Is this info accurate about Plame's covert status?

I've heard (forget where) that her cover was as an executive for some type of global communications company. Also, other covert agents used this company as a cover for their operations. When she was outed, not only did it affect her, but any agent who had previously used or was using this company as a cover. Is this accurate? And if so, why is it not being rammed down the MSM's throat????

Not everyone who used the company as cover may neccessarily have been revealed, but most of them are probably compromised to one degree or another--having been associated with a CIA front company, they'll probably be on intelligence watch lists until they jump to a new identity. Not to mention the retroactive damage that's done: because now foreign intel agencies know that employees of this company were potentially spies, they can go back and look over past events and possibly learn new things, break some people's cover, and compromise certain operations.

Ms. Plame was an "energy analyst" for them.

This CIA front company kept track of nuclear capabilties of countries the US felt shouldn't have nukes.

cover because the Bush family and Cheney/Halliburton are all about illegal arms trading and have been for decades.

Brewster-Jennings was monitoring that sort of thing and would've been in Bush/Cheney/Neo-con's way.

Thanks. I'm passing this idea around.

that 70 of them were killed?

There was a claim by one guy, ex-CIA I beleive, that over 70 CIA "assets" as they're called were killed or disappeared as a result of Plame and Brewster Jennings being outed.

"Assets" is what the CIA calls their pawns, people who aren't agency employees but who the agency has a use for. Foreign government officials, people close to notable figures, business owners, and sometimes just ordinary people who are in the right place at the right time--in short, people who know things or can make things happen when the CIA is gathering intelligence or running an op.

In contrast, actual CIA employees are called agents, operatives, case officers, etc.

If you want to get a gestalt of how the CIA views its "assets," I highly recommend the film "Spy Game." It's one of the more true-to-life depictions of the CIA and how they work.

Brewster Jennings & Associates. Some info on that firm in Boston Globe article: http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/10/10/apparent_cia_front_didnt_offer_much_cover/

Notably, since the article doesn't portray the front company as much, it includes this comment:

Vince Cannistraro, the CIA's former counterterrorism chief, said that when operating undercover outside the United States, Plame would have had a real job with a more legitimate company. The Boston company "is not an indicator of what she did overseas," he said.

http://rubdmc.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/17/22429/1711


The CIA's Plame/Brewster Jennings Damage Assessment Report
by pontificator
Sun Jul 17, 2005 at 07:04:29 PM PDT
Whenever there is a major intelligence f*ck-up, such as Aldrich Ames or Robert Hanssen, the CIA performs an exhaustive, meticulous damage assessment of the harm inflicted on our intelligence operations and national security.

Let's remind ourselves of the 18 month-long damage assessment the CIA conducted after catching Aldrich Ames:

pontificator's diary :: ::


For the past year and a half, an independent team of Intelligence Community analysts and operations officers has conducted a Damage Assessment of the actions of Aldrich Ames, who, while a CIA Directorate of Operations officer from 1985 to 1994, committed espionage for Soviet (and later Russian) intelligence. This Damage Assessment, commissioned by my predecessor, is now complete.





The damage which Aldrich Ames did to his country can be summarized in three categories:

SNIP:

You can bet your bottom dollar that the CIA has conducted a painstaking, meticulous damage assessment of the harm caused by Rove and his co-conspirators, which led to the loss not just of Valerie Plame as an agent, but of Brewster-Jennings as a front company and the use of any agent ever who worked for that Brewster Jennings front.

This damage assessment report is presumably still classified. But you can bet Fitzgerald hauled its authors into the grand jury room, and whatever harm was done to our national security because of Rove's malignancy -- Fitzgerald knows about it.

Deals in the most fragile of intelligence products: HUMINT(Human Intelligence). HUMINT networks take years to organize and get to the point where they produce good and accurate product. This is because that the largest number of HUMINT assets are citizens of the target countries.

When Brewster-Jennings cover was blown, so was the cover of every person that worked for B-J and was also a CIA NOC. Furthermore, even the most hamfisted intelligence service of a target country, or any country where B-J did business would trace contacts of the known or suspected NOCs. One effect of this would be to place the lives of the HUMINT assets in serious, even mortal jeopardy. And innocent people, too.

Life comes cheap in a lot of places in the world. You can get a bullet in your head for just about anything. Or worse.

You can bet this broke up more than one effective HUMINT network.

There is a trail of Valerie Plame as one who was supposedly monitoring certain contractors. In fact, that was a grand cover for her intel activities. Everyone in every country who was associated with her became at risk when she was outed.

It is not an exaggeration to assume that people died because she was outed. Certainly, operations around the globe were compromised, and agents were compromised. It was treasonous.

Brewster Jennings Protects America: The global spy hunt game.

http://www.brewsterjennings.com/