May 01 2006
More Plame Leaking In Media
*** Update III: Glenn Greenwald has mistaken my dumbfoundness at the stupidity of the leakers and the journalists with anger in this hillariously ironic post. I am a blind Bush supporter because I did not blindly accept Shusters silly claims and because I applied a small dash of common sense! Too funny. ***
*** Update II:I failed to make note of the one thing the Wilsons have in common with LJStrata and myself – their twins. Valerie had her twins in 2000, apparently only a few months after we had ours. I can tell you for sure Valerie was not doing anything regarding work for the first year at least, and I doubt she was travelling much on any missions either. Therefore it is not plausible to think of Val as some desk ridden NOC – she did not have the sleep cycles for that kind of stuff for quite a while. Aldrich Ames had exposed her cover in the mid 1990’s. She met Joe in 1997 and had the twins in 2000. She was out of field ops for a while at least, but probably for good.
Update: Clarice Feldman reminded me about the last big news we heard concerning the CIA and Iran. It was about a Clinton-era CIA leak of supposedly faulty plans for a nuclear trigger to the Iranians. But the CIA did such a poor job of inserting a technical mistake their Russian gopher was able to fix the plans and ended up giving Iran a huge leap towards a Nuclear bomb! Yeah, so was Plame the only one able to stop the CIA from making another hostoric blunder like that one? Wonder if the same blunder-kids that leaked the nuclear triggers to Iran leaked this news to MSNBC? ***
You would think the CIA insiders would know better than to leak more national security information to the media. But looks like another attempt by the shadow CIA and the Wilsons to play games:
On Chris Matthews’ Hardball Monday evening, just moments ago, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster confirmed what RAW STORY first reported in February: that outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was working on Iran at the time she was outed.
…
According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.
I assume these fools will try and claim people in the administration leaked this information to hurt the Wilsons and put Val at risk. Is this the canary trap everyone expected with McCarthy? Whoever ‘leaked’ this pretty damn interesting. The one thing that would get this into the media is the idiotic claim only Valerie, sitting in Langley, VA, could analyze the reports coming in. NBC’s David Shuster took the bait!
AND THE SOURCES ALLEGE THAT WHEN MRS. WILSON’S COVER WAS BLOWN, THE ADMINISTRATION’S ABILITY TO TRACK IRAN’S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS WAS DAMAGED AS WELL.”
What a joke! Valerie was the only analyst who cold track Iran’s ambitions? This is the reason I think this was a canary trap. Only a reporter would be so naive and gullible at the same time! Or are the VIPerS this dumb? Someone tell me this is just a joke and these people are not this stupid.
There is no way Valerie was the only person on the planet who could (or did) review intelligence on Iran! Question is, was it a trap from the CIA cleaning their house or the VIPerS floating one of their delusional ideas?
Update: Make sure to check out Jed Babbin’s piece in the American Spectator today. It explores the parallels between the rogue CIA agents messing with our American democracy and the corrupt Praetorian Guard of Roman times.
The last major success our intelligence community produced was the 1962 appearance before the UN General Assembly in which Adlai Stevenson displayed pictures of Soviet missile sites in Cuba. They were irrefutable, and Stevenson’s moment exposed Soviet lies and helped compel the Soviets to back down. That was forty-four years ago. The CIA’s record since then is a string of failures unblemished by a single notable success. From the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, to the rise of bin Laden and 9-11, the CIA has been a blind watchdog.
I would say death, dumb and blind. And by dumb I do not mean silent. Point in fact is where Babbin notes Larry Johnson ran his mouth too much and probably tipped off investigators into the McCarthy leaks to Dana Priest:
Johnson went on, writing, “[McCarthy] could [only – ajstrata] find out about secret prisons if intelligence officers involved with that program had filed a complaint with the IG or if there was some incident that compelled senior CIA officials to determine if an investigation was warranted.” Johnson has been indiscreet before about what he learns from inside the CIA. His bias is manifest, and his reliability is — at best — questionable. But what he says in this case makes sense.
Yep, now investigators know where to look. If Johnson is right (and I would say the bungle-head is right) the claims to the IG about the CIA safe houses (no one has proven the facilities were anything more than safe places to hold up while transportation was being put in place) is a great place to start looking for accomplices. Crazy Larry screws up in reverse again.
Babbin thinks the internal whistleblowers would be protected. Not likely. Only a few people knew the details, and there are ways to tie them to the IG tips – even anonymously. Once you have a lead, you can investigate all sorts of information which will lead to more information, and more leads, and so on. My guess is the Praetorian guard got cocky, lazy and clumsy.
Update: Tom Maguire has a great rundown of Shuster’s shenanigans
For one thing, is the CIA so incompetent that a woman with a history of severe postpartum depression would be placed in a role so vital to the national security? And what if she got hit by a bus? Would intelligence gathering be hindered if that was the case?
Seems as if they are trying to bleed one last little drop out of this non-story–especially in light of the fact that more scrutiny is being paid to the “shadow Government” thanks to McCarthy’s firing.
Chris Matthews has invested a whole lot into the defense of the Plame-Wilsons. I’m sure he’s going to try his best not to look like the total fool and partisan hack that we all know he is when we all find out “officially” , hopefully through the courts that ole Val was no secret agent.
And the fact that Fitz is still refusing to release any info to Libby’s team should give us all a big clue.
AJ
I had to laugh, at this…thinking, um lets say this were true…the CIA totally gave up on tracking Irans nukes, as 1 – you point, the only spy in the entire nation capable name was revealed which makes you got the next logical question — when Robert Novak chose to print her NAME, somehow I messed the part that she was on Iran, so um..they had to scrap the program because an NAME was revealed?
The press are just loosing it on this story.
Seems as if they are trying to bleed one last little drop out of this non-story–especially in light of the fact that more scrutiny is being paid to the “shadow Government†thanks to McCarthy’s firing.
My hunch? The news that Walton ordered, and Fitzz had to comply and hand over the CIA/DOJ referral letter has the potential to embarrass a whole lot of people.
Well, Scary Larry may be up to his neck in something at the moment. He is not deleting me fast and furiously at his site. Something else has occupied him, hopefully questions from people who know how to get the right answers.
See the thing is, the CIA isn’t going to come out with a damage assessment from Plame’s outing. Why? Well, because as Woodward says, it will show that it wasn’t all that damaging.
Shuster will never have to actually provide any evidence that operations on Iran were harmed by her getting leaked. The people watching his show don’t care for evidence, they will just believe what he says anyways. The dude is one of the biggest liars on television.
As for Crazy Larry…
http://www.seixon.com/blog/archives/2006/05/leisure_hack_la_1.html
Just out of curiosity, reckon the reason Iran was able to reach the stage of enriching uranium was because the only person at the CIA who was watching Iran was home having twins and suffering PPD? Scary, if that is what we’ve been reduced to.
Seixon, do you have a link for the original smack down. I’d love to read it.
Pressures building gonna blow!!!!! Poor Crazy Larry! He seems to suffer from early ejacu…… Well you get it. LOL
Great Work Seixion! Great Post AJ! Keep the pressure up!
Today Libby filed a response to Fitz’ Motion to Clarify, arguing that this was really amotion to reconsider the Judge’s ruling against ex parte communications.
As for Iran, the last thing I remember is those idiots at the Agency gave doctored plans for a nuclear reactor to a Soviet defector to give the Iranians..when he turned it over, he told them where the errors were. Thus, the CIA under Clinton sped up the Iranian nuclear program.
And the leaks go on. And the leaks go on……
From Raw Story: On Chris Matthews’ Hardball Monday evening, just moments ago, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster confirmed what RAW STORY first reported in February: that outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was working on Iran at the time she w…
MSNBC: Plame Was Working On Iran (Video)…
Click to Download (.wmv) It seems to me that those that are in such an uproar over the leak of Valerie Plame’s name and claim that it had a negative impact on our national security would be hesitant, to……
The CIA ran the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
America won that war and the Soviet Union was destroyed. Of course it has been said that the CIA was forced into fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan by the most amazing collection of patriots and scoundrels. Please read the book Charlie Wilson’s war. The book makes clear that the CIA establishment had no desire to win the war in Afghanistan and that in the end they took credit for work that was mainly accomplished by others. This fits with the indictment of the CIA establishment we read in the article above. Still winning the Cold War was no small victory.
Valerie Plame “was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.”
In a darkly humorous way, one could argue it might be true! Given the CIA’s abysmal track record, Valerie Plame might have been the ONLY person in the agency following WMD technology to and from Iran while the rest of her “operational” coherts were tasked to meet with journalists, television producers, book publishers and political operatives.
Oh wait…….
Tnactitan,
The link is in my post.
CIA Leaking Fantasies — Another Canary Trap?…
CIA: Still Leaking By Bryan [Preston] MSNBC’s credulous David Shuster reports that Valerie Plame was the CIA’s single point of failure monitoring Iran’s nuke program when the eeevil Bush/Rove Halliburton conspiracy outed her. Gossip rag Raw Story…
Did the plumber arrive at Langley, yet?…
Nearly three months ago, what I called ‘the National Enquirer of leftist “journalism”‘, Raw Story, claimed that the outing of Valerie Plame crippled the CIA’s (and the government’s) ability to monitor Iran’s nuclear weapons development.
Via B…
You know… I’m willing to bet money that Shuster used Raw Story as a source, and never actually heard anything from anonymous CIA officials. Shuster usually never says anything that isn’t already available on some left-wing site. With his tendency to be dishonest, I wouldn’t put it past the guy to source information to non-existent people.
Who else thinks Shuster hijacked Raw Story’s “scoop”?
AJ,
It is just not you that has the left watching your posts. Mac has drawn the Kos kids and underground dummies this morning. They are out and about on their skateboards and schwin bicycles.
Yourself, Mac, Captain, Curt, TM, etc. must be ruffling some feathers. It is too funny to these the leftest zealots come scrambling out of their cages before feeding time.
Casino run has me very late (and broke) this am. But don’t forget CIA’s major contribution to Bay of Pigs!
Seixon’s work on Schuster’s reporting is awesome. Once you start reading one blog post of Seixon’s, it is hard to stop reading them all. Schuster has woven many quotes to attack the Bush Administration out thin air. He routinely miscontrues the context of quotes from administration officials.
Seixon: You have categories on your blog. I think Schuster, or at least Hardball, deserves it’s own category. The original reporting for “Hardball” by Schuster is probably the worst in modern television history.