On the media-front, NPR did note the story in the headlines section of Morning Edition today, mostly highlighting the calls by some Senate Democrats for an independent investigation. There were no new facts, and indeed, the basic report on the incident sounded very much like the Sunday WaPo story.
Ogged has the following which inludes info from today’s WaPO which states that Plame was indeed undercover. While I have no cause to doubt that fact, I am still confused that if that was the case, why did the CIA confirm to Novak that she as an employee? Further, he stated yesterday that he had confirmed that she was just an analyst. Overall, someone somewhere is wrong, confused or lying.
The WaPo story also sheds some light on the CIA memo to Justice, which indicates that this is perhaps not routine:
Three weeks ago, intelligence officials said, the CIA returned to the Justice Department a standard 11-question form detailing the potential damage done by the release of the information. Officials said it may have been the first such report ever filed on the unauthorized disclosure of an operative’s name. Word of the Justice probe emerged over the weekend after the CIA briefed lawmakers on it last week.
Here’s more on Novak’s statements tonight via CNN.
Novak said Monday that he was working on the column when a senior administration official told him the CIA asked Wilson to go to Niger in early 2024 at the suggestion of his wife, whom the source described as “a CIA employee working on weapons of mass destruction.”
Another senior administration official gave him the same information, Novak said, and the CIA confirmed her involvement in her husband’s mission.
In his column, Novak attributed the information about Plame’s involvement in Wilson’s trip to Africa to two unnamed senior administration officials. But he did not attribute her name to them.
“[The CIA] asked me not to use her name, but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else,” he said.
The crux of the matter:
Novak said a confidential source at the CIA told him Plame was “an analyst, not a spy, not covert operative and not in charge of undercover operatives.”
Other CIA sources told CNN on Monday that Plame was an operative who ran agents in the field.
For anyone who hasn’t actually read the Novak piece in question, here’s the passage that is causing all the uproar:
Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. “I will not answer any question about my wife,” Wilson told me.
Here is a similar set of statements from a TIME.com piece:
The CIA triggered the Justice inquiry with a memo saying that there may have been an unauthorized disclosure about the wife of Joe Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador.
[...]
The CIA is required to notify Justice if it believes there may have been an unauthorized disclosure.
There is a certain pro forma feel to the procedure, but again, that may be the reportage.
I would be curious precisely what it is that normally triggers such a referral. Is it just the mention of CIA personnel in the press? Is there some other specific tripwire?
The Justice Department receives about 50 CIA referrals a year seeking a preliminary investigation into leaks of classified information, a senior administration official said. Very few ever get beyond the preliminary investigation.
Investigators have to answer a number of questions before deciding whether to begin a full-blown criminal investigation, the official said.
Among the most difficult to determine is how many people in the government might have been privy to the classified information. Other key questions are how much damage was done by disclosure, whether the leaker was aware the information was classified and whether that person had intended to violate the law.
[...]
After Novak’s column was published, the CIA’s Office of General Counsel sent a letter in late July to the Justice Department, saying that a violation of the law had apparently occurred when someone provided Novak with the CIA officer’s name. The letter was not signed by CIA Director George Tenet and did not call for a specific investigation of the White House.
It does appear that those calling for a independent investigation may have jumped the gun a bit, for even if there is something serious here, such an action seems premature at this point.
Ogged quotes a Drudge posting that quotes Novak noting that the CIA asked him not to use Plame’s name, but “but never indicated it would endanger her or anybody else.” This revelation, which seems to be a different quote than the Crossfire bite I heard earlier, is interesting, but continues to leave this whole story in a somewhat strange space, conclusion-wise.
Ogged thinks this proves that two senior administration officials committed a crime. I am not so sure, insofar as it makes no sense (whether the CIA wanted her name used or not) that they would confirm, over the phone to a reporter that Plame was an employee if that was classified information. Indeed, it makes no sense whatsoever for them to so much as discuss her, if, in fact, revealing her identity would compromise covert operations.
The whole thing boils down to whether or not she was covert operative, or just an analyst.
According to a radio report I just heard, Novak said on Crossfire today that he did not get the Plame info from a leak, but from an interview, and that when he called the CIA to confirm that she worked for them, they confirmed that fact–which would be strange if she was indeed some covert operative.
Following on James of OTB’s discussion (here, here, and elsewhere)of the lack of coverage of the Plame story, it is noteworthy that a Google News search on “Plame” shows only a handful of entries, and WaPo and Slate are the only major (ok, major and mid-level) sources listed.
UPDATE (4:24pm, cdt): Since I origially posted this, a few more stories have emerged (Newsday, VOA, WaTi, and CNN now all have stories).
I still feel as if I am not quite up to speed on the Plame affair, not so much because I haven’t now been exposed to the story in its current totality, but because the whole thing doesn’t fully track for me. For the example that I cannot understand why anyone would have, as reported in WaPo on Sunday, “outed” Ms. Plame for “revenge.” It isn’t that I don’t see the damage, but rather, of the things that could be done to punish Ms. Plame’s husband, Mr. Wilson (a critic of the administration and a central figure in obviating the claims that Iraq tried to purchase “yellowcake” from Niger), how this was considered to be a efficacious way to do so.
I am not saying that it didn’t happen, or couldn’t have happened, nor am I defending the administration. I am just saying the whole thing makes no sense. Especially the whole calling the media and “shopping” the info. Especially from a notoriously leak-averse White House.
Of interest is an NRO column by Clifford May which asks:
Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?
What also might be worth asking: “Who didn’t know?”
[...]
That wasn’t news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.
The rest of the column is an interesting critique of Mr. Wilson, but one that does not directly, in my view, deal with the Plame “outing” issue.
Now, Mr. May is a pro-administration partisan, but if what he says is true, then that puts a interesting spin on the overall situation, not to mention the “revenge” issue itself. A legitimate question at this point, to me, is what exactly was Mr. Plame’s status? Another question, that is inferred from Mr. May’s critique of Mr. Wilson is this: if Ms. Plame’s status was that delicate, why would the CIA assign her husband to this delicate and WMD-related task (WMD’s is Ms. Plame’s expertise)?
As I have noted, the whole story feels incomplete.
