September 30,2003 by s.z.

Foghorn Leghorn to Conservative Pundit: "You Gotta Pay Attention, Son!" Adds, Re Rush Limbaugh: "That Boy's About as Sharp as a Bowlin' Ball." While you are probably sick to death of the Plame matter right now, my position is that if right-wing know-it-alls are going to continue to say stupid things about it, then I'm gonna point them out, because I want a new law passed making it a crime to pontificate about stuff WHEN YOU CAN'T READ!  (Yes, mandatory literacy for pundits may seem a draconian measure, but it's a law that can benefit us all.) Okay, Rush is on the scene, resolving the Plame affair through his penetrating insights.  In a piece entitled Liberals Over the Top With Seething Rage  he starts out by saying: You can't escape the feeding frenzy over the Mrs. Joe Wilson non-story. Robert Novak has made it a non-story by saying that no one at the White House "leaked" Joe Wilson's wife's name to him, and that she is not a CIA agent, covert operative or spy. [snip] Let's go back and let's take a look here at what Novak actually said: "According to a confidential source at the CIA [Note: Not the White House], Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, not in charge of undercover operatives." Again, Rush, she is currently an UNDERCOVER CIA EMPLOYEE.  Her CIA affiliation was SECRET.  For a discussion of CIA cover, I refer you to this excellent little recap at Slate How Deep is CIA Cover?, and especially this part: Nonofficial cover.  NOCs (the word rhymes with "rocks") are the most covert CIA operatives. They typically work abroad without diplomatic protection (often they pretend to work for some commercial enterprise).  If these spies are caught, there's no guarantee that the United States would admit their true identities.  When using official cover could put a spy's life and work at risk, NOC is the only alternative.  Why is it such a big deal that someone outed Valerie Plame? For starters, it's a felony. And Plame was also reportedly a NOC with years of experience investigating weapons of mass destruction.  If this is true, her discovery could compromise intelligence operations she was involved with around the world, which would explain why she maintained her nonofficial cover even when she was back in the United States. "Hard target" countries like China and North Korea often keep records of every known meeting between Americans and their scientists and officials.  Almost certainly, those lists would have been frantically reviewed when Plame's identity was revealed, and any sources she recruited could have been exposed.  Okay, now on to the second prong of your incredibly obtuse observations: that Novak said that nobody at the White House leaked anything to him, so case closed.  To start with, what Novak actually said was: Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July, I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. I'll go slow here: Novak said that two Senior Officials told him that Wilson's trip was "inspired" by his wife, a CIA employee working in the field of WMDs, and gave him other information which he used in his article.  The fact of Mrs. Wilson's CIA emplyment was CLASSIFIED.  The officials leaked this.  Therefore, a leak did occur.  While they may not have "called Novak to to leak this," the fact is, that Novak said that they DID leak it.  As to your assertion, Rush, that it was the CIA who actually leaked this, which you expanded here This Could Be the Start of Something Bigger  (Duh! You think?), as follows: There was no leak, and in fact Bob Novak says it did not come from the White House but from the CIA! This is how one-trick, one-playbook this party is. "Repeat it often enough and it becomes a fact." No, Rush, let's follow your suggestion and actually look, AGAIN, at what Bob Novak said: In July, I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. See, Rush, honey, Bob says the SAOs told him that Mrs. Wilson worked for the CIAs. When I called the CIA in July, they confirmed Mrs. Wilson's involvement in a mission for her husband on a secondary basis, who is -- he is a former Clinton administration official. They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. See, the CIA just confirmed what Bob said the SAOs had told him, but asked him not to reveal her name or CIA affiliation in his story.  But Bob, not wanting to do what the CIA had asked him to do, called his CIA snitch: According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives So, Bob's snitch, (another leaker, sure, but probably just a low-level guy who looked up Ms. Plame's name in the classified CIA phone book) said that Plame was an analyst.  But he has no authority to speak for the Agency, and probably isn't even a CIA employee (since CIA employees are polygraphed every few years, they are usually too scared to leak stuff to the media, and this role is usually filled by detailees to the Agency, who have no polygraphs to worry about, and no institutional loyalty).  But the bottom line is: what he did does not change the fact that TWO SAOs (you know, senior officials in the Bush administration?) LEAKED PLAME'S CIA AFFILIATION TO NOVAK, per Novak. Now that we've reviewed all this, Rush, I can see what you meant by: You people are grasping at straws.   5:41:56 PM

Why Betraying Secrets is Wrong, and Other Lessons Some People Missed in Kindergarten        I was going to write something nice and light for today (you know, be a uniter, not a divider, and be a pitcher, not a belly itcher), but my allergies are bothering me, so I'm cranky and thus VERY SUSCEPTIBLE TO GETTING ANNOYED AT MORONS. So, here's today's list of morons, and the stupid stuff they said, and why they're so stupid. Idiot Number One: Robert Novak.  Per Crossfire Transcripts: 29 Sept, he said: Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this. In July, I was interviewing a senior administration official on Ambassador Wilson's report when he told me the trip was inspired by his wife, a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction. Another senior official told me the same thing. As a professional journalist with 46 years experience in Washington, I do not reveal confidential sources. When I called the CIA in July, they confirmed Mrs. Wilson's involvement in a mission for her husband on a secondary basis, who is -- he is a former Clinton administration official. They asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else. According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives. So what is the fuss about, pure Bush-bashing? Okay, Bob, using what you said on "Crossfire" and what you said in your article Mision to Niger, I am going to paraphrase your story, if I may (and I may, because I am the boss here): You were interviewing a Senior Administration Official (maybe you called him, maybe he called you -- whatever) about Joseph Wilson's NY Times piece in which Wilson said that he'd investigated the story that Saddam had bought Nigerian uranium in the late 1990's, had concluded it was false, and had reported as much to the goverment in March 2002, long before the story was included in Bush's State of the Union address.  And the SAO said that yes, the Vice President's office HAD asked the CIA to verify this story, even though the CIA had already said that it was a fabrication (but the VP's office wasn't the only one asking about it -- all the kids were; we ALL wanted it to be true).  And yes, Wilson had gone to Nigeria to check this out, but it was Wilson's wife, CIA EMPLOYEE VALERIE PLAME, who suggested he go.  And it was her GS-nothing bosses in the Nonproliferation office who authorized his trip,  not anybody whom high-level people like the VP would ever talk to.  And it was his wife who actually asked him to go; (because us SAOs would have NEVER asked Wilson to do anything for us, since we hate his guts), and so nobody IMPORTANT, certainly not the VP, actually read the report of Wilson's findings, and that's why President Bush didn't misuse intelligence to go to war with Iraq.  And then the SAO said, here, talk to another SAO who will tell you the same thing, and he did. And then you called the CIA, and they confirmed that Ms. Plame did work there.  And while the CIA asked you not to use her name in your story, they never actually said that she would DIE or anything if you did, so you figured that this meant they actually wanted you to mention her.  But just to be sure, you asked your confidential source at the CIA (his name, btw, is Dave "Huggybear" Johnson -- since he's not a case officer, it's okay to reveal that), and he looked Valerie up in the phonebook and said that she's an analyst, and so you thought, "Hey, she's not, like a SPY, or in charge of undercover operatives, so it's okay if I blow her cover."  And besides, those Senior Administration Officials never called you and asked you to LEAK anything, like sources are saying they did to 6 other reporters.  No, they just TOLD it to you, and let you do with it what you thought best.  Thus, if anybody is saying anything about this disclosure now, it's just pure Bush bashing.  So, that's your story, right, Bob? Now let's discuss it, and why some people might still be upset about it, despite your clarifications.  First, if two Senior Administration Officials provided the information that you reported in your article, including Plame's name and affiliation, then whether they called you, or you called them, they did leak classified information.  And one can only conclude that they did it with a couple of goals in mind: the primary one being to get the Prez (and VP) off the hook for having used discredited intelligence as a justification to the American people for going to war (and to do this while not implicating CIA Director Tenent in any intelligence failure, since he presumably knows where the bodies are buried, and is not wise to antagonize).  So, the SAOs said that Wilson's mission was so low-level and his report so underwhelming that nobody other than his wife even read it; certainly not the Prez!  The secondary mission was to punish Wilson for talking out of turn (mostly by implying that he's an ineffectual nobody).  I am going to be charitable here and assume that blowing his wife's cover wasn't actually part of the revenge mission, but instead was part of the primary mission, in that it provided a pretext for the claim that only low-level people knew about Wilson's report on the Nigerian uranium, by implying that he only went in the first place because his wifey got him the gig.  But, the point is, since the SAOs knew that Plame was a CIA employee, they also had to have known that she was undercover (or certainly should have found out that she wasn't before discussing her employment with the media); but they betrayed her CIA affiliation anyway, which is against the law.  They knowingly (or with depraved indifference) leaked this classified information, to further rather unsavory political goals.  These are not the kind of people who should be entrusted with classified information, which pretty much eliminates them from any  Senior jobs in any moral Administration. Now, on to why their revelations were bad.  First, let me counter the hysteria and say that Plame's life is not in any real danger as a result of this disclosure, since she is apparently currently based at CIA Headquaters and living in the U.S., where we don't usually kill all known CIA officers.  But even if she is an analyst, like Huggybear said, she was undercover for a reason.  Analysts, especially when they cover accounts like weapons proliferation, travel overseas frequently.  If the analyst is on the record as a CIA employee, the local intelligence service would presumably make it point to watch her closely while she was in country, and so anyone she met (operations officers, assets, etc.) would be in jeopardy, as she might be also, while she was there.  Since the CIA will not knowingly let this happen, Ms. Plame will probably never be able to go oversears for the Agency again, and her ability to do her job has been severely compromised.  And if she is, as current reports suggest, a career Operations Officer taking a mid-career tour as an analyst, as many of them do--well, THAT career in the clandestine branch is basically over.  (Hopefully, she didn't have any any assets or ongoing operations from previous overseas tours that will now be endangered when those countries learn that Valerie Plame wasn't really an energy consultant, or whatever her cover job was, but was actually a CIA officer, there trying to elicit secrets from the people she was meeting with.)  Thanks Bob, thanks SAOs.  And since whatever sources or methods which were used to build Plame's cover were presumably also used to provide cover for other CIA employees, THEIR cover might now be jeopardized (hopefully, they are U.S.based analysts too, and not in any immediate danger of dying or anything).  And, since it costs money to provide cover, and these mechanisms may well have to be changed -- at a minium, Plame's cover will now have to be removed and her job duties changed-- Bob and the SAOs have cost the taxpayers some money.  So, while it is unlikely that Plame's life is actually in danger because of your column, Bob, her ability to do her work has been compromised, other people's cover may have been blown, and money has been wasted.  So, the moral of point two: this compromise of classified information had unfortunate, but foreseeable, consequences. I expect a little more professionalism from professional journalists with 46 years of experience-- one would hope that they would not be flattered into doing the dirty work of Senior Administration Officials with political agendas to further and petty scores to settle. And as a tax payer, I certainly expect better behavior from the SAOs whose salaries I am paying.  While White House spokesmodel McClellan said that if anyone at the White House leaked Plame's identity, he should be fired, and pursued to the "fullest extent," I'm doubting the Justice Department is going to pursue this "to the fullest" if it looks like somebody near the top is culpable.  But I would certainly hope that when the guilty parties are identified (and it shouldn't be that hard to do; the guys on "Law and Order" would solve the case in 90 seconds, by examining the LUDs and schmoozing with the secretaries), then said SAOs are out of the White House and working for Halliburton ASAP. So, to answer your question, Bob, NO, this isn't pure Bush-bashing.  It's weasel bashing. Idiot Two: Congressman Jack Kingston (R-Georgia), who said, during the "Crossfire" debate of the "Weasely SAO Affair" (to use our "Man From U.N.C.L.E" codename for it). that if Plame was really in danger from the leak, why was she still alive?. Idiot Three:  Carl Limbacher, NewsMax.  For so many reasons, including this:  Novak: Wilson's Wife Not a Covert CIA Agent  Carl quotes Bob Novak's announcment from "Crossfire," and answers Bob's question about whether this is just Bush-bashing with a resounding YES!  But Carl doesn't limit his investigation to just reporting what Bob and his snitch at the CIA allegedly said: no, he even goes so far as to read an article in the liberal Washington Post!  He says: In fact, in a little-noticed line in the initial Washington Post report on the announcement of the CIA's request for an investigation, the paper noted that "the CIA has declined to confirm whether she was undercover." FYI, the CIA routinely "refuses to confirm or deny" for public dissemination the CIA affiliation of undercover employees.  And Carl, honey, do you REALLY believe that they would file an official report with DOJ (asking for a leak investigation regarding the disclosure of Ms. Plame's agency affiliation) if she WASN'T under cover?  Well, apparently he does, for he continues:  Still, hours after Novak went public with a clarification of Mrs. Wilson's status, she was described as a "undercover agent" by former White House chief of staff David Gergen in an interview with Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren, and as a "covert agent" by MSNBC's Chris Matthews. Yes, the correct term would be "undercover employee."  Bad on David and Chris.  But of course "Novak going public" on what he understands Plame's cover status to be from what Huggybear told him doesn't really make everybody in town stop what they're doing and change their secret spycodes.  And Carl, even if Plame wasn't an "agent" (which, in CIA parlance usually refers to a foreign national who is providing information or services to our government, while betraying the interests of their own), her CIA affiliation was still secret, and it was still wrong to disclose this, and Q.E.D., Republicans are evil.  Sorry, Carl, that's just how these things work. On to idiot 4, but only briefly, because I'm running out of righteous indignation tonight, so let's hear it for David Limbaugh, who is everywhere lately (in the fair-and-balanced right-wing press), being lauded for having courageously written a book which portrays how that hated minority, Christians, are so gravely persecuted in this country.  In two articles about his book this week, Dave has referred to the shocking case of little Kayla Broadus (and so has Ann Coulter, who devoted last week's column to promoting David's book--so let's just provide the link to that one, because it's late and Ann's version of events is always the most "colorful": so,  David Limbaugh: My Boyfriend).  As David and Ann ( and the scores of Evangelical websites who wrote extensively about this case long before Dave "courageously" broke the story), little Kayla coerced her little friends into holding hands with her while she recited this prayer at snacktime (and during reading time, per the school): "God is good, God is great, thank you, God, for my food."  And so her kindergarten teacher fed Kayla to the lions. Well, actually the school just sent a letter to her parents, telling them that Kayla wasn't to pray out loud in class anymore, especially since Kayla was a dope who was messing up the rhyme, which goes, as everyone knows: "God is great, God is good, now we thank him for our food."  Anyway, the parents took the case to court, and the judge said that Kayla could pray out loud, but could not make the other kids hold her hands while she did it.  Which, per David and Ann, is a STILL an alarming case of how anti-Christian judges and Republican-hating schools can take away your liberties.  And unless you're one of those treasonous, Jesus-hating LIBERALS you should be mad, MAD! that the government is infringing on Kayla's rights this way.  And you should still feel that way if little Kayla was making her school friends hold her hands in class and join her in praying "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger." More about why David is an idiot tomorrow. 2:55:31 AM