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Peeps don’t get caught up and dragged into the toxic vortex of perpetual lying that RepubliKlan television commentators are spewing. Valerie Plame Wilson’s status as an undercover CIA NOC (Non-Official-Cover) was certified in the court records and transcripts of the just concluded trial. Libby’s defense and prosecutor Fitzgerald and the judge all certified the fact that she was an undercover CIA NOC (Non-Official-Cover) in the court record. The thousands of pages will soon all be available online. In any event it’s old news. The fact that she was an undercover CIA NOC involved in critically important intelligence gathering was known the day Novack put her name in the paper almost 4 years ago.
I outlined some of the details in this thread -
http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?t=68136
During the last 4 years every time you have turned on your television set and seen a RepubliKlan saying that she wasn’t a undercover NOC they were engaging in deliberate lying. From day one the RepubliKlans have frantically tried to diminish the “outing” of her name and her “brass plate” company as trivial. With the cooperation of most of the “media of mass distraction” they have been, for-the-most-part successful.
The score is.
Anna Nicole Smith circus -526
True facts about the significance of Libby’s conviction -3
The score represents the amount of cumulative hours television media spent on both topics following the verdict announcement. Television is critical since 91% of all Americans get MOST of their news from television. 64% get ALL their news solely from television. For most Americans, if it’s not on television, it didn’t happen.
Libby’s conviction for lying to a federal grand jury to protect Darth Cheney is just the tip of the iceberg.
What did Joe Wilson, a respected US ambassador, who received the highest praise from baby bush’s father, president George H. W. Bush, do that so enraged and frightened the Vice President, Libby, Rumsfeld, and the oblivious ”decider”.
That question and the easily available answers to this question are what the RepubliKlans and their media allies want to bury in the memory hole. Their propaganda talking points are that the attack on Wilson was just the normal Washington DC food fight that occurs between political opponents. Nothing could be further from the truth than this bogus dribble.
Wilson was the United States’ last ambassador to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before the 1991 Iraq war. Remember Cheney was secretary of defense in 1991 and Libby was his under-secretary of defense. Condi was at the White House serving as a Soviet specialist. Wolfowitz, remember him, was also at the Pentagon in 1991 with Darth Cheney & Libby.
Wilson was as dangerous to the ‘bush crime family’ plans to lie to the world and invade and plunder Iraq based on a pack of lies as Richard Clark. He knew these guys; he knew Niger, he knew about the forged Niger documents, he knew Iraq, he knew Saddam, he knew that weapons of mass destruction and a Iraq nuclear weapons threat was BULLSHIT.
Wilson like Clark had to be smeared and destroyed.
Valerie Plame Wilson will testify <u>under oath</u> in congress next week. After her testimony watch how all the RepubliKlans lying about her undercover CIA NOC status will vanish. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has also been asked to testify next week. Her testimony will put the kabosh on any quick Libby pardon. Libby’s felony conviction opens the door to discovery in the Wilson’s civil suit against Darth Cheney et al. This is why the RepubliKlans are screaming at-the-top-of-their-lungs for an immediate pardon for Libby. Cheney was scared, there was too much risk, to go <u>under oath</u> and face Fitzgerald during the Libby trial despite the intimation in the defense opening statement that he would testify. Cheney will have to testify <u>under oath</u> at the civil trial deposition phase. The Bill Clinton civil trial, Paula Jones/ blow-job follies, establishes the legal precedent that will legally compel Cheney to be deposed. Peeps the conviction of Libby is just the beginning.
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<font face="arial black" size="4" color="#d90000">The Big Lie About Valerie Plame</font>
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Jul 12, 2005 -
by Larry Johnson</b>
The misinformation being spread in the media about the Plame affair is alarming and damaging to the longterm security interests of the United States. Republicans' talking points are trying to savage Joe Wilson and, by implication, his wife, Valerie Plame as liars. That is the truly big lie.
For starters, Valerie Plame was an undercover operations officer until outed in the press by Robert Novak. Novak's column was not an isolated attack. It was in fact part of a coordinated, orchestrated smear that we now know includes at least Karl Rove.
Valerie Plame was a classmate of mine from the day she started with the CIA. I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985. All of my classmates were undercover--in other words, we told our family and friends that we were working for other overt U.S. Government agencies. We had official cover. That means we had a black passport--i.e., a diplomatic passport. If we were caught overseas engaged in espionage activity the black passport was a get out of jail free card.
A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed.
The lies by people like Victoria Toensing, Representative Peter King, and P. J. O'Rourke insist that Valerie was nothing, just a desk jockey. Yet, until Robert Novak betrayed her she was still undercover and the company that was her front was still a secret to the world. When Novak outed Valerie he also compromised her company and every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company and with her.
The Republicans now want to hide behind the legalism that "no laws were broken". I don't know if a man made law was broken but an ethical and moral code was breached. For the first time a group of partisan political operatives publically identified a CIA NOC. They have set a precendent that the next group of political hacks may feel free to violate.
They try to hide behind the specious claim that Joe Wilson "lied". Although Joe did not lie let's follow that reasoning to the logical conclusion. Let's use the same standard for the Bush Administration. Here are the facts. Bush's lies have resulted in the deaths of almost 1800 American soldiers and the mutilation of 12,000. Joe Wilson has not killed anyone. He tried to prevent the needless death of Americans and the loss of American prestige in the world.
But don't take my word for it, read the biased Senate intelligence committee report. Even though it was slanted to try to portray Joe in the worst possible light this fact emerges on page 52 of the report: According to the US Ambassador to Niger (who was commenting on Joe's visit in February 2002), "Ambassador Wilson reached the same conclusion that the Embassy has reached that it was highly unlikely that anything between Iraq and Niger was going on." Joe's findings were consistent with those of the Deputy Commander of the European Command, Major General Fulford.
The Republicans insist on the lie that Val got her husband the job. She did not. She was not a division director, instead she was the equivalent of an Army major. Yes it is true she recommended her husband to do the job that needed to be done but the decision to send Joe Wilson on this mission was made by her bosses.
At the end of the day, Joe Wilson was right. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It was the Bush Administration that pushed that lie and because of that lie Americans are dying. Shame on those who continue to slander Joe Wilson while giving Bush and his pack of liars a pass. That's the true outrage.
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/13/04720/9340
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CIA Yet to Assess Harm From Plame's Exposure</font><font face="helvetica, verdana" size="2" color="#000000">
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By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 29, 2005; A09</b>
More than Valerie Plame's identity was exposed when her name appeared in a syndicated column in the summer of 2003.
A small Boston company listed as her employer suddenly was shown to be a bogus CIA front, and her alma mater in Belgium discovered it was a favored haunt of an American spy. At Langley, officials in the clandestine service quickly began drawing up a list of contacts and friends, cultivated over more than a decade, to triage any immediate damage.
There is no indication, according to current and former intelligence officials, that the most dire of consequences -- the risk of anyone's life -- resulted from her outing.
But after Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's column, the CIA informed the Justice Department in a simple questionnaire that the damage was serious enough to warrant an investigation, officials said.
The CIA has not conducted a formal damage assessment, as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted. Yesterday, after a two-year inquiry into the leak, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald issued a five-count indictment against Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, for perjury, obstruction of justice and making false statements during the grand jury investigation.
Fitzgerald has not charged anyone with breaking a law that protects the identities of undercover operatives.
Nonetheless, intelligence specialists said the exposure of Plame -- who operated under the deepest form of cover -- was a grim reminder of the risks spies face.
"Cover and tradecraft are the only forms of protection one has and to have that stripped away because of political scheming is the moral equivalent to exposing forward deployed military units," said Arthur Brown, who retired in February as the CIA's Asian Division chief and is now a senior vice president at the consultancy firm Control Risks Group.
"In the case of the military, they can pack up and go elsewhere. In the case of a serving clandestine officer, it's the end of that officer's ability to function in that role."
Plame entered the CIA 20 years ago as a case officer at age 22. She spent several years in intensive training at home and abroad, and traveled widely, often presenting herself as a consultant.
Her official employer, listed in public records, was a Boston firm, now known to have been fictitious, named Brewster-Jennings & Associates. And during her years undercover she studied at the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium.
When she met her future husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, an ambassador, several years later at an embassy party, she introduced herself as an "energy analyst." It was a story she would tell her closest friends and neighbors for years.
All that changed after Wilson publicly revealed in The Washington Post and the New York Times on July 6, 2003, that he had officially investigated, and discounted, claims by President Bush that Iraq was trying to buy a key ingredient for nuclear weapons from Niger.
"The fact is, once your husband writes an op-ed piece and goes political, you have no immunity, and that's the way Washington works," said Robert Baer, who served in the CIA's clandestine service.
Eight days later, Novak, citing two senior administration officials, wrote that Wilson's trip was arranged by his wife, whom Novak identified by name as a CIA officer. The column generated speculation that the Bush administration had purposely blown her cover to try to discredit Wilson -- a critic of the administration's case for war.
"Blowing the cover of a CIA officer is the cardinal sin in the intelligence business: It could wipe out information networks and put lives at risk," Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House intelligence panel, said in a statement.
For Plame, the most serious consequence may be professional.
"It's possible that no damage was done [to national security] but she can never [work] overseas again," said Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March.
Lowenthal said he was unaware of the extent of damage that may have been caused by exposing Plame, who worked in the Counterproliferation Division at CIA headquarters in Langley.
"You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources," Lowenthal said.
Intelligence officials said they would never reveal the true extent of her contacts to protect the agency and its work.
"You'll never get a straight answer about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were," said one intelligence official who would speak only anonymously.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/28/AR2005102801988.html
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