All the Republican Candidates Except Ron Paul Either Dodged or Lied About Valerie Plame Scandal
by James Buchanan
No less than George Bush’s father, a former CIA chief, stated that exposing the identity of a CIA agent was the most “insidious” form of treason. Too bad no one in Junior’s administration takes those words seriously. In fact, relatively few people in the Republican Party are stepping up to the plate and denouncing the treason that took place when COVERT agent Valerie Plame’s identity was exposed thanks to a whisper campaign by top officials in the Bush administration.
There was not just one person responsible for exposing Valerie Plame’s identity as some GOP candidates claim. Both Dick Cheney and Karl Rove fed Valerie Plame’s name to the media. They deserve to be put on trial for treason even more than the mindless reporters who published her name. These reporters definitely should go on trial for leaking classified information along with their editors. What the hell were they thinking? Would these folks publish the plans for an A-bomb if that were leaked too?? Some things require common sense. Perhaps a few convictions of reporters AND editors would be a wake up call to the media not to leak classified information.
Valerie Plame was doing covert work at the CIA at least until Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby dug up her name, passed it around and published it. She was the head of a covert company set up to do covert work employing covert agents operating in foreign lands. Despite all this, some neocon talk show hacks are still trying to claim that she had nothing to do with classified work.This lie was repeated whole-heartedly by various Republican presidential candidates. Only Ron Paul broke through the dishonesty pointing out that Scooter Libby had played a key role in lying the United States into the Iraq War and casting a little cloud of doubt over Mr. Libby’s head, which is currently occupying a prison cell for the crime of perjury.
One of the many lies passed around is that “she boasted about her CIA job at cocktail parties.” If there were any truth to that “Karl Rove” rumor, Ms. Plame would have been subject to discipline within the CIA for talking too much. Some neocon lawyers have jumped into the mix trying to nitpick the definition of “covert.” The one fig leaf that various portly neocons are trying to hide behind is that to be convicted it must be proven that the offending individual knew that Ms. Plame was covert.
Well, that was the whole point of outing her wasn’t it? Valerie Plame’s husband Joe Wilson embarrassed the Bush administration when he exposed the fact that Iraq was not seeking uranium from Niger, contrary to what Bush said in his State of the Union speech. The neocons wanted to punish Wilson so they went after his wife, exposing her identity as a CIA agent and ruining her career. If Valerie Plame worked at Bank of America, would the neocons have told Robert Novak about her? Of course, not.
A few neocons claimed that Valerie Plame assigned her husband to investigate whether Iraq was seeking Nigerian uranium. In recent testimony, Ms. Plame stated she had no authority to choose him for that job. Joe Wilson was a former ambassador with experience in Africa, who was well-qualified for that assignment.
The neocons are acting as though outing Valerie Plame was a fraternity boy prank. At the very least, they have ruined the promising career of a CIA agent. The front organization set up by the CIA, which she was running, has been ruined and the agents working for that organization had their lives endangered (especially if they were in foreign countries at the time Plame was outed).
Outing Valerie Plame was an act of treason. If no one is punished for this, our entire foreign intelligence operation has been severely undermined. As Valerie Plame testified recently, her employment by the CIA should have been a “red flag” to anyone who came across this information. Anyone with any common sense should have assumed that she was doing secret work as a CIA employee. Assuming anything less was criminally negligent. People are sent to jail all the time for criminally negligent behavior. In this case, everyone involved from Dick Cheney to Robert Novak should have known better than to out a CIA agent. While it’s true that some CIA agents may have paper-pushing jobs such as accountants, this was NOT the case for Valerie Plame. She was heading a secret CIA front employing secret CIA spies. Her identity needed to be kept secret for national security.