Now, regardless of whether you’re under official or nonofficial cover, you are under cover; that’s a protected identity. When I left the Central Intelligence Agency on Sept. 30 of 1989, the day I walked out the door, my cover was lifted. Up to that point, I had been sitting at a desk, but I was undercover, and release of my name would have been a violation, at least, under the law, although I had not served overseas.
But in Valerie’s case, she went to the nonofficial cover which simply means you don’t have the protection of the U.S. government. You may operate under a U.S. passport, you may operate under some other passport. But if you’re caught engaged with espionage overseas, you could be executed. You have no protection under the Geneva Conventions.
And it’s this lie, first and foremost, I want to put to bed. Because you’ve had the Republican National Committee sending out members of Congress, like Congressman Peter King and Roy Blunt, who are perpetuating a lie. And I think it is inappropriate for members of the Senate and the House to go on national television—and I’ve seen individuals even such as Senator Hatch insist that this is of no consequence, and that’s relevant because Senator Hatch is the one who wrote my recommendation letter getting me in the CIA.
I will not stand for any American official to launch these unwarranted, unfair attacks and mislead the American people on issues so basic.
There have been efforts to say, well—the Washington Times quoted a former supervisor, Fred Rustman, saying, “Oh, her cover was light.” This is not true. Fred Rustman left the agency in 1990 and he was not aware of anything that happened subsequent to that, because he was not in social contact with Valerie or Joe Wilson. And he was not in a position to know. And that’s how it’s been with the agency and throughout the intelligence community; it’s called “the need to know.”
We’re told that Valerie was just a desk jockey; didn’t do anything important. If you just sit at a desk, you’re not an intelligence officer.
It is that expression by people who are on intelligence committees, to display such gross ignorance at times, that makes me wonder if they have been asleep at the meetings, to not understand how this system works and the requirements and obligations for protecting people.
The last lie I want to put to bed—and unfortunately the Senate Intelligence Committee report on this helped feed the flame—and that is, that Valerie sent her husband on the mission to Niger.
Now, apart from the fact that in February of 2002, when Valerie allegedly sent Joe Wilson on this mission, at that time the Administration did not have a clear, publicly defined position stipulating that, in fact, Iraq was selling uranium or trying to acquire uranium from Niger. So it mystifies me how a low-level case officer could on her own discern what the Administration’s policy subsequently would be, so she could put in place this dastardly scheme to send her husband to Niger to find out that that was false so that then she could embarrass the Administration a year and a half later.
That is laughable.
But the reality is, Valerie was not a manager. When the referral came, when Vice President Cheney’s office—when Vice President Cheney himself asked the CIA briefer, “What about the Defense Intelligence Agency report that Iraq is trying to acquire uranium from Niger?”—the briefer said, “We’ll check it out.” Went back—the process works at headquarters in this way—the briefer comes back, meets with the office directors, who are the very senior managers at CIA.
The office directors in turn talked within their offices. They’ll have several divisions. That office director from the Counterproliferation Center talks to the division director for the Counterproliferation Division, who, in turn, later sends an e-mail, the deputy of that office, to Valerie saying, “Could your husband do this? Is he available?”
She wrote the memo back. Unfortunately, what the Senate Intelligence Committee only reports is the memo that she sent back. Nobody had the decency and honesty to ask the natural question: Who asked her to write the memo? Because she didn’t just generate it on her own.