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Re: THE BIG LIE ABOUT VALERIE PLAME, by Larry Johnson

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2015 9:49 am
by admin
Apparent CIA front didn't offer much cover
By Ross Kerber and Bryan Bender
Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent
10/10/2003

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At first glance, 101 Arch St. seems like the perfect setting for a spy story: an elegant office building downtown with an upscale restaurant, lots of foot traffic, and a subway entrance to stage a getaway.

"It's a great place to blend in," said Rob Griffin, regional president of Cushman & Wakefield Inc., the real estate firm.

The CIA may have thought so too. Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative once listed as her employer Brewster Jennings & Associates. A company by that name has a listed address but no visible presence at the 21-story office tower.

Plame's exposure as an intelligence operative has become a major controversy in Washington. Former intelligence officials confirmed Plame's cover was an invention and that she used other false identities and affiliations when working overseas. "All it was was a telephone and a post office box," said one former intelligence official who asked not to be identified. "When she was abroad she had a more viable cover."

That's a good thing, considering how little work seems to have gone in to establishing the company's presence in Boston, intelligence observers said. While the renovated building houses legal and investment firms, current and former building managers said they've never heard of Brewster Jennings. Nor did the firm file the state and local records expected of most businesses.

Both factors would have aroused the suspicions of anyone who tried to check up on Brewster Jennings, said David Armstrong, an Andover researcher for the Public Education Center, a liberal Washington think tank.

At the least, a dummy company ought to create the appearance of activity, with an office and a valid mailing address, he said. "A cover that falls apart on first inspection isn't very good. What you want is a cover that actually holds up . . . and this one certainly doesn't."

Some in the real estate industry believe something was amiss, if not illegal. "It's almost like out of a spy novel -- the tenant that wasn't there," said Griffin, who once oversaw management of the tower. "And they picked a nice address."

The collapse of Plame's cover could compromise any other operatives who claimed to work for Brewster Jennings. Although former officials wouldn't confirm that Plame's cover company used the Arch Street address, they offered no other explanation of the phantom tenant.

Plame's identity as a CIA operative was disclosed July 14 by the conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak, who implied that the information came from "two senior administration officials." Just eight days before, her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, a former US ambassador, had written in The New York Times that the Bush administration relied on discredited intelligence in alleging sales of uranium from Niger to Iraq.

Yesterday, Plame didn't return a message left with Wilson requesting an interview, but she had listed her employer as "Brewster-Jennings & Associates" in a filing when she donated $1,000 to Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. She listed her occupation as "analyst."

A spokeswoman for Dun & Bradstreet Inc., a New Jersey operator of commercial databases, said Brewster Jennings was first entered into its records on May 22, 1994, but wouldn't discuss the source of the filing. Its records list the company at 101 Arch St. as a "legal services office," which could mean a law firm, with annual sales of $60,000, one employee, and a chief executive identified as "Victor Brewster, Partner."

That person isn't listed elsewhere. But the address is certainly known, a tower finished in 1988 at the corner of Summer and Arch streets with 405,511 square feet of office space, then housing the upscale Dakota's restaurant, since succeeded by Vinalia. Many commuters pass through the building as they exit the Downtown Crossing subway station. 101 Arch was sold last year to CB Richard Ellis Investors of Los Angeles for an estimated $90 million.

Dun & Bradstreet records on Brewster Jennings show that on June 1, 2000, "sources contacted verified information" the day before, but a D&B spokeswoman wouldn't discuss what that means.

The D&B records give a phone number for the company, but it wasn't in service yesterday. Verizon wouldn't comment. A spokesman for the US Postal Service wouldn't say whether a post office box was associated with the company.

Vince Cannistraro, the CIA's former counterterrorism chief, said that when operating undercover outside the United States, Plame would have had a real job with a more legitimate company. The Boston company "is not an indicator of what she did overseas," he said.

Brewster Jennings was the name of the president of the former Socony-Vacuum oil company, a predecessor of Exxon Mobil Corp. But the Jennings family denies any connection, said a grandson, Brewster Jennings, a real estate investor in Durango, Colo. He said that since the firm was named as a CIA front he's heard from many friends and family members who "find tremendous humor in all this."

Ross Kerber can be reached at kerber@globe.com.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

Re: THE BIG LIE ABOUT VALERIE PLAME, by Larry Johnson

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2015 9:53 am
by admin
Mission To Niger
By Robert D. Novak
uly 14, 2003

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The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet's knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided.

Wilson's report that an Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger was highly unlikely was regarded by the CIA as less than definitive, and it is doubtful Tenet ever saw it. Certainly President Bush did not, before his 2003 State of the Union address, when he attributed reports of attempted Iraqi uranium purchases to the British government. That the British relied on forged documents made Wilson's mission, nearly a year earlier, the basis of furious Democratic accusations of burying intelligence, though the report was forgotten by the time the president spoke.

Reluctance at the White House to admit a mistake has led Democrats ever closer to saying the president lied the country into war. Even after a belated admission of error last Monday, finger-pointing between Bush administration agencies continued. Messages between Washington and the presidential entourage traveling in Africa hashed over the mission to Niger.

Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a "con man." This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, the State Department and the Pentagon, and not just Vice President Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it.

That's where Joe Wilson came in. His first public notice had come in 1991 after 15 years as a Foreign Service officer when, as U.S. charge in Baghdad, he risked his life to shelter in the embassy some 800 Americans from Saddam Hussein's wrath. My partner Rowland Evans reported from the Iraqi capital in our column that Wilson showed "the stuff of heroism." The next year, President George H.W. Bush named him ambassador to Gabon, and President Bill Clinton put him in charge of African affairs at the National Security Council until his retirement in 1998.

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me that Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. "I will not answer any question about my wife," Wilson told me.

After eight days in Niger's capital of Niamey (where he had once served), Wilson made an oral report in Langley that an Iraqi uranium purchase was "highly unlikely," though he also mentioned in passing that a 1988 Iraqi delegation had tried to establish commercial contacts. CIA officials did not regard Wilson's intelligence as definitive, being based primarily on what the Niger officials told him and probably would have claimed under any circumstances. The CIA report of Wilson's briefing remains classified.

All this was forgotten until reporter Walter Pincus revealed in The Post on June 12 that an unnamed retired diplomat had given the CIA a negative report. Not until Wilson went public on July 6, however, did his finding ignite the firestorm.

During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Wilson had taken a measured public position -- viewing weapons of mass destruction as a danger but considering military action to be a last resort. He has seemed much more critical of the administration since revealing his role in Niger. In The Post on July 6, he talked about the Bush team "misrepresenting the facts," asking: "What else are they lying about?"

After the White House admitted error, Wilson declined all television and radio interviews. "The story was never me," he told me, "it was always the statement in [Bush's] speech." The story, actually, is whether the administration deliberately ignored Wilson's advice, and that requires scrutinizing the CIA's summary of what its envoy reported. The agency never before has declassified that kind of information, but the White House would like it to do just that now -- in its and the public's interest.

(c)2003 Creators Syndicate Inc.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Re: THE BIG LIE ABOUT VALERIE PLAME, by Larry Johnson

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2015 9:56 am
by admin
Timeline: The CIA Leak Case
July 2, 2007
by National Public Radio

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I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, is the only administration official charged or convicted in the CIA leak case. On July 2, 2007, President Bush commuted the part of Libby's sentence that involved prison time. Reuters

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Joseph Wilson. After traveling to Niger, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson said some evidence used to make the case for war against Iraq was exaggerated. Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, claim that administration officials retaliated by outing Plame as a CIA agent. Reuters

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White House political adviser Karl Rove was never charged in the CIA leak case. Matt Cooper, formerly of Time magazine, told a grand jury that Rove leaked to him that Ambassador Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Jim Bourg/Reuters

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'New York Times' reporter Judith Miller. Former New York Times reporter Judith Miller testified before the grand jury after receiving what she calls a voluntary and uncoerced waiver from Libby.

Syndicated columnist Robert Novak identified Valerie Plame as a CIA operative in a column published in July 2003 — not long after Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, criticized the White House for exaggerating evidence in its push to justify going to war against Iraq. Novak said two unnamed administration sources had identified Plame to him.

That revelation sparked a two-year-long investigation by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into who disclosed the covert agent's identity. In October 2005, Fitzgerald indicted I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then-chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, on charges of obstruction of justice, false statement and perjury in the CIA leak case. Libby resigned from his post and pleaded not guilty to the five counts against him. But a jury found Libby guilty on four of the five counts, convicting him of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI. Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000.

However, on July 2, 2007, President Bush stepped into the politically charged case by commuting Libby's prison sentence. Libby will not have to serve time behind bars, but he must still pay the fine and serve two years probation.

Following is a timeline of how the CIA leak case has evolved:

February 2002: Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson travels to Niger at the CIA's request to check for evidence that Iraq bought uranium "yellowcake" from the African country that could be used for production of a nuclear weapon.

Jan. 28, 2003: President Bush delivers his State of the Union address. In the speech he includes the following sentence: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." Those 16 words contradicted what Wilson had reported upon his return from Niger to check out the claim. Months later they would be retracted by the White House.

March 20, 2003: The invasion of Iraq begins.

May 6, 2003: The New York Times publishes a column by Nicholas Kristof disputing the accuracy of the 16 words in the president's State of the Union address. The column reports that, following up on a request from the vice president's office, an unnamed ambassador investigated the allegations regarding Iraq's efforts to buy uranium from Niger. Kristoff writes that in early 2002, the ambassador had reported to the CIA and State Department that the allegations were unequivocally wrong.

July 6, 2003: Wilson's op-ed column, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," is published in The New York Times. In it he concludes, "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

July 7, 2003: President Bush boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington en route to Dakar, Senegal. It is the start of a weeklong tour of the continent that become overshadowed by questions about alleged Iraqi WMD.

Also onboard is a top-secret briefing book containing a memo prepared by the State Department identifying Valerie Wilson (Plame's married name) as a CIA officer and as the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

July 9, 2003: Speaking to a White House press pool in Pretoria, South Africa, the second stop on the president's Africa tour, Press Secretary Ari Fleischer says the State of the Union address should not have included the reference to Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Niger. Fleischer says: "With the advantage of hindsight, it's known now what was not known by the White House prior to the speech. This information should not have risen to the level of a presidential speech."

July 14, 2003: Robert Novak, in his syndicated commentary, reveals that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, is a CIA operative. Novak attributes the information to "two senior administration officials."

July 17, 2003: Time magazine publishes an online article by Matthew Cooper, Massimo Calabresi, and John F. Dickerson indicating that government officials had disclosed Plame's identity to them.

July 22, 2003: At a White House news briefing, McClellan, when asked about the administration leaking Plame's name, states: "That is not the way this president or this White House operates."

Sept. 14, 2003: Vice President Cheney, on NBC's Meet the Press, is asked if he had been briefed on Wilson's findings when Wilson returned from Niger. Cheney responds: "No. I don't know Joe Wilson. I've never met Joe Wilson." Cheney adds moments later, "I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back.

Sept. 16, 2003: McClellan calls "totally ridiculous" the allegation that presidential adviser Karl Rove was the source of the leak.

Sept. 28, 2003: CIA Director George J. Tenet calls on the Justice Department to investigate the leak.

Sept. 29, 2003: McClellan reiterates his earlier defense of Rove, adding that he had spoken to Rove about the leak.

Sept. 30, 2003: The Justice Department launches a full criminal investigation into the leaking of Plame's name. President Bush, speaking to reporters in Chicago, says, "If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of..."

Oct. 24, 2003: FBI agents begin interviewing White House administration officials about the leak. Interviewees include Karl Rove and Scott McClellan.

Dec. 30, 2003: Attorney General John Ashcroft recuses himself from the leak investigation and U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald takes over the probe.

Jan-Feb 2004: A federal grand jury questions White House administration officials, including Scott McClellan, Mary Matalin and Adam Levine.

May 21, 2004: Tim Russert, host of NBC's Meet the Press, and Time's Cooper are subpoenaed for the grand jury investigation. Both Time and NBC say that they would fight the subpoenas.

June 18, 2004: White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales testifies before the federal grand jury.

June 24, 2004: Prosecutors question President Bush in the Oval Office. The questioning takes over an hour, and the president is not under oath.

Aug. 9, 2004: Cooper, refusing to reveal his confidential source, is held in contempt of court and ordered to jail by a federal judge in Washington. Judge Thomas F. Hogan also orders Time to pay $1,000 per day until the source is revealed. The decision is stayed pending an appeal.

Aug. 12, 2004: New York Times reporter Judith Miller is subpoenaed by a grand jury.

Aug. 24, 2004: The order to jail Cooper is canceled after he submits to questioning by Justice Department prosecutors.

Oct. 7, 2004: Miller is held in contempt of court for refusing to name confidential sources. Miller has not published any articles about the Plame case. Judge Hogan stays the order pending appeals.

Oct. 13, 2004: Cooper is again held in contempt of court for refusing to identify a confidential source who informed him about Plame's identity.

Oct. 15, 2004: Rove testifies before a federal grand jury for two hours. Fitzgerald assures Rove that he is not a target of the probe.

June 27, 2005: The U.S. Supreme Court declines to review appeals by Cooper and Miller.

June 30, 2005: Time agrees to turn over Cooper's notes and e-mails.

July 3, 2005: The Washington Post reports that Karl Rove spoke with Matthew Cooper in July 2003 when Cooper was reporting on Plame's husband. Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, states, "Karl did nothing wrong."

July 6, 2005: Miller is jailed for refusing to reveal her confidential source. Judge Hogan declares that she was "defying the law." The same day, Cooper agrees to cooperate with the investigation, saying his confidential source granted him permission to comply.

July 10, 2005: Newsweek cites Rove as Cooper's source for the leak.

July 11, 2005: During a contentious White House press briefing, McClellan is asked to reconcile his statements from 2003 that Rove had no involvement in the leak with new revelations that Rove had spoken to reporters about Plame. McClellan refuses to discuss the matter, citing the ongoing investigation.

July 12, 2005: The White House says President Bush continues to have confidence in Rove.

July 15, 2005: Rove attorney Robert Luskin tells the Associated Press that Rove made three appearances before the grand jury and answered all questions. Luskin also says he has been assured that his client is not a target of the investigation.

July 17, 2005: In Time magazine, Matt Cooper discusses his testimony before the grand jury investigating the leak. He says Rove never referred to Valerie Plame by name, but that Cooper did learn from that conversation with Rove that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and was involved in WMD issues.

July 18, 2005: President Bush, during a White House appearance with India's Prime Minister Singh is asked if, regardless of whether a crime was committed, he still intends to fire anyone found to be involved in the CIA leak case. The president replies that if someone "committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

Aug. 4, 2005: Novak swears in disgust and walks off the set of CNN's program Inside Politics in response to a comment from Democratic strategist James Carville. Carville tells viewers that he thinks Novak is trying to "show these right-wingers that he's got a backbone." The two were discussing U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL), and Carville's comment was unrelated to the CIA leak investigation. But CNN correspondent Ed Henry said he was about to ask Novak about the CIA leak case when the columnist walked off the set.

Aug. 5, 2005: Novak apologizes for walking off the set of Inside Politics but says it had "absolutely nothing" to do with the CIA leak probe. "I was sorry he said that," Novak said of CNN's Ed Henry.

Sept. 29, 2005: Reporter Judith Miller is released from the Alexandria Detention Center in Virginia. Editors at The New York Times say she reached a deal with U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald to testify. The editors say her source in the leak probe offered assurances that he wanted her to testify and was not coerced into releasing her from a promise of confidentiality.

Sept. 30, 2005: The Times identifies Miller's source as I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff. In Washington, Miller testifies before the grand jury. Afterwards, she declines to confirm that Libby was her source, but says the source sent her a letter and called her in prison. "I concluded from this that my source genuinely wanted me to testify," she says.

Oct. 14, 2005: Presidential adviser Karl Rove makes his fourth appearance before the federal grand jury. Rove's appearance was voluntary, but at the request of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald. In a statement afterwards, Rove's lawyer Robert Luskin said Fitzgerald "has not advised Mr. Rove that he is a target of the investigation and affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges. The special counsel has indicated that he does not anticipate the need for Mr. Rove's further cooperation."

Oct. 16, 2005: In a New York Times article recounting her testimony before the grand jury, Judith Miller writes that notes of her conversations with Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, suggested that the two had discussed Plame's job at the CIA but not her name. Miller wrote Plame's name in the same notebook she used when taking notes during her interviews with Libby, but said she cannot remember who gave her the CIA operative's name.

Oct. 25, 2005: Citing lawyers connected to the case, The New York Times reports that Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about Plame from a conversation with Cheney in the weeks before her identity became public in 2003. Libby's notes from that conversation, which took place June 12, 2003, contradict Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he first learned about Plame from journalists, lawyers told the paper. The previously undisclosed notes are now in the possession of prosecutors.

Oct. 28, 2005: Vice presidential adviser I. Lewis Libby is indicted on obstruction of justice, false statement and perjury charges in the CIA leak case. Libby resigns as Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.

Nov. 3, 2005: Libby pleads not guilty in federal court to the five-count indictment against him.

Nov. 15, 2005: Washington Post editor Bob Woodward testifies that a "senior administration official" told him about Valerie Plame and her job at the CIA nearly a month before she was first named in Robert Novak's column. The revelation would make the source, who Woodward refused to identify, the first official to reveal Plame's identity to a reporter.

April 26, 2006: Presidential adviser Karl Rove testifies for a fifth time before a grand jury. Fitzgerald says he is investigating whether Rove lied or obstructed justice in failing to initially disclose his conversation with Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper. Rove blamed a faulty memory.

June 13, 2006: A lawyer for Rove says his client has been informed by prosecutors he won't be charged with any crimes in the investigation, ending months of speculation.

January 6, 2007: Libby's criminal trial begins.

February 21, 2007: Jury receives case for deliberation.

March 6, 2007: Jury returns guilty verdict on four of five counts, convicting Libby of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI.

June 5, 2007: Libby is sentenced to 30 months in prison and fined $250,000.

June 14, 2007: U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton denies request to delay Libby's sentence.

July 2, 2007: A federal appeals court rejects Libby's request to remain free on bail while pursuing appeals — meaning Libby would likely have to report to prison soon. Hours later, President Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence, leaving the $250,000 fine and two years probation intact. "I respect the jury's verdict," Bush says in a statement. "But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive."

Sources: NPR research, news reports, Facts on File

Re: THE BIG LIE ABOUT VALERIE PLAME, by Larry Johnson

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2015 10:04 am
by admin
A White House Smear
By David Corn
JULY 16, 2003

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Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security–and break the law–in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?

It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted.

In a recent column on Nigergate, Novak examined the role of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV in the affair. Two weeks ago, Wilson went public, writing in The New York Times and telling The Washington Post about the trip he took to Niger in February 2002–at the request of the CIA–to check out allegations that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium for a nuclear weapons program from Niger. Wilson was a good pick for the job. He had been a State Department officer there in the mid-1970s. He was ambassador to Gabon in the early 1990s. And in 1997 and 1998, he was the senior director for Africa at the National Security Council and in that capacity spent a lot of time dealing with the Niger government. Wilson was also the last acting US ambassador in Iraq before the Gulf War, a military action he supported. In that post, he helped evacuate thousands of foreigners from Kuwait, worked to get over 120 American hostages out Iraq, and sheltered about 800 Americans in the embassy compound. At the time, Novak’s then-partner, Rowland Evans, wrote that Wilson displayed “the stuff of heroism.” And President George H. W. Bush commended Wilson: “Your courageous leadership during this period of great danger for American interests and American citizens has my admiration and respect. I salute, too, your skillful conduct of our tense dealings with the government of Iraq….The courage and tenacity you have exhibited throughout this ordeal prove that you are the right person for the job.”

The current Bush administration has not been so appreciative of Wilson’s more recent efforts. In Niger, he met with past and present government officials and persons involved in the uranium business and concluded that it was “highly doubtful” that Hussein had been able to purchase uranium from that nation. On June 12, The Washington Post revealed that an unnamed ambassador had traveled to Niger and had reported back that the Niger caper probably never happened. This article revved up the controversy over Bush’s claim–which he made in the state of the union speech–that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa for a nuclear weapons program.

Critics were charging that this allegation had been part of a Bush effort to mislead the country to war, and the administration was maintaining that at the time of the speech the White House had no reason to suspect this particular sentence was based on faulty intelligence. “Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency,” national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said days before the Post article ran. “But no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions.” Wilson’s mission to Niger provided more reason to wonder if the administration’s denials were on the level. And once Wilson went public, he prompted a new round of inconvenient and troubling questions for the White House. (Wilson, who opposed the latest war in Iraq, had not revealed his trip to Niger during the prewar months, when he was a key participant in the media debate over whether the country should go to war.)

Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad. the payback came. Novak’s July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson’s mission and contained the following sentences: “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate” the allegation.

Wilson caused problems for the White House, and his wife was outed as an undercover CIA officer. Wilson says, “I will not answer questions about my wife. This is not about me and less so about my wife. It has always been about the facts underpinning the President’s statement in the state of the union speech.”

So he will neither confirm nor deny that his wife–who is the mother of three-year-old twins–works for the CIA. But let’s assume she does. That would seem to mean that the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it.

The sources for Novak’s assertion about Wilson’s wife appear to be “two senior administration officials.” If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what’s known as “nonofficial cover” and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson’s wife is such a person–and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her–her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, “Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames.” If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer. That would not likely do her much good.

This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in prison. Journalists are protected from prosecution, unless they engage in a “pattern of activities” to name agents in order to impair US intelligence activities. So Novak need not worry.

Novak tells me that he was indeed tipped off by government officials about Wilson’s wife and had no reluctance about naming her. “I figured if they gave it to me,” he says. “They’d give it to others….I’m a reporter. Somebody gives me information and it’s accurate. I generally use it.” And Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials.

So where’s the investigation? Remember Filegate–and the Republican charge that the Clinton White House was using privileged information against its political foes? In this instance, it appears possible–perhaps likely–that Bush administration officials gathered material on Wilson and his family and then revealed classified information to lash out at him, and in doing so compromised national security.

Was Wilson’s wife involved in sending him off to Niger? Wilson won’t talk about her. But in response to this query, he says, “I was invited out to meet with a group of people at the CIA who were interested in this subject. None I knew more than casually. They asked me about my understanding of the uranium business and my familiarity with the people in the Niger government at the time. And they asked, ‘what would you do?’ We gamed it out–what I would be looking for. Nothing was concluded at that time. I told them if they wanted me to go to Niger I would clear my schedule. Then they got back to me and said, ‘yes, we want you to go.'”

Is it relevant that Wilson’s wife might have suggested him for the unpaid gig. Not really. And Wilson notes, with a laugh, that at that point their twins were two years old, and it would not have been much in his wife’s interest to encourage him to head off to Africa. What matters is that Wilson returned with the right answer and dutifully reported his conclusions. (In March 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that the documents upon which the Niger allegation was based were amateurish forgeries.) His wife’s role–if she had one–has nothing but anecdotal value. And Novak’s sources could have mentioned it without providing her name. Instead, they were quite generous.

“Stories like this,” Wilson says, “are not intended to intimidate me, since I’ve already told my story. But it’s pretty clear it is intended to intimidate others who might come forward. You need only look at the stories of intelligence analysts who say they have been pressured. They may have kids in college, they may be vulnerable to these types of smears.”

Will there be any inquiry? Journalists who write about national security matters (as I often do) tend not to big fans of pursuing government officials who leak classified information. But since Bush administration officials are so devoted to protecting government secrets–such as the identity of the energy lobbyists with whom the vice president meets–one might (theoretically) expect them to be appalled by the prospect that classified information was disclosed and national security harmed for the purposes of mounting a political hit job. Yet two days after the Novak column’s appearance, there has not been any public comment from the White House or any other public reverberation.

The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation’s counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security.

DAVID CORN David Corn is Mother Jones' Washington bureau chief. Until 2007, he was Washington editor of The Nation. He has written for the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Newsday, Harper's, The New Republic, Mother Jones, Washington Monthly, LA Weekly, the Village Voice, Slate, Salon, TomPaine.com, Alternet, and many other publications. He is the co-author (with Michael Isikoff) of Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (Crown, 2006). His book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown, 2003) was a New York Times bestseller. The Los Angeles Times said, "David Corn's The Lies of George W. Bush is as hard-hitting an attack as has been leveled against the current president. The Washington Post called it "a fierce polemic...a serious case....[that] ought to be in voters' minds when they cast their ballots. A painstaking indictment." His first novel, Deep Background, a political thriller, was published by St. Martin's Press in 1999. The Washington Post said it is "brimming with gusto....As clean and steely as an icy Pinot Grigio....[An] exceptional thriller." The Los Angeles Times called it "a slaughterhouse scorcher of a book you don't want to put down" and named it one of the best novels of the year. The New York Times said, "You can either read now or wait to see the movie....Crowded with fictional twists and revelations." The Chicago Tribune noted, "This dark, impressive political thriller...is a top-notch piece of fiction, thoughtful and compelling." PBS anchor Jim Lehrer observed that Deep Background is "a Washington novel with everything. It's a page-turning thriller from first word to last...that brings some of the worst parts of Washington vividly alive." Corn was a contributor to Unusual Suspects, an anthology of mystery and crime fiction (Vintage/Black Lizard, 1996). His short story "My Murder" was nominated for a 1997 Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America. The story was republished in The Year's 25 Finest Crime and Mystery Stories (Carroll & Graf, 1997). He is the author of the biography Blond Ghost: Ted Shackley and the CIA's Crusades (Simon & Schuster, 1994). The Washington Monthly called Blond Ghost "an amazing compendium of CIA fact and lore." The Washington Post noted that this biography "deserves a space on that small shelf of worthwhile books about the agency." The New York Times termed it "a scorchingly critical account of an enigmatic figure who for two decades ran some of the agency's most important, and most controversial, covert operations." Corn has long been a commentator on television and radio. He is a regular panelist on the weekly television show, Eye On Washington. He has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, Crossfire, The Capital Gang, Fox News Sunday, Washington Week in Review, The McLaughlin Group, Hardball, C-SPAN's Washington Journal, and many other shows. He is a regular on NPR's The Diane Rehm Show and To The Point and has contributed commentary to NPR, BBC Radio, and CBC Radio. He has been a guest on scores of call-in radio programs. Corn is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University.

Re: THE BIG LIE ABOUT VALERIE PLAME, by Larry Johnson

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2015 10:06 am
by admin
Bush's Enemy Within
Robert Novak
Jul 10, 2003

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WASHINGTON -- Much of Washington was stunned last month when President Bush's chief counterterrorism expert resigned with a blast of criticism and then joined Democratic Sen. John Kerry's campaign for president. The shock among a knowledgeable few was even greater when an intimate adviser of Janet Reno as the Clinton administration's attorney general was named to a similar high-ranking terrorism post.

Defector Rand Beers's post as senior director for Combating Terrorism remains vacant. However, on May 27, Frances Fragos Townsend was named deputy national security adviser for Combating Terrorism. The announcement obscured the fact that she had been a Democratic political appointment who was partially blamed by erstwhile Justice colleagues for failure to investigate alleged Sept. 11 terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui. A White House official told me Townsend considers herself a career government employee and a "lifelong Republican," with no responsibility for the Moussaoui fiasco.

Careful political screening by the Bush operation for routine appointments seems to have broken down in filling highly sensitive terrorism posts. The Democratic establishment, probing for soft spots in the president's armor, is claiming a misdirected war against terrorism. Bush has already suffered from one enemy within, and now risks another.

Resignation of a senior national security aide on policy grounds followed by defection to the political opposition is unprecedented. The selection last August of Beers to replace resigned veteran terrorism expert Dick Clarke raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill. Career foreign service officer Beers repeatedly tangled with House Republicans over how to fight narcoterrorists in Colombia.

Beers, a registered Democrat, vigorously promoted President Clinton's cautious line on Colombian policy as his assistant secretary of state for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. He owed Clinton for saving his career in 1997, when White House aides wanted to sack him as a National Security Council staffer for failing to give the president FBI reports about illegal campaign contributions from China. Beers holding a highly sensitive post in a Republican administration was an accident bound to happen.

As Beers joined the Kerry campaign by attacking Bush, extreme care would have been expected in making further appointments. That is why the Townsend selection was so stunning to officials who knew her at the Justice Department.

Townsend began her government career in 1985 as a local prosecutor in Brooklyn, working under District Attorney Elizabeth Holtzman, a prominent liberal Democratic activist. Three years later, Townsend moved to the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan -- notoriously liberal-laden amid a Republican administration. Townsend's boss and patron there was Jo Ann Harris, whose orientation was liberal Democratic.

When Attorney General Reno in 1993 summoned Harris to Washington as assistant attorney general running the Criminal Division, Harris immediately brought Townsend along as her aide. Townsend was promoted to oversee international law enforcement and then became counsel to the attorney general for terrorism and head of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review (OIPR) -- a political Reno appointment for a supposed career slot.

The line between career and political appointments at Justice has been blurred, but Townsend was viewed by old timers at Justice as part of the Reno inner circle. Her critics partially blame Townsend for changes in operation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) that they claim inhibited sharing of information between intelligence and prosecution.

That shortcoming was corrected by Attorney General John Ashcroft, but not before the failure to investigate Moussaoui prior to Sept. 11. The White House official told me that Townsend had tried to correct FISA shortcomings, but that is not the version by former Justice colleagues. Ashcroft sent Townsend to the Coast Guard as assistant commandant for Intelligence, where she remained until her appointment as the president's adviser on counterterrorism.

Townsend did not return my telephone calls. The White House official representing her said National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice obtained endorsements of her by Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller and CIA Director George Tenet.

"I am absolutely astonished," a former Justice Department told me when he was informed of her claims to being a lifelong Republican. With Democrats in full cry against Bush's conduct of the war against terrorism, the president can only hope Fran Townsend is not another Randy Beers.

Re: THE BIG LIE ABOUT VALERIE PLAME, by Larry Johnson

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2015 10:09 am
by admin
Plame Gate: Did Robert Novak willfully disregard warnings that his column would endanger Valerie Plame? Our sources say "yes."
By Murray S. Waas
2.12.04

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Two government officials have told the FBI that conservative columnist Robert Novak was asked specifically not to publish the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame in his now-famous July 14 newspaper column. The two officials told investigators they warned Novak that by naming Plame he might potentially jeopardize her ability to engage in covert work, stymie ongoing intelligence operations, and jeopardize sensitive overseas sources.

These new accounts, provided by a current and former administration official close to the situation, directly contradict public statements made by Novak. He has downplayed his own knowledge about the potential harm to Plame and ongoing intelligence operations by making that disclosure. He has also claimed in various public statements that intelligence officials falsely led him to believe that Plame was only an analyst, and the only potential consequences of her exposure as a CIA officer would be that she might be inconvenienced in her foreign travels.

The two administration officials questioned by the FBI characterized Novak's statements as untrue and misleading, according to a government official and an attorney official familiar with the FBI interviews.

One of the sources also asserted that the credibility of the administration officials who spoke to the FBI is enhanced by the fact that the officials made their statement to the federal law enforcement authorities. If the officials were found to be lying to the FBI, they could be potentially prosecuted for making false statements to federal investigators the sources pointed out.

Novak declined to be interviewed for this article.

The two officials say Novak was told, as one source put it, that Plame's work for the CIA "went much further than her being an analyst," and that publishing her name would be "hurtful" and could stymie ongoing intelligence operations and jeopardize her overseas sources.

"When [Novak] says that he was not told that he was 'endangering' someone, that statement might be technically true," this source says. "Nobody directly told him that she was going to be physically hurt. But that was implicit in that he was told what she did for a living."

"At best, he is parsing words," said the other official. "At worst, he is lying to his readers and the public. Journalists should not lie, I would think." These new accounts, provided by two sources familiar to the investigation, contradict Novak's attempts to downplay his own knowledge about the potential harm to Plame.

Moreover, one of the government officials who has told federal investigators that Novak's account is false has also turned over to investigators contemporaneous notes he made of at least one conversation with Novak. Those notes, according to sources, appear to corroborate the official's version of events.

That the FBI interviewed the officials who warned Novak not to publish Plame's name could not be independently corroborated through federal law-enforcement authorities. That's not surprising — the investigation has been shrouded in secrecy.

Over the past several months, the FBI has interviewed more than 30 Bush administration officials and has reviewed phone logs, personal calendars, and e-mail records, according to government sources. But Attorney General John Ashcroft tightly controlled information gathered during the probe, requiring FBI agents to sign unprecedented nondisclosure agreements that say they could face immediate termination if they speak to the press. As a result, scant information about the leak investigation has appeared in the media, making it all but disappear as a political issue for the Bush administration until the disclosure last week that a federal grand jury had been convened to hear evidence in the matter.

On December 30, Ashcroft recused himself from the case so a special counsel, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, could take over. And on January 21, a federal grand jury in Washington began hearing evidence, re-interviewing witnesses, and notifying others that they will be called. At least four Bush administration officials have testified so far before the grand jury.

Deputy Attorney General James Comey said the secrecy surrounding the investigation would continue -- partly because "we don't want to smear somebody who might be innocent and might not be charged."

Shortly after his column appeared, Novak seemed to suggest that the information about Plame was planted as part of a White House campaign. In an interview with Newsday reporters Timothy M. Phelps and Knut Royce, he said, "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant. They gave me the name and I used it."

Then Novak started to backtrack, giving the impression that the leak was more the result of his own initiative than from a White House source. He also claimed the Newsday reporters quoted him out of context, an accusation both reporters deny. (Full disclosure: Royce is my longtime friend.)

Novak made another statement about his column during a September 29 broadcast of CNN's Crossfire. "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this," he said. "In July, I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador [Joseph] Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing.

"When I called the CIA in July, they confirmed Mrs. Wilson's involvement in a mission for her husband on a secondary basis ... they asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else.

"According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives. So what is the fuss about, pure Bush-bashing?"

In his July 14 column, Novak claimed that Plame had played a role in the selection of her husband for a mission to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was buying enriched uranium. Yet White House and CIA officials have since said that Wilson, a former national-security senior director for African affairs, was chosen only because of his expertise, and that his wife had no role in his selection.

A government official also questions Novak's claims that the columnist "called the CIA" and "they confirmed Mrs. Wilson's involvement in her husband's mission." Rather, this person says, the CIA at first declined to comment. Still later, the same official contends that Novak was categorically told that Plame had played no role in the selection of her husband for the Niger mission.

"He was told it just wasn't true -- period," said the government official. "But he just went with the story anyway. He just didn't seemed to care very much whether the information was true or not."

Apparently the leak to Novak was made as senior Bush administration officials were reportedly attempting to discredit Wilson, who had been saying that the administration had relied on faulty intelligence information to bolster its case to go to war with Iraq.(President Bush had cited the Niger evidence in his 2003 State of the Union address.)

Congressional Democrats and some members of the Bush administration say the purpose of the leak was not only to discredit Wilson but also to intimidate other government officials from coming forward to question the administration's rationale for war.

Steve Huntley, the editorial-page editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, which is the flagship newspaper for Novak's syndicated column, says he "implicitly and completely trusts Bob Novak's reporting."

Fred Hiatt, the editorial-page editor of The Washington Post, which also ran Novak's column, declined to comment. Previously, though, he told his newspaper's ombudsman, Michael Getler, "In retrospect, I wish I had asked more questions, and I wish Bob had informed us and his readers that he had considered, and rejected, a CIA request to withhold her name."

(After Novak's column appeared, an anonymous administration official said the CIA warned Novak of "security concerns" that would arise if he were to publish Plame's name. Novak has disputed that account as well.)

In an online column, "Take Three Steps to Avoid Future Novaks," Aly Colón of the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit, educational organization for journalists, writes, "There's an old adage that claims journalists are only as good as the sources that feed them. Here's a new one: Journalists are only as credible as the ethics that guide them. By disclosing the identity of a CIA operative, Novak provoked a Justice Department investigation of his sources and raised serious questions about his ethical conduct."

What if Novak indeed purposely mislead readers of his column-- as the two administration officials have asserted to the FBI?

In an interview, Colón, while saying he could not speak to the specifics of this particular story said: "Any time a journalist purposely deceives his readers, he undermines the newsperson's or [his or her own] news organization's credibility" and "threatens the trust between the reader and reporter."

Murray Waas is a Washington journalist (read more at http://www.waasinfo.com ). Research assistance for this article was provided by Thomas Lang.
Copyright © 2004 by The American Prospect, Inc. Preferred Citation: Murray S. Waas, "Plame Gate Did Robert Novak willfully disregard warnings that his column would endanger Valerie Plame? Our sources say "yes."," The American Prospect Online, February 12, 2004

Re: THE BIG LIE ABOUT VALERIE PLAME, by Larry Johnson

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2015 10:11 am
by admin
Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on C.I.A. Officer
By DAVID JOHNSTON and RICHARD W. STEVENSON
JULY 15, 2005

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Correction Appended

WASHINGTON, July 14 - Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, spoke with the columnist Robert D. Novak as he was preparing an article in July 2003 that identified a C.I.A. officer who was undercover, someone who has been officially briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Rove has told investigators that he learned from the columnist the name of the C.I.A. officer, who was referred to by her maiden name, Valerie Plame, and the circumstances in which her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Africa to investigate possible uranium sales to Iraq, the person said.

After hearing Mr. Novak's account, the person who has been briefed on the matter said, Mr. Rove told the columnist: "I heard that, too."

The previously undisclosed telephone conversation, which took place on July 8, 2003, was initiated by Mr. Novak, the person who has been briefed on the matter said.

Six days later, Mr. Novak's syndicated column reported that two senior administration officials had told him that Mr. Wilson's "wife had suggested sending him" to Africa. That column was the first instance in which Ms. Wilson was publicly identified as a C.I.A. operative.

The column provoked angry demands for an investigation into who disclosed Ms. Wilson's name to Mr. Novak. The Justice Department appointed Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a top federal prosecutor in Chicago, to lead the inquiry. Mr. Rove said in an interview with CNN last year that he did not know the C.I.A. officer's name and did not leak it.

The person who provided the information about Mr. Rove's conversation with Mr. Novak declined to be identified, citing requests by Mr. Fitzgerald that no one discuss the case. The person discussed the matter in the belief that Mr. Rove was truthful in saying that he had not disclosed Ms. Wilson's identity.

On Oct. 1, 2003, Mr. Novak wrote another column in which he described calling two officials who were his sources for the earlier column. The first source, whose identity has not been revealed, provided the outlines of the story and was described by Mr. Novak as "no partisan gunslinger." Mr. Novak wrote that when he called a second official for confirmation, the source said, "Oh, you know about it."

That second source was Mr. Rove, the person briefed on the matter said. Mr. Rove's account to investigators about what he told Mr. Novak was similar in its message although the White House adviser's recollection of the exact words was slightly different. Asked by investigators how he knew enough to leave Mr. Novak with the impression that his information was accurate, Mr. Rove said he had heard parts of the story from other journalists but had not heard Ms. Wilson's name.

Robert D. Luskin, Mr. Rove's lawyer, said Thursday, "Any pertinent information has been provided to the prosecutor." Mr. Luskin has previously said prosecutors have advised Mr. Rove that he is not a target in the case, which means he is not likely to be charged with a crime.

In a brief conversation on Thursday, Mr. Novak declined to discuss the matter. It is unclear if Mr. Novak has testified to the grand jury, and if he has whether his account is consistent with Mr. Rove's.

The conversation between Mr. Novak and Mr. Rove seemed almost certain to intensify the question about whether one of Mr. Bush's closest political advisers played a role in what appeared to be an effort to undermine Mr. Wilson's credibility after he challenged the veracity of a key point in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, saying Saddam Hussein had sought nuclear fuel in Africa.

The conversation with Mr. Novak took place three days before Mr. Rove spoke with Matthew Cooper, a Time magazine reporter, whose e-mail message about their brief talk reignited the issue. In the message, whose contents were reported by Newsweek this week, Mr. Cooper told his bureau chief that Mr. Rove had talked about Ms. Wilson, although not by name.

After saying in 2003 that it was "ridiculous" to suggest that Mr. Rove had any role in the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's name, Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, has refused in recent days to discuss any specifics of the case. But he has suggested that President Bush continues to support Mr. Rove. On Thursday Mr. Rove was at Mr. Bush's side on a trip to Indianapolis.

As the political debate about Mr. Rove grows more heated, Mr. Fitzgerald is in what he has said are the final stages of his investigation into whether anyone at the White House violated a criminal statute that under certain circumstances makes it a crime for a government official to disclose the names of covert operatives like Ms. Wilson.

The law requires that the official knowingly identify an officer serving in a covert position. The person who has been briefed on the matter said Mr. Rove neither knew Ms. Wilson's name nor that she was a covert officer.

Mr. Fitzgerald has questioned a number of high-level administration officials. Mr. Rove has testified three times to the grand jury. I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, has also testified. So has former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The prosecutor also interviewed Mr. Bush, in his White House office, and Mr. Cheney, but they were not under oath.

The disclosure of Mr. Rove's conversation with Mr. Novak raises a question the White House has never addressed: whether Mr. Rove ever discussed that conversation, or his exchange with Mr. Cooper, with the president. Mr. Bush has said several times that he wants all members of the White House staff to cooperate fully with Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation.

In June 2004, at Sea Island, Ga., soon after Mr. Cheney met with investigators in the case, Mr. Bush was asked at a news conference whether "you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found" to have leaked the agent's name.

"Yes," Mr. Bush said. "And that's up to the U.S. attorney to find the facts."

Mr. Novak began his conversation with Mr. Rove by asking about the promotion of Frances Fragos Townsend, who had been a close aide to Janet Reno when she was attorney general, to a senior counterterrorism job at the White House, the person who was briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Novak then turned to the subject of Ms. Wilson, identifying her by name, the person said. In an Op-Ed article for The New York Times on July 6, 2003, Mr. Wilson suggested that he had been sent to Niger because of Mr. Cheney's interest in the matter. But Mr. Novak told Mr. Rove he knew that Mr. Wilson had been sent at the urging of Ms. Wilson, the person who had been briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Rove's allies have said that he did not call reporters with information about the case, rebutting the theory that the White House was actively seeking to intimidate or punish Mr. Wilson by harming his wife's career. They have also emphasized that Mr. Rove appeared not to know anything about Ms. Wilson other than that she worked at the C.I.A. and was married to Mr. Wilson.

This is not the first time Mr. Rove has been linked to a leak reported by Mr. Novak. In 1992, Mr. Rove was fired from the Texas campaign to re-elect the first President Bush because of suspicions that he had leaked information to Mr. Novak about shortfalls in the Texas organization's fund-raising. Both Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove had been the source.

Mr. Novak's July 14, 2003, column was published against a backdrop in which White House officials were clearly agitated by Mr. Wilson's assertion, in his Op-Ed article, that the administration had "twisted" intelligence about the threat from Iraq.

But the White House was also deeply concerned about Mr. Wilson's suggestion that he had gone to Africa to carry out a mission that originated with Mr. Cheney. At the time, Mr. Cheney's earlier statements about Iraq's banned weapons were coming under fire as it became clearer that the United States would find no stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons and that Mr. Hussein's nuclear program was not far advanced.

Mr. Novak wrote that the decision to send Mr. Wilson "was made at a routinely low level" and was based on what later turned out to be fake documents that had come to the United States through Italy.

Many aspects of Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation remain shrouded in secrecy. It is unclear who Mr. Novak's other source might be or how that source learned of Ms. Wilson's role as a C.I.A. official. By itself, the disclosure that Mr. Rove had spoken to a second journalist about Ms. Wilson may not necessarily have a bearing on his exposure to any criminal charge in the case.

But it seems certain to add substantially to the political maelstrom that has engulfed the White House this week after the reports that Mr. Rove had discussed the matter with Mr. Cooper, the Time reporter.

Mr. Cooper's e-mail message to his editors, in which he described his discussion with Mr. Rove, was among documents that were turned over by Time executives recently to comply with a subpoena from Mr. Fitzgerald. A reporter for The New York Times, Judith Miller, who never wrote about the Wilson case, refused to cooperate with the investigation and was jailed last week for contempt of court. In addition to focusing new attention on Mr. Rove and whether he can survive the political fallout, it is sure to create new partisan pressure on Mr. Bush. Already, Democrats have been pressing the president either to live up to his promises to rid his administration of anyone found to have leaked the name of a covert operative or to explain why he does not believe Mr. Rove's actions subject him to dismissal.

The Rove-Novak exchange also leaves Mr. McClellan, the White House spokesman, in an increasingly awkward situation. Two years ago he repeatedly assured reporters that neither Mr. Rove nor several other administration officials were responsible for the leak.

The case has also threatened to become a distraction as Mr. Bush struggles to keep his second-term agenda on track and as he prepares for one of the most pivotal battles of his presidency, over the confirmation of a Supreme Court justice.

As Democrats have been demanding that Mr. Rove resign or provide a public explanation, the political machine that Mr. Rove built to bolster Mr. Bush and advance his agenda has cranked up to defend its creator. The Republican National Committee has mounted an aggressive campaign to cast Mr. Rove as blameless and to paint the matter as a partisan dispute driven not by legality, ethics or national security concerns, but by a penchant among Democrats to resort to harsh personal attacks.

But Mr. Bush said Wednesday that he would not prejudge Mr. Rove's role, and Mr. Rove was seated conspicuously just behind the president at a cabinet meeting, an image of business as usual. On Thursday, on the trip with Mr. Bush to Indiana, Mr. Rove grinned his way through a brief encounter with reporters after getting off Air Force One.

Mr. Bush's White House has been characterized by loyalty and long tenures, but no one has been at Mr. Bush's side in his journey through politics longer than Mr. Rove, who has been his strategist, enforcer, policy guru, ambassador to social and religious conservatives and friend since they met in Washington in the early 1970's. People who know Mr. Bush said it was unlikely, if not unthinkable, that he would seek Mr. Rove's departure barring a criminal indictment.

Correction: July 16, 2005, Saturday Because of an editing error, a chart on Friday describing events that led to a criminal investigation of the leak of Valerie Wilson's work under cover for the C.I.A. misstated her whereabouts at the time her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Niger in February 2002. She was at the agency's headquarters in Virginia, not in Niger.

Correction: July 16, 2005, Saturday Because of an editing error, a chart on Friday describing events that led to a criminal investigation of the leak of Valerie Wilson's work under cover for the C.I.A. misstated her whereabouts at the time her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, traveled to Niger in February 2002. She was at the agency's headquarters in Virginia, not in Niger.

Correction: July 19, 2005, Tuesday A front-page subheading on Friday with an article about the disputed involvement of Karl Rove, the White House senior adviser, in leaking the name of a C.I.A. officer omitted attribution for an account of Mr. Rove's words to the columnist Robert D. Novak. The conversation was described by someone who had been officially briefed on the matter. According to the account, Mr. Rove said "I heard that, too" after hearing about the officer from the columnist. The subheading should not have attributed the account of that comment directly to Mr. Rove.

David E. Sanger contributed reporting for this article.

Re: THE BIG LIE ABOUT VALERIE PLAME, by Larry Johnson

PostPosted: Tue Dec 29, 2015 10:15 am
by admin
AP Falsely Reported Wilson "Acknowledged His Wife Was No Longer In An Undercover Job" When Her Identity Was First Publicly Leaked
by ANDREW SEIFTER
Media Matters
July 15, 2005

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In a July 15 article reporting new details in the ongoing criminal investigation into the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity, the Associated Press distorted a remark by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV to falsely report that Wilson "acknowledged his wife [Plame] was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak's column first identified her." In fact, Wilson merely emphasized that his wife's cover was blown at the moment when columnist Robert D. Novak revealed her identity in a July 2003 column.

From the AP report:

In an interview on CNN Thursday before the latest revelation, Wilson kept up his criticism of the White House, saying [White House senior adviser Karl] Rove's conduct was an "outrageous abuse of power ... certainly worthy of frog-marching out of the White House."

But at the same time, Wilson acknowledged his wife was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak's column first identified her. "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," he said.

Federal law prohobits goverment [sic] officials from divulging the identity of an undercover intelligence officer. But in order to bring charges, prosecutors must prove the official knew the officer was covert and nonetheless outed his or her identity.


But the context of the interview on the July 14 edition of CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports demonstrates that the AP misconstrued and falsely reported Wilson's remarks. In stating that "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," Wilson was simply noting that Plame's identity was no longer secret after Novak publicly revealed it. In fact, when host Wolf Blitzer specifically asked Wilson if his wife "hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before" Novak's column was published, Wilson responded that he could not comment on her past status as an undercover officer, but noted that "the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed." The implication of Wilson's statement is clear. Had Plame not been a clandestine officer at the time Novak published her identity, the CIA would not have believed a possible crime had been committed.

From the July 14 edition of CNN's Wolf Blitzer Reports:

BLITZER: But the other argument that's been made against you is that you've sought to capitalize on this extravaganza, having that photo shoot with your wife [in the January 2004 Vanity Fair magazine], who was a clandestine officer of the CIA, and that you've tried to enrich yourself writing this book and all of that.

What do you make of those accusations, which are serious accusations, as you know, that have been leveled against you?

WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.

BLITZER: But she hadn't been a clandestine officer for some time before that?

WILSON: That's not anything that I can talk about. And, indeed, I'll go back to what I said earlier, the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and that's why they referred it to the Justice Department.

She was not a clandestine officer at the time that that article in Vanity Fair appeared.


And as Media Matters for America has documented, multiple press outlets reported that Plame was an undercover CIA operative at the time Novak wrote his column.

Note: After this item was written, but before it was posted, the AP corrected its error. New versions of the article read:

In an interview on CNN earlier Thursday before the latest revelation, Wilson kept up his criticism of the White House, saying Rove's conduct was an "outrageous abuse of power ... certainly worthy of frog-marching out of the White House."

Wilson also said "my wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity."

In an interview Friday, Wilson said his comment was meant to reflect that his wife lost her ability to be a covert agent because of the leak, not that she had stopped working for the CIA beforehand.


Though the AP ran a correction, other news outlets had already repeated its mistake. CNN's Ed Henry told viewers that "Wilson himself suggested that she was not undercover." The Drudge Report link to the AP story suggested the same thing, and numerous other news outlets picked up the AP article.

Re: THE BIG LIE ABOUT VALERIE PLAME, by Larry Johnson

PostPosted: Thu Aug 09, 2018 6:07 am
by admin
CIA’s secret agents hide under a variety of covers
by Greg Miller
Originally published July 25, 2005 at 12:00 am Updated July 24, 2005 at 10:20 pm

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WASHINGTON — Several months after her identity as a CIA operative was exposed in a newspaper column, Valerie Plame had dinner with five of her classmates from the agency’s training academy.

Four had already left the CIA, and they spent the evening catching up on what they had done during their clandestine careers, as well as the jobs and moves that followed. But even though Plame’s “cover” had been cracked wide open, her dinner companions didn’t pry for details. Even in that tight circle, no one wanted to spill any more secrets.

“Cover is a mosaic, it’s a puzzle,” said James Marcinkowski, a former CIA case officer who attended the dinner. “Every piece is important [to protect] because you don’t know which pieces the bad guys are missing.”

The Plame case has brought intense scrutiny on the White House amid disclosures that President Bush’s chief political adviser, Karl Rove, is a central figure in the controversy surrounding the disclosure of Plame’s identity to the media.

But it also has called attention to the precious, concealing commodity that the intelligence community calls cover. The term refers to the amalgam of lies and props, from false names to phony front companies, that disguise a spy’s true identity and purpose.

Although often cast in binary terms — an operative is either under cover or not — there are distinct categories of cover that CIA agents use, and an almost endless list of components. Some cover is tissue-thin and disposable. Other arrangements are so layered and deep that they anticipate hostile probing of every facet of a person’s life.


Plame’s cover, in which she posed as a private energy consultant while actually working for a CIA department tracking weapons proliferation, was somewhere in the middle.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said it’s unlikely that Plame is in any danger as a result of being identified. And an internal review at the CIA concluded that her exposure caused minimal damage, mainly because she had been working at headquarters for years, former officials familiar with the review said.

Still, her clandestine career is over, and the outrage among many current and former case officers lingers because cover is something they go to such great lengths to protect.

“It doesn’t matter whether he used her name,” Marcinkowski said of the recent disclosures surrounding Rove. “It doesn’t matter what her status was. He gave up a piece of the puzzle, and he had no right to do it.”

Stripped of cover

As many as one-third of the CIA’s approximately 20,000 employees are under cover or have worked in that capacity at some point in their careers, according to former CIA officials. The agency declined to comment for this article.

The vast majority of the agency’s undercover officers work in the clandestine service, the branch that operates stations around the world, recruiting spies, tracking terrorists and carrying out covert missions designed to influence events or even topple governments.

Plame’s identity was revealed in print nearly two years ago by Robert Novak, a syndicated columnist and conservative commentator. But cover can be compromised in a number of ways.

The most damaging breaches have often been committed by insiders, such as former CIA officer Aldrich Ames, who was convicted in the mid-1990s of spying for the Soviet Union and revealing dozens of undercover operations and agents’ identities to his Russian handlers. In fact, Plame was among those recalled from their overseas assignments at that time out of concern — never confirmed, former CIA officials said — that she was among those Ames had exposed.

More recently, a host of CIA aliases and cover arrangements were exposed in embarrassing fashion by an Italian magistrate.

The judge was seeking to prosecute agency operatives for their alleged role in kidnapping a radical Islamic cleric in Milan in 2003 and transferring him to Egypt. Court records released in the case list the names, phone numbers and other details drawn from travel documents used by 19 suspected CIA operatives accused of taking part in the operation.

Most of the names seem to be aliases, but the documents appear to contain the real identities of a senior CIA officer based in Milan, and two others in the United States.

The documents suggest that three of the operatives represented themselves as employees of a company called Coachmen Enterprises in Washington, D.C. A search of public directories and business records turned up no listing for such a firm.

Another operative, who used the name Eliana Castaldo, is linked in the documents to a telephone number in Pennsylvania. Several calls by a reporter were answered by different female voices offering inconsistent answers to basic questions. One refused to identify the business, a second said she was with an answering service, while a third said the number was that of “Washburn and Company.” In each case, the speaker said there was no Eliana Castaldo at that number.

Most dangerous category

CIA officials describe such flimsy backstopping as “notional cover,” a thin guise for operations that don’t need to withstand intense or long-term scrutiny.

The vast majority of the agency’s overseas officers are under what is known as “official cover,” which means they are posing as employees of another government agency. The State Department allows hundreds of its positions in embassies around the world to be occupied by CIA officers representing themselves as diplomats.

A rarer and more dangerous job category is “nonofficial cover” — or “NOC” (pronounced knock) — in which CIA officers pose as employees of international corporations, as scientists or as members of other professions. Such covers tend to provide a plausible reason to work long periods overseas and come in contact with foreign nationals the agency wants to recruit.

Plame worked under official cover early in her career but moved to nonofficial, commercial cover during the 1990s, maintaining that status even after she returned from overseas to work at CIA headquarters.

In recent years, she has worked in the counter-proliferation division of the agency’s clandestine service. Despite her continued use of commercial cover until Novak’s column, some former CIA officials argue she was not a NOC in the purest sense, because operatives in that supersecret program rarely go near agency facilities, let alone take jobs at headquarters.

NOCs are known for taking extreme risks as part of their work. If caught by a foreign intelligence service, they have no diplomatic immunity to protect them from prosecution under their host country’s laws.

One former NOC who left the agency several years ago said he spent more than a decade overseas collecting intelligence on high-priority targets. All the while he was posing as a midlevel official with well-known multinational companies.

The former officer said he had worked for several years as a business consultant before joining the agency, making him a perfect candidate for the NOC program. To throw his training classmates off the scent, he had to tell them he was quitting the agency in frustration.

Senior executives at his cover employers were aware of his real identity, but other company employees were not. During the day, he performed the ordinary duties of a person occupying his cover position, and once even helped his employer land a $2 million contract. But he said he spent three or four nights each week holding clandestine meetings with sources cultivated during the day.

The costs of cover

The total number of NOCs is relatively small — thought to be in the dozens — and some NOCs can spend decades in their assignments.

The process of creating and maintaining their cover is both elaborate and costly. NOCs who hide behind front companies rely on the CIA’s cover staff to establish false tax records, payroll checks, incorporation papers, phone lines and sometimes even the hiring of other employees.

Often, even close relatives have to be shielded from the truth. The former NOC said it was particularly traumatic to inform his son, when the boy was in his midteens, that his father had been misleading him for years about his true line of work.

“He was pretty stunned,” the former NOC said. “He was also disappointed that no, I didn’t carry a gun, didn’t get to meet pretty enemy spies and that my cellphone was just a cellphone.”

Other former CIA officers described similarly difficult conversations with loved ones, and said one of the hardest parts of being under cover is the extent to which that status can complicate your personal life.

Plame’s husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, said the two met at a diplomatic party in 1997.

“But I didn’t know what she did until we were well along in our courtship,” he said, adding that her public outing continues to ripple through her private life.

“People she has known for upwards of 20 years have all sort of had to go through this period of adjusting to who is the real Valerie Wilson.”