Your statement is still timely.

Thank you for presenting it.

Thank you all for this information.

It's truly shameful that the president and his administration are undermining the CIA and punishing those who tell the truth to the American public.

I hope you'll continue to get your message out. In some ways it may be more important than any of your regular jobs at the CIA, because if this sort of action continues, doing an honest job at the CIA will become an impossible.

Do we want the CIA o return to the bad days of the Cold War when it was used as the private army of the Administration with little to no Congressional oversight? 

How could you have worked with Plame for three decades if she was only 40 years old at the time?

What quote are you referring to?  I see him say "18 years later", I'm not sure where you're getting 3 decades from.

My dog Alex, you beat me to it.  I don't find three decades mentioned either.

You know Josh, we need to be preserving the tapes of all these "apologists" that think outing Mr. Wilsons wife was OK or not a big deal.  Every damn one of them has to account for their words.  Every damn one of them.

Cincinnatus - what is your point?

Do you think this is a serious issue or not?  Do you think the accidental outing of Khan was a serious issue or not?

Do you think that people that are cleared for classified work are provided the same leniency that Karl is being given?  Do you think any agent, or contractor that behaved in the same way would retain security clearences?

Award fees for defense contractors are reduced due security breaches far less serious than this one.  Karl is being held to a very, very low standard thus far - and every person that has to get a clearence knows it.

(Sorry for serial posting...)

For the record, if a Dem or independent did the same thing, I'd punt them in a heartbeat.  No hesitation at all. 

It's more like "fragging". 

One more point, possibly the biggest, that should be made is the loss of a CIA front company with its personell, contacts and previous contacts by it's personell.  This isn't just about outing Plame, it's also about all the other NOCs and their contacts.

If Fitzgerald is really investigating Plamegate, this might just turn out to be the real problem for the Bush Administration (as it is for the Agency).

DGOQ

BTW - If you confirm for a reporter as the second source, doesn't that make you  just as much a source?  

Assume the following:

Cheney's office told Bolton to find dirt on Wilson and/or his family.

Bolton told the NeoCON pricks in Cheney's office about Plame.

The NeoCON pricks told Rove about Plame's CIA connection.

Rove used whatever back channel he always uses to pass this information on to Judith Miller (Mary Matalin?) - who is herself an operative for Cheney's shadow government with it's own intelligence manufacturing organization in Cheney's office.

 Judith Miller contacted her "handler," Darth Novak, to tell him what she had learned and to ask how to make it pubilc without getting in trouble for doing so.  Novak said that he'd handle it from there, and she didn't need to write anything about it.

 Novak then set about finding two high level administration officials as confirming sources, one of whom was Rove, and broke the story.

 Miller is most certainly the first person outside of the administration and the agency to learn of Plame's CIA position.  Whoever told her is guilty of Treason, and whoever authorized that to occur is guilty as well...all the way up to Cheney, who most assuredly was the Mafia Don who ordered the HIT.

Screw the technicalities of the law - they likely made damn sure they could dance on the head of that pin when they developed the strategy to destroy Wilson and his wife (Rove's strategy).  These people have violated their oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

If the entire truth is ever exposed about not just this Conspiracy, but the Bigger Conspiracy that relied on the implementation on an attack upon the United States "Homeland" (PNAC) as the trip wire/pretext for the invasion and occupation of the Middle East (using AIPAC's moles within the Cheney Regime to orchestrate it), there will be a run on torches and pitch forks, and suitable rope with which to hang them all from the lamp posts in front of the White House.

Follow the evidence all the way back to 9/11 - but do so with an evil heart, because it's too dificult to comprehend otherwise. 

George Bush and his administration took an oath of office to serve the American people and to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States. It can be argued that he does but only as it happens to be coincident with his political and private goals. Beyond that he could give a hoot about his oath, this country or the American people. His first allegiance is to his party and his supporters. No president in my lifetime has demonstrated the degree of partisan conduct that we have seen in this five plus years. Nor have we ever seen the degree of disregard for our laws that is the equal of what has occurred in this same period.

George Bush is a traitor to this country. Plain and simple. From his likely failure to properly meet his military obligation to everything else he does, this country is not his first priority. My eyes and ears tell me so. And I am not blind or deaf and I can fairly well manage two plus two. And anyone who claims to have similar abilities that takes the time to collect the facts and consider them objectively will arrive at a similar conclusion. To explain away all the shortcomings and instances of failure as coincidence or the fault of someone else can't be done.
 
How you can stack a pile of crap so high and have it stink up the place so badly and not have a serious majority of people screaming to get rid of it is beyond my comprehension.

I often wonder if being born to wealth and power instills a different credo or sense of honor than that of the vast majority of Americans. And if that is so, it presents us with some clear insight of why the vast majority of Americans are so poorly represented while those of wealth and power have prospered so disproportionately. Kind of makes you want to reconsider the 'values' argument with a bit of a different perspective, examining it for the red herring that it probably is. The reality that we have been witness to a con job for the ages is not much of a stretch.


thepeoplechoose

See how the spin works?

CIA agents rally around Plame and make the point of how damaging her exposure has been to national security....

....and this obvious troll has everyone parsing minute and ultimately inconsequential parts of their statements. 

See?  You too can play at being members of the easily-distracted  MSM....

Cincinnatus, I hope that you were not awake all night savoring your "gotcha" moment and working out that math.

If, as is eminently possible, no one in Bush's inner circle pays for outing Plame we will have witnessed the final act in carte blanche for criminality. They currently engage in murder, genocide,  undeclared & unprovoked war, enviromental destruction, attempted (and unbeknownst to us successful?) coups in other nations, flouting of Geneva, Kyoto and the Constitution. Ever know someone in a cancer scare, but the biopsy comes back negative? It looked bleak for a bit but after a huge sigh of relief they vow to tackle life with a bit more gusto and sense of urgency. This crew will breathe their sigh, then vow to themselves to go at all the above with a bit more gusto, a bit more of a sense of urgency. A few Amendments and nations shredded or destroyed, so many, many more to go..............

This brings up a broader point. Who would volunteer to go stick their necks out for this country in harms way while this group is in the Whitehouse.

I am in the process of studying for a bar exam, I should'nt even be spending time at one of these sites. I told a fellow student from Korea whom I study with that my real interest is in nation building issues - so I was interested in going to Korea to review the history of the last 40 years there. He said to me, if you are interested in nation building, you can get a job in Iraq, working for George Bush.

We were in a restaurant, I started laughing real loud, and when I quit laughing I said to him, would you share a fox hole with Georgre Bush? (Nearly all Koreans serve in the Army for a couple of years - so he knew what I was talking about). I said to him when the enemy came, I picture George Bush as a guy that would stab you in the back, and then drape you body over his and pretend to be dead, similar to a scene in Platoon.  I recall that he said that he was for the Vietnam war, but refused to fight in it. As Josh Marshall I think once said, that is the very definition of cowardice.  Anyone that goes off to Iraq, to be in harms way is in danger of being left high and dry by this guy that has no loyalty to anyone or thing but money. I then stopped and realized everyone in the restaurant heard what I said. We were done, so we got up and left, and I was terribly embarrased for making such an obviously inflamitory political statement in a non-political setting.

Now, at least I feel vindicated a little because of the posting here. But the broader question still remains.  Who in their right mind would stick there necks out for these guys. Certainly no Republicans - recruitment is down and thats because not just democrats or independents don't trust them, but no one does.   We are very close to a situation where there is a broad collapse in moral authority of this administration: a war could come and no one shows up. That's not good for us, its not good for global security. This takes the governance of this administration to new levels of failure.  Oh the banality of it all.

A friend of mine has worked as a consultant throughout west africa. He has told me, that there is a common pattern throughout sub saharan Africa. A nation has a few decent years, the treasury becomes full, it becomes a tempting target and so a cabal stages a coup, lootes the treasury and spreads it around to henchmen, cohorts, supporters and fellow tribesmen - the country falls postrate, slowley recovers,  eventrually a couple of good years of commidity prices in coco come along and fill the treasury and the whole thing happens all over again.   That's all Bush represents - Clinton filled the treasurey, it became an attractive target, a coup was staged, and the treasurey looted.  The war in Iraq is part of distracting us from the looting going on in the treasury and also provides spoils of war or a further looting to Bush's cohorts.  That people, Americans die is of no consequence - this is a looting. Oh the banality of it all.

They have made our country less secure and we, the citizens, less safe by their conscious and cold blooded decisions to place their own political power ahead of the well being of our nation.

This is, by far, the biggest tragedy of this whole affair...

 It is also the modus operandi of the current administration.  On how many other issues and events can it be said that they put their own power above the best interests of our country?  Power  over good policy.

Ron Suskind's 2002 Esquire Magazine profile of Rove is looking more and more like the vivid depiction of our national nightmare.

Cross-posted by request:

There's a reason it's against the law to disclose covert identities, and his name is Richard Welch. And Welch's murder is the reason President George H.W. Bush was one of the architects of the law protecting his former CIA colleagues. Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass writes

In the early 1970s, ex-CIA officer Philip Agee wrote a book and worked with newsletters to expose the identities of CIA officers overseas. Bush hated Agee because, he said, one of the hardest things he had to do as CIA director was meet with Tim Welch and tell him that his father had been murdered.

Richard Welch, the CIA station chief in Athens, was slain on Dec. 23, 1975, by a leader of the Greek terrorist group November 17. Welch was driving down a street in Athens near his home, on the way back from a Christmas party, when he was blown away by a man with a .45.

"What was I to say to this young man?" the former president said. "Why had his father died? So that a reckless ideologue could sell more books?" While the 1st Amendment, political hypocrisy and irony grab our attention, let's not forget where this started. In 1982, in response to Agee and others, Vice President George H.W. Bush helped push through a law making it illegal to knowingly divulge the identity of covert CIA personnel. President George W. Bush can still talk to his father about the deadly politics of leaks.  

-- The Duke

I very much appreciate Mr. Johnson's article, and I wish to thank him for finding the courage to write it. However, it always galls me to see people refer to the Clinton Administration scandals, while paying no attention at all to the constant stream of true scandals perpetrated by Bush. The scandal of fabricating "facts" so as to support his desire to have a war is, all by itself, a far, far bigger reason to refer to the Bush Administration scandals long before even remembering any Clinton Administration scandals.

Anybody that outs an under cover agent should be sent to jail. The problem hear is that, VALERIE PLAME WAS NOT AN UNDER COVER AGENT AT THE TIME OF NOVAK'S COLUMN! It's been pretty well established that she has worked in the states since she got married in 1997. Since the "leak" occured in 2003, there is no crime.

Please prove that there is a crime before convicting someone of the crime.

Furthermore, there is no ethical problem with telling reporters that someone works for the CIA (unless, of course, that person is working under cover).

Thank you for posting this. Despite the continued GOP spin in the media, loyal Americans see this desperate act of revenge for what it is. Let's hope the investigators are thorough and identify every bastard that was part of this plot. And that someday, the public learns the whole story. It'll be ugly and painful, but necessary for our democracy to survive.

Impressive statement. Thank you, Mssrs. Cavan, Marcinkowski and Johnson and Ms. Doe.

Someone in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research knew that the administration wanted to discredit Wilson, knew Plame's identity, and knew that Rove and/or Cheney wanted it leaked. (Are we talking about Bolton?)

Who is the official who sent the memo describing a meeting at the CIA where the Niger trip by Wilson was discussed? The CIA claims that this person could not have been at the meeting. Whoever gave the memo writer this misinformation is the source that outed Plame. Has Fitzgerald subpoenaed him yet?

This official was aware that the blame would fall on the source of the information. Giving the false memo about Plame to Powell while he was flying with the president and top administration officials may be an attempt to deflect the blame to Powell, often at odds with Bush.

Were they hoping to blame Powell as the source? They have a record of making the mud of lying innuendo stick, because the networks buy it.

Just watch.

VALERIE PLAME WAS NOT AN UNDER COVER AGENT AT THE TIME OF NOVAK'S COLUMN!"


Hmm- then I wonder why the Central Intelligence Agency got a bug up its arse about it and requested a special independent prosecutor (who Mehlman said he "highly respected") to convene a Grand Jury to determine who leaked Plame's name? And why on earth have they wasted two years and legal actions all the way to the US Supreme Court to get to the bottom of a "non-issue"? Gosh... could it be that there really HAS been a crime committed? Could it be you're just repeating spin like a loyal Republican rather than wanting to know the truth like a loyal AMERICAN?
 
Please...for the sake of all Americans, republican or democrat or independent....use your own logical abilities to make a rational observation, because it really is that obvious when you look at all the facts we've seen so far. Or hold judgment until the special prosecutor is done. But don't repeatedly regurgitate the obviously inaccurate GOP line just because he's a fixture of your party. It's very clear that by outing Plame, he not only violated the intelligence agreement he signs every year, but shut down an entire front operation, the extent of damage to which we'll probably never know. Whether that was for political gain or not is mostly irrelevant with regards to prosecution. Ambassador Wilson's political motivations are mostly irrelevant as well. Sandy Berger broke the law and was prosecuted for it, and you don't hear anyone other than extremists using hair-splitting language to explain away an illegal act. I'm sure you didn't stand for that, but you're asking everyone to ignore facts just because you want to keep a traitor on your team..an effective fighter, to be sure, but clearly a traitor.