Valerie Plame Puts Critics to Shame
Valerie Plame, the covert CIA agent who was ‘outed’ after her husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, publicly disagreed with the Bush administration, is testifying before Congress today and reportedly speaking very well.
AP via CNN:
Valerie Plame Wilson, the CIA operative at the heart of a political scandal, told Congress Friday that senior officials at the White House and State Department “carelessly and recklessly” blew her cover to discredit her diplomat-husband.
Plame Wilson, whose 2003 outing triggered a federal investigation, said she always knew her identity could be discovered by foreign governments.
“It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover,” she told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Washington Post: Valerie Plame, the Spy Who’s Ready to Speak for Herself
She has been silent nearly four years. Today, the CIA officer whose unmasking fueled a political uproar and criminal probe that reached into the White House is poised to finally tell her own story — before Congress.
Valerie Plame’s testimony will have all the trappings of a “Garbo speaks” moment on Capitol Hill, with cameras and microphones arrayed to capture the voice of Plame, the glamorous but mute star of a compelling political intrigue. But while she hopes to clear up her status as an agency operative when her name first hit newspapers in July 2003, America’s most publicized spy is unlikely to betray any details in open session about her mysterious career.
The reason: Plame remains gagged by the same secrecy rules that governed her 20 years as a CIA employee working overseas and at Langley in classified positions.
People close to Plame say her primary goal in testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is to knock down persistent claims that she did not serve undercover. “She is so tired of hearing that,” her mother, Diane Plame, said in an interview earlier this week.
UPDATE by MvdG
Think Progress has a good post up about Valerie Plame’s testimony “under oath before the House Government and Oversight Committee”. Plame said that she was still a covert agent at the moment her name was leaked to the press, she added: “While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.”
Think Progress has a video up, be sure to watch it. She doesn’t just explain that she was a covert agent, she also explains what the leak meant to her personally:
“all of my efforts on behalf of the national security of the United States, all of my training, all the value of my years of service, were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly”.
As both TP’s Faiz and The Carpetbagger Report point out, quite some people have denied that Plame was, at the time that Novak wrote his column, a covert agent. Plame (and CIA sources for that matter) contradicts that.
TCR has her entire open statement up – you all should read it in its entirety. She also pointed out:
“The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave, but I can’t provide details beyond that in this public hearing. But the concept is obvious. Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized, even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence. Lives are literally at stake.”
Long story short: everyone involved should be fired immediately. Karl Rove should be forced to leave the White House today. This is an embarrassment and I find it, to be quite honest, insulting to the American people and to those who choose to serve their country, for anyone to defend the conduct of certain people in the White House in this matter.
For an incredibly diverse, and constantly updated round-up go to Memeorandum.
71 Responses to “Valerie Plame Puts Critics to Shame”
kritter,
I just don’t see much evidence for a plot or conspiracy. If the leaker had been someone other than Armitage – someone who was actually close to Rove then I’d agree with a conspiracy. Armitage is no lackey, however. If he was used by the White House I think he’d be telling everyone about it – I certainly would be.
In other issues, I’ve been reading some of yesterday’s testimony this morning. The most interesting so far is from Ms. Toensing, a staffer who worked for Senator Goldwater in the early 1980′s and is the person most responsible for writing the law that protects CIA covert officers and agents. As a student of the intelligence community, I found much of her opening statement fascinating, particularly the circumstances surround the creation of the law. In any event, after reading her testimony, it seems pretty clear to me why no indictments were issued. What it comes down to is that the law is specific requirements for it’s violation – requirements that were put in in large part to prevent the CIA from labeling their entire staff as covert and therefore prevent criticism and whistle blowing to the press. Journalists are also inherently protect from prosecution in the legislation. Anyway, according to Ms. Toensing, these are the requirements for a violation of the statue to occur:
Begin quote
——————————-
The second category is government employees. In addition to a government employee having authorized access to classified information and disclosing it to a person without clearances (like a journalist), the following factors must be present for a government employee to violate the Act:
• The United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal a covert agent’s intelligence relationship to the United States;
• The person disclosing the identity knows that the government is taking
affirmative measures to conceal the relationship;
• The person disclosing the identity knows that the information so identifies
the covert agent;
• The covert agent whose identity was disclosed is an employee of an
intelligence agency;
• The covert agent whose identity was disclosed has a relationship with such agency that is classified;
• At the time of the disclosure, the covert agent whose identity was
disclosed was serving outside the United States or had done so within five
years of the disclosure; and
• The disclosure is intentional.
In a prosecution, all these factors, which are called elements of the offense, must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
————————————
End quote.
There are a couple of factors there that probably make indictment by any of the players in this controversy impossible, so if one is looking for a reason no indictments were issued, that is probably it.
CaseyL,
My intent was not to suggest that somehow the yellowcake story was valid. It certainly wasn’t. I was simply pointing out that Wilson’s evidence, though helpful, was not a smoking gun that blew the yelloscake theory out of the window. The preponderance of evidence showed the yellowcake to be false. My main point was that the WH should have attacked the credibility of his evidence and not the man himself.
entropy -Plame’s name was leaked 20 times by State Dept officials and by those in the administration. Armitage himself leaked it twice within a couple of weeks-how would that just happen out of the blue? Conspiracies are extremely hard to prove in court, especially when there are two people -Rove and Libby determined to obstruct the investigation. If there was no conspiracy, then why did Libby, one of the smartest legal minds around, allow himself to be convicted? I think you should read Hubris, and look at the trial testimony, plus Plame’s testimony again. BTW, the civil case is still coming up- so we can expect to hear much more.
Fitz said he declined to prosecute Armitage because he couldn’t prove that Armitage knew Plame was covert. That means the others knew.
Entropy- Colin Powell was used by the WH as a lackey during the UN speech- Rove even told him they were using him for his reputation for integrity- they thought he had the best chance of being believed. If a man of Powell’s stature allowed himself to be used, why is it so hard to believe it of Armitage? He was with Bush even during the election (a member of the Vulcans) and was a signatory of the PNAC letter that urged Clinton to take out Saddam.
CS- If Plame had no regard for her privacy after the outting- why would she have bothered? By then it was too late to worry about it, as the reason necessitating secrecy about her identity was no longer valid. And what is the “evidence” that she had no regard for it before the outting???
Where is any proof that they had no concern for privacy before all of this happened? It comes straight from the right wing spin machine that so much of CS’s talking points come from.
Kim,
I really wasn’t going to comment again but since you directed a question to me…
I wasn’t really speaking so much about Plame’s behavior beforehand, rather about Wilson’s (I have no way of knowing how much he consulted with her prior to the publication of his OpEd). My point being, when someone behaves as a whistleblower, part of the story is what that person’s motivations are. You assume that Wilson’s were pure but I don’t. I don’t know that they weren’t, either, but the fact that he chose to level a VERY serious accusation against the Bush administration in a VERY public way, before getting all of the facts straight, doesn’t pass the sniff test to me. It’d be like a person working in a nuclear or chemical plant going to the press about safety violations without finding out first whether any wrongdoing actually took place.
Jim, I hope that answers your question as well. I’m writing my own opinions, thank you very much. I’m sure there are others who see it the way I do, but I don’t regurgitate what other people write, I simply call things as I see them.
kritter,
It’s not just conspiracies that are hard to prove, look at the requirements I listed above for one to violate the law. Plame had not served overseas since 1997, so even if there was intent, and all the other requirements, there was still no violation of the act. That doesn’t make what happened right, but as far as violating the law goes, it seems pretty clear that it wasn’t violated. I find it highly unlikely that people working in the State Department knew whether Plame was covert or not – the CIA does not exactly publish a list of personnel who fall into that category.
The intent of this law was originally to deal with people like Phillip Agee, not people like Armitage and this situation – that’s why there were no indictments.
Powell was not “used” by the WH as you suggest. He gave the speech partly because of his credibility, and partly because it was his responsibility as SECSTATE. Furthermore, he personally vetted everything he said – he did not have hit talking points dictated to him. That’s one reason the weakest evidence, like the Niger Uranium, never made it into his speech. To call Powell a lackey is simply incredible and suggests he was some kind of weak-spined pawn of the Administration. It’s clear he was not.
And just so we’re clear on Wilson, what he reported to the CIA after his trip was different from what he later said publicly and before Congressional Committees. The text is too long to quote here, but read pages 44-46 of this declassified report:
http://intelligence.senate.gov/108301.pdf
If you want the whole story on what happened with the Niger Uranium, begin on page 36 – it’s probably as definitive as one can get.
Entropy – Plame had not lived overseas, but she had travelled overseas in covert ops during the last 5 years- not sure how they usually interpret the law there.
As far as Powell’s speech- Libby wrote it for him over in Cheney’s office. He has said in interviews that he regrets giving it, and that he knew parts of it were shaky, but did not have time to rewrite the whole thing. I remember reading that the decision was made by Karl Rove for Powell to give the speech– because of the trust factor. I’ll see if I can find it anywhere- it might have been in the biography of Powell that came out last year, or he might have said it in an interview.
As I stated previously, Fitz found no evidence that Armitage knew she was covert, but it is common sense that if you are discussing someone at the CIA that that would be a consideration. I agree that it was difficult to prove that the law had been violated, just as it was difficult to prove that there was a conspiracy. But thats what it all points to. I actually am not sure that Armitage knew whether or not she was covert, but it would be interesting to know-not sure if this will come out in the congressional hearings or in the civil case.
Powell did go over the intelligence personally with analysts and cut some of it out. If you have something that shows this is not the case, then please post it, because it contradicts what I remember reading at the time.
I’m sure we will know more once Bush is out of office. I predict a run of “insider” books from former administration officials.
Austin, your retraction was falling on a MUCH bigger sword than Libby did. Yours was not for anyone but yourself, and that takes guts man.
Bravo
I tried to find my original source but its been too long. I did read that he had been assured by Tenet that the sourcing was solid and felt betrayed later when he found out that was not the case. He had 4 days to try to source the materials he was given and did rewrite some of it. But he was handed a stack of material to present and had to rely on Tenet for its veracity. I’m not excusing him- he allowed it all to happen despite his misgivings, and then of course, regretted it later once his credibility was shot. I can’t find the source that claims that Rove relied on Powell’s credibility to sell the war to the UN. I don’t think he was against removing Saddam, just wanted more credible information to present, and thought we should use overwhelming force to subdue the insurgents and establish stability, so he had a rift with Rummy and Cheney.
kritter,
That’s how I remember it to. What I didn’t remember was when you suggested before that Libby wrote the speech for him. I doubt that is the case, though he was certainly given guidelines or an outline to focus his arguments.
Hopefully Powell will write a book one day giving all the details.
Very interesting blog post:
http://www.sweetness-light.com/archive/when-and-why-joseph-c-wilson-iv-outed-valerie-plame
Pyst – thanks, but in my mind I was simply reacting to an unassailable statement.
I may be opinionated, and stubborn, and biased at times (no really, I can be!), but I try to be intellectually honest.
CS: JJC objects because he feels that I’m saying that there is EQUAL blame to go around, which I never said.
Just to pick the sort of nit that occasionally influences a discussion:
I objected to the inference that seemed reasonable to draw from your statement that the generality of the blame was more at issue than the blame of anyone in particular. I know you never said they were EQUAL.
I understand you were responding to several people at once, so it would be unfair for me to expect you pay particular attention to my particular issue. I hope you don’t think I’m picking on you here, but if you do, well here’s what I’m after–
I bring this up in connection to something GWB said somewhere along the line: “I was careful NOT to say that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11.” (Not sure the quote is exact, but am confident this is close.) Whatever it was he actually DID say was a significant part of the discussion of this issue that had 69% of Americans believing that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11 two years after 9/11.
I don’t know whether GWB intended to achieve this result or not, but his being “careful not to say” what people ended up believing is near the top of my list of several hundred issues I have with his choices of how to lead this nation.
Long after this Presidency has ended, the issues are sure to smolder regarding the accountability of Bush, Cheney et al. for the death, distruction, and disasters in their wake. Whatever is the opposite of accountability, seems to be a big part of what these guys are all about.
I think the many people who responded to your statement, “there is blame just about everywhere you look,” are animated by a sentiment uncomfortably close to rage that highly privileged men skilled at playing the system connived and finagled to their own benefit and at enormous cost to hundreds of millions, and have so far maneuvered succesfully to largely avoid accountability, or “blame,” and are more likely than not to do so until they die.
In conclusion, it was never my issue whether there was EQUAL blame to go around. It was my issue that you seemed to suggest, by making the statement at all, that “blame” or accountability was beside the point and so not really worth pursuing. As you know only too well, many of us see that very accountability as the point no one should lose sight of.
jjc- this is not my fight but I do want to comment anyway. One of the reasons that CS may feel that there is so much blame to go around is the extraordinary amount of misinformation that gets fed into the press. The Plame case is a perfect example of this phenomena. Here is a CIA agent that was guilty of no more than doing her job of discovering whether Iraq had WMD’s , but was outted because she got caught up in a political hailstorm involving her husband, the CIA and Dick Cheney’s office.
Over the past few years we heard that she was not covert in the first place, no law was broken, the Wilsons were publicity hounds, Plame had a desk job, Wilson lied about who sent him because he had been co-opted by subversive leftists, Plame sent her husband , who had no qualifications, on the trip in the first place, Plame’s identity was widely known on the cocktail party circuit, no crime was ever committed, etc, etc.
Its not surprising that so many were confused by this case. If there’s enough misinformation out there, we start believing it, and then aren’t we swiftboating the truth? I have followed this case for years, but even I didn’t know until Plame testified that she was really covert. It shouldn’t be that hard to find out the truth in a democracy with a free press.
Kim,
Why do you assume there was complete misinformation on the side of the issue that assigns anything but pure intent to the Wilson-Plames, but all of the information that is negative toward the administration is true and not only that, but you seem to assume that there was a conspiracy that we just can’t prove (that Armitadge worked in cahoots with Cheney and Rove)?
Jjc,
The key word is that you are reacting to an INFERRENCE. Glad to see that you got that wording correct as some people tend to confuse inferrence and implication. But I’ll point out, that whatever you inferred is your own interpretation and it happens to be different than mine. Your inferrence (and that of other commenters) is that assigning blame on both sides means that I’m somehow making a weaker case for blame on any particular person. I don’t understand why it would be less possible to assign blame to one side if we are also willing to assign blame to the other side if the evidence indicates there was wrongdoing there as well. I think that kind of polarized thinking prevents us from getting to the heart of the problem, the systemic ills.
In other words, I get your point and see the nit about equality of blame not being the issue, but I still disagree with you on this and it was never my intention to imply what you have inferred here:
It’s my view that focusing ONLY on the accountability of these “highly priveleged men skilled at playing the system” while ignoring or excusing other people who are also highly skilled at playing the system, prevents us from fixing the aspects of the system which facilitate this behavior.
It’s my view that focusing ONLY on the accountability of these “highly priveleged men skilled at playing the system� while ignoring or excusing other people who are also highly skilled at playing the system, prevents us from fixing the aspects of the system which facilitate this behavior.
Little danger of that, practically speaking. The highly priviliged always have someone to speak up for them.
It is of course the nature of inferences and implications that they will never be strictly equal. It’s useful to know that what you intended to imply was different from what I inferred.
Note I have not argued that Joe Wilson should be excused. I would argue that his culpability has already been extensively argued.
More than that, though, I would argue in this case, so what? There’s playing the system to score debating points, and there’s playing the system to initiate a war. I think a very clear distinction needs to be drawn between the two, and I think it’s been the habit of rightwingers (not saying you’re one of them) to try to blur distinctions like this in the service of granting their operatives freer reign to wreak havoc and escape accountability.
CS- The conspiracy aspect was never proven, but it sure seems like a heck of a coincidence that with a 6-week period this agent was outted 20 times by administration and state dept sources. Also it is highly suspicious that no in-house investigation was ever done by the WH as Shaun noted previously. Even after it was clear that Rove had taken part in the orchestrated effort to out Plame, he kept his security clearance. Armitage is a bit of a mystery, again I admit I have no proof, but it all fits if you believe he was in on it. Fitz declined to prosecute him because he had no proof that Armitage knew that she was covert, he never said that Armitage’s leak was not intentional.
Most of the Misinformation put out by the right was disproven in the Libby trial testimony and by Plame’s sworn testimony in Congress- so that’s not much of an assumption. As far as Wilson’s basic contention that the Italian document was a forgery, and he could find no evidence that Saddam was getting uranium from Niger, that was supported by Stephen Hadley, who admitted that claim was not true.
Yes, I can understand that point but I guess I’d say that this habit of certain rightwingers has led to a certain amount of overreaction by leftwingers and centrists.
I agree somewhat. Certain rightwingers obfuscate the debate, and in so doing create a diversion that distracts leftwingers and centrists, effectively reinforcing the righwingers’ gambit. I consciously attempt to avoid being diverted in this way.
But your response seems largely a diversion in itself. You change the subject from the orginal obfuscation to the leftwingers’ and centrists’ overreaction. You understood the point but neither agreed nor disagreed, making a different point instead.
I’ll skip ahead a little now. I think you more or less agree that there’s a significant accountability problem relating to Bush, Cheney et al, but consider that others are doing plenty already to address that problem.
And my response to that is. . .
Making these guys accountable is more than just a political issue. You have yourself given up on supporting them, but not only are many still supporting them even now, not only did they have much more support when they began, but others like them will similarly draw support in the not-so-distant future to wreak havoc again. That is, unless we very emphatically recognize what went wrong here, to the point where the lessons of Iraq will persevere longer than the lessons of VietNam appear to have.