'Hubris' On Valerie Plame's Day Job

David Corn, writing in The Nation, sneak previews the coverage in "Hubris" of Valerie Plame's job at the CIA:

Valerie Wilson was no analyst or paper-pusher. She was an operations officer working on a top priority of the Bush Administration. Armitage, Rove and Libby had revealed information about a CIA officer who had searched for proof of the President's case. In doing so, they harmed her career and put at risk operations she had worked on and foreign agents and sources she had handled.

Another issue was whether Valerie Wilson had sent her husband to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Iraq had sought uranium there. Hubris contains new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been.

...

In 1997 [Ms. Plame] returned to CIA headquarters and joined the Counterproliferation Division. (About this time, she moved in with Joseph Wilson; they later married.) She was eventually given a choice: North Korea or Iraq. She selected the latter. Come the spring of 2001, she was in the CPD's modest Iraq branch. But that summer--before 9/11--word came down from the brass: We're ramping up on Iraq. Her unit was expanded and renamed the Joint Task Force on Iraq. Within months of 9/11, the JTFI grew to fifty or so employees. Valerie Wilson was placed in charge of its operations group.

There was great pressure on the JTFI to deliver. Its primary target was Iraqi scientists. JTFI officers, under Wilson's supervision, tracked down relatives, students and associates of Iraqi scientists--in America and abroad--looking for potential sources. They encouraged Iraqi émigrés to visit Iraq and put questions to relatives of interest to the CIA. The JTFI was also handling walk-ins around the world. Increasingly, Iraqi defectors were showing up at Western embassies claiming they had information on Saddam's WMDs. JTFI officers traveled throughout the world to debrief them. Often it would take a JTFI officer only a few minutes to conclude someone was pulling a con. Yet every lead had to be checked.

"We knew nothing about what was going on in Iraq," a CIA official recalled. "We were way behind the eight ball. We had to look under every rock." Wilson, too, occasionally flew overseas to monitor operations. She also went to Jordan to work with Jordanian intelligence officials who had intercepted a shipment of aluminum tubes heading to Iraq that CIA analysts were claiming--wrongly--were for a nuclear weapons program. (The analysts rolled over the government's top nuclear experts, who had concluded the tubes were not destined for a nuclear program.)

Well.  Unlike the Armitage "revalation", this story is not exactly testimony against interest - since it fits beautifully into Corn's preferred story line, we are left to wonder hwo hard he pushed his sources and how heavily he weighted (or discounted) less helpful information.

More later...

MORE:  I'm still reeling - Ms. Plame was a senior officer in the specific CIA group that had spent the spring and summer of 2003 in a peeing contest with Dick Cheney.  Well, I suppose his motive to out her might be greater than we expected.  But guess what - Fitzgerald has investigated that for two years and has no case against Cheney.

And of course, her motive to be part of a politically motivated "Gotcha" game played by the CIA at the expense of the Vice-President is also greater than we expected.

This article does not really help with some outstanding issues, but here we go;

(1) Was Ms. Plame involved with orchestrating Joe Wilson's trip to Niger in 2002?

David Corn must be kidding when he tells us that

Hubris contains new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been.

Please - Ms. Plame was head of the JTFI Ops group, had proposed her husband for his 1999 trip to Niger, but was not involved here?  Well, then, why does Libby's indictment include this:

7. On or about June 11, 2003, LIBBY spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of Wilson's trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.

Court filings eventually established that 'senior officer' to be Robert Grenier.  So why was he wrong about this - more bad intel from the CIA?  My guess - Grenier accidentally told the truth; later, the CIA scrubbed their story a bit.  (Gosh, does that mean the CIA might, like, lie?  That is almost like running a covert op...).

(2) Was Ms. Plame covert?  We still don't know - the statutory definition of "covert" requires that her employment is classified (check!) and

who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States;

And does "served" mean "formally posted" or is a flight to Europe (or Jordan) on Agency business sufficient?

No one has ever been tried under this statute, so we don't know.  However, I bet some inspired legla researcher could find some relevant case law regarding State Department definitions of "service" that might be relevant.  FWIW Victoria Toensing, who helped draft the law, insists that "served" means "posted", but who knows?

Developing...

THE NON-BARKING DOG:  Per the story, Cheney met with folks from the CIA team.  Well, if he met Valerie Plame professionally, that evidence would have been presented by Fitzgerald, who has strained to come up with anything at all suggesting that Libby knew her status was classified.  So far, he has a warning Libby received *after* Novak's column had been published.

THE "ENFORCED" LEAVE:  Why did Ms. Plame take what the Daily Telegraph described as a unpaid "enforced leave of absence" in June od 2004, which was long after the initial leak drama, long after the birth of her twins, but just before the embarrassing Senate Intelligence Committee report?  Does "Hubris" probe this?  I'll bet!

GET ME ROBERT GRENIER!  If Grenier actually told Libby that Ms. Plame was on the JTFI as head of operations, wouldn't that be quite unforgettable, whether he also mentioned her classified status was disclosed or not?  What did Grenier tell Libby, and how does it impact his "I Forgot" defense?  That asked, Special Counsel Fitzgerald has surely poked at this.

NOT A MONOLITH:  It's worth keeping in mind that the CIA was hardly monolithic on the question of Iraqi WMDs - just offhand, the CIA had "Joe" at WINPAC promoting aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment centrifuges, supported the notion that captured trailers were for mobile bio-weapons labs, and vetted Powell's not-so-good speech to the UN.  Was the CIA sure Saddam had no WMDs? Not a slam dunk!

Actually, Libby's complaint to Judy Miller in the summer of 2003, when the WMDs went missing, was quite different - his view was that the CIA sent over hedged reports before the war, then back-pedaled when the WMDs weren't found.

ALL CONSPIRACIES GET A WHIFF OF OXYGEN:  As noted above, if Ms. Plame was so central to the Iraq effort (as opposed, for example, to manning the CIA's Estonia desk), then all conspiracies get a boost, including this one from an unlikely source - Kevin Drum.   His speculation - the timing of Wilson's leaks and public statements were driven by information held only inside the CIA and passed to him by his wife.

If they were exploiting her classified status and their spousal immunity to embarrass the White House, that's naughty.  Of course, there is no evidence that Fitzgerald ever investigated this, and no likelihood that he will (but that's what the civil suit is for!).

Comments

[Freaknik]

Problem being if its true you and your possess look like morons.

[Sara (Squiggler)]

And yet she and her group totally missed AQ Khan and his network operating without restraint and brokering nuclear technology all over the place. She sends ol' Joe to Africa in 1999 and he comes home and says AQ Khan is what? doing nothing? not a threat? not dealing as a front man for Iraq? for Iran? for Libya? for North Korea?

[Sue]

He went to Africa in 1999 more than once. Her group was concerned about something.

[Jeff]

Tom

I'm curious, which information do you think might be overweighted? That she was in charge of operations for the Joint Task Force on Iraq, which appears to be described on p. 262 of the SSCI; that JTFI did the Iraqi scientists operation (this is your best bet, if you ask me); that JTFI debriefed defectors; that she traveled overseas as part of her job to monitor operations; that she specifically traveled to Jordan with regard to the interception of the aluminum tubes?

I take it the key claims are that she was in charge of operations for JTFI - which in itself makes her job different and more significant than those on the right have been claiming these past three years, indisputably it seems to me (though I am quite certain some on the humorless right will dispute it - hi Sue!) - and that she traveled overseas in that job, which suggests, by the way, that Tatel was on firm ground in his interpretation of what Fitzgerald was saying in his 8-27-04 affidavit.

[Sue]

Would Fitzgerald consider Plame a whistleblower? He sure gave the whistleblower and good leak, bad leak a run for its money.

[Sue]

Hi Jeff.

Do you think Wilson and Plame are Corn's sources?

[Sara (Squiggler)]

Yeah, they were concerned about AQ Khan. According to links I posted in the WaPo thread a couple of days ago, he was sent in 1999 to find out what AQ Khan was doing in Africa re: the uranium. Yet, blind/deaf Joe comes back and gives a report almost identical to what he reported in 2002. Joe Wilson seems far more interested in lining his own pockets than finding the bad guys when it comes to nuclear proliferation.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

This is priceless:

'Valerie Plame was recruited into the CIA in 1985, straight out of Pennsylvania State University. After two years of training to be a covert case officer, she served a stint on the Greece desk, according to Fred Rustmann, a former CIA official who supervised her then. Next she was posted to Athens and posed as a State Department employee. Her job was to spot and recruit agents for the agency. In the early 1990s, she became what's known as a nonofficial cover officer. NOCs are the most clandestine of the CIA's frontline officers. They do not pretend to work for the US government; they do not have the protection of diplomatic immunity. They might claim to be a businessperson. She told people she was with an energy firm. Her main mission remained the same: to gather agents for the CIA.'

He's got her got her going from no cover at all--a State Department employee in the Athens embassy who every foreign service intelligence service would assume to be CIA--to a deep cover 'NOC'!

[SteveMG]

Corn's characterization of Plame's work is distinctly at odds with that given by Woodward and, to a lesser extent, Pincus and Priest.

Let's see: A leftwing advocacy journalist who writes for a socialist magazine and who has a personal and ideological vested (vested? hell it's a full suit) interest in the story versus three reporters for the Washington Post?

I guess for the nutroots, it's a tie.

But for me, I know who I'm siding with.

SMG

[boris]

Look who's back !!!

Doesn't change the fact that once Joe goes public her "cover" was toast.

Nobody deliberately "outed" her. Armitage spread spread gossip and Rove heard that too.

[Sue]

Steve,

Those 3 journalists didn't seem to have Val and Joe as their source.

I wonder if this means her book isn't getting written?

[Extraneus]

What's the difference? The key points are:

1. Wilson's the one who drew attention to her by his own antics.

2. Armitage is the one who "outed" her, not some imagined White House cabal.

How does anything written here by Corn change that? If she was so important to the national security, than #1 above is even more of a craven, selfish, hurtful move than we thought!

[Sue]

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/2444>AJ makes a great point.

[Sue]

Ex,

And Tenet didn't care enough to intervene. Wonder why?

[AJStrata]

Squiggler,

Who says her team missed AQ Khan? Why do you think she sent Joe in 1999? It is a myth her group was not sending red warning signs in 1999 and 2000 (Clinton's term). This is pre-millenium. In fact, it all makes sense as to why the Administration was caught off guard. None of the Wilson claims made sense given his wife's task force products! She may would have been rolling up the Iraq NIE data itself.

Don't assume we know ANYTHING. Read my post on this, but Corn tries to claim all intelligence came from defectors and they said BS. But we all know the CIA, DIA, NSA and other organizations in the task force had many more sources of intel. This case just went into hyper drive!

Wonder what forced their hand????

[AJStrata]

Spot On Sue!

Corn just cleared Bush and implicated the CIA and Plame specifically.

[AJStrata]

Damn Sue, you are fast! You got my link here before I did!

Cheers, AJStrata

[Sue]

::grin::

It was a good point. I didn't want anyone to miss it.

[AJStrata]

Are you sure you did not read it before I posted it??????

[JM Hanes]

Finally, someone is willing to claim they actually know something about what Plame was doing at the CIA! Seems all too appropriate that it turns out to be David Corn.

Before we get caught up in the slew of questions/answers raised, I'd like to ask what we know about Val's activities in 1996? Clearly, per Corn himself, she was no longer NOC ("They do not pretend to work for the US government; they do not have the protection of diplomatic immunity.") by 1997 at the latest. It would be nice to think we'd laid at least that one to rest officially.

As for whether she travelled to Jordan (or Africa w. Joe!) covertly, Corn ain't saying, is he? If that's the case, however, Corn has once again revealed more about her covert & "classified" activities than virtually anyone else, bar none.

[Sue]

Wonder what forced their hand????

The Wilsons?

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'She also went to Jordan to work with Jordanian intelligence officials...'

So, she walks in to Jordanian Intelligence, and says, 'Hi guys, my name is Valerie Plame. I'm an energy analyst with Brewster-Jennings, we have a post office box in Boston. I hear you've got some aluminum tubes bound for Iraq?'

[SunnyDay]

Sue is fast.

[Sue]

Are you sure you did not read it before I posted it??????

I was looking over your shoulder.

[Neo]

If this piece is correct, then Novak and Armitage "out"ed the person who lead the group at the CIA responsible for the biggest intelligence failure since the Bay of Pigs invasion.

There is some sort of irony here that just hasn't been comprehended.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

Since Corn is now revealing classified information, wouldn't the CIA be required to send a referral to the Justice Dept asking for an investigation?

And wouldn't the Justice Dept have precedent on their side in threatening him with jail if he doesn't reveal his sources for all this stuff?

[Sue]

Corn has once again revealed more about her covert & "classified" activities than virtually anyone else, bar none.

AJ's point, too.

[Thomas Morrissey]

Wilson, too, occasionally flew overseas to monitor operations.

Where else did she send Joe, and in what capacity?

The rationale behind his trip to Niger was his personal relationship with Niger officials, what posssible reason could be used to send an amateur publicity hound to other places when his identitiy as a known U.S official would have drawn a great deal of attention.

[Sue]

Thomas,

I took that Wilson reference to mean Valerie.

[AJStrata]

I get the feeling you were dictating over my shoulder....

[Sue]

I'm not a dictator.

[Jeff]

Oh and Sure, should I gear up for an I told you so moment with regard to what I said about Rohn's memo creating misimpressions through its quite ambiguous phrasing? Oh never mind, I'm sure no one will acknowledge they were told so.

[Thomas Morrissey]

Sue,
I'm just so used to hearing her referred to as Plame.

[topsecretk9]

Jeff

Do you know when Wilson testified to the Senate Committee on Intelligence?

[Sue]

Jeff,

I don't owe you an I told you so. I even made your point for you the other night. Since I'm the only one who gets a kick out of I told you soes, you need to try again.

[Sue]

Sue,
I'm just so used to hearing her referred to as Plame.

So was Judith Miller. Wonder if this brings things closer into focus? Like Miller knew Plame from WMD coverage?

[Tom Maguire]

I knew AJ would love this Corn thing.

From jeff:

I'm curious, which information do you think might be overweighted?

I don't even know, but if some CIA source told Corn that Valerie was an ornamental time-server puncing a clock and trying to get to twenty years while others did the real work, I bet he dropped that.

If guys told him that OF COURSE as head of JTFI Ops she would be involved in sending Joe to Niger, well - cut that, too.

Does Corn have anything on her leave of absence from June 2004 to June 2005 (described by the Torygraph as a "forced leave")? Maybe, but if not, why not?

Look, Corn is an agenda-driven muck-raker; I assume he wil shade the story his way if sources conflict.

[Sara (Squiggler)]

Whoa AJ, I'm saying Joe Wilson missed the AQ Khan dealings, not that her group missed it. She sent him, according to the Senate report because they had suspicions. He came back with a "nothing to see here" report that sounds nearly identical to his 2002 report. I've been on the same page with you as far as the 1999 trip since you first wrote about it.

[SteveMG]

Valerie Wilson had sent her husband to Niger to check out an intelligence report that Iraq had sought uranium there.

This is the Joe Wilson canard.

No one said that Valerie Wilson sent her husband to Niger. Wilson said his wife has no role in his selection.

The question was whether she had any role in the selection. Clearly, she did.

Hubris contains new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip.

Again, false. No one said she arranged the trip.

In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been

Well, let's use our friend Jeff's requirements.

What did he say? When did he acknowledge this? To whom did he admit it? To Corn? Were there others there? Who? What do they say? When? To whom?

We'll need more information before accepting Corn's statement.

SMG

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'Come the spring of 2001, she was in the CPD's modest Iraq branch. But that summer--before 9/11--word came down from the brass: We're ramping up on Iraq. Her unit was expanded and renamed the Joint Task Force on Iraq. Within months of 9/11, the JTFI grew to fifty or so employees. Valerie Wilson was placed in charge of its operations group.'

How does this square with Joe's claims that she wouldn't have had the authority to dispatch him to Africa? I'd say the person 'in charge' would have to sign off on it.

[Thomas Morrissey]

Sue,

Like Miller knew Plame from WMD coverage?

Good point,she was supposedly a favored outlet from the Administration on the issue, and she has been widely criticized for being so.

Back to the Corn narrative, if she had been as important as he describes,doesn't it make her decision to send Joe even worse.

These would have been serious people doing serious work, Joe had no place there.

And how could she then allow him to publish his Op-ED, and essentially blow the program wide open.

[maryrose]

"I am not a dictator"
Eva Peron you are not but as a Plameologist you are top-notch.
AJ Strata:
You are doing yeoman's work on the Plame/Wilson scam and I for one appreciate it. Let's get the truth out!

[Sue]

I'd say the person 'in charge' would have to sign off on it.

Especially since it has been touted that after Cheney asked about the Niger uranium, it was Plame's unit that was tasked with finding out more information.

[Jeff]

Let's assume for the moment that Corn's report is true, at least insofar as Plame was in charge of operations for the JTFI. I'm curious what connection, if any, there was between JTFI and what the WaPo called the Iraq Issues Group, which Robert Grenier was apparently in charge of.

Tom, of course, suggested that Grenier, who told Libby about Plame, might not have given Armitage her name, since he might have known her back in the day when her name actually was "Valerie Plame." Of course, we don't have any evidence I know of of an Armitage-Grenier connection, though it's possible. And one might think that Grenier might have told Libby, whom he is alleged to have told about Plame. Was "Plame" still her working name in 2002-2003, as has been reported? Did Grenier know her? Who knows, maybe Grenier is one of Novak's inside CIA sources.

[AJStrata]

Squiggler, Sorry - missed your point!

Added this to my post:

"BTW, if Val was the head of the Joint Iraq Task Force for the Intel Community (IC), then she would be the one who would know all about forged Niger documents that purported to indicate a yellow cake sale to Iraq sometime during the previous five years (since dates on the documents span many years and governments). So now we have a clear and obvious source for Joe Wilsons unambiguous knowledge regarding details related to those same forgeries. Recall Wilson’s premise in his Op-Ed and his anonymous leaks prior was the claim the Bush administration used those forged documents, knowingly, to take the country to war. He was highly knowledgeable about classified details on those documents until the Senate declassified WHEN those documents supposedly fell into the CIA’s (read Valerie’s) hands. Wilson went to Niger during the period indicated on some of the documents, which where handed to Val’s group in the CIA in Oct (6 months after Joe’s visit) and then disappeared until they magically ended up in the hands of the IAEA. Coincidence? Nope."

This really does throw a lot of this story back up into the air for analysis.

[Sue]

Not even close, Maryrose, but thank you anyway.

[maryrose]

Jeff:
Please answer Sue's and other people's questions as they are posed to you.

[AJStrata]

TM,

Yep you were right - it did catch my eye!

Cheers, AJStrata

[Sue]

maybe Grenier is one of Novak's inside CIA sources.

Well, he isn't the source inside the CIA that Novak says told him Plame was an analyst.

[Cecil Turner]

I'm curious, which information do you think might be overweighted?

Well, this bit is risible:

Hubris contains new information undermining the charge that she arranged this trip. In an interview with the authors, Douglas Rohn, a State Department officer who wrote a crucial memo related to the trip, acknowledges he may have inadvertently created a misimpression that her involvement was more significant than it had been.

[Snort.] Rohn's contribution is the notes page to the INR memo, which contains the following revelation about Plame:

Meeting apparently convened by Valerie Wilson, a CIA WMD managerial type and the wife of Amb. Joe Wilson, with the idea that the agency and the larger USG could dispatch Joe to Niger to use his contacts there to sort out the Niger/Iraq uranium sale question.

This is obviously at odds with Plame's own statement, summarized in the SSCI:

The former ambassador’s wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

[Okay, maybe not.] Whatever "misimpression" Rohn may have created, it's hardly the basis for the charge that she arranged the trip; whcih was based on an entirely different report, which Rohn had nothing to do with:

Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife “offered up his name” and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12,2002, from the former ambassador’s wife says, “my 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 activitv.”

And though the Dem members successfully kept this conclusion out of the report, it is self-evidently correct:

Conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee.

[lurker]

"Oh and Sure, should I gear up for an I told you so moment with regard to what I said about Rohn's memo creating misimpressions through its quite ambiguous phrasing? Oh never mind, I'm sure no one will acknowledge they were told so."

Well, MSM, leftwingers, and democrats sure created alot of misimpressions here. As AJStrata points out, the various intelligence agencies, such as CIA, DIA, NSA and other organizations in the task force, had many more sources of intel. Perhaps many more sources of intel actually confirm Rohm's memo?

[Sue]

I should have said, not the source if Jeff is going to say he told Novak and Libby she was covert/NOC/or anything else.

[lurker]

Reading the first paragraph:

"Valerie Wilson was no analyst or paper-pusher. She was an operations officer working on a top priority of the Bush Administration. Armitage, Rove and Libby had revealed information about a CIA officer who had searched for proof of the President's case. In doing so, they harmed her career and put at risk operations she had worked on and foreign agents and sources she had handled."

My first question was: Is this what the Wilsons and CREW are basing their lawsuit on?

[AJStrata]

Thanks Maryrose, I do my humble best.

Jeff, Your conceptions of how IC members interact with non-cleared workers and mid level administration staff is all wrong. This is not shop talk stuff. If people knew of Plame being at the CIA and being involved with Joe's trip it came from (a) a CIA report through channels and captured in the INR memo (with no indication of Plame's covert status) or (2) someone who knew her and her role. The administration did not dig into this much after the first Kristof editorial - no one reacts on one silly newspaper article. By the Pincus article in the WaPost on June 12th Armitage basically knew about Plame and Joe and gabbed to Woodward. This tells me option (a) is out completely. There were some very connected people passing information to Armitage right from the first Kristof article.

Looking back it was possible the Wilson Op-Ed was held until it was clear the news had spread to the WH so Joe could go public at the proper time.

[Sue]

lurker,

Sure. If you read further, you see she told her colleagues she wanted, in a couple of years, to go back into the clandestine side of intelligence. Though how you do that, I don't know, I'm sure it is possible.

[MayBee]

Where does any of this say she was a covert agent? I don't see why she had to be covert to run operations from Langley.
It sounds to me that she was, in fact, a manager.
Am I missing something?

[clarice]

Just when you thought the long national nightmare was over, Ratso Corn throws another stinkbomb!

[boris]

don't see why she had to be covert to run operations from Langley

She could no longer hand deliver super secret missions to her agents in the field.

[JM Hanes]

Neo:

Too bad Novak wasn't smart enough to claim he was blowing a whistle.

As I recall, one of the original (pre-war run-up?) complaints about the CIA was their near total lack of interest in bothering with Iraqi ex-pats. Regardless of what anyone may think of Chalabi, I believe he was on the list of people they never even interviewed. I'll have to see if I can dig it up.

[AJStrata]

Sue and Maybee,

Along those lines I just added this to my post

" More Corn fudging and Clintonesque misdirections:

Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator--to rise up a notch or two--and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again.

To the casual reader it seems Val is saying she wanted to go back undercover. Actually it says no such thing, It says she wanted to go into administration (where Mary McCarthy worked) not handling any classified information but managing people, money, etc. She wanted to rise a few pay grades because the SES levels were probably only open to management and not operators. SES's could go 'back' to handling intelligence data and conclusions. But note how Corn conflates the cover being blown with not being able to go back to OPERATIONS! She of course could go back to operations. Once she worked at Langley she was all but done on the undercover NOC stuff. Is Corn being stupid or clever here?

"

[Jeff]

Jeff, Your conceptions of how IC members interact with non-cleared workers and mid level administration staff is all wrong.

Sorry, but I have no idea what you're talking about. Be a little more explicit. The reporting also indicates, by the way, that Armitage asked about Pincus' report after it was published, when he came back on the job, and was given the INR memo.

Also, Grenier told Libby about Plame, according to Grenier's testimony, apparently.

[lurker]

"Jeff, Your conceptions of how IC members interact with non-cleared workers and mid level administration staff is all wrong."

Classified interactions and handling of classified data are based on "Need to know" rules depending on the classification levels.

In a general sense, security cleared people must not share classified information with non-cleared people.

Sue, I saw that. Clearly, Valerie and Joe tell people that she was covert at the time Armitage leaked her out.

[lurker]

Funny how CREW and Fitz decided against going after Armitage. Tells me that Plame was not covert.

Jeff, do you know if Libby has security clearance? Armitage having security clearance? Grenier?

[lurker]

Pay grades are interesting in comparison to private industry salary rates. Pay grades are considerably lower than private industry salary rates but government benefits sometimes far outperform private industry benefits.

[AJStrata]

LOL! Jeff,

I talking about your theories on how information flows out of one agency which is part of the IC and another organization that is not part of the IC. There are strict points of contact where information can flow.

Libby is not going to learn details from just anyone. And apparently he didn't! And I will leave it to you to understand why it is clear Libby did not receive any information out of prescribed channels.

[JM Hanes]

Per Corn:

"But that summer--before 9/11--word came down from the brass: We're ramping up on Iraq."

Well, there's just a little more to it than that. From the the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (see Section VIII):

In 1998, a new ADCUC led a major effort to examine worldwide end-to-end collection. To undertake this effort, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) established the Collection Management Task Force. Led by the ADCI for Collection, the Collection Management Task Force identified both the successes and challenges of the IC’s collection activities and made several recommendations to improve collection, including bringing “the collection disciplines together in a more synergistic way,” looking for “innovative ways that improve collaboration and innovation across the Community,” and establishing a center to examine the IC’s most intractable intelligence problems and develop new ways to improve collection. In 2000, the Collection Concepts Development Center (CCDC) was created to achieve these goals and took on Iraq’s WMD capabilities for its first study.

In the CCDC study, collectors and analysts within the IC worked together to identify collection gaps and develop new, unilateral collection strategies designed specifically to target Iraq’s WMD programs. The study looked at all four aspects of WMD (nuclear, biological, chemical and delivery) and recommended ways to address the collection gaps. The CCDC released its report, titled, Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction: Recommendations for Improvements in Collection, in June 2000. Immediately after the report was released, the IC began to implement the CCDC’s recommendations to improve intelligence collection in all disciplines (human intelligence [HUMINT], signals intelligence [SIGINT],imagery intelligence [MINT], open source intelligence [OSINT] and measurement and signature intelligence [MASINTI) against Iraq’s [deleted]. The NICB briefed Committee staff on the how these recommendations were implemented and how intelligence collection improved as a result of these efforts.

Emphasis mine. Definitely not Corn's.

[MayBee]

Sure. If you read further, you see she told her colleagues she wanted, in a couple of years, to go back into the clandestine side of intelligence. Though how you do that, I don't know, I'm sure it is possible.

Per the Wilsons themselves, they believed she had previously been outed. Per the Wilsons themselves, she was quite loose with the information that she had been NOC.

If she had dreams of going back, that isn't the same as the admin outing an NOC. There are a lot of things that might have hurt her desire to go NOC again. Including having a husband that had a big mouth.

But now I see why Kristof kind of limited what he said about the damage to her as "now she'll never run the Rome bureau".

[lurker]

Terrorism Prevention act, passed in 1996. Posted at CQ.

Looks like a very long bill.

[Cecil Turner]

It sounds to me that she was, in fact, a manager.
Am I missing something?

Don't think so. In common parlance, an Operations Officer is someone who schedules and plans operations (and yes, it is a pencil-pusher/manager job). Maybe it's different at CIA, but I doubt it. Rohn's "CIA WMD managerial type" is looking pretty apt.

[AJStrata]

Jeff,

Get a calendar. Pincus' article happened the day before Armitage met with Woodward! Do you think State can get an answer regarding classified information from the CIA in under 24 hours (unless it is a clear emergency)???

This is the naivette' I am talking about.

[lurker]

Interesting on the Nay votes of the above Senate bill:

Byrd
Feingold
Hatfield
Kennedy (no surprise)
Moseley-Braun
Moynihan
Pell
Simon

Hhhmmm...Kerry and Harry Reid voted in favor of it.

[Wilson's a Liar]

What a farce.

Valerie had no intention of continuing her CIA career, she was planning on being Mrs. Secretary of State after John Kerry was elected president. Lying Joe sold her a bill of goods. This whole fiasco has been a result of Joe trying to make good on all his empty promises to dear Val of fame and fortune.

[Sara (Squiggler)]

Lurker, surely you aren't asking if the Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the U.S. had a security clearance. It would be pretty hard to perform his duties as CofS without one.

[lurker]

SEC. 324. FINDINGS.

The Congress finds that--

(1) international terrorism is among the most serious transnational threats faced by the United States and its allies, far eclipsing the dangers posed by population growth or pollution; (2) the President should continue to make efforts to counter international terrorism a national security priority; (3) because the United Nations has been an inadequate forum for the discussion of cooperative, multilateral responses to the threat of international terrorism, the President should undertake immediate efforts to develop effective multilateral responses to international terrorism as a complement to national counter terrorist efforts; (4) the President should use all necessary means, including covert action and military force, to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy international infrastructure used by international terrorists, including overseas terrorist training facilities and safe havens; (5) the Congress deplores decisions to ease, evade, or end international sanctions on state sponsors of terrorism, including the recent decision by the United Nations Sanctions Committee to allow airline flights to and from Libya despite Libya's noncompliance with United Nations resolutions; and(6) the President should continue to undertake efforts to increase the international isolation of state sponsors of international terrorism, including efforts to strengthen international sanctions, and should oppose any future initiatives to ease sanctions
on Libya or other state sponsors of terrorism.

[lurker]

"Lurker, surely you aren't asking if the Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the U.S. had a security clearance. It would be pretty hard to perform his duties as CofS without one."

Squiggler, it was a trick question to Jeff because Jeff seems to imply that Grenier passing information to Libby was a violation. Also, since Armitage leaked Plame's identity to Novak and Woodward, if considered classified information, clearly this would be a violation and a condition of employment. Since Armitage was not indicted for his leaking and subsequently left his job (retired?), then the information is not classified. Which means that Plame never was NOC.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator--to rise up a notch or two--and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again.'

Right, after working at Langley at getting to know all kinds of secrets, she was going to go back into the field where she could be captured, drugged, tortured, and possibly reveal all those secrets. Sure, David.

[Sue]

The comment I was referring to goes to the civil case. Damages. A self-serving statement.

[Patrick R. Sullivan]

'In common parlance, an Operations Officer is someone who schedules and plans operations (and yes, it is a pencil-pusher/manager job). Maybe it's different at CIA, but I doubt it. Rohn's "CIA WMD managerial type" is looking pretty apt.'

And, in your opinion, Cecil, would such a person be allowed to take her knowledge of schedules and plans overseas, where she could be captured by hostiles?

[Sue]

I think we know now why they haven't served the complaint on the defendants. The timeline for discovery, etc., starts to toll once the defendant has been served. They wanted the BIG news out there first.

[Sara (Squiggler)]

Mapes going back to work with Dan Rather so they can start "having fun and breaking balls" -- GAGs start now.

[lurker]

"

LOL! Jeff,

I talking about your theories on how information flows out of one agency which is part of the IC and another organization that is not part of the IC. There are strict points of contact where information can flow.

Libby is not going to learn details from just anyone. And apparently he didn't! And I will leave it to you to understand why it is clear Libby did not receive any information out of prescribed channels."

And as for Libby or Rove's ability to answer reporter's questions is very limited based on security clearance rules and the level of classification on any classified data.

[Sue]

Which means that Plame never was NOC.

Oh, I think she probably was, at one time. She just didn't fit the criteria needed to charge the IIPA. So they were looking at the Espionage Act. Damage to national security.

[lurker]

Oh, sorry, Sue, you're right. I meant that Plame was not covert in year 2003 when this story went into hyperdrive.

[clarice]

Tom M has said what I have always felt was the stupidest thing about this investigation:

The fundamental unfairness of the investigation is that it began as an attempt to determine who disclosed Plame's identity to Novak. For that purpose the Department of Justice guidelines which limit substantially the prosecution's interrogation of reporters might be sufficient. Once Armitage was known to be the source and the prosecutor shifted to an effort to determine who was the first to tell any reporter about Plame, the limitation was certain to lead to a flawed result. The Miller testimony evinces that as well as anything. She did have other sources. In fact she had Wilson's name and phone number in her notes. One of those other sources may, in fact, have been Armitage but under the limitations of the DoJ guidelines and the prosecutor's agreement to limit questions to Libby (which he briefly breached by asking her the source of other notes, by the way), the result was certain to reflect not the truth, but the presupposition of the prosecution.

[lurker]

Other Tom and anyone else, do you know of any links that indicate Ames outting Plame's identity?

[AJStrata]

Lurker,

I have no links off the top of my head but I have seen that claim many, many times. It is why she came back in 1997, Aldrich Ames exposed her.

Corn is either dumb not to know this or simply doing his version of Goebbels for the naive.

[topsecretk9]

--I think we know now why they haven't served the complaint on the defendants. The timeline for discovery, etc., starts to toll once the defendant has been served. They wanted the BIG news out there first.--

Having comprehension problems today, what do you mean? :::GRINNNNNN:::

[JM Hanes]

Cecil:

Taking the question in regard to "operations" a step further:

Within months of 9/11, the JTFI grew to fifty or so employees. Valerie Wilson was placed in charge of its operations group.

In a 50 person "joint task force," do you have any idea how many of them would likely be assigned to Val's "operations group"? I'd also be curious to know if you think there would be any organizational significance to the fact that Corn didn't capitalize the name of the group (i.e. collections group vs. Collections Group"). Actually, I'd welcome any additional insights you might care to offer on such an outfit.

[cathyf]

Why did Foley tell Clarice that P;ame didn't work for him? Who's lying?

[cathyf]

Sorry, that would be "Plame"

[clarice]

Maybe the same lie peddlers who told Vanity Fair Foley was Plame's boss, told Corn this pack of lies?

Hitchens has more on Zahawie and the Niger-Iraq connections, condlucing:
"At a minimum, this would suggest that the Blair and Bush administrations were quite right to view the Iraq-Niger relationship with concern. At a maximum, it would suggest that the Niger connection was a great deal more significant—and more dangerous—than anyone has even suspected. (The A.Q. Khan network was not exposed until after Muammar Qaddafi's capitulation and the opening of the Libyan stockpiles, which in turn did not occur until after Saddam Hussein had been overthrown.)

In any conflict of evidence or interpretation between Rolf Ekeus and Wissam Zahawie, there cannot be a person living who would prefer Zahawie's word. In any evaluation of the Wilson visit to Niger, it must indeed be acknowledged that he found nothing—but only because he had neither the ability nor the intention to do so. This was yet another CIA "intelligence failure" in the making, and it follows that those who asked searching questions about the agency's role were doing exactly the right thing."

http://www.slate.com/id/2148995/

Does Corn say anything about Fulton Armstrong (II or III, I forget) ? Was the officer for LA deeply involved in this crack intel operation as well? Or did Foley just make up stuff to the Bolton confirmation committee?

And what a dupe Voinovich must feel knowing that the folks who whispered in his ear lies about Bolton were also peddling lies about the President, letting the Administration hang in the wind, and covering their own asses while they did so?

[Sue]

Top,

I'm just rambling. In federal court, there are strict guidelines that control the case, much stricter than our district courts. Once a defendant has been served, the case is assigned a 'tract'. Which tract it is put on, depends on when certain things have to be done. The ititial disclosure is almost immediate (immediate in court terms, since nothing is immediate ::grin:: when you go to court) no matter which tract you are assigned. I just think they didn't want to get the toll running until certain things were already 'out there'.

[JM Hanes]

cathy:

"Sorry, that would be "Plame"
I think you could pretty much count on this crowd to figure that one out! LOL.

[topsecretk9]

Well...it is obvious they are a source for Corn now, just as Wilson was Corn's source on July 15, 2003....so six and half of one, dozen of the other?

-----

Also, does anyone recall when Wilson testified to the Senate Select committeee (I know, I know...I'm a broken record)

[topsecretk9]

Oh-- top half to Sue

[JM Hanes]

Per Corn, the JTFI was "frantically toiling away in the basement, mounting espionage operations to gather information on the WMD programs Iraq might have."

Well that explains it. Why on earth did they think they'd find anything in the CIA basement?

[Sue]

Mr. E.,

If you have something to say to me, you will have to do so here. I am not going to post next door again, not unless I have to eat crow. ::grin::

This has been a public service announcement. Now, back to your regularly scheduled discussion.

[AJStrata]

Note Corn says 'within months' of 9-11, implying prior to 9-11. He is in full Goebbels mode on this one. The growth took place after 9-11. Note that in September 2001 the US Federal Government is still running on and being guided by Bill Clinton's budget signed into law the previous fall - late summer. Any legislation Bush was able to get passed since taking office would only take effect after October 1st. For people who do not know how these things it is important to remind them that the Clinton policies were still in full LEGAL affect on 9/11.

[Sue]

Note Corn says 'within months' of 9-11

I caught the implication. In fact, I'll take it one step further. He wanted everyone to remember that Bush was looking at invading Iraq on the day he took office. The earlier meme that didn't get much traction.

[JM Hanes]

AJStrata:

Excellent piece. I'd have put up your paragraph on some of the things Corn should NEVER have exposed here, but folks should read the whole thing.