Funmurphys: the Blog

What About The CIA and Plame?

First off, Alex at the Parks Department has put together an excellent list of leaks on "Wilsongate".

As long as the press is faulting the Bush administration on the pace of it's investigation into who leaked Valerie Plame's CIA status, why aren't they faulting Novak, who knows who leaked, and the six journalists who reportedly know who leaked (because they were leaked to but didn't publish)? Oh that's right, because their careers might suffer. Look, this is a serious matter, and probably a crime, and I for one think playing by journalism's rules (as Craig repeats them from Edward J Epstein's book) makes no sense. The bottom could be gotten to in an afternoon of eight journalists in front of a grand jury. I mean, do we really want the press to shield criminals? Does that really serve some larger purpose?

Plame's employment with the CIA was classified. Sometimes people think if you have a security classification, its OK for you to be informed of any classified information of the appropriate level. This is not true. You have to have a need to know the classified information to carry out the tasks for which you have a security clearance. That is the general rule. I can't be told classified information just because I have a clearance. Sometimes, it's a little more formalized, and some information has an access list - in other words, only certain pre-defined people can be told particular classified information - they are the only ones to have a need to know. I would think in a properly run CIA, the identities of clandestine agents, which apparently covers Plame, would be access list controled, with a different list for each such agent, with the list limited to as small a number of people as possible. This limits the damage moles and captured agents can do.

So here's what I find odd - how did somebody in the Bush Administration know she worked for the CIA? Did the CIA not keep her name close to the vest? As an undercover operative, you'd think they'd want to protect her name. Let's turn to Nick Kristof's piece (which I by and large agree with):"Third, Mrs. Wilson's intelligence connections became known a bit in Washington as she rose in the CIA and moved to State Department cover, but her job remained a closely held secret." This jibes with Clifford May's piece in National Review that he was told in an offhand manner by a former government worker. In other words, somehow her status got out of the CIA itself - and excuse me, you can't be an overcover operative if everybody knows you work for the CIA even if nobody knows what you do there. So as long as we're investigating the leak from the Bush administration (which as I've pointed out before should be child's play but isn't), we should also be investigating the leak from the CIA (which nobody has mentioned yet). Maybe it was a structural leak - people who didn't know she was an undercover operative (because that is a closely guarded secret known only to a few) didn't see anything wrong in letting slip that she worked for the CIA because at this point she was currently not undercover- in which case the CIA needs to rethink how they handle that situation.

I have no idea how much damage this has done (if any) to CIA networks and agents - and anybody who does isn't (or at least shouldn't) be talking to the press. Apparently she may have been unmasked earlier - by our old buddy Aldrich Ames. Still, I'm upset that somebody either deliberately or inadvertinately in the Bush Administration leaked the name of a CIA operative, which is a serious breach of trust, and that the CIA didn't protect their own operative.

Why hasn't the press asked the question of how (not why or who) the name of an undercover CIA operative popped out of the mouth of an administration official? I guess because nobody's leaked why that may be important to a journalist.