Valerie Plame testifies

[BrainGlutton]

Plame testified today before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Key points:

1. Despite rumors to the contrary, she played no part in the decision to send her husband, Joe Wilson, to Nigeria to check out the “yellowcake” report.

2. Plame served as “a covert operations office for the Central Intelligence Agency” before the leak and that her “affiliation with the CIA was classified.” She said she helped manage “secret worldwide operations” against Iraq’s presumed weapons of mass destruction program from CIA headquarters and “traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.”

3. Her employment “was not common knowledge on the Georgetown cocktail circuit.”

Does anyone still think this was all a tempest in a teapot?

(The Freepers do, no surprises there.)

[PatriotX]

I thought that the change in Toensing’s tone under oath was telling.

Under oath Toensing said that Plame was not covert according to “the statute” only because the CIA was not taking enough affirmative measures to protect her identity. Toensing said that the CIA should have sent the DCI instead of the CIA spokesman to tell Novak not to publish.

[gonzomax]

She was a long time agent. She was part of a fake business used as a front. Every body that used that front has been exposed. Everyone that associated with her abroad or here is under suspicion by other governments. There has been serious damage and I think a crime committed.

[FRDE]

@gonzomax

She was a long time agent. She was part of a fake business used as a front. Every body that used that front has been exposed. Everyone that associated with her abroad or here is under suspicion by other governments. There has been serious damage and I think a crime committed.

Probably the people who needed to know, knew all about her and the rest of them. My uncle used to move in Diplomatic circles, his USA representative was ‘ex US Foreign Service’ which was about as convincing as the Bulgarian Cultural Attache who enjoyed picking my uncle’s brains over an Indian.

Not that briefing against her was not both stupid and spiteful.

• also I should imagine that some people are going to run into seven years of bad luck

[Hamlet]

So far, the most interesting part, to me, was these statements by Waxman:

"I have been advised by the CIA and that even now, after all that has happened, I cannot disclose the full nature, scope and character of Ms. Wilson’s service to our nation without causing serious damage to our national security interests.

But General Hayden and the CIA have cleared these following comments for today’s hearing.

During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was undercover. Her employment status with the CIA was classified information, prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958.

At the time of the publication of Robert Novak’s column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information.

Ms. Wilson served in senior management positions at the CIA, in which she oversaw the work for other CIA employees and she attained the level of GS-14, Step 6, under the federal pay scale.

Ms. Wilson worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA.

Ms. Wilson served at various times overseas for the CIA. "

What is sad is that none of this will matter. Rush, Hannity, Toensing, and those unthinking masses who believe them, will insist she didn’t meet the statutory definition of covert, that the investigation was a sham, that Libby’s lies weren’t material, and that nothing was wrong with outing her. While it is nice to have some more facts presented, and I sincerely hope the hearings change some minds of those who can think for themselves, I just don’t see anything really changing, whether in this administration or its supporters. They’ve had their talking points for years now, and nothing is going to change their mind.

[crowmanyclouds]

Even she can’t talk about what she did for the CIA,

Intel: A Writer’s Blocked
Newsweek
Jan. 15, 2007 issue

A CIA panel has told former officer Valerie Plame she can’t write about her undercover work for the agency … Plame recently hired a lawyer to challenge the CIA Publications Review Board, which must clear writings by former employees. The panel refused Plame permission to even mention that she worked for the CIA because she served as a “nonofficial cover” officer (or NOC) posing as a private businesswoman, according to an adviser to Plame, who asked not to be identified discussing a sensitive issue. “She believes this will effectively gut the book,” said the adviser. …

CMC fnord!

[RTFirefly]

The WaPo is finding new ways to Make Shit Up about Valerie Plame Wilson.

At the top of the front page of today’s Post (warning: link is only good for today), there’s a photo of Plame entering the hearing room.

The caption: “Valerie Plame strolls into the hearing room, the only sound the paparazzi’s shutters. For three years, she kept a public silence about the Bush Administration; now she savors her revenge. Washington Sketch, A2.” (Bolding mine.)

Heres the link to Dana Milbank’s Washington Sketch on page A2. I sure can’t find a thing in there that would suggest Plame regards her testimony as revenge, let alone whether she’s savoring it.

What a worthless paper.

[BMalion]

I’ll say one thing.
I think she’s hot.

[elucidator]

Yes, but that’s classified.

[AskNott]

The core issue is this:

Someone, in the White House and perhaps in an undisclosed location, decided that ruining the career of a longtime US spy and her entire network meant nothing, compared to exposing the lies this war was based on. Ms. Plame, and her WMD mission, were mere elephant fodder. Before Scooter Libby fell on his sword, a crucial web of spies were run through with a White House sword.

[Lakai]

@RTFirefly

The WaPo is finding new ways to Make Shit Up about Valerie Plame Wilson.

[snip]

What a worthless paper.

Weren’t they the ones that uncovered Watergate? Not being from D.C. I don’t know too much about their credibility.

Now if we look at the pathetic New York Post headline.

The editorial seems to be saying that there is a left wing conspiracy to use a phony charge of lying under oath for political gain. Of course we all know that lying under oath is only bad if you want to cover up a blow job. Lying under oath about revealing a covert CIA agent obviously deserves a pardon.

Worthless paper indeed.

[PatriotX]

@Lakai

Weren’t they the ones that uncovered Watergate? Not being from D.C. I don’t know too much about their credibility.

Now if we look at the pathetic New York Post headline.

The editorial seems to be saying that there is a left wing conspiracy to use a phony charge of lying under oath for political gain. Of course we all know that lying under oath is only bad if you want to cover up a blow job. Lying under oath about revealing a covert CIA agent obviously deserves a pardon.

Worthless paper indeed.

Quite a number of people don’t realize that the WH was leaking previously and independently

[Scylla]

I’ve been involved in long debate with many of you as whether or not Valerie Plame was “covert.”

I’d just like to point out the incontrovertible fact that there is no way in hell you can be covert when you are that hot.

[crowmanyclouds]

@Scylla

… I’d just like to point out the incontrovertible fact that there is no way in hell you can be covert when you are that hot.

Is that a spy detector ya got there in your pants, or are ya just happy to see her?

CMC fnord!

[Hamlet]

@Scylla

I’ve been involved in long debate with many of you as whether or not Valerie Plame was “covert.”

I’d just like to point out the incontrovertible fact that there is no way in hell you can be covert when you are that hot.

First, I think it’s spelled “hawt”. Second, did any of the testimony and statements convince you about Plame’s status?

[ElvisL1ves]

@Scylla

I’d just like to point out the incontrovertible fact that there is no way in hell you can be covert when you are that hot.

See? That simply demonstrates how effective hotness can be as a cover.

[GIGObuster]

@Hamlet

First, I think it’s spelled “hawt”. Second, did any of the testimony and statements convince you about Plame’s status?

I think it was a joke from **Scylla **, but just in case there is someone taking that line seriously, I do think Valerie Plame fitted the stereotype of a career woman that had the means to look good at the executive level (let us not forget what her cover was).

But for me it will always remain the height of shamelessness to see still the right wing media continue to report on Plame by ignoring the facts of the case, even I can remember several items that if they had been true they would had derailed the case a long time ago, or that now the congress critters could have shamed the CIA guys about those inconvenient “facts” or the White House staffers would had reminded the congress about those “facts”

Pink Jim Crow Rolls On - Fired for Being Gay

What I get from the hearings is that the Status of Valerie Plame being cover is not an issue at all, Republican representatives like Tom Davis had to come with new pathetic excuses to minimize the fact that they never bothered to investigate what had occurred while they had the power.

First they came for the teenage Muslims...

I think it will remain an eternal shame for many right wing posters why is that they never demanded their sources to be indeed fair and balanced or to demand them at least to be accurate when inconvenient facts appeared to then contradict what it was supposed to happen (day in and day out they reported that this case was not important or that it was going to be dismissed soon by the new “evidence” they reported it existed), failing at least that, I would have dumped them a long time ago as trusted sources, like I do even with lefty sources that play loose with the facts.

[Scylla]

@Hamlet

First, I think it’s spelled “hawt”. Second, did any of the testimony and statements convince you about Plame’s status?

Yeah. There’s no way she was covert at the time of the outing. Her own testimony to the contrary put the nail in that coffin.

[GIGObuster]

@Scylla

Yeah. There’s no way she was covert at the time of the outing. Her own testimony to the contrary put the nail in that coffin.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/16/hayden-cia-plame-covert/

CIA Director Hayden: ‘Wilson Was Covert’
During House hearings today, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) announced that CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden recently told Reps. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) that there was no doubt Victoria Plame Wilson was covert. Cummings — relaying what Waxman had told him — said that Gen. Hayden expressed clearly and directly, “Ms. Wilson was covert.”

Cummings also asked Wilson to respond to the specific claim, made by Victoria Toensing and others, that Plame had lost her covert status because she “had not been stationed abroad within five years.” Cummings asked, “During the past five years, Ms. Plame, from today, did you conduct secret missions overseas?” She answered, “Yes I did, congressman.”

[Hamlet]

@GIGObuster

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/03/16/hayden-cia-plame-covert/

He got me too. I guess meeting the statutory definition of covert agent isn’t sufficient to be a covert agent.