MSNBC confirms: Outed CIA agent was working on Iran

just incase you haven't seen this?

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/MSNBC_confirms_Raw_Story_report_Outed_0501.html

On Chris Matthews' Hardball Monday evening, just moments ago, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster confirmed what RAW STORY first reported in February: that outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was working on Iran at the time she was outed.

RAW STORY's Larisa Alexandrovna broke the story earlier this year, which went unnoticed by the mainstream media (Read our full story).

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Reports Shuster in this rush transcript: "INTELLIGENCE SOURCES SAY VALERIE WILSON WAS PART OF AN OPERATION THREE YEARS AGO TRACKING THE PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIAL INTO IRAN. AND THE SOURCES ALLEGE THAT WHEN MRS. WILSON'S COVER WAS BLOWN, THE ADMINISTRATION'S ABILITY TO TRACK IRAN'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS WAS DAMAGED AS WELL."

and execution. Enough with these fucks.

if you've got the feathers, I'll rustle up a tall stack of poles and we can start to clean out all our Houses.

Knowing that they wanted to go into Iran?

Enough already...prosecute these criminals!!

They consistently screw up, but sell it to their followers as divine intervention. Remember, Klein thinks we should sell them on the "we're as crazy as you are" theory. http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_04_01_digbysblog_archive.html#114564191293256631

Axis of Evil. Say it twice. They knew they wanted Iran a long, long time ago.

Valerie and her entire operation stood in the way of their ambitions regarding Iran, among other things. They had to deal with that.

What better way than to frame it as revenge against her husband for writing his article after he got home?

Joe was the tool; Valerie and her operation were the true victims. Which has the greater motive- lying to go to war, or lying to expand that same war?

I've never bought the 'revenge' story. Once it became public she was working on WMD proliferation in the ME, I thought, "aahhh, so that's the real reason. She knew something." At the time, I speculated that someone was in posession of information regarding plans to plant WMDs in Iraq.

I was wrong- they wanted Iran to become a "threat" by giving them just enough leash to start developing nuclear weapons. Valerie's operation wouldn't have allowed that to happen without it becoming very, very obvious to very deep-cover people in the CIA that someone was being ordered to ignore the intel they would have been frantically sending re nukes in Iran.

None of that went down, though. The operation was exposed with Plame's name and occupation being revealed. Thus that particular roadblock to nuclear proliferation was removed, to the neocons' "benefit".

Sickening, but now that we have confirmation that Plame was indeed working on nukes in Iran, I'd say we've been handed the real reasons for her exposure on a silver platter.

trying to PLANT nukes in Iraq after the invasion, and Brewster-Jennings covert agents and contacts monitoring and countering the acquisition of nuclear weapons technology in Iran. There was a very curious story about Manucher Ghorbanifar trying to dupe the CIA into thinking the Iranians had stolen Iraq's nukes or nuke material and taken it to Iran (around the time of the Bush invasion). The story evaporated upon investigation, and Ghorbanifar had tried to hide the fact that he was behind it. Ghorbanifar, the notorious Iranian arms dealers with his fingers in Iran-Contra, had been discredited by the CIA as a liar. He was present at the Rome 2001 meeting--with Michael Ladeen and other Neo-Cons, and Italian fascists--where the Niger forgeries were more than likely cooked up.

I've yet to figure out what Ghorbanifar's motive may have been, in the phony Iraq-nukes-to-Iran feint. Like the Niger forgeries, it was easily exposed. Perhaps it was intended to lure out and identify the honest people in the CIA.

Now think back to summer 2003. There is nothing that Bush needed more than a "find" of WMDs in Iraq. The failure to find such weapons is one of the key reasons the Bush junta is in such political trouble today. They lied; everybody now knows they lied. But what if they had succeeded in planting nukes in Iraq--and these had been "found" by the U.S. troops who were "hunting" for the weapons that everybody knew weren't there (accompanied by NYT faux reporter/war propagandist Judith Miller)? And what if they'd gotten away with it? This would have vastly changed the political landscape--or at least the war profiteering corporate news monopoly narrative of our political landscape--then and now.

It seems to me more likely that Ghorbanifar was at that Rome meeting as a procurer of illicit weapons--weapons to be planted in Iraq--than that he was there to cook up the "crude" Niger forgeries. Illicit weapons are his business.

We have also to consider what looks to me like haste and panic in the way the Bushites outed Plame and Brewster-Jennings in the week of July 7-14, 2003. I tend to think that that haste and panic had an immediate cause--and it was not Wilson's article (published July 6), which was expected, but rather something unexpected. My guess is that the unexpected thing was that David Kelly--the Brits chief WMD expert, who had been whistleblowing to the BBC since late May, about the "sexed up" pre-war Iraq WMD intel--when he was interrogated at a "safe house" (first week of July), revealed that he knew about the plot to plant nukes in Iraq. This guess is profoundly influenced by the fact that David Kelly was found dead, in highly suspicious circumstances, four days after Plame was outed (July 18). His office and computers were searched, and four days later (on July 22), Brewster-Jennings--the entire CIA WMD counter-proliferation network--was ADDITIONALLY outed (also by Novak).

The key may be in the otherwise disreputable Hutton report--which reveals that on July 7 Tony Blair was informed that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things"--COULD say, not HAD said. What were the "uncomfortable things" that Kelly COULD say--that may have gotten him killed? Ten days later he was dead, and, a couple of days later, BJ was outed, putting all those covert agents and contacts at risk of getting killed, and disabling all their projects.

And all this occurred in the heat of the "hunt" for WMDs in Iraq. It's too much coincidence. I think that these things are connected--David Kelly's whistleblowing, interrogation and death, and the Plame/BJ outings.

As for Iran, it seems clear now that it was the Bush junta's main target all along. Iraq, greatly weakened by the first Gulf war and by 12 years of sanctions and "no fly zone" bombings, was a pushover, at first brush. It's an utter disaster now, but it was easy to "shock and awe" a very weak country with no air force and to invade it, and smash it up. It is the launching pad for Iran. That's what that Vatican-sized U.S. compound in Baghdad--and the string of permanent U.S. bases--are all about. The junta's actions in Iraq have nothing to do with "stabilizing" Iraq, and never did. Their goal is permanent U.S. occupation of the Middle East. But they did have to be concerned about American and world opinion. That's why "finding" nukes or other WMDs in Iraq was so important--and who can doubt that this gang of criminals would have planted the weapons if they could have? In fact, it's damned puzzling that they DIDN'T "find" any such weapons--that they didn't get away with it. They'd set it all up, with the Niger forgeries, and 24/7 propaganda about Iraq WMDs in the U.S. war profiteering corporate news monopoly press.

I think planting nukes in Iraq was step one, and permitting Iran to obtain nuclear weapons technology was step two. And counter-proliferation experts like David Kelly and Valerie Plame, and the Brewster-Jennings network--people who thought it was their job to work toward peace, not to manufacture war--stood in their way.

Thanks for the highly readable synopsis! I wonder if the truth will ever take hold as the actual narrative of events, or if twenty years from now people will still be clinging to their idea that this administration had nothing but good intentions in the ME. I especially liked your last sentence, about there still being people who think it is their job to work toward peace. It's a hopeful thought in these awful times.

Sometimes there are posts on a thread that should be OPs. This is one.

I figured BushCo would plant them. I didn't realize the Kelly knew the actual plan. No wonder he ended up dead. His death stunk to high heavens at the time and even more so now.

Thanks for the insight and the details.

I agree with H2O. This could be a thread all its own.

charge--that they offed Kelly because of what he knew, and that they committed treason to cover up their own attempted deceit, and thus put our own agents at risk of death--that I don't want to make a big deal of such a speculation. I want it investigated. And I am in no position to do the investigation. So I keep mentioning this theory in threads, hoping to catch the eye of people who do have that capability.

There is no proof that David Kelly knew of a plot to plant WMDs in Iraq. I think it's a very good and educated guess--akin, say, to the overwhelming inference of the data that Bush lost the 2004 election. In both cases, there is no transparency. All you have is what can be gained from intelligent and informed inference--underscored by what we know of the Bush junta and the lies and deceit, and torture and cold-blooded mass murder, that it is capable of.

That coincidence of dates haunts me. July 14, Plame outed. July 18, Kelly found dead; his office and computers searched. July 22, Brewster-Jennings outed. I also think that Kelly's turnaround on the war--in favor of it before the invasion, whistleblower afterward--needs a motive, something dramatic, shocking and unexpected, that would turn a thoroughgoing insider like Kelly into a whistleblower. It's not the sort of thing that a man like him would do lightly. And the drama of his anonymous whistleblowing about the "sexed up" prewar intel, and the swift movement of those events toward his death, also point to something big being at stake--not just "sexed up" intelligence, something more damning. Many suspect that this is also true of the Plame/Brewster-Jennings outings--that something much bigger was at stake than a dissenting article published by an ex-diplomat--and that in truth Plame/Brewster-Jennings was the main target, not the collateral damage of brutal Rovian "politics."

There is a current theory--the result of revelations that Plame/BJ was working on the matter of Iranian WMDs at the time that it was all outed and disabled--that Plame/BJ was outed in anticipation of the junta's plan to widen the war into Iran. This, and also Cheney or other junta dirty arms dealings, are good possibilities, as motives for the outings--although none of these necessarily contradicts the Iraq WMD-planting theory. The value of the latter theory is that it goes a long way to explain the events of July 7-14--the junta's seeming foolishness, risk and haste in outing Plame/BJ (--that the Bushites' plot to plant the weapons in Iraq was about to be exposed).

The WMD-planting theory of Traitorgate--that the Plame/BJ outings were done to cover up the plot to plant WMDs in Iraq, and likely to punish those who foiled this attempted Bushite deceit--and its connection to David Kelly's outing, interrogation and death, is all inference, with little pieces of evidence here and there that support it, and with nothing having emerged so far that contradicts it. Indeed, the more we find out, the more likely it seems. The only argument I've read that contradicts it is that nuke material has a signature, and that it's not so easy to plant it somewhere, and allege, for instance, that it was part of an Iraqi nuke program. But I think that may be why Manucher Ghorbanifar was at the Rome meeting--to figure that part of it out. And it's not as if the Bush junta doesn't have bought and paid for scientists and control of the corporate newsstream. If they had succeeded in planting nuke material in Iraq, I doubt that someone like David Kelly--or any real expert--would have gotten anywhere near it. Why did the Bushites oust the UN weapons inspectors--and send their own troops in, led around by the nose by none other than faux reporter and NYT war propagandist Judith Miller? It smells like a set-up (for Miller to "find" the weapons). There WERE some Muslim press news reports of U.S. efforts to plant WMDs in Iraq, at that time, which were never followed up. God knows what has happened to those people.

You see what I mean by bits and pieces of evidence--and a lot of educated guessing. Prime to me are the resonant coincidence of Plame/Kelly dates (they really jump out at you, when you line them up), the need for a Kelly motive for his anonymous whistleblowing (why, if he supported the invasion, would he act to undermine it immediately afterwards?), the presence of Ghorbanifar at the Rome meeting (to cook up bad forgeries?), the tenor of the times--with the "news" drenched with the "hunt" for WMDs (and the political capital to be gained if they were "found")--and the apparent panic and haste of the Bushites in outing Plame and BJ, which involved exposing many top Bushites (all the way to the top) in potential treason charges, and included at least six contacts with reporters (potential journalist witnesses to treason) in one week, by top Bushites. Seems like a lot of fuss and bother over an article--and tremendous risks taken.

Anyway, this is the nature of the theory--intelligent inference. It's a good working hypothesis for investigation--but it is not something you can announce, and say, here's the story. I suppose it could be OP-ed with all these caveats. But even here--as comment in a thread--it has led someone to CONCLUDE that David Kelly knew about a Bush WMD-planting plot. This is NOT a conclusion. It is a speculation. A good one, I think--but one for which there is no concrete evidence. If it IS true, they likely carted that evidence away with his office files and computers--and it will take another courageous whistleblower to reveal it.

I urge people NOT to treat this theory as fact. But I do urge people to be highly suspicious of the corporate news monopoly narrative of these events--even when the truth SEEMS to be coming out. The news monopolies are not much better than the Bush junta itself, as to lying, cheating, stealing and getting people killed, and are worse than the junta in that they have a specific responsibility to the truth that is the linchpin of our democracy.

I'm sure someone os going to come out of the woodwork soon and reveal all?

did the neocons think they were going to get 'caught'

who's to gain? Hmmm, here's a hypothesis, maybe some corporation was selling illegal weapons to Iran--maybe some supposedly US corporation--a corporation that could make a bundle and then the government could say Iran has nukes, not mentioning they know because of such illegal sale. didn't certain corporations do business, especially a subsidiary of a well known US corporation, do business with Iraq during the embargo before we bombed them to kingdom come? I don't believe it was to get back at Wilson, not destroying a network-it has to be more, especially if said network was tracking WMD's. Why would you jeopardize the security of your country for outing?

was, or even IS, doing business in Iran?

Something starting with H... ha..... Hal..... something.

I have been telling people this for years and they look at me either aghast or like I'm nuts. I am glad that they are getting it out more. This was more than simple retaliation but Mr.bush endangered everyone. fuckers


1 more recommendation please someone.

Joe Wilson on a post here the other day.............I wondered for a long time what a blond American was doing fiddling around in the Middle East, and how she could ever be an effective spy..........and then that picture clued me in. She is NOT a natural blonde. She has fairly dark skin (doesn't look like just a tan), brown eyes, and dark eyebrows and eyelashes. Is it possible that her maiden name is NOT PLAME??? Is she of Middle Eastern heritage? IS this at all relevant, or just an interesting but useless factoid? Or am I nuts?

When we see that blond woman, are we seeing the REAL Valerie Plame, or just another disguise?

if we are to believe the label on this photo.


"Valerie Plame"
http://images.google.com.au/imgres?imgurl=&imgrefurl=http://index.hu/politika/kulfold/miller0930f/&h=240&w=160&sz=12&tbnid=EH7phQAiJVrfgM:&tbnh=104&tbnw=69&hl=en&start=31&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dvalerie%2Bplame%26start%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN

She was obviously able to pass herself off as someone closely resembling Judith Miller. ;-)

:evilgrin: :hide:

treasonous bastards

Iran.

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/New_Jersey_senator_calls_on_CIA_0502.html

In light of reports that CIA Agent Valerie Plame was working to track Iran’s effort to obtain nuclear weapons when her identity was leaked, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) today called on CIA Director Porter Goss to provide an assessment of the damage to national security from the incident, RAW STORY has learned.