The Wilson / Plame Affair

Who outed Valerie Plame? Well, to begin with, her husband. She is named in at least one on-line bio. Jane Galt has an appropriate comment or two:

For one thing, it's not clear that she was an undercover operative. This didn't happen without the knowlege of the CIA; Novak checked with them first, and they didn't say "she's undercover in Islamabad; don't blow it." And while my knowlege of the CIA is almost nonexistant, I actually find it pretty hard to believe that the wife of an ambassador was an undercover operative any time in the recent past. Everyone pretty much knows that if you talk to the wife of an ambassador, you're talking to the American government. So it seems pretty unlikely to me that this put current or future covert operations in serious jeopardy. Not impossible by any means. But unlikely...
If the Bush administration blew the cover of a covert operative for political gain and thereby put her life and career in jeopardy, that's rephrehensible. But the odds that a) this was Bush administration policy and not a wing nut b) she was actually undercover and not a desk analyst seem slim at the moment. This is internicene warfare in the administration, which is never pretty, and one side is clearly, at the very least, exaggerating their side. But which side is exaggerating is not obvious to me, and it wouldn't be to those who are brandishing this as proof of the administration's evil if they weren't already predisposed to believe the worst of the administration.

Donald Luskin points out that Novak has stated who confirmed her CIA connection, the CIA:

The matter of Bush administration officials leaking the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame in connection with their attempt to discredit her husband Joseph Wilson has reared its ugly head again. CIA director George Tenet is calling for an investigation, and an unnamed administration official has confirmed the leak, according to a Washington Post story yesterday. Reporters Mike Allen and Dana Priest have buried the lede, though. They have reported -- but apparently not recognized the significance -- of the fact that the CIA itself abetted the exposure of Plame in Robert Novak's July 14 column. Allen and Priest write,

"When Novak told a CIA spokesman he was going to write a column about Wilson's wife, the spokesman urged him not to print her name "for security reasons," according to one CIA official. Intelligence officials said they believed Novak understood there were reasons other than Plame's personal security not to use her name, even though the CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover.

"Novak said in an interview last night that the request came at the end of a conversation about Wilson's trip to Niger and his wife's role in it. 'They said it's doubtful she'll ever again have a foreign assignment,' he said. 'They said if her name was printed, it might be difficult if she was traveling abroad, and they said they would prefer I didn't use her name. It was a very weak request. If it was put on a stronger basis, I would have considered it.'"

This means that, effectively, the CIA itself participated in leaking Plame's identity. Think about the sequence of events. Novak talks to administration officials who tell him about Plame. He has the integrity to call someone at CIA to confirm his risky story before he runs with it -- and they confirmed it! Instead of saying "Valerie who? We've never heard of anyone named Valerie" or simply that "We don't answer media inquiries about CIA personnel" -- the CIA itself confirmed it, and in so doing the CIA itself leaked it.

Now why would they do that? Well, maybe she wasn't really a covert operative, the revelation of whose name would create any particular danger for her (in which case the administration's leaks wouldn't be so scandalous). Or maybe she was covert, and the CIA was as pissed off at Wilson as the Bush administration, but for their own special reason: because Wilson had gone public with the findings of a CIA-sponsored study, thus effectively leaking himself. And who recommended him for the job? The little woman... Valerie Plame. So it looks like George Tenet ought to be asking for two investigations here.

-- posted by Chuck at Monday, September 29, 2003 | E-mail | Permalink | Main | 0 comments

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Monday, September 29, 2003

The Wilson / Plame Affair