Valerie Plame Wilson Speaks Muzzled

[Blue_Roses]

Valerie Plame Wilson Speaks Muzzled

By Larry Johnson on October 19, 2007 at 10:36 PM in Current Affairs



Four years and three months after waking up on a Sunday morning and learning that her career as a clandestine intelligence officer was over because of a stupid column by Robert Novak, Valerie Plame Wilson finally gets to meet the public and tell some of her story.

Sunday night she appears on 60 Minutes, and kicks off a book tour that will start Monday morning on the Today Show and include stops at Larry King Live and the Daily Show. Unfortunately, Val cannot be totally forthcoming. I am not talking about revealing sources or methods that would compromise intelligence operations. She is a solid professional and would never entertain such nonsense. But the CIA succeeded in getting a Federal judge to block Val from admitting that she started working with the CIA in September of 1985.

It is as if Rod Serling has returned from the dead with a 21st Century version of the Twilight Zone. The CIA won the initial round in Federal Court and insists Valerie cannot acknowledge working at the CIA prior to February 2002. Because of a pending appeal in her freedom of speech case against the CIA, she cannot say anything about joining the CIA in September of 1985 fresh out of college. She cannot say anything about her initial impression of her Career Trainee classmates–such as Jim Marcinkowski, Brent Cavan, Mike “the Griz” Grimaldi, Precious Flower, and mois. She is proscribed from telling you about wandering the forests of Camp Peary learning land navigation and she certainly will not, at least for now, be able to tell you about being taken hostage and subjected to torture for two days.

Valerie especially cannot tell you about her first tour overseas as a case officer. Ironically, her first boss overseas–Fred Rustmann–has gone on the record and tried early on in this scandal to argue that she was not a NOC (i.e., Non Official Cover officer). But Fred, who was forced out of the CIA and into early retirement because of misdeeds overseas, was not around long enough to learn that after her first tour Val was given the opportunity to become a NOC.

more...
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2007/10/19/valerie-plame-wilson-speaks-muzzled/

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[opihimoimoi]

1. Its all part of the Brown Shirting of America....where are the BLUE SHIRTS?

[Bitwit1234]

2. Well if the interviewer was smart...and they sure aren't.

He/she could inject into the questioning, "reports say you became a CIA officer in 1985 after that blah blah blah..." And they couldn't blame Valerie...she wouldn't be saying.

[jeff30997]

3. Yes! And she could respond:

"Unfortunately I can't comment about this because my First Amendment rights have been taken away by

this Agency."

[tanyev]

4. The interviewer will be Katie Couric.

Set your expectations on LOW.

[orleans]

5. tonight on 60 minutes

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/17/60minutes/main3378089.shtml

CBS) Valerie Plame Wilson chides President Bush for not firing anyone for the leaking of her covert CIA identity, which caused a national scandal and an investigation resulting in a perjury and obstruction of justice conviction against Vice President Richard Cheney's chief of staff.

She also tells Katie Couric that she has learned of the damage that the leaking of her identity caused agents of the clandestine service and it is serious. Wilson speaks to Couric in her first interview for a 60 Minutes report to be broadcast Sunday, Oct. 21, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.

Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, accuse the Bush administration of leaking her identity to the press as retaliation for her husband's public charge that the administration was manipulating intelligence about Iraq's weapons programs.

No one was ostensibly punished directly because of the leak, though Karl Rove, President Bush's close adviser who was involved, resigned some months later. One high administration official, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then chief of staff for Vice President Richard Cheney, received a jail sentence for lying to investigators probing the leak.

This irks Plame Wilson. "I don't know about (President Bush knowing about the leak beforehand). But I, like most other Americans, saw President Bush say on TV that he would fire anyone from his administration found to be involved in leaking my name," she says. "It turns out the president is not a man of his word."

Plame Wilson's 20 years at the CIA put her in touch with many individuals with whom she linked up secretly while pursuing intelligence on her mission to keep rogue nations from obtaining nuclear weapons. Did she ever hear if any of these individuals suffered because of the leak of her identity? "Yes I have. That's all I can say," she tells Couric, who then asks if it was bad news. "I have heard -- I have had some news," she replies.

Asked to assess the damage to these individuals, Plame replies, "It would be serious."

Plame says the morning her identity was made public in the column of conservative newspaper columnist Robert Novak, the world's intelligence services went to work.

"I can tell you all the intelligence services in the world that morning were running my name through their databases to see, did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Who did she see?" she tells Couric. "(The leak is) very serious. It puts in danger, if not shuts down, the operations that I had worked on."

Only the CIA knows the full extent of the damage. "There was a damage report done by the CIA. I never saw it. I certainly didn't reach out to my old assets and ask them how they're doing, although I would have liked to," says Plame Wilson.

Plame Wilson has written a book, "Fair Game," published by Simon & Schuster, which like CBSNews.com, is owned by CBS Corp.

[Annces]

6. It will make a good movie

showing her in training school and such.