One suggested change to your answers... she should never blame Novak but should instead blame those who leaked to him.

He is, for all his faults, a journalist. It's his job to write what he knows, even if the CIA doesn't want him to. Once he knew it, the genie was out of the bottle.

She should focus on the elements of the government who leaked to him. They're the real villains. Novak might be a jerk but it's the people who told him about her that are really responsible.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Now, Ms. Plame; while at the CIA did you have any role in the coverup of President Clinton's sale of Earth's Defense Plans to the Maritans for campaign contributions?

It will be interesting to watch the Republicans on the Committee, if they get too nasty they risk looking like
they're raping her again.

I just don't get the whole "Who's who" bit. Are these mental giants suggesting that the fact that Valerie Plame was married to Joe Wilson was somehow a state secret? I really think that's what they are going on - look, here is something that you didn't keep secret - therefore you were not undercover!

I also don't get the bit about Brewster Jennings. That was her cover so of course she listed it as her occupation when giving a political donation. Was she supposed to pretend Brewester Jennings didn't exist? Again, do these people understand the idea of cover?

The part that was secret was her employment for the CIA, not
- being married to Joe Wilson
- donating money to the Gore campaign
- working for Brewster Jennings

They all deserve a slap for asking such silly questions, and the people who buy into the silliness also deserve slaps.

"The fact that its a copy doesn't mean the Civil War is still raging." Hmm, maybe your having only a copy explains why it is still raging. Where would the GOP be without the race card and Nixon's Southern Strategy? Or perhaps it's a diminishing impact of race (and, with failure in Iraq, terrorists) that explains, as much as fundamentalism, the strategic emphasis on gays and immigrants. Always need some internal enemy to blame . . . .

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

There goes John again with his Area 51 space aliens again.

Generally, I disagree with you on a couple of minor points. When Libby outed Plame, it was simply to get Joe Wilson. It was not his "intent" to ruin her career and what ever colateral damage. She just didn't matter. He did not give a rat's ass what happened to ANYBODY because this mission was SO important. This relates to the other point: the true "mafia" would not have done it this way. They were gentlemen of a sort, and left families out of it. Libby is not as good enough to compare to the mafia.

This was a man who was highly valued in this administration. Think briefly about this point, and then remember that THESE are the guys who DO have access to WMDs.

dc

apparently these right-wing idiots think that being a covert CIA agent means pretending you don't actually exist rather than simply covering up who really work for.

You don't understand, Rick. Ya see, being a CIA covert agent is like  being a comic book superhero. When you're hanging around the house or going to a party with your spouse your name is, say, "Clark Kent." But when you're doing spook stuff, your name magically changes to, say, "Superman." NEVER MIND that everyone can see that Clark Kent looks just like Superman, and therefore they must be the same person, and therefore something fishy must be going on; you still have two names and pretend to be two different people. Valerie's CRIME is that she used THE SAME NAME for both of her identities. Or at least that must be what the liars at these right-wing dishrags are thinking....

According to Plame herself, a CIA official called Novak and pleaded with him not to reveal the information. Yes, the people who told him are the ones ultimately responsible, but Novak deserves plenty of blame too. This is proof that he puts his own column's interests above those of his country.

On March 16, 2007 - 11:26am TJKING said:

There goes John again with his Area 51 space aliens again.

Its obvious Valerie Plame is a "Communist." heh heh heh

I know, but remember the White House called the NY Times and asked them not to print their bank records story... we're lucky the Times refused.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

it continues to occur to me (and i can't recall ever actually seeing this said anywhere) that the whole notion that 'his wife sent him' (regardless of that being untrue) was/is supposed to be relevant in that it would somehow discredit joe wilson, is tellingly based on the same sort of sexism that is behind the arguments (if you can even charitably call them that) that valerie was not a covert agent. has anyone else had that same impression?

TJ's partisan hack posts often remind me of the following;

A friend's son told us the following:

'When I was in basic we heard about a chickenshit Lt. Colonel who was going to inspect the barracks. This guy was supposed to be all Army, strictly by the book. So we prepared for his arrival by working our asses off; bunks, foot lockers, floors, ceilings, windows, doors, showers, johns.

So this Col gets here and he's wearing white gloves, of course, and he checked every window, every bunk, every foot locker. He scaned the floors and ceilings, then went into the showers and checked them out, making sure they were clean and the fittings were polished.

He then went to the toilets and looked closely at the first 5 and all seemed well. Then when the 6th and last seemed ok, he took his hat off, knelt down, and stuck his head in the bowl to look under the rim. Well, he found something and the inspection didn't pass.'

Here's the moral of the story: "If you go around searching for shit, you're going to find it."

This garbage only gets better every day. Now, Plame is claiming that a mysterious man, with no name, that happened to be walking past her office, told her he thought Lyin' Joe should go to Niger, and he walked her (apparently by force, sheesh) to the supervisor and recommended Joe, as she looked on.

I think its time for a subpeona and another Perjury charge.

Perhaps she sees no purpose to revealing the name of a CIA employee for everybody to banter about. Man. You are the original American Thinker!

I guess that describes you perfectly, John. Always hoping that nobody will notice your shit, instead of cleaning it up.

I figured the moral to the story was, John will never attain the rank of latrine specialist.

This garbage only gets better every day. Now, Plame is claiming that a mysterious man, with no name, that happened to be walking past her office,...

Hey Einstein, he was INSIDE the CIA Bldg passing Plame's desk, um, just maybe he was a CIA agent? You know, a kinda COVERT GUY?

Yes, people that are demoted latrine specialists would definitely prefer to be a "Communist".

Oh, Gee, thanks for filling me in, Sherlock. I didn't realize every person in the building at Langley is assumed to be "a kinda COVERT GUY". That must make it difficult on foreign agents to figure out who is covert, since everybody at Langley is covert.

I understand we just heard testimony today that people that are covert rarely hang out at Langley. But they may have just changed that for your benefit. Duh!

Now I can see why you flunked out of Latrine duty 101.

I didn't get that impression - but what do I know?  You could be spot on.  However, I imagined the motive to be to discredit Ambassador Wilson by implying that his trip was some sort of a nepotistic junket and/or a democratic plot to undermine the president.  You know, the covert democratic operative/mole in the CIA, Ms. Wilson, jumps at the opportunity to get Bush by engineering her fellow operative/husband's trip to Niger in order to poo poo on the administration.

There are really people who think like this.   Weird, ain't it?

Neoboho

Why not take a trip on the real wild-side then?

Conservapedia

Yeah, TJ. I see you're just baiting people with language here because you can't stand to be away; you can't stand to just be quiet; and your previous myriad posts can't stand the light of day!

PLAME WAS COVERT --- PLAME WAS COVERT --- PLAME WAS COVERT --- PLAME WAS COVERT --- PLAME WAS COVERT --- PLAME WAS COVERT --- PLAME WAS COVERT --- PLAME WAS COVERT ---

Sorry, I just couldn't help myself!

Jan Knaus

On March 16, 2007 - 5:08pm TJKING said: "I understand we just heard testimony today that people that are covert rarely hang out at Langley."

Hey Stephen Hawking, ya gotta stop hangin' out in FreeRepublic.com and listening to their "testimony".

Ya see Mister Newton, no one who said coverts rarely "hang out" at Langley said they never go there :)

Do they 'appear' at Langley? Sure they do. Plame was there, she was covert. :)

Ya see Socrates, after a mission is accomplished they can go home, go to the local bar, or go to Langley to be debriefed, or all three.

See how easy that was?

More of your garbage that is unsourced, no links, and nothing to back it up. You clearly implied in your goofball post that a person walking down the hall should be assumed to be covert, now you are trying to back pedal, because you look like an imbecile. And now here again you just pull crap out of your butt and make it up, such as the assumption that a covert agent is supposed to come to Langley to be debriefed after a mission.

Next time you are at the latrine, "de-brief" yourself.

I wanted to post this way earlier but it got by me;

I give Larry's answers while acting in place of Valerie Plame a 5

That's likely the case; she did not identify her subordinate that took the OVP phone call, either. Note that no one on the committee pressured her on either identity. This implies both were on the "Don't Ask" list.

Unlike the rest of the liberal posters on this site...TJ has kept his mind and bodily fluids pure enough to smell the communist plots behind Valerie, Joe and Larry, summed up in the link below by a famous USAF officer, Colonel Ripper:

audio link quicktime

Let's see... T... and then J in Spanish and a couple of other lingos is pronounced as an "H"...and then King. Often the s is given a hard sound in Pacific rim languages. So, Thhhking...Toensing. TJKING=Toensing!!

JohnW, my man, you figured it out!

Hey, TJ. Since Plame testifies that she was covert and the CIA stipulates that she was covert and no one in the administration is denying that she was covert, isn't there a little egg on your face?

Of course, when you wrote "she is not covert" I guess you could quibble over the meaning of what is is.

The column was probably secondary. Novak and Rove have previous experience in leaking together, for Rove's benefit.

In 1992 in an incident well known in Texas, Mr. Rove was fired from the state campaign to re-elect the first President Bush on suspicions that Mr. Rove had leaked damaging information to Mr. Novak about Robert Mosbacher Jr., the campaign manager and the son of a former commerce secretary.

Since then, Mr. Rove and Mr. Novak have denied that Mr. Rove was the source, even as Mr. Mosbacher, who no longer talks on the record about the incident, has never changed his original assertion that Mr. Rove was the culprit.

But the episode, part of the bad-boy lore of Mr. Rove, is a telling chapter in the 20-year friendship between the presidential adviser and the columnist.

Practice makes perfect. Or not.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left. Bertrand Russell

On March 17, 2007 - 1:32am Clay Allison said:

Let's see... T... and then J in Spanish and a couple of other lingos is pronounced as an "H"...and then King. Often the s is given a hard sound in Pacific rim languages. So, Thhhking...Toensing. TJKING=Toensing!!

Excellent analysis, you must be a CIA code breaker, posting under a pseudonym, of course. :)

That's exactly right. And according to TJ, it's OK if I tell you that I work for the CIA, as long as I don't tell you my name (rather than the other way around).

--Clay Allison (oops!)

Link above de-linked due to bandwidth problems, but available under 'conspiracy' third down on

this page

~

I won't waste my precious time on reasoning with bullshitting trolling punks like the apologist above...

The TPM "Apologists for the Scumbags" ... the MSM and Valerie Plame

“In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counterproliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer whose affiliation with the CIA was classified...” Valerie Plame Wilson

“While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.” Valerie Plame Wilson

“It was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit that everyone knew where I worked.” Valerie Plame Wilson

Before the House Oversight Committee March 16, 2007

Keep it up folks ... you can all have fun playing tit-for-tat with the apologists for the scumbags till your eyes glaze over.

~OGD~

This meme that because someone works in Langley that they aren't covert continues to amaze me.

Larry, as a former CIA employee, can you tell me what the response would be if a reporter from a major newspaper were to contact the CIA and request a list of all "non-covert" employees at Langley? Would there be anyone on such a list who isn't already identified on their website or who works in Public Relations?

-Dave Adams-

OK, TJ, what would have to happen for you to admit that she was under cover?

Excellent question, but of course, there will be no answer.

The predecessor question was asked at the hearing.  Knodell responded, Jeffrey Thompson.  When asked where that person is now, he indicated that, last he knew, Thompson had moved to Georgia.

That's fair Tom. I chose the word poorly. I wasn't implying that there was no secret items that had been previously agreed would be off limits, only that the fact that Waxman is running the show, he could put anything on that list and then steer the questioning to his favor. Instead of Imaginary, I should have said phony or illegitimate list.

As I have said here before, if the Democrats really wanted the truth to come out they would ask for full and in depth hearings, not a show trial meant to trot out Plame for a softball slow pitch game.

When the Republican asked what her party affiliation was, Democrat viewers think the giggles are for her, but Republicans were laughing because it was his frustration to have to play the straightman in a show trial where he could only ask her name, rank and serial number, while she told her phony sob story.

I still find it interesting hearing the gang here reading tea leaves and smoke signals about mysterious what ifs, but nobody here really wants full hearings that would bring out the truth.

Waxman's hearing was a total joke.

Humor or Snark?

I was a kid, :D but I looked it up: Alexander Butterfield -- The former White House aide who disclosed the existence of the president's secret taping system.

CIA, incidentally, is much more relaxed than NSA. I've never been to an NRO facility. Years back, I was doing a policy study on security and security classification for the Ripon Society, and I remember interviewing the director of physical security at CIA. He said that he differed with his counterparts at NSA, in that they appeared to be most worried that a Soviet Guards Airborne Division was going to drop on the roof and capture everything, while he was worried about the inside employee that left, daily, with a briefcase -- or brain -- full of secrets.

Some of the secrecy, such as the number of employees, really isn't too valuable. Things like the classification of the phone book really are justifiable, since that will give you not just the total employees but their distribution into organizations, or at least most of the employees who aren't clandestine.

Incidentally, CIA just improved their webpage access to their in-house journal, Studies in Intelligence. It looks like they split it recently into unclassified, unclassified extracts from the classified version, and classified editions.

I'm trying to remember if I found the information in Studies in Intelligence, but I found a fairly detailed discussion of how, in their computer systems, they isolate agent identity (and general descriptions at different levels of sensitivity) in their computer system. This proved useful in setting up electronic health records that could be used as a research database without compromising individual privacy.

At least in technical areas, there's more and more exchange between the intelligence community and the public. As opposed to NSA's secretiveness about the design of the original Data Encryption Standard (DES), its successor, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) was selected, by NSA and NIST, from public proposals. The encryption algorithm eventually selected, Rijndael, was developed by two Belgian researchers.
--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]