Slice:
Some suspect that the White House leaked her name in retaliation for a July 6, 2003, op-ed piece in the New York Times written by Wilson, her husband. He accused the administration of twisting intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.We already know that this administration is okay with killing people for a cause because "it is worth it," so the connection of these dots is not beyond the stretch of imagination. If true, it is indeed criminal, carrying a max sentence of 10 years.
Slice:
In addition to putting an end to Valerie Plame's operational usefulness, the revelation of her identity poses a substantial, perhaps even mortal, threat to whatever foreign officials or private citizens might have been supplying her with information about their nations' attempts to create WMD capacity. It is quite likely that some of those people are now in dungeons having their fingernails pulled out, or being subjected to whatever alternative form of encouragement the local secret police like to use.That will tend to have a discouraging effect on future agent recruitment efforts. Thus, unlike most violations of security regulations, "outing" Valerie Plame as a CIA officer could well have caused palpable damage to U.S. national security.
3 comments:
That is the rationale that I heard was the reason for the "outing" of Plame. Her husband had been openly critical of the Bush administration's orders to intelligence agencies to produce intelligence that would justify their invasion of Iraq. "Fixed" intelligence, as the Downing Street minutes later called it. But until recently, all the attention had been on Novak as the one who outed her. I hope something comes of this!
Windspike, on Moxie's blog you asked, "Has anyone tracked down Wilson's original article?"
Here it is, thanks to Information Clearing House: Mission to Niger. I posted this there, too, in case you go there first.
Yup, I'm the King o' Links! 8^)
Thanks Shea. Blog on Brother.
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