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Valerie Plame

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This article deals with the individual. For focus on the political scandal, see Plame affair

Valerie Plame Wilson[1] (born April 19 1963) is a United States Central Intelligence Agency officer, who was identified as a CIA operative in a newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. The ensuing political controversy, commonly referred to as the Plame affair, or the CIA leak scandal, led, in late 2004, to a Justice Department investigation into possible violation of criminal statutes, including the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

File:Plame and Wilson.JPG
Valerie Plame with her husband Joseph C. Wilson, photographed after her CIA identity became public knowledge.

Background

On April 3, 1998, Plame became the third wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Plame met Wilson, her second husband, at a Washington D.C party in early 1997. She was able to reveal her CIA role to him while they were dating because he held a high-level security clearance. At the time, Wilson was separated from his second wife Jacqueline, a former French diplomat. Wilson and Plame are the parents of five-year-old twins.

File:Plame.jpg
Plame (rt.), date similar to photo above.

Education

Plame is a graduate of Pennsylvania State University in 1985, the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK, and the College of Europe, an international-relations school in Bruges. Soon after graduation, she started working for the U.S. government in Washington D.C. During her time at Penn State, she had worked on the business side of PSU's student newspaper, The Daily Collegian. According to an October 9, 2003 Collegian article, she previously attended Lower Moreland High School in Huntingdon Valley, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. [2]

Career

Little is known of Plame's professional career. While undercover, she had described herself as an "energy analyst" for the private company "Brewster Jennings & Associates," which the CIA later acknowledged was a front company for certain investigations. "Brewster Jennings" was first entered into Dun and Bradstreet records on May 22 1994, but D&B would not discuss the source of the filing. D&B records list the company as a "legal services office," located at 101 Arch Street.

One former CIA official, Larry C. Johnson, identified Plame as a "non-official cover operative" (NOC). He explained: "...that meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. If caught in that status she would have been executed." [3] David Armstrong, an Andover researcher for the Public Education Center, believed that the Brewster-Jennings & Assoc cover had not been done convincingly and that other covers would have been established for her by the CIA. [4]

It has been speculated that Plame likely would have worked in the office of former CIA Deputy Director of Operations (DDO) James Pavitt.

The Novak article

Columnist Robert Novak discussed Ambassador Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger in a syndicated article published on July 14, 2003. In it, Novak stated that Plame had a role in selecting Wilson for his trip to Niger:

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 [concerning alleged Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium in Niger]. 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. [5]

In a later column, Novak said he included this paragraph "because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission." He claimed:

I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one...During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. [6]

Other than the use of the word "operative", there was nothing in the article to suggest that Plame was engaged in covert activities. Novak later said a CIA source told him unofficially that Plame had been "an analyst, not in covert operations." The suggestion that Plame was a secret agent first appeared in an article by David Corn published by The Nation on July 16, 2003, two days after Novak's column. [7] Of course, because Plame's official cover was that she was working for a private company, Novak's identification of her as an Agency operative compromised both Plame's cover and the cover of all of the other covert operatives associated with that company. Larry Johnson wrote, "Robert Novak’s compromise of Valerie caused even more damage. It subsequently led to scrutiny of her cover company. This not only compromised her 'cover' company but potentially every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company or with her."[8] David Corn's later article, it is argued, only confirmed what Novak had already made clear.

Response to the article

Wilson charged that Plame's CIA status was deliberately exposed by Bush administration officials, as retaliation for his public charge that U.S. intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was largely a conspiracy to falsify and fabricate evidence to support the war. Wilson had denounced the Bush administration in a The New York Times article on 6 July 2003, writing that "some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." [9]

Novak indicated that he had used the term "operative" loosely, and had not intended it to identify Plame as an undercover agent. Novak's initial column identified Plame as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." He has since claimed that he believed Plame was merely an analyst at the CIA, not a covert operative —the difference being that analysts are not undercover, so identifying them is not a crime.

Critics of Novak's defense argue that after decades as a Washington reporter, Novak was well aware of the difference and would be unlikely to make such a mistake. A search of the LexisNexis database for the terms "CIA operative" and "agency operative" showed Novak had correctly used the terms to describe covert CIA employees, every single time they appear in his articles, including the Plame article.

David Corn, in his July 16th, 2003 blog post that deconstructed Novak's terminology, was the first publication to use the terms "covert" or "undercover" in regard to Plame's status at the CIA. Corn indicated in that post and subsequent ones that he was speculating that Plame might have been "covert" based on Novak's use of the term "Agency operative", which typically is applied only to covert CIA employees. In any case, once Novak had revealed that Plame worked at the CIA the secret was blown and Corn was not revealing anything new.

Novak has also claimed that Plame's CIA employment was an "open secret" in Washington DC, indicating that effective "affirmative measures" to conceal her relationship to the CIA were not being taken. Several ex-CIA operatives who knew Plame have disputed this and indicated that she was at one time a NOC (nonofficial cover) covert operative. Larry Johnson has stated that Wilson "agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport [and if she had been] caught in that status she would have been executed." [10]

In "The CIA Leak", Novak stated this explanation for the two "senior administration officials" and the "CIA official" referenced in his June 14 article:

During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger. He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: "Oh, you know about it." The published report that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue.
At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission. [11]

In other interviews, Novak confirmed that his sources warned him not to mention Plame. His motivation to disregard the warnings is suggested by this comment in "The CIA Leak:" "I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment." Just four days before he revealed Plame's name, Novak wrote "Bush's Enemy Within." Therein, Novak excoriates the Bush administration's appointment of Frances Townsend to an important national security post, explaining she could later betray Bush because two of her former superiors were liberal democrats and she had served in the US Attorney's office in Manhattan. According to Novak this office was "notoriously liberal laden." [12]

Novak's disregard for his sources' warnings may have been motivated not by particular, personal feelings about Wilson or the Iraq war, but by his general, peculiar concern the Bush Administration was appointing Democrats and liberals to government posts. In this scenario, the interpretation by Wilson and others that the first "leak" was designed to hurt Wilson or subvert Wilson's repeated denials that his wife recommended him for his trip to Niger would be erroneous. The officials who mentioned Plame's role would theoretically have done so without ill intent, "on background", in order to explain how a person no longer with the government was chosen for the trip, and with the assumption their warnings would be heeded.

Although there have been many discussions about government and journalistic ethics promulgated by the Valerie Plame matter, there has been little or no attention given to possible ethical breaches committed by Novak in foregoing his sources' warnings not to reveal Plame's name, breaches he attempts to ameliorate by blaming his sources for not giving him stronger warnings.

On February 12, 2004, Murray S. Waas for the American Prospect wrote that two "administration officials" spoke to the FBI and challenged Novak's account about not receiving warnings not to publish Plame's name. According to one of the officials, "At best, he is parsing words... At worst, he is lying to his readers and the public. Journalists should not lie, I would think." [13] Novak has also stated on CNN's Crossfire that "Nobody in the Bush administration called me to leak this." [14]

Responses of the Bush administration

President George W. Bush and his White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan have made several statements about the administration's response if anyone were found to have been involved in the leak:

McClellan - September 29, 2003: "The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." [15]
Bush - September 30, 2003: "I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." [16]
McClellan - October 7, 2003: "Let me answer what the President has said. I speak for the President and I'll talk to you about what he wants." and "If someone leaked classified information, the President wants to know. If someone in this administration leaked classified information, they will no longer be a part of this administration, because that's not the way this White House operates, that's not the way this President expects people in his administration to conduct their business." [17]
Bush - June 10, 2004: Responded to media question referring to "anybody who leaked the agent's [Valerie Plame's] name" and then asked the President "do you stand by your pledge to fire anyone found to have done so," to which the President responded "Yes. And that's up to the U.S. Attorney to find the facts." [18]
Bush - July 18, 2005: "If someone committed crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

Many people, including several former CIA officials who worked with Plame, as well as members of the press and politicians from both parties, pointing to the October 2003 and June 2004 statements, contend that the President has changed his position over time, from originally stating that he would fire anyone involved in the leak, to stating that only those who "committed a crime" would be fired. Members of the Bush Administration and some Republicans contend that the position has remained consistent — only those criminally responsible for the leak would be fired.


Novak's sources

In another series of leaks during July 2005, it was revealed that Karl Rove was Novak's second source [19]. Novak told Rove about Plame, using her maiden name. Through his personal attorney, Robert Luskin, Rove has stated that other media sources told him about Plame, although he's not sure which journalist first told him. Rove and his attorney do not dispute TIME Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper's contemporaneous email and subsequent grand jury testimony, as related by Cooper himself, that Cooper first learned Plame's identity from Rove. The investigation potentially involves multiple leak sources other than those who spoke to Novak, yet Novak was the first to print reference to Wilson's wife.

It is still publicly unknown who was Novak's first source, whom Novak described as "not a partisan gunslinger".

Justice Department investigation

The matter is currently under investigation by the Justice Department and the FBI. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself from the investigation in December 2003. U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald currently heads the investigation. Because the Justice Department is a part of the executive branch, some critics of the Bush Administration contend that the absence of rapid and effective action has been deliberate.

In March 2004, the Special Counsel subpoenaed the telephone records from Air Force One.

On April 7, 2005, the Washington Post reported that unnamed sources speculated Fitzgerald was not likely to seek an indictment for the alleged crime of knowingly exposing a covert officer (which prompted the inquiry), although he may possibly charge a government official with perjury for giving conflicting information to prosecutors during the investigation. [20]

Fitzgerald sought to compel Matt Cooper, a TIME Magazine correspondent who had covered the story, to disclose his sources to a grand jury. After losing all legal appeals up through the Supreme Court, TIME turned over Cooper's notes to the prosecutor. Cooper agreed to testify after receiving permission from his source, Karl Rove, to do so. Robert Luskin confirmed Rove was Cooper's source. A July 11, 2003 email from Cooper to his bureau chief indicated that Rove had told Cooper that it was Wilson's wife who authorized her husband's trip to Niger, mentioning that she "apparently" worked at "the agency" on weapons of mass destruction issues. Newsweek reported that nothing in the Cooper email suggested that Rove used Plame's name or knew she was a covert operative [21], although Cooper's TIME Magazine article describing his grand jury testimony noted that Rove said, "I've already said too much." Neither Newsweek nor TIME have released the complete Cooper email.

The leak to Newsweek, presumably from TIME Magazine, was the first major leak of investigative information. More attenuated leaks have followed, seemingly tailored to either include or absolve various officials and media personages. As of late July 2005, Fitzgerald's office has apparently not talked to the press. White House officials such as Press Secretary Scott McClellan and the President have not made any on-the-record comments concerning the investigation since Newsweek's e-mail scoop, although other Republican officials, particularly RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, are talking with the press.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller started serving a civil contempt jail sentence in early July 2005 for refusing to testify to the grand jury. Miller indicates that, unlike Cooper's, her source has not sufficiently waived confidentiality. Miller's assertion — like most assertions in this case — is disputed. [22]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ While officially named "Valerie Wilson," she has been better known in the media by her maiden name, Plame. The convention has been to refer to Valerie Wilson as "Plame," while "Wilson" refers to Joe Wilson. The New York Times reported on 5 July, 2005, that her "husband said she has used her married name both at work and in her personal life since their 1998 marriage." Real estate records corroborate this. Joe Wilson told NBC's Today on July 14 2005, "My wife's name is Wilson, it's Mrs. Joseph Wilson. It is Valerie Wilson." Robert Novak printed her maiden name, Plame, which he claims to have retrieved from Joseph Wilson's Who's Who in America entry, since Novak referenced that publication as a source of information on Joseph Wilson and his wife.
  2. ^ Vanity Fair's profile on Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame, Vanity Fair magazine.
  3. ^ United States Federal Electoral Commission (Advanced Search)
  4. ^ Larry Johnson, "The Big Lie about Valerie Plame"
  5. ^ Ross Kerber and Bryan Bender, "Apparent CIA front didn't offer much cover", Boston Globe
  6. ^ Robert Novak, "Mission to Niger" (Syndicated column)
  7. ^ Robert Novak, "The CIA leak" (Syndicated column)
  8. ^ David Corn, "A White House Smear", The Nation (blog).
  9. ^ Joseph C. Wilson IV, "What I Didn't Find in Africa" (6 July, 2003), New York Times
  10. ^ Robert Garcia Tagorda, "Joseph Wilson's Political Contributions" (blog), September 30, 2003; references Open Secrets Donor name: wilson, Donor State: DC, Cycles selected: 2006, 2004, 2002 and Donor name: wilson, Donor State: DC, Cycles selected: 2000, 1998.
  11. ^ Larry Johnson, "The Big Lie about Valerie Plame"
  12. ^ Robert Novak, "The CIA leak" (Syndicated column)
  13. ^ Robert Novak, "Bush's enemy within" (Syndicated column)
  14. ^ Murray S. Waas, "Plame Gate", American Prospect.
  15. ^ David Ensor (contributor), et al. "Novak: 'No great crime' with leak", CNN.
  16. ^ David Johnston; & Richard W. Stevenson, "Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on C.I.A. Officer", New York Times.
  17. ^ A.S. "AP falsely reported Wilson 'acknowledged his wife was no longer in an undercover job' when her identity was first publicly leaked", Media Matters for America.
  18. ^ Christopher Wolf (neighbour and lawyer for Valerie Plame), "Plame Investigation Is Not a 'Game'", Washington Post (Letter to the Editor), January 18, 2005, Page A16.
  19. ^ Carol D. Leonnig, "Papers Say Leak Probe Is Over", Washington Post, Page A12.
  20. ^ Michael Isikoff, "Matt Cooper's Source", Newsweek.
  21. ^ Cliff Kincaid, "Why Judith Miller Should Stay In Jail", Accuracy In Media

References

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