Thursday, October 02, 2003

Ramblings on Plame Plame: No Harm, No Foul?. PLAME: NO HARM, NO FOUL?....Max Boot suggests today that the Valerie Plame affair is a poor excuse for a scandal:It's true that these kinds of revelations can cost lives, as they did in the 1970s when renegade CIA agent Philip... [CalPundit] I was having another fit over this earlier today. I'm way too easily baited by rightists on this issue... Ok, here's what we know about Plame - she joined the CIA sometime in the '80s. She's a specialist on proliferation issues, and, according to at least a few reports, she (at some point in the past) served as a case officer, potentially overseas. Later, she moved into an analyst role. She also married Joseph Wilson three years ago, if I'm remember correctly. Since then, she's been a desk analyst, as best as we know. (BTW, I'm going to try to dredge up sources for this - I'd like to get as accurate and reliable a bio of Plame as I can. If you have links that can corroborate or reverse info I've got here, please, let me know.) Now, the argument that Boot (and others) seem to be making is this: since Plame is a desk jockey now, there's no risk to outing her. After all, she's not undercover in Iran or anything like that. True, Plame is probably not at risk of physical harm - though the professional harm she has suffered due to this situation is quite real. But I don't think anyone's arguing that the leak is bad because it puts Plame at risk. Rather, agents in the field, and our ability to gather intelligence, have been put it at risk. We know that Plame was a case officer. That means she handled agents in the field, either American covert operatives or (more likely, given her area of expertise) foreign agents working for the CIA in their home countries. To handle foreign agents, she obviously would need to have had contact with them - meaning she probably was based overseas. Case officers overseas are generally under diplomatic cover - both for legal protection and to allow them to recruit and work with agents in place covertly. She would have been able to meet with agents without the host government knowing that she was CIA. However, we can assume that she was under surveillance at least some of the time, depending on where she was stationed - embassy officials generally are. The host government probably recorded contacts she made with locals, etc...and now, they're all digging through those records, finding who she met with - who might be a spy. This not only exposes these agents - it also exposes whoever our CURRENT case officers are in those locations, if they're still working with Plame's agents. And if the host government can identify the CIA case officer there now...well, you can see how that can go. Is this a sure thing? No. She might not have actually been a case officer. She might have only worked with American operatives, not exposing any foreign nationals. The host governments might not have any information on who she met, and so on. Hopefully, no one was exposed, no assets were lost, etc...but the POSSIBILITY that they could have been is the issue. White House officials deliberately leaked this information, almost certainly without consideration of the ramifactions. That's criminal. Obviously. CalPundit adds more - an ex-CIA agent writing in the LA Times points out that we also lose trust with foreign nationals, who now know that they could be exposed to the US media by American political figures for the slimmest of reasons. Again, the reasons this is a bad thing should be self-evident...

1:12:30 PM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

Guess What Clark Did? Yeah, That's Right - Pissed Off The Neocons. Wes Clark's comments... (October 2nd, 2003 -- 3:57 AM EDT). Wes Clark's comments about the neo-cons and the Project for the New American Century in his TPM interview triggers a raspy smack back from the... [Talking Points Memo] More reasons I'm a Clark supporter - not only does he have the gumption to go after these guys, he's got the brains and presence to REALLY get under their skin.

8:19:33 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []

I Hate This Morning. ARGH! I stayed up 'til 3:30 last night, watching the goddamn Sox game (which, of course, they lost 5-4 in the bottom of the 12th) and then trying to RECOVER from watching the goddamn Sox game. And STILL I wake up at 7:45. Argh. Argh. Argh. Not a great way to start the day...
8:04:59 AM p e r m a l i n k trackback [] say something []