PatPatriot
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<HR>Issues & Insights
<NOBR>Thursday, July 14, 2005</NOBR>
The Plame Game
Security Leaks: Seems that talking to reporters is OK if you're Deep Throat or a Democratic congressman at war with the CIA. But if you're the guy who helped get George W. Bush elected twice, you're a criminal.
John Kerry, with Hillary Clinton nodding at his side, said that "Karl Rove ought to be fired" after the disclosure that Rove, in an e-mail to Time magazine's Matt Cooper in July 2003, said a trip that former Ambassador Joe Wilson took to Niger for the CIA was arranged by "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency." He didn't provide her name.
This was said to be retaliation for Wilson's claim in a New York Times op-ed piece after the trip that Bush lied in his State of the Union speech that British intelligence had learned Saddam operatives were trying to buy yellowcake uranium in Africa. Wilson also made three appearances on NBC's "Meet The Press."
Wilson, a Democrat who worked in the National Security Council under President Clinton, is a physician in need of healing himself when it comes to truth-telling.
On July 9, 2004, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its report on the CIA's prewar intelligence on Iraq. The report concluded Wilson lied when he denied his wife got him the Niger assignment. The report also said Wilson lied when he told The Washington Post he knew the Niger intelligence had been based on forged documents. The CIA didn't obtain the document said to be a forgery until eight months after Wilson returned from Niger.
On July 14, 2003, Robert Novak wrote a column naming Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA employee. Novak did not name his source, but Wilson accused Rove, swearing that he would see Rove led out of the White House in "handcuffs."
In a column the following October, Novak said "the disclosure of Wilson's wife working at the agency . . . was not much of a secret" and that it "was well-known around Washington that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA."
Her name was certainly no secret, appearing in Wilson's "Who's Who In America" entry. Nor were her political affiliations and those of her husband. It could be argued that Mrs. Wilson blew her own cover when she made a contribution to the Al Gore for President campaign and listed her CIA cover company as her employer in the FEC filing.
Her husband Joe also made a contribution to the Gore campaign and, coincidentally enough, signed on with the Kerry presidential campaign as an unpaid foreign policy adviser and speech-writing assistant. He also campaigned for Kerry in six states.
The 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which Rove is accused of violating, was written following a scandal involving Philip Agee, a rogue former CIA agent who published the names of 700 of his CIA colleagues before fleeing to the worker's paradise of Cuba.
The law was designed to protect the CIA from subversion and treason by those who wished harm upon the agency and the U.S. It was not designed to protect the identities of agents and their spouses who freely inject themselves into one side of a national political debate. If Karl Rove is a criminal, exactly what was the crime?
The act protected only those who were "serving outside the United States or (have) within the last five years." It's not clear how Mrs. Wilson would qualify as an undercover covert operative when she was a weapons of mass destruction analyst sitting at a desk in Langley, Va., and not a spy.
Pure politics is behind the outrage of liberals such as Kerry and Clinton who suddenly feel protective of the CIA after spending decades blaming the organization and its covert operatives for all manner of mischief. Where was the outrage back in the '90s, when Democrats gave one of their own, then-Rep. Bob Torricelli, a pass when he blew the cover of a real CIA operative in Guatemala?
The usual suspects who got even with Newt Gingrich for electing a Republican Congress are now trying to settle the score with the architect of Bush's two election victories. Wilson now goes around Washington saying, "Neo-conservatives and religious conservatives have hijacked this administration, and I consider myself on a personal mission to destroy both." He's not alone, it seems.
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