how much time did Valerie Plame spend outside her "cubicle" in Langley? I just talked to a former

[Gabi Hayes]

CIA agent and he claims that she was "well intentioned", but didn't get overseas much at all. I'm checking now, but wondered if anyone has any info or links that would shed light on this subject. I mentioned that she worked for Brewster Jennings and their links to WMDs in both Iran and Iraq, but that was all I was able to get to before the show was over.

he's got a book out and says the CIA should be broken up and put back together, but says it wasn't Bush's fault that we went into Iraq, because he was ill-served by the CIA!

I wanted to ask if he was aware of the book State of War, which quite effectively put the lie to that statement, but I was refused airtime the first time I called because the screener....a real arrogant ahole, thought it was too off topic.

I also got the host VERY pissed at me (called my approach vicious, because I asked him if he knew who Orlando Bosch or Luis Posada Carilles were....he didn't and asked me why I was bringing them up, so I said he should know about REAL terrorists like them, who are being protected by our own government, before he makes snide comments about Bill Ayers, to whom he likes to refer as a pal of Obama). I said something along the lines of it being sad that he's become such a partisan right winger, which is when he referred to my viciousness!

this was WGN in Chicago; the show, Milt Rosenberg. so you'll know, he had Ann Coulter on a few years ago, and I got on first, and read a bunch of her lies back to her, which made Milt mad, because it "wasn't what you told the screener you called to talk about.'' I was a cheater!

so, anyway, what's the deal with her overseas service? why would she have had NOC status for 20 years or so.....the guest gave an exact number, so I think he knew more than he was admitting....and never have had substantial time spent outside DC? makes no sense to me, not that I know much.

[dbonds]

1. "Bush's fault that we went into Iraq, because he was ill-served by the CIA"

That statement there would make me question everything else he says. You know it was Bush's fault, the CIA is the patsy.

[Gabi Hayes]

4. I know, that's why I mentioned State of War, which is an excellent resource, with myriad

instances of just how disgustingly the regime behave, with Tenet-"led" CIA totally supine

here's the review, which touches most of the bases, but leaves out a couple of very important vignettes

that book was the culmination of Risen's groundbreaking revelations of SPYING by the Bush admin on US citizens, the story the NYT SAT on for about a year, until the 04 election theft was allowed to proceed.

here's the review, which is very instructive

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2006/0603.ackerman.html


btw....totally agree on your point, BUT, the guy wrote a book in which the central argument is to tear it down and start all over, plus he's not taking any royalties, so I had trouble figuring out his angle. the Bush support was a big clue, though

[shraby]

2. As a NOC, her information was highly

compartmentalized..a little here in this file, a little here in that file, etc. To be able to read any part of it, a person had to have a "need to know" that was then okayed by the CIA. That's just any part, not the whole amount of information about her job. If that CIA man was saying he knew the whole story, he was into files he had no business looking at. The system was devised to protect NOC agents to the very maximum, because if their cover is blown the CIA denies knowing them. That's the meaning of NOC.

[The Traveler]

3. NOC

NOC does not imply necessarily overseas duty, but it usually does. NOC merely means Not Official Cover. Most non-NOC agents have an embassy position as a cover, for example.

A NOC could be inserted into private industry with global connections for the purposes of developing and running a network of assets. Assets are not employees of the Agency ... they are people who are used by the agency. Quite often, they do not even know they are being so used. When they are aware of the Agency connection, they are usually compensated financially. It is not uncommon for assets to provide their services gratis due to patriotic or ideological motivations.

A domestically deployed NOC is still at risk, and exposure significantly increases that risk. More significantly, the NOC's network is still at risk. It is unclear to me if anyone died as a result of Plame's exposure ... but given the nature of her work I think it likely. I have heard numbers as low as 3 and high as 90. Who knows?

It is certainly the case that exposure of Plame and hence her network damaged this nation's intelligence gathering ability and put lives at risk, and that this occurred at a time when the nation was engaged in armed conflict. Now, in my day, that was grounds for a charge of treason.

But in these days of a New World Order, in which the representatives of the people lie prostrate before the power of the Corporatocracy, and in which the provisions of the Constitution become optional, it is apparently a small matter. One can today betray the country, provided one is a Republican and serves that Corporatocracy well.

[Gabi Hayes]

5. thanks for that info. apparently, according to the sources cited at Wikipedia.....I know....

but they're using easily verifiable sources in the public domain....

she spent a LOT of time overseas:

Plame served the CIA as a non-official cover (or NOC), operating undercover in (at least) two positions in Athens and Brussels.<20> While using her own name, "Valerie Plame," her assignments required posing in various professional roles in order to gather intelligence more effectively.<21><22><23> Two of her covers include serving as a junior consular officer in the early 1990s in Athens and then later an energy analyst for the private company (founded in 1994) "Brewster Jennings & Associates", which the CIA later acknowledged was a front company for certain investigations.<24>

John Crewdson, senior correspondent for the Chicago Tribune, notes that a former senior diplomat in Athens remembered Plame in her dual role and also recalled "that she served as one of the 'control officers' coordinating the visit of President George H.W. Bush to Greece and Turkey in July 1991."<25> After the Gulf War in 1991, the CIA sent her first to the London School of Economics and then the College of Europe, in Bruges, for Master's degrees. After earning the second one, she stayed on in Brussels, where she began her next assignment under cover as an "energy consultant" for Brewster-Jennings.<12> Beginning in 1997, Plame's primary assignment was shifted to the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

She married Wilson in 1998 and gave birth to their twins in 2000,<26> and resumed travel overseas in 2001, 2002, and 2003 "as part of her cover job. She met with folks who worked in the nuclear industry, cultivated sources, and managed spies. She was a national security asset until exposed. . . ."<27> CBS has confirmed that part of her work involved ensuring that Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons.<28>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame

here are the footnotes....lots of 'lib' sites, so they may not be 'trustworthy,' but there they are, and I'm too tired to go elsewhere tonight. I'm sure there are many here who can cite chapter and verse on much of her postings, especially as has to do with Brewster-Jennings, and oops on numbers 21 and 27, but there it is....remember when DU hung on his every heroic word?:

20)Elisabeth Bumiller, "Debating a Leak: The Director: C.I.A. Chief Is Caught in Middle by Leak Inquiry", New York Times, October 5, 2003.

^Larry C. Johnson, "The Big Lie about Valerie Plame", tpmcafe.com (Special Guest blog), June 13, 2005, accessed July 15, 2006. (Johnson is "a former CIA analyst who was in Plame's officer training class in 1985-86" and Deputy Director for Special Operations, Transportation Security, and Anti-Terrorism Assistance in the U.S. State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism until October 1993.)

^ Michael Duffy and Timothy J. Burger, "NOC, NOC. Who's There? A Special Kind of Agent", Time, October 19, 2003, accessed September 25, 2006.

^ Richard Leiby and Dana Priest, "The Spy Next Door: Valerie Wilson, Ideal Mom, Was Also the Ideal Cover", Washington Post, October 8, 2003: A01, accessed October 31, 2006.

^ Carolyn Kuhn, "Libby Trial: Plame, Brewster, Ellmann, Edwards, Dennehy, Jennings: Not Secret?", dc.indymedia.org (Washington, D.C. "newswire"), January 31, 2007, accessed May 5, 2007.

^ John Crewdson, "Plame's identity, if truly a secret, was thinly veiled," Chicago Tribune March 11, 2006, accessed September 25, 2006.

^ Mark Memmott, "CIA 'outing' Might Fall Short of Crime", USA Today, July 14, 2005, accessed September 25, 2006.

^ Larry C. Johnson, "Is Max Boot Using Oxycontin?" No Quarter (blog), November 2, 2005, accessed July 15, 2006. See also Nicholas D. Kristof, "Secrets of the Scandal", New York Times October 11, 2003.

28) Muriel Kane and Dave Edwards, "CBS confirms 2006 Raw Story scoop: Plame's job was to keep nukes from Iran," Raw Story (20 October 2007).

[The Traveler]

7. Yes. But the point I am trying to make is

that overseas deployment is irrelvant to the issue.

It is clear that Plame was being extracted from the scene. Still, protection of her status was crucial to protection of the network and its methodology. (Protecting the secrecy of methods by which intelligence is gathered is absolutely vital.) Once she is exposed, the entire network had to be presumed compromised. A vital national security resource becomes unusable.

[Gabi Hayes]

8. my point to the guest was that she was NOT sitting in her cubicle at Langley, as he

averred.

he was VERY specific about her not getting out of Washington, "despite her good intentions"

that's what he said. I actually am aware of the last part of your above post, and that the real damage done was, as you say, to the network with which she worked.

I was trying to get a feel for what part of this person's spiel I could accept as authentic.

there were lots of gaps in his knowledge, so I thought it was 'interesting' that he had such specific citation of her whereabouts, ESPECIALLY since he strongly defended Bush's lack of a role in the runup to the war, portraying him as an innocent victim of bad intel.

I disagreed, saying that, among other things, lower lever CIA ops provided PLENTY of humint (and its superiority to elint, which was one of the chief topics of discussion) from which the WH could make up its mind on the veracity of WMDs, etc. I also said that the door to the Plame outing led STRAIGHT to the WH, rather than the EOB (Cheney's office?), because of Harriet Miers' supposedly denying the right of Cheney to declassify info on his own.

[The Traveler]

9. **nodding** I get you

His statements were factually incorrect. My point is that they are also logically incorrect ... that even if they were true signficant damage to American intelligence gathering would have been done by exposing her.

[Gabi Hayes]

10. yeah...I couldn't figure out the guy's angle, and I can't find his name on the radio

lineup

sounds like you know what you're talking about.

anyway to pry some FYEO tales from your files?

ever read any of this guy's stuff?

http://www.alanfurst.net/

or have any recs for well written fiction along those lines?

did you read Pattern Recognition and/or Spook Country?

[FogerRox]

11. If NOC's are compartmentalized

how would have this guest had any idea, unless he was in Brewster Jennings ?

[FormerOstrich]

12. You are nicer than I.....

I would have had to mention that he must be speaking of the time AFTER she was outed and it wasn't good intentions that kept her held there!!

I swear for all the damage Bush has done and no matter how "unpopular" he allegedly is, people like this guy seem to silently cling to him (in support of him).

The creepy SOBs seem to think it just isn't that bad about outing a FEMALE DESK JOCKEY CIA agent.....they don't do REAL work afterall....

damn...my blood pressure is rising as I type!

[Gabi Hayes]

13. Old Milt cut me off while I was trying to get the guest to explain how he knew she was only in

her "cubicle" all the time.

the host was VERY PO'd at my calling him out on his snide RW remarks. I hope he heard me laughing when he called my own 'vicious.' I wear that as a badge of honor, like the time David Schippers said to me, "You go to HELL, sir," when I asked him how his girlfriend was doing. Remember who he was? I have that on video tape.

[FormerOstrich]

15. lol

:thumbsup:

That's great!! Ok...we neither one are nice!

:hi:

[bdf]

18. Are you saying

That when they looked at how they could punish Wilson they found out who Plame was and realized that outing her not only punished Wilson but also served their other ambitions? Or are you saying that outing Plame was the whole point of the exercise in the first place and that Wilson was set up to give them the excuse?

If you're saying the latter, you are in serious tinfoil helmet territory. It's true that outing Plame did serve their plans by removing an entire CIA department consisting of people who were in a position to determine the falsehood of the administration claims about Iraq (and their lies about Iran, now), some of whom might just be loyal enough to the US to go public. But really, to suggest that the whole exercise was constructed with the purpose of outing Plame is fantastic, so I presume you meant that once they dug into how they could harm Wilson they realized that by outing Plame they'd get a "two-fer."

I have seen only one other suggestion that outing Plame was the whole purpose of the exercise. Few others have seen it, and most of those that have seen it don't take it seriously. Even I have doubts about it, and I wrote it...

But in the end it comes down to this. Whenever something bad happens unexpectedly (such as 9/11) and you find yourself thinking "That couldn't have worked out any better for Dubya 'n' Dick if they'd planned it all themselves" then they almost certainly did. Outing Plame worked out very well for them.

[ColbertWatcher]

6. Does--anyone besides the director and his assistants--ever admit...

...to working for the CIA?

I mean, seriously, except for the occasional homeless person, I've never heard of anyone who is currently working for the CIA.

I think the big issue with Plame is why the need to expose her CIA employment, regardless how much time she spent behind a desk.

[Gabi Hayes]

14. Ishmael Jones is the author....here's the book

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?r=1&ISBN=9781594032233&ourl=Human%2DFactor%2FIshmael%2DJones&itm=1&afsrc=1

[Gabi Hayes]

17. hmmmmm.....

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url?%5Fencoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Ishmael%20Jones

[EFerrari]

16. Bush was ill served by CIA because they didn't cover his @ss.

I guess this winger isn't satisfied with the gutting Porter Goss did to CIA -- not that they are choir boys in the first place.

[Gabi Hayes]

19. did you ever read State of War? it's so disgusting. they KNEW that

Saddam had no nukes, and hadn't worked on them for YEARS. EVERY single person they interviewed from Iraq beforehand said there was NOTHING.....that is everybody that wasn't in cahoots with Chalabi, Judy Miller, Iraqi Nat Con, etc

[EFerrari]

20. Haven't read it but someone was quotng it the other day

maybe on Amy's show. Of course they knew.

Remember Ray McGovern said the Neos were called "the crazies" before they took over the government?

[dansolo]

21. Milt Rosenberg is a right wing asshole

I used to occasionally hear him when I lived in Chicago, and he tries to portray himself as a deep-thinking, philosophical person, but he always is spouting right-wing talking points.

[Gabi Hayes]

23. he's gotten 'progressively' more rabid in the last few years, and his guest lists

really reflect it. even his 'new' screener is a real ahole....check his blog. one of my favorite shows was when he had on some local RW jagoffs the year Obama beat Keyes, and they were waxing joyous over what a great candidate he'd be, and how he had an EXcellent chance to win! I called in and said that there was NO way he'd come within thirty points, and they all acted like I was insane. I offered to bet any of them any amount of money that O would win by at LEAST 25 and had no takers

that was fun

[NNN0LHI]

22. You didn't happen to meet this former CIA agent in a bar did you?

I run across former and active CIA agents in bars around here all the time.

Its all very hush, hush usually.

Don

[Dan]

24. I of course would not doubt your friend

but I think it might be a crime for an agent to discuss another agent activities...

[Gabi Hayes]

25. kick so others can compare this thread to the one praising "Ishmael's" book

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3723055&mesg_id=3723055