Valerie Plame's Last Day at the CIA
Sources Confirm Betrayed Agent's Departure From Agency
By PETE YOST, AP
WASHINGTON (Dec. 10) - Valerie Plame, the CIA officer whose exposure led to a criminal investigation of the Bush White House, spent her last day at the spy agency Friday.
Neither the agency nor Plame's husband would confirm her departure, but two people who have known Plame for a number of years confirmed she was leaving.
Married to Bush administration critic and former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Plame was working at agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, in 2003 when her CIA status was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak. That triggered a probe that led to the recent indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby.
Plame had served for many years at overseas postings for the CIA, and her employment remained classified when she took a headquarters desk job, traveling overseas periodically.
She was an employee in the CIA's Counterproliferation Division.
"Her career was arbitrarily and whimsically destroyed by a mean political trick," said Vincent Cannistraro, a former chief of operations for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.
Plame's CIA connection was disclosed eight days after her husband accused the Bush administration of twisting prewar intelligence to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.
In the preface to the paperback edition of his book, "The Politics of Truth," Wilson says that he and his wife were the focus of a "Republican smear machine."
Deputy White House chief of staff Karl Rove, President George W. Bush's top political adviser, remains under investigation in the Plame probe. Libby, who resigned from the government the day of his indictment, has pleaded not guilty to five counts of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to the FBI.
Plame has been cast by Bush administration defenders as "just a desk jockey at the CIA, someone who wasn't really undercover and a manipulative Mata Hari who aspired to bring down the Bush administration. All of that is false," said former CIA officer Larry Johnson, a friend of Plame. "At the end of the day, she was betrayed by her own government and they show no signs of remorse."
12-10-05 05:46 EST
This article is a wonderful example of how the news media loves to spin events and make them into something that never really existed before. Don't you like the way they refer to Mr Novak as a "conservative columnist", while they make Mrs V out to be this pitiful, poor, hardworking CIA agent equal to someone that had put her life on the line in high risk, covert, undercover operations in the face of terrible threats that can no longer do her job because someone knew she was married to Joe Wilson. And when the question came up about who told ole Joe to go to Africa and do a fact finding mission on discrediting the Presidents comments about intelligence reports from many other countries concerning "yellow cake" (something nuclear) they simply said, his wife did.
Lets stop here for just a moment- Did she have the authority to send him or even suggest that he be the one to go? (that would be like Bill Clinton having Monica handle the investigation of the stained dress)
I have not heard one news source ask that question, except Fox News, with no answers as of yet.
Has anyone actually read Joe's report. From what I can gather his report contained nothing that would show any contradiction to the initial intel reports that Bush had sourced. But the book he wrote about the trip states things somewhat differently. He simply opinionated his report based on his pre-conceived ideas and not on fact.
Lets face the truth!
1. She was not in danger
2. He should not be the one reseaching on CIA time and money.
3. They have pretty much concluded that no crime was committed surrounded the Plame game. Only mis-spoken answers to questioning by the investigators. (I could replay the tape with Clinton saying "I did not have sex with that woman" over and over here but I won't)
At the end of this article it almost makes me sick the way they use the betrayal song, while democratic leaders pipe off sound bite after sound bite on how this war on terror is not able to be won. They throw dishonor in the face of every American soldier with the spin rhetoric they pump through their sewer channels everyday, and for what? Political gain. They have not gained anything yet in my opinion.. But it is certainly evident that they will stop at nothing to bring down this administration, even if it cost them their pride, dignity and integrity; not that there was much of that left in that party anyway.
Just don't spew your venom on our men and women of the military that fights for a cause you have obviously forgotten about.
Jamey Green
Saturday, December 10, 2005
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