Wes Pruden -- Shut Up, Jackass

In a June 19 column advocating a presidential pardon for former vice presidential chief of staff and current felon Scooter Libby, Washington Times Editor-in-Chief Wesley Pruden claimed that "[a]s it turns out, [former CIA operative Valerie Plame] was not a secret agent at all, but little more than a clerk assigned to clip and paste newspaper and magazine articles." Pruden concluded his bullshit column "[s]ince she was not a secret agent, under the law there was no harm, no foul."

WHY do we have to keep refighting this argument? Valerie Plame Wilson WAS a COVERT operative. Her identity was CLASSIFIED and should not have been revealed. She DID travel undercover as part of her CIA employment. She DID have a non-official cover that identified her as the employee of a civilian energy research company.

Before jackasses like Wes Pruden start braying they should know the FACTS. Like these, for instance:

It was clear from very early in the investigation that Ms. Wilson qualified under the relevant statute (Title 50, United States Code, Section 421) as a covert agent whose identity had been disclosed by public officials, including Mr. Libby, to the press.

On 1 January 2002, Valerie Wilson was working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations (DO). She was assigned to the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) at CIA Headquarters, where she served as the Chief of a CPD component with responsibility for weapons proliferation issues related to Iraq.

While assigned to CPD, Ms. Wilson engaged in temporary duty (TDY) travel overseas on official business. She traveled at least seven times to more than ten countries. When traveling overseas, Ms. Wilson always traveled under a cover identity -- sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias -- but always using cover -- whether official or non-official cover (NOC) -- with no ostensible relationship to the CIA.

At the time of the initial unauthorized disclosure in the media of Ms. Wilson's employment relationship with the CIA on 14 July 2003, Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for whom the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States.

Valerie Plame was a covert intelligence officer covered by the Intelligence Officer's Identity Protection Act, and Lewis "Scooter" Libby lied to the grand jury. These two truths emerge from the opinion written by Judge Tatel, of the U.S. Court of Appeals, and released in February 2005. Thanks to a FOIA request by the Wall Street Journal we now have a more complete record, although key parts of his decision are still blacked out. Perhaps most of the media will now realize that they have been fed a pack of lies by the likes of Ken Mehlman, Victoria Toensing, Cliff May and others.

Valerie Plame was undercover until the day she was identified in Robert Novak's column. I entered on duty with Valerie in September of 1985. Every single member of our class--which was comprised of Case Officers, Analysts, Scientists, and Admin folks--were undercover. I was an analyst and Valerie was a case officer. Case officers work in the Directorate of Operations and work overseas recruiting spies and running clandestine operations. Although Valerie started out working under "official cover"--i.e., she declared she worked for the U.S. Government but in something innocuous, like the State Department--she later became a NOC aka non official cover officer. A NOC has no declared relationship with the United States Government.

Of course, Pruden DOES know all these facts. He chooses to ignore them, as does anyone else who insists on claiming that Valerie Wilson wasn't a covert operative and that leaking her identity was no big deal.