Here’s the real reason the CIA agent was outed

V.P. Cheney's chief of staff spy leaker?
Here's an interesting perspective re the identity of the Whitehouse leakers
---BumbleBeeBoogie

Cheney Chief-of-Staff Named as Spy-gate Leaker
by Justin Raimondo
October 2, 2003 - http://antiwar.com/

MSNBC'S Buchanan & Press scored a major scoop on Wednesday, all but unmasking the high government official who "outed" a CIA operative via a July 14 column by Robert Novak. Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst who worked with Valerie Plame, the reported agent, all but identified "Scooter" Libby as the government official who outed her - and at least one other in the Vice President's office.

Who is "Scooter" Libby?

He's the nexus of the neocon network in Washington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and assistant to the President, whose office is the operational nerve center of the War Party. It is Libby and Cheney who made repeated trips to the CIA, pressuring them to accept tall tales of Al Qaeda connections and assorted "weapons of mass destruction" supposedly lurking in Baghdad - including the Niger-uranium yellowcake "evidence" that Iraq had acquired fissionable material for a nuclear weapon.

The documents purportly proving the Niger-Iraq uranium connection turned out to be a crude forgery.

Pressed by Pat Buchanan to name the leaker, Johnson refused to deny it was Libby; he furthermore stated that the perpetrator was no stranger to "scandal."

As Marc Rich's longtime lawyer, and a key figure in procuring the fugitive billionaire a presidential pardon, Lewis ""Scooter" Libby surely fits the bill.

Johnson also rebutted widespread stories that Plame wasn't an undercover intelligence officer. Clifford May, of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, has said her status was an open secret, and that she was an analyst whose life would not be placed in danger if her CIA connection was revealed. Asked by Buchanan if Plame's work would have taken her overseas, where compromising her CIA affiliation would put her in physical danger, Johnson's answer was an emphatic yes. Furthermore, he emphasized, her outing would put all her various overseas contacts in jeopardy.

Developing ...

Spy feuds raise heat in capital
from the October 03, 2003 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1003/p01s01-uspo.html

Spy feuds raise heat in capital
The harsh words on exposing a secret agent reflect deep splits over intelligence matters.
By Peter Grier and Faye Bowers | Staff writers of The Christian Science Monitor

WASHINGTON - Tensions created by troubles in Iraq have exploded into finger-pointing and high-level bickering in Washington.

What's new about this week's struggles is that they are not entirely partisan. In Congress, key Republicans are causing as much trouble for the White House as Democrats over such matters as funding for Iraqi reconstruction, and the search for those elusive weapons of mass destruction.

Most ominous for the administration may be the dispute over whether a Bush official leaked the name of a CIA clandestine operative to the media. It was the CIA itself that requested the Justice Department to look into this matter, and the CIA rank-and-file remain furious over the incident.

Thus the investigation into the matter may now represent the revenge of intelligence analysts who felt the administration hyped the danger posed by Saddam Hussein's regime before the war.

"That is what this [dispute] is all about - the politicization of intelligence," says Stanley Bedlington, a former senior analyst in the CIA's counterterrorism center.

Disputes over the progress of President Bush's $87 billion request for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan may be embarrassing for the administration, but they are unlikely to result in major changes to the legislation.

For instance, this week the Senate handily defeated an effort by Sen. Robert Byrd (D) of West Virginia to shrink the amount of Iraqi reconstruction aid contained in the package from $20.3 billion to $5.1 billion.

However, pressure is building on the White House to make part of this aid a loan, instead of a grant. Support for such a move comes from both sides of the aisle, and includes both conservative and moderate Republicans.

"Given all the needs here in the United States, we have to sometimes draw lines, and that's one of them," says Sen. Olympia Snow (R) of Maine.

Administration officials say that the last thing the tottering Iraqi economy needs right now is more debt. Nor does the US want to do anything to bolster the widespread impression overseas that one of the main reasons the US went to war in the first place was to somehow gain control of Iraqi oil.

Meanwhile, the so-far fruitless search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq continues to frustrate the White House and serve as an easy target for criticism.

The CIA's special adviser for the weapons search, former UN chief weapons inspector David Kay, visited Capitol Hill on Thursday and updated Congress on his progress, or rather, on the lack thereof.

At the time of writing, details of his testimony had not been publicly released. But he was expected to have no new revelations to report. "He's not ruling anything out or in at this point on the search for WMD," says a CIA spokesman.

Two months ago Kay told Congress he was making "solid progress." Today some of his conclusions reportedly include the belief that Iraq may have retained civilian technology that could have been converted to WMD production capability on short notice.

The administration has clearly backtracked on its claims for Iraqi WMD in recent months, say critics. "We've gone from [saying they had] programs, to capabilities, to intentions to develop capabilities," says Joseph Cirincione, senior associate and director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

As part of its $87 billion bill, the administration is asking for $600 million to continue the weapons hunt, on top of $300 million already spent, notes Mr. Cirincione.

While Mr. Kay and his effort may get those funds, it is likely to face more scrutiny from increasingly skeptical legislators.

"Congress is no longer likely to give [Kay] the latitude it once did," says Cirincione.

The White House's most acute problem related to Iraq is clearly the uproar over the alleged leaking of Valerie Plame, a CIA officer, by someone with administration ties.

Ms. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, had angered the White House by publicly disputing its claims that Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium for a nuclear program in Niger.

Many in the CIA remain convinced that the White House distorted intelligence about Saddam Hussein's WMD programs and ties to terrorism prior to the Iraq war. Analysts were stung by charges from administration hard-liners that they were being too timid in their conclusions on this crucial issues.

Now they may be getting their revenge.

"I know there's a lot of anger in the CIA. [The White House] tried to foist the blame and use the agency as a scapegoat," says Mr. Bedlington.

It's possible this revenge theory may be overblown, however. Former CIA director Stansfield Turner notes that it is relatively routine for the agency to refer possible security breaches to the Justice Department.

"Of course, [CIA chief] George Tenet is really under pressure from his own people who they need to be backed up by their director, because they've been under pressure from [Vice President] Cheney and others," says Mr. Turner.

Sounds like beds are being made and bread is being buttered.

All we need to know now is...who is going to be made to lie in them and who is going to be made to eat it.

Wanna bet the expression "What did the president know and when did he know it?" will be heard inside the beltway once again?

May I say that this whole so-called CIA scandal is a fabrication to envigorate the CIA for future administrations.

If this thing were a REAL scandal, it would never even reach mainstream media, make no doubt about it. Then why did it? The psychological effect of this so-called scandal is 1) the legitimation for the CIA as an 'intelligence agency', which it is not at all; it's a covert operation and propaganda agency with vast powers at home, and 2) revive doubts about whether Saddam Hussein might then possess WMD's after all - as the CIA leak would create such an impression.

For the last two years, there have been hidden psyop strategies involved in every news story that involved the CIA. In every CIA media story, the illusion that the CIA might serve some democratic purpose, and is really trying to catch the bad guys out there (which it is NOT), remains the eventual conclusion that lingers in the minds of the public. And that's what these so-called leaks and scandals involving the CIA are about: to keep that illusion (and future funding) alive.

Frank<

I agree with you on the question you pose in the above quote.

Dubya, however, is too stupid to know anything and too busy trying to find the WMDs in Iraq to know that he doesn't know anything.

Wilson and Novak were both interviewed by Tim Russert on Meet the Press. If anyone doesn't come out of this knowing that Dubya has painted himself into a corner and has tried to sneak out of the room, they are ignoring the footprints.