JOE WILSON, HUSBAND OF THE UNMASKED CIA AGENT VALERIE PLAME, SAYS THERE HAVE BEEN THREATS AGAINST HER 60 MINUTES SUNDAY
Drudge Report
Fri Oct 28 2005 20:56:07 ET
Former CIA Colleagues say the Unmasking of Plame Could Cause Harm to Other Agents
Joe Wilson, whose wifes unmasking as a CIA agent is at the center of the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgeralds investigation, said today that that his wife, Valerie Plame, has been threatened. Wilson talks to Ed Bradley in his first interview since Fitzgerald announced the indictment of I. Lewis Libby. It will be broadcast on 60 MINUTES Sunday Oct. 30 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.
There have been specific threats [against Plame]. Beyond that I just cant go, Wilson tells Bradley. Wilson says he and his wife have discussed security for her with several agencies.
Former CIA colleagues say that by revealing her identity, harm could be caused to the CIAs agents and operations. If a CIA agent is exposed, then everyone coming in contact with that agent is exposed, says Jim Marcinkowski, a former CIA agent who trained with Plame at the top-secret Virginia facility known as the Farm. There is a possibility that there were other agents that would use that same kind of a cover. So they may have been using Brewster Jennings just like her, said Marcinkowski, referring to the fictional firm the CIA set up as her cover that also came out when journalists, including Robert Novak, disclosed it.
Marcinkowski also points out, [Plame] is the wife of an ambassador, for example. Now, since this happened
theyll know theres a possibility that the wife of a U.S. ambassador is a CIA agent.
Another friend, once a covert CIA operative, says people who say Plame wasnt in a sensitive position need to understand how intricate a cover story is, regardless of what an agent is working on. Cover is
for a clandestine officer, can be different things at different times. We change cover. We modify cover based on how we need it. But that cover is linked together, she tells Bradley. If you start to unravel one part of that, you can unravel the whole thing.
Rep. Rush Holt (D.-NJ), a former intelligence analyst and member of the House Intelligence Committee, agrees. I think any time the identity of a covert agent is released, there is some damage -- and its serious. Holt says its possible agents overseas could be arrested or even killed, but if there were, and Id been briefed on it, I couldnt talk about it, he tells Bradley. He did say he has been assured the CIA was mitigating the effects of the leak. They have taken the usual procedures to protect the damage from spreading.
Those procedures began the moment Valerie Plame learned her cover was blown. Upon finding out about the leak of her name, she felt like she'd been hit in the stomach. It took her breath away, said Wilson. Then she methodically went to work, he says, making lists of what she had to do to ensure that her assets, her projects, her programs and her operations were protected.
Wilson tells Bradley, contrary to reports that many knew Plame was in the CIA, that only he and three other people knew. Well, very few people outside the intelligence community [knew she was CIA]. Her parents and her brother, essentially, says Wilson.
Developing...
Sudden Instant Death Syndrome
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James Hatfield, author of Fortunate Son, an unauthorised biography of George W. Bush, which detailed Bush's cocaine use and cover-up of a cocaine arrest, was found dead on 18 July 2001 in a seedy Arkansas motel room, another suicide victim. His is a long, painful story. The 43-year-old writer, who left behind a wife and baby daughter, left no notes for his family and friends that listed alcohol, financial problems and Fortunate Son as reasons for killing himself, according to police. Three years before his death, his original publisher, St. Martin's Press, pulped its entire run of Fortunate Son just as it shot to The New York Times bestsellers list after they discovered the author's own drug past. A New York punk-rock publisher, Soft Skull Press, later reprinted it and rushed it out in time for the 2000 presidential elections. The Bush camp, of course, was on the case. In fact, Bush's chief strategist, Karl Rove - who previously worked for Richard Nixon, the godfather of dirty tricks - had contacted Hatfield urging to meet him to see if he was 'on the right track'. He also received death threats from one of the Bush allies who had confirmed Bush's cocaine arrest allegations. The threats named Hatfield's wife and daughter and said, "If you value their lives, you'd better back off." In early 2001, Hatfield accidentally found out his computer was bugged when he took it to be repaired. Could this mean that Bush strategists dug Hatfield's criminal record to discredit him and kill off his book? After Hatfield's death made the headlines, the official story force-fed to the corporate media, as surreal as it seemed, was that Hatfield was charged on 17 July with credit-card fraud. Police had confiscated his computer and given him 24 hours to turn himself in, but instead he checked into a motel, overdosed on prescription drugs and died. But why would a bestselling author try to commit credit-card fraud using a computer he believed was bugged? He was also afraid of breaking the terms of his parole, fearing that if he did, that he would be sent back to Texas to prison, where, he was convinced, he would be killed. In the police report, there's no mention of anything found in the computer that was confiscated, though it was the first item mentioned in the application for a search warrant.
Free Republic - "Are we seeing the beginning of another 'Dead Body List'? I thought that garbage flowed out with the incoming tide,"
Arkancide or Texacide. Fair and balanced. You decide.