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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Ilaine who wrote (55043)	7/19/2004 2:51:38 PM
From: carranza2	Respond to of 793555

This is EXACTLY why the CIA blew her cover to the White House, and someone at the White House blew it to Safire, not "vindictiveness". Huh? Well, no, exactly. The statute dealing with secrecy allows communication between the WH staff and the CIA concerning secret matters, including Plame's status as an undercover agent. Thus, it is quite possible that the individuals involved at the WH knew that she was undercover or were validly within the scope of those allowed to know. I can't imagine the CIA impermissibly "blowing" an undercover agent's identity for any reason. The CIA agents I saw on various talk shows and the material I read subsequent to the revelation indicates that the CIA was uniformly furious that the WH has revealed her identity. This is reasonable since revelations endanger undercover agents' lives. It wasn't Safire, it was Novak. The chronolgy is that Wilson started criticizing the WH on Niger and other matters, then Novak learned of Plame's status as an undercover CIA agent from someone at the WH. He then wrote the story. There are in my view two possibilities for the revelation. The first is that it was an accidental. Its timing makes it difficult to accept an accident as the explanation, particularly since it was made to a journalist who was writing on the subject Wilson was investigating in Niger. Because the person who spoke to Novak obviously expected the revelation to be printed, the second reason for the revelation seems almost certainly to be payback. The statute makes some exceptions, i.e., one I hazily recall allows revelation if the agent has not been doing undercover work overseas for 5 years. This may apply to Plame. This loophole may get the person who revealed her identity off the hook, though the fact that the investigation has not stopped for this reason makes it unlikely that this loophole applies. If the revelation can be proven and the statute's exemptions clearly do not, the person at the WH who made it to Novak should be prosecuted. This kind of revelation can be deadly. It is exactly the reason why the statute was put in place. I don't care for Wilson--he's a jerk, as far as I can tell--and know very little about Plame. This doesn't change the fact that the identities of undercover CIA operatives should not be bandied about to the press for any reason, particularly partisan ones.