Valerie Plame Was Covert
by James Buchanan
Valerie Plame was doing covert work at the CIA at least until Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby dug up her name, passed it around and published it. She was the head of a covert company set up to do covert work employing covert agents operating in foreign lands. Still, some neocon talk show hacks are still trying to push the story that she had nothing to do with classified work.
One of the many lies passed around is that “she boasted about her CIA job at cocktail parties.” If there were any truth to that “Karl Rove” rumor, Ms. Plame would have been subject to discipline within the CIA for talking too much. Some neocon lawyers have jumped into the mix trying to nitpick the definition of “covert.” The one fig leaf that various portly neocons are trying to hide behind is that to be convicted it must be proven that the offending individual knew that Ms. Plame was covert.
Well, that was the whole point of outing her wasn’t it? Valerie Plame’s husband Joe Wilson embarrassed the Bush administration when he exposed the fact that Iraq was not seeking uranium from Niger, contrary to what Bush said in his State of the Union speech. The neocons wanted to punish Wilson so they went after his wife, exposing her identity as a CIA agent and ruining her career. If Valerie Plame worked at Bank of America, would the neocons have told Robert Novak about her? Of course, not.
A few neocons claimed that Valerie Plame assigned her husband to investigate whether Iraq was seeking Nigerian uranium. In recent testimony, Ms. Plame stated she had no authority to choose him for that job. Joe Wilson was a former ambassador with experience in Africa, who was well-qualified for that assignment.
George Bush’s dad once said the most insidious form of treason is the exposure of a CIA agent’s identity. Robert Novak, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby all deserve to be put on trial for treason for exposing the identity of a CIA agent, who was doing covert work. (more…)