Plame was ‘covert’ agent at time of name leak

Newly released unclassified document details CIA employment

By Joel Seidman

Producer

NBC News

Updated: 4:24 p.m. ET May 29, 2007

WASHINGTON
– An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame’s
employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time
today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald,
indicates that Plame was “covert” when her name became public in July
2003.

The summary is part of an attachment
to Fitzgerald’s memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation
that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former top aide,
spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak
investigation.

The nature of Plame’s CIA employment never came up in Libby’s perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

Undercover travel
The
unclassified summary of Plame’s employment with the CIA at the time
that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14,
2003 says, “Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was
taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to
the United States.”

Plame worked as an
operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to
the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The
employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame,
“engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business.”
The report says, “she traveled at least seven times to more than ten
times.” When overseas Plame traveled undercover, “sometimes in
true name and sometimes in alias — but always using cover — whether
official or non-official (NOC) — with no ostensible relationship to
the CIA.”

Criminal prosecution beat national security
After
the Novak column was published and Plame’s identity was widely reported
in the media, and according to the document, “the CIA lifted Ms
Wilson’s cover” and then “rolled back her cover” effective to the date
of the leak.

The CIA determined, “that the
public interest in allowing the criminal prosecution to proceed
outweighed the damage to national security that might reasonably be
expected from the official disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s employment and
cover status.”

The CIA has not divulged any
other details of the nature of Plame’s cover or the methods employed by
the CIA to protect her cover nor the details of her classified
intelligence activities. Plame resigned from the CIA in December
2005.

Plame and her husband, former
Ambassador Joseph Wilson have filed a lawsuit against four current or
former top Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick
Cheney, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to
destroy her career at the CIA.

‘I felt like I had been hit in the gut’
In
March at a House of Representatives hearing, Plame testified saying,
“My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior
government officials in both the White house and the State Department”

She described how it felt to see her true identity exposed in the morning paper, her career destroyed she said.

“I felt like I had been hit in the gut, it was over in an instant, I immediately thought of my family’s safety.”

Plame’s
identity was leaked to reporters in 2003, after her husband began
criticizing the Bush administration. She claims her constitutional
rights were violated by the administration and is demanding
compensation.

No leak charges
Several
administration officials, including Libby, former State Department
official Richard Armitage and Bush advisor Karl Rove, disclosed Plame’s
identity to reporters.

No one was ever
charged with the leak of Plame’s name itself, which would have been a
crime only if someone knowingly gave our information about someone
covered by a specific law protecting the identities of covert agents.

Fitzgerald
wrote last week in the 18-page memo, “Particularly in a case such as
this, where Mr. Libby was a high-ranking government official whose
falsehoods were central to issues in a significant criminal
investigation, it is important that this court impose a sentence that
accurately reflects the value the judicial system places on
truth-telling in criminal investigations.”

The
special counsel recommended to the judge that Libby not receive any
leniency, because, he writes, “He has expressed no remorse, no
acceptance of responsibility, and no recognition that there is anything
he should have done differently – either with respect to his false
statements and testimony, or his role in providing reporters with
classified information about Ms. Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA.”

Libby
was convicted in March of four of five felony counts against him. He is
scheduled to be sentenced on June 5th before U.S. District Judge Reggie
Walton.

Joel Seidman is an NBC producer, based in Washington.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

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