GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth Message Board

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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth

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To: one_less who wrote (52203)	7/11/2005 9:21:27 PM
From: wonk	Read Replies (2) of 173976

…The worst harm is that she become unable to perform undercover work which she wasn't doing anyway…. No, sorry, that’s just plain wrong. From what has been revealed she was still doing “undercover” work – though not overseas at the time of the exposure. I won’t get into whether Rove did anything for which he can be convicted. That’s not relevant to what is the “worst harm.” The worst harm is that: A. An “operative’s” identity was revealed. B. The revelation came in part from a senior official of the government. It almost doesn’t have to be said – but I’ll say it anyway. When a formerly covert agent or operative is revealed, besides the harm that comes from the loss of the intelligence that the operative was producing, the exposure reveals sources and methods of intelligence gathering. Its bad enough that she was a WMD analyst – and outing her did harm to one of very objectives we ostensibly went to war in Iraq about. Basically, whatever good work or results she generated in the past was compromised. Any human sources of information or foreign agents she may have developed are compromised and likely useless to us. Her foreign sources – if any – are now tainted and in fact could be at risk for imprisonment or death. Even if no human sources were used, the methods used to obtain sensitive or secret information can now be backtracked and shut down. That’s pretty damn bad. But now lets look at the collateral damage cause by point B. Here we have a senior official of the United States Government – charitably stated – being rather caviler with an undercover agent’s identity. Ask yourself, if you’re being recruited by the Operations Directorate of the CIA for a covert posting, whether its overseas or not, how will this incident effect your decision to take on such a job? Moreover, imagine you’re a foreigner being recruited to pass information to us, i.e. spy on your own country (in most places that’s a crime punishable by death). No matter how many inducements or how much money they (we) throw at you, your perception of the risk of exposure has now just gone up astronomically. It’s bad enough when agents are “blown” because the tales of what happens to those folks become well know in those very places we’re trying to penetrate (making it a lot harder to recruit new agents). But when officials of the U.S. government are perceived (at this movement I’ll stick with perceived) to toss away peoples covers with no more thought than tossing away a used Kleenex the ability to recruit and retain foreign agents has been immeasurably harmed. It’s not about Plame though her career has been hurt and perhaps ruined. It’s not about Rove. It’s not about politics. It is about the USA and our ability to develop information to protect this country. ww

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