I haven’t posted in all the brouhaha about Rove & the Plame leak as I’ve been quite ill, but I have been mulling over the details as they come out and trying to see how this all fits into the timeline we put together on Gannon’s role in the whole mess {Jeff Gannon & L’Affaire Plame}

And today, just now, with Hunter’s latest post, I think I’ve got it. I welcome critical analysis and discussion, but this just strikes me as something Fitzgerald would already know…

Follow me on the flip…
Hunter brings up the leak to Pincus and the additional information surrounding her cover/ position with the CIA and the patronage aspect of the meme…

Well… how about this…

Here’s Novak’s original “outing” –

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. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him.

After eight days in the Niger capital of Niamey (where he once served), Wilson made an oral report in Langley that an Iraqi uranium purchase was “highly unlikely,” though he also mentioned in passing that a 1988 Iraqi delegation tried to establish commercial contacts. CIA officials did not regard Wilson’s intelligence as definitive, being based primarily on what the Niger officials told him and probably would have claimed under any circumstances. The CIA report of Wilson’s briefing remains classified.

All this was forgotten until reporter Walter Pincus revealed in the Washington Post June 12 that an unnamed retired diplomat had given the CIA a negative report. Not until Wilson went public on July 6, however, did his finding ignite the firestorm.

On October 17th, in the WSJ, David S. Cloud writes this about the “memo” that Novak references and on which the leak was based… about the Plame leak and the decision to send Wilson to Niger:

An internal government memo addresses some of the mysteries at the center of the White House leak investigation and could help investigators in the search for who disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency operative, according to two people familiar with the memo.

The memo, prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel, details a meeting in early 2002 where CIA officer Valerie Plame and other intelligence officials gathered to brainstorm about how to verify reports that Iraq had sought uranium yellowcake from Niger.

Ms. Plame, a member of the agency’s clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested at the meeting that her husband, Africa expert and former U.S. diplomat Joseph Wilson, could be sent to Niger to investigate the reports, according to current and former government officials familiar with the meeting at the CIA’s Virginia headquarters. Soon after, midlevel CIA officials decided to send him, say intelligence officials.

Classified memos, like the one describing Ms. Plame’s role, have limited circulation and investigators are likely to question all those known to have received it. Intelligence officials haven’t denied Ms. Plame was involved in the decision to send Mr. Wilson, but they have said she was not “responsible” for the decision.

….

According to current and former officials familiar with the memo, it describes interagency discussions of the yellowcake mystery: whether the reports of Iraq’s uranium purchases were credible; which agency should pay for any further investigation; and the suggestion that Mr. Wilson could be sent to check out the allegations. Other officials with knowledge of the memo wouldn’t say if it mentions Ms. Plame by name as the one who suggested Mr. Wilson, or if her identity is shielded but obvious because of what is known now about the mission. Operations officers like Ms. Plame are sometimes identified only by their first names even in interagency meetings.

I parsed this baby once, but not enough I see now. Let’s take this step by step.

  1. Cloud is relying on “two people” who had seen the memo, but presumably not himself in the first paragraph. Two people. Not two “government officials”, not “two intelligence officers” as he then goes on to cite, but just two plain ol’ people. Coulda been Novak. Coulda been Miller. Coulda been Fidel Castro. Who knows, but that choice of wording is really bizarre.
  2. Cloud then details that Plame was covert and working on Iraqi weapons issues & that she suggested at the meeting that her husband could be a good candidate for the trip to Niger. His sources on this are current and former government officials who were familiar with the meeting at Langley. I didn’t catch this the first time around… former gov’t officials? So who was talking to Cloud? Who was in the gov’t with the necessary clearing in Feb 2002 when the meeting occurred, and who was not there by Oct 2003? And when exactly did they give him all this background info?
  3. Then, within the same paragraph, he cites Intelligence officials (presumably CIA) describing who actually decided to send Wilson. He continues to affirm that, according to the Intelligence officials, Valerie was involved, but not the decision maker.
  4. At the end of the piece he flips back to his current & former officials for more details on the memo… but then something strange happens… he flips sources again in the same paragraph to reveal the most crucial piece of the puzzle… other officials with knowledge of the memo wouldn’t say if it mentions Ms. Plame by name as the one who suggested Mr. Wilson, or if her identity is shielded but obvious because of what is known now about the mission. Operations officers like Ms. Plame are sometimes identified only by their first names even in interagency meetings. Other officials… what other officials? Government officials? Intelligence officials? Customs officials? And MORE THAN ONE OF THEM?

And notice what those “Other Officials” said… Valerie Plame would not have been identified by name in that memo as she was covert. That memo is not the smoking gun (if it was in fact real). Someone with high-level CIA classified access, who potentially attended and knew Valerie Plame as Joe Wilson’s wife by sight, or was debriefed by someone who did. We know the memo was a fake (or at least think we do, Jeff Gannon says the Senate Intelligence Committee said it wasn’t), so whomever was talking was at the meeting or was debriefed by someone who was. It is very interesting to note which of Cloud’s sources reference a memo and which reference a meeting.

So who from the WH or Pentagon was at that meeting?

And what does that tell us about who was leaked to first… Pincus or Novak?

… critique away… I can’t wait to see someone frogmarched out of the WH… 🙂