CIA Politics …I [Robert Novak] obtained Waxman’s talking points for the hearing. The draft typed after the Hayden-Waxman conversation said, “Ms. Wilson had a career as an undercover agent of the CIA.” This was crossed out, the hand-printed change saying she “was a covert employee of the CIA.”

Who had made this questionable but important change? Hayden told me Tuesday that the talking points were edited by a CIA lawyer after conferring with Waxman’s staff. “I am completely comfortable with that,” the general assured me. He added he now sees no difference between “covert” and “undercover” — an astounding statement, considering that the criminal statute refers only to “covert” employees.

Mark Mansfield, Hayden’s public affairs officer, next e-mailed me: “At CIA, you are either a covert or an overt employee. Ms. Wilson was a covert employee.” ….

Fitzgerald, Plame, CIA Director Hayden and Scooter Libby
Fitzgerald:
“…At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson’s employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States. …”

C.I.A. Inquiry May Hinge on What the Leaker Knew
” …a 1982 law that makes it a crime to identify covert operatives in some circumstances.

“The statute does not require that the name be disclosed,” Jeffrey H. Smith, a former general counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency who is now in private practice at Arnold & Porter in Washington, said on Sunday. “It just says that you cannot intentionally disclose any information identifying a covert agent.” ….

it’s all what your definition of “covert” is and your intent, i ’spose.

Bush/Cheney
Hague Trials ‘09

Buck Fush

Comment by PatrioticLiberalChristian — December 3, 2007 @ 2:25 pm

DC is repeating a rightwing talking point, the maiden name semantic thing, that is deader than a doorstop. Sheer desperation.

Dreamcrusher and Bigfoot, despite their statements, are here to champion torture, fascism, historic revisionism, and the end of everything America stands for.

They stand for treason, a dictator in the whitehouse, propaganda replacing your media, and true hatred in general.

They are evil, they are the rightwing.

So you must have major problems with the CIA investigating the leak and then asking for a criminal investigation? You must have major problems with the president appointing a special prosecutor. You must have issues with the president saying he would fire anyone invloved in the leak of her name? Afterall why go through all the effort when she was a well known desk jockey who flauted her status on the Washingotn cocktail circuit and among all her neighbors etc…

Back in this world you and your kind are dead wrong…again.

I’m grateful that Waxman and others (on both sides of the aisle) don’t hold DreamCrusher’s myopic view.

Yeah. Ri-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-i-ght. Whatever you say, sparky.

Also if the argument all along has been that she was not covert why would you even bring up the notion that her husband exposed her covert status? That in it’s self is an admission that she was covert as the CIA has said all along.

So let me recap where you are wrong…1) her husband could not be the first to expose her when you cite an article written after her exposure. 2) if your argument is that she was not covert (in direct opposition to the CIA and the courts) thenn you have no cause to say anyone exposed her.

The reality of this is that regardless of what she did, as a covert agent it is essential that her identity as an agent be safeguarded forever. This needs to be done to keep her sources secure, to alleviate suspicion and investigation from foreign governments, to ensure that whatever work she has done in the past remains knowledge in our hands that our foes shoudl not know we have and lastly who on earth would ever work covert for the CIA knowing that at any time they might be exposed by the administration purely for politcal reasons.

Comment by DreamCrusher — December 3, 2007 @ 1:25 pm

Quit getting you facts from the neocon crackerjack box, Plame was covert, she was outed. The Fitz investigation was started because the CIA filed that a crime occured when Plame was outed.

Back up your inane statements with some proof, you lying piece of sh!t.

““Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson ’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.” The column does not describe her as a covert agent, then, but it does name her as “Valerie Plame” – her maiden and cover name. “