into another matter not related to Iraq. On February 12, 2002, the former ambassador's wife sent a memorandum to a Deputy Chief of a division in the CIA's Directorate of Operations which said, "[m]y husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." This was just one day before the same Directorate of Operations division sent a cable to one of its overseas stations requesting concurrence with the division's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger.

Conclusion: Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.

At the time the former ambassador traveled to Niger, the Intelligence Community did not have in its possession any actual documents on the alleged Niger-Iraq uranium deal, only second hand reporting of the deal. The former ambassador's comments to reporters that the Niger-Iraq uranium documents "may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong,'" could not have been based on the former ambassador's actual experiences because the Intelligence Community did not have the documents at the time of the ambassador's trip. In addition, nothing in the report from the former ambassador's trip said anything about documents having been forged or the names or dates in the reports having been incorrect. The former ambassador told Committee staff that he, in fact, did not have access to any of the names and dates in the CIA's reports and said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct. Of note, the names and dates in the documents that the IAEA found to be incorrect were not names or dates included in the CIA reports.

Following the Vice President's review of an intelligence report regarding a possible uranium deal, he asked his briefer for the CIA's analysis of the issue. It was this request which generated Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger. The former ambassador's public comments suggesting that the Vice President had been briefed on the information gathered during his trip is not correct, however. While the CIA responded to the Vice President's request for the Agency's analysis, they never provided the information gathered by the former Ambassador. The former ambassador, in an NBC Meet the Press interview on July 6, 2003, said, "The office of the Vice President, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there." The former ambassador was speaking on the basis of what he believed should have happened based on his former government experience, but he had no knowledge that this did happen. These and other public comments from the former ambassador, such as comments that his report "debunked" the Niger-Iraq uranium story, were incorrect and have led to a distortion in the press and in the public's understanding of the facts surrounding the Niger-Iraq uranium story. The Committee found that, for most analysts, the former ambassador's report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger- Iraq uranium deal.

During Mr. Wilson's media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the President had lied to the American people, that the Vice President had lied, and that he had "debunked" the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. As discussed in the Niger section of the report, not only did he NOT "debunk" the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true. I believed very strongly that it was important for the Committee to conclude publicly that many of the statements made by Ambassador Wilson were not only incorrect, but had no basis in fact.

In an interview with Committee staff, Mr. Wilson was asked how he knew some of the things he was stating publicly with such confidence. On at least two occasions he admitted that he had no direct knowledge to support some of his claims and that he was drawing on either unrelated past experiences or no information at all. For example, when asked how he "knew" that the Intelligence Community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book, he told Committee staff that his assertion may have involved "a little literary flair."

The former Ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading. Surely, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has unique access to all of the facts, should have been able to agree on a conclusion that would correct the public record. Unfortunately, we were unable to do so.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_pat-roberts.htm

[Rick Ballard]

Feom where I sit, it appears that Wilson's hope of parlaying his successful planning of Bubba's African Adventure vanished with Gore's defeat. Without a Dem in the WH he was finished at DoS, he quits and sets up a consulting effort with meager success. His only real links with a power player were with COGEMA. The Niger gig was an effort to establish some "current" credence with COGEMA - which undoubtedly appreciated his careful sweep under the rug of any ties they might have had to clandestine trade in yellowcake but didn't turn their appreciation into remuneration (cheap French).

Then the VIPS appeared and Wilson saw an opportunity and leapt for it like a cat on a June bug. He wasn't doing anything anyway and a Dem victory might result in a handsome payoff. Just a small man with small ambition trapped by his own limitations. Easy prey and easy to play.

[maryrose]

"Altogether a filthy black op"
Agreed and one that immediately got out of hand. What started as a Bush bash and Kerry promo quickly degenerated into this morass we find ourselves in now. The msm clearly never dreamed it would go this far and as of this date no one has been held accountable for the false stories or the tangled web they were weaving. A disgraceful travesty and manipulation of the CIA and questionable activities at State. Where was Powell in all this and why didn't he step up and put a halt to this?

[MTT]

Clarice,

Black-ops, indeed.

I think you hit on the real story here, a confluence of enemies of Bush (DoS, CIA, NYT, CBS, AP, Kerry) who used Joseph Charles Wilson IV (himself part of the Kerry camp) to injure the POTUS.

In this case, not only did JCW4 get on base, he hit the home run "heard around the world."

But as you say, in order for their plan to succeed they needed a pliant press and an angry and susceptible public, and boy did they have those!

What is curious about such a scenario is in the weakness of the so-called "push-back." Libby is indicted and the White House ducks and covers. Where was the fight?

[Able Danger]

Wow, it's almost like piecing together bits of publicly available information can give you valuable, actionable intelligence about organizations which wish to remain secret.

I wonder if there were any attempts made to exploit this public data gathering technique within our own government? Who knows?

[clarice]

Rick, that's pretty much my take on it.

(Will someone send Rick and my comments to the SSCI and Rocky and Durbin staffs,please? Come clean, kiddies. The CIA is and you'll be left holding money bags empty bags.)

[clarice]

MTT, I keep asking myself that. On the occasion when I had to headhunt for an organization, I forced them to first assess their strengths and weaknesses and hire a head who was strong where they were weak. The weakest point of this administration is that the President is not a good communicator.Unfortunately neither is the WH press office.

OTOH, I think he has a sort of religious belief that the truth will out and that it is unnecessary and unseemly for the WH to fight back on all these things. Maybe he's right.But it isn't what I would have done.

Frankly, I'd have hauled Tenet in my office the moment the Kristof story broke and demand an on the record reply to the first lies.

[boris]

never dreamed it would go this far and as of this date no one has been held accountable

History may attribute the tendency of "objective" MSM and government professionals to fly off the rails and go haywire as widespread BDS.

I am not close enough to the action to see the details but from here it looks like even small time sneaky scams "catch fire" and blow up. Don't quite know whether to categorize BDS as malice or stupidity but it makes it difficult to apply the maxim about not attributing one to the other.

[Kate]

Not only did the White House not fight back, but President Bush praised prosecutor Fitzgerald for running a "dignified" investigation.

I believe the President thinks that if he labels someone with a positive quality, that person will try to live up to that praise.

"Dignified" Fitzgerald...hmm...

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

Are you using memories of Clinton's spin machine to assess the Bush WH response? If so, what was the electoral net result of Clinton's skunks stinking up the airwaves? All that I ever saw was a cheap Arkansas county courthouse pol using tricks that William Faulkner would have recognized - and laughed at. The Snopes family residing in the WH didn't do the Dems much good - and Bubba Snopes current activities simply confirm previous suspicions.

The MSM's purchase of polls (and their results) isn't a very good measure of success or failure either of electoral politics or the politics of governance. Clinton dragged the major departments of the government through the mud for his own benefit. It would be nice if some of that mud were allowed to be washed off by simply allowing process to proceed without the WH stepping in and dictating both process and result.