Prince pickleprince wrote:
Valerie Plame broke her own cover?
Fact: Valerie Plame was employed by the CIA as a "non official cover" (NOC) operative. What that means is that her mere employment at CIA is a matter of national security.
Fact: On Feb 19th, 2002, Valerie Plame appeared in CIA headquarters at a briefing which included several members of the INR (State Department) and CIA. She handled introductions at the meeting, specifically introducing Wilson (presumably not identified as her husband at the time) to the INR and CIA members attending.
Questions:
1. Was Valerie Plame clearly acting as an employee of the CIA at that meeting? Did she have a CIA badge? What exactly was her role there? We know what she *did*. We know that she appeared to members of the State Department in a CIA building in some level of official capacity (she wasn't a guest obviously since she was handling part of the meeting).
2. Can we assume then that those members of the state department who attended that meeting believed her to be an employee of the CIA? Does this constitute "breaking cover"?
3. What name did she use at the meeting? Was she identified by name at all? If she was, one can assume that she didn't use her married name (if for no other reason then to counter even the possiblity of relation between herself and the person she was introducing).
That last one is extremely relevant, since it gives us a huge hint as to what really happened. Novaks article named her "Valerie Plame". Yet, by her own account, that's not a name she uses in any official way. Her checkbooks all have her married name. All her official papers ore in the name of Valerie Wilson. Loans, cars, accounts.. all under the last name of Wilson. This is *hugely* significant. If Novak was investigating "Wilson's Wife", he would have started with Wilson, moved to his wife, and then perhaps found out she worked at the CIA (that's the theory eveone's working on and assuming he was leaked that info). But if that was the case, why would he call her "Valerie Plame"? That makes no sense. He'd call her by her name, not go digging through old documents to uncover her maiden name and call her that.
The use of the name Valerie Plame *only* makes sense if Novaks investigation started with someone named Valerie Plame and ended at the realization that that was Wilson's wife. And the only reason I can see why he'd be starting with that name is if that was the name given as someone involved in Wilson's trip.
So the logical scenario is that she did identify herself at that meeting. She identified herself as a CIA employee named Valerie Plame. When Novak investigated the meeting, he was led to this woman and investigated her. Eventually, he figured out (how is somewhat irrelevant) that this mystery woman who set up the metting between Wilson and the CIA and the INR was none other then Wilson's wife!
That was the news that Novak was going after. That's what he dug up. The fact that she was a CIA employee was never something he would have needed to dig up or have leaked to him. He *started* with that knowledge, since he was specifically digging into the idenity of the CIA employee who set up the meeting.
Assuming that's even close to what happened (and it's the only explanation that makes 100% sense), then Plame did indeed out herself when she appeared in that meeting. She did what she was not supposed to do: Identified herself as a CIA employee to people who were not cleared to know she was a NOC. That's the end of it. There's your leak.
I'll admit that this is just a theory. But it's the only one that fits all the information we have.
Edited, Wed Oct 19 21:45:17 2005 by gbaji