Novak claims CIA Chief Hayden is confused, for identifying Plame as 'covert'

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/RobertDNovak/2007/04/12/cia_politics&Comments=true

CIA Politics
By Robert D. Novak


WASHINGTON -- Seated at the Washington Gridiron dinner March 31, I was interrupted by a man crouching at my feet who was dressed Air Force formal with the four stars of a full general. It was CIA Director Michael Hayden, who complained to me profanely that my column had misrepresented him in the Valerie Plame Wilson case. Denying he favors Democrats, Gen. Hayden indicated to me he had not authorized Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman to say Mrs. Wilson had been a "covert" CIA employee, as he claimed Hayden did, but only that she was "undercover."

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At the Gridiron, I heard Hayden tell me he actually referred to Mrs. Wilson only as "undercover." He apparently said the same thing to Toensing, who testified as a Republican-requested witness at the March 16 hearing. On April 4, she wrote Hayden that in three Gridiron conversations "in front of different witnesses you denied most emphatically, that you had ever told" Waxman "that Valerie Plame was 'covert.' You stated you had told Waxman he could use the term 'undercover' but 'never' the term 'covert.'"

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The confusion deepened when I obtained Waxman's talking points for the hearing. The draft typed after the Hayden-Waxman conversation said, "Ms. Wilson had a career as an undercover agent of the CIA." This was crossed out, the hand-printed change saying she "was a covert employee of the CIA."

Who had made this questionable but important change? Hayden told me Tuesday that the talking points were edited by a CIA lawyer after conferring with Waxman's staff. "I am completely comfortable with that," the general assured me. He added he now sees no difference between "covert" and "undercover" -- an astounding statement, considering that the criminal statute refers only to "covert" employees.

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Mike Hayden was brought into the CIA as an intelligence professional when President Bush fired Porter Goss, who had retired from Congress to go to Langley at the president's request. Goss thought he had a mandate to clean up an agency whose senior officials delivered private anti-Bush briefings during the 2004 campaign. The confusion over Valerie Plame's status suggests the CIA gave Waxman what he wanted, even if the director of central intelligence seemed confused.