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Post by John B on Nov 3, 2009 19:37:24 GMT -5
I dunno what to think about this, but I think the author brings up some very important points.
A curious lack of curiosity Tony Blankley Washington Times
Not so long ago, there was a furious fight between different tribes in the White House, the CIA and the State and Defense departments over the correct war-fighting strategy. The coin of the realm back then was intelligence: Intelligence that pointed in the right policy direction was cherry-picked and shown to the public; covert players connected to undesirable conclusions were outed or disparaged. This fight for the hearts and minds of Washington opinion shapers was fought out on the battlefields of The Washington Post and the New York Times - and from them to the networks and news outlets across the country and around the world.
These descriptions may remind you of Valerie Plame - a CIA operations officer with relatively minor responsibilities who was outed by someone in the George W. Bush administration. As soon as the press corps came to believe that someone - perhaps close to the president - had leaked her name to Robert D. Novak, the hunt was on. The media screamed for investigations. The CIA called for a Justice Department investigation. The opposition Democrats called for a special prosecutor to probe the unconscionable breach. The prosecutor was appointed by President Bush. A trial was held.
People were less concerned with what they substantively had learned about Iraq's yellow-cake uranium policy - that the past decision to go to war in Iraq may have been made against the advice and proffered ambiguous evidence of Miss Plame's husband - than with the identity of the government official who had despicably and feloniously "blown her cover."
Well, last week the Times again published on the front page the name of a purported CIA-paid undercover asset. This time it was none other than Ahmed Wali Karzai, the powerful brother of the Afghan president. This time the Times cited, on background, Obama administration "political officials," "senior administration officials" and others as their sources to the effect that Mr. Karzai has been secretly on the CIA payroll for eight years and has been helping the United States with intelligence, logistic and base support for our Special Forces, recruiting and running an Afghan paramilitary force on the instruction of the CIA - as well as being a major narcotics trafficker.
This may well be the most egregious compromise of an extraordinarily valuable and inflammatory secret CIA operative in our history. It was leaked not after the policy was carried out - as in the Plame case - but just weeks before the president will be making his fateful strategy and manpower decision for the Afghan war.
The Times reporters on this story are the estimable James Risen, Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti. While they doubtlessly were the target of an intentional leak, their top-rate professional reputation can assure us that they have been scrupulously accurate in describing their sources as Obama administration "political officials" and "senior administration officials," among others. Those characterizations can mean nothing less than high sub-Cabinet or Cabinet officials and/or White House deputy assistants or assistants to the president. On a stretch, the political officials might be special assistants to the president.
In all such categories, their investigation and prosecution (it is a very serious felony to reveal such information by an official with authority to possess the information) would need to be carried out by a special prosecutor - as the attorney general would be judged to have a conflict of interest to prosecute someone appointed by the president and so close to him.
At such a moment, one question promptly and almost invariably arises across the media, across Washington and across the country: Who did it and why? The search starts with the answer to the age-old question: Cui bono? Who benefits? No one knows yet. I certainly do not. But people are speculating. Was it done to shape presidential policy not yet made or to justify a policy already made but not yet announced?
Is it the group in the White House around the vice president who do not want to have our country ally with a corrupt Afghan government (and thus want to reduce, not increase, troop levels)?
Is it the political operatives in the White House who desperately do not want the president to get bogged down in "his" Vietnam and are allied with Speaker Nancy Pelosi (who herself is in open war against the CIA - calling them criminal liars to Congress)?
Is it a senior diplomat with personal grievances?
Is it the group in the White House closely allied with the Defense Department, which for deep institutional reasons that transcend policy, partisan politics and administrations is often on the lookout to give the CIA a black eye?
Is it some political player at the White House acting in the interest of some other faction at CIA - which many knowledgeable people believe has been or still are supporting all sides in Afghanistan: Taliban, narco-traffickers, warlords, other mujahedeen, different wings of the Karzai government, the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence, Iran, India, Russia?
The CIA should order its inspector general to investigate. There should be a Justice Department leak probe. A special prosecutor must be appointed. Sen. Pat Roberts, ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, should raise holy hell. He knows how to do it.
Of course, you have not heard anyone asking these questions - yet, because in today's Washington, there is a curious lack of curiosity regarding possible administration staff wrongdoing.
But you will hear these questions - and more. Because there are some powerful cliques in this town with powerful interests in seeing justice done in this "intelligence betrayal of the century." Tick-tock ... tick-tock. The squirming has already begun.
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Post by Marshall on Nov 3, 2009 19:46:58 GMT -5
I think it's too long to read on an internet forum.
;D ;D ;D
You're a crusader tonight, John.
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Post by knobtwister on Nov 3, 2009 19:54:50 GMT -5
Not an agent but an operative.
Still it certainly was disclosed for some political purpose.
Don
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Post by John B on Nov 3, 2009 20:01:19 GMT -5
I think it's too long to read on an internet forum. ;D ;D ;D You're a crusader tonight, John. Blah blah blah...Karzai...Plame...WTF?!?
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Post by patrick on Nov 3, 2009 20:14:49 GMT -5
Blankley doesn't know what the freak he's talking about.
Plame was a career CIA Agent, an American who spent her career on a GS salary risking her life. And she set up foreign intelligence networks all throughout the Middle East that benefited, and still benefit, America.
Karzai is just one more sleazy foreigner who's not only a criminal but is selling out his own country for a buck. Or lots of them.
And is anyone even surprised to learn that Karzai is being paid by the CIA?
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Post by Doug on Nov 3, 2009 20:19:04 GMT -5
I think I'll agree that a career criminal that's an American is better than a career criminal that's a sleazy foreigner.
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Post by Supertramp78 on Nov 3, 2009 21:01:25 GMT -5
"These descriptions may remind you of Valerie Plame - a CIA operations officer with relatively minor responsibilities"
I love it when people try to write off what they did by pretending it was no big deal. First they said Plame wasn't even covert. Then they had to admit she was covert, just not important.
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Post by millring on Nov 4, 2009 6:22:11 GMT -5
The law against outing isn't based on the person being outed. The law against outing is based on the notion of national security.
The presumption by the media on the left is that security doesn't matter if they don't like what the CIA did (deal with a presumed scumbag), but it does matter if they do like who the CIA employed (a fellow Democrat, Plame).
But, again, it's not a law about who. It's about national security.
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Post by dickt on Nov 4, 2009 9:00:35 GMT -5
So does "law against outing" apply to non-CIA agents, then? Care to cite it? Everyone who knows anything about Afghanistan knows that Karzai is a sleazebag warlord with ties to the opium trade. The fact that the CIA may have paid him for info doesn't make him an agent. He could hardly be "outed" as a covert operative.
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Post by AlanC on Nov 4, 2009 10:46:04 GMT -5
Plame was a Democrat? You sure about that?
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Post by millring on Nov 4, 2009 10:50:43 GMT -5
Plame was a Democrat? You sure about that? Pretty sure. She was a Democrat who was appointed by a Republican.
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Post by AlanC on Nov 4, 2009 11:28:23 GMT -5
Appointed to what by whom?
From Wiki After graduating from college, moving to Washington, D.C., and marrying Sesler, she worked at a clothing store while awaiting results of her application to the CIA.[3] She was accepted into the 1985–86 CIA officer training class and began her training for what would become a twenty-year career with the Agency.[9] Although the CIA will not release publicly the specific dates from 1985 to 2002 when she worked for it, due to security concerns,[9][10] Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald affirmed that Plame "was a CIA officer from January 1, 2002, forward" and that "her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003.[11] Due to the nature of her clandestine work for the CIA, many details about Plame's professional career are still classified, but it is documented that she worked for the CIA in a clandestine capacity relating to counter-proliferation.
She worked at the CIA until "The Dick" threw a monkey wrench into the machine for political payback. She was working on keeping Iran from getting nukes- where is the left-right flavor in that?
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Post by Supertramp78 on Nov 4, 2009 11:32:46 GMT -5
CIA agents aren't appointed.
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Post by Deleted on Nov 4, 2009 11:35:45 GMT -5
Perhaps it came as no great surprise to anyone that a tribal strongman and drugthug in Afghanistan, WHO WAS BEING PAID AND SUPPORTED BY THE US, is taking money from the CIA?
Similarly, did it surprise anyone to learn that the CIA was paying and supporting groups in Afghanistan to oppose the Soviets. Did someone compromise US security when they reported that bin-Laden was once paid and supported by the CIA? (That's not a rhetorical question--- i don't know).
A leak's a leak, I guess. But, they ain't all the same. Some may result in the death or ineffectiveness of a covert asset. others will provoke a "duh" from everyone around them.
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Post by Supertramp78 on Nov 4, 2009 11:40:08 GMT -5
Others send a message to the Afghan president during a time period when we were trying to get him to agree to a runoff election and to clean up his government that the US was perfectly willing to dump their support to him personally unless he did a better job.
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Post by AlanC on Nov 4, 2009 11:54:10 GMT -5
Why not? We paid the Sunnis to make nice-nice. Hey! I just solved world peace. We give every malcontent in the whole damn world a pallet or two of US dollars like we did in Iraq. Everything will be peachy until it takes two pallets to buy a 7.62 round for your AK. Hey! Again! Epiphany! If it takes two pallets of hundred dollar bills to fill your clip, nobody can afford to get pissed and shoot anything. We just have to hurry up and collapse the world's economies and make a global Doug-u-topia! OK, next problem.
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Post by TDR on Nov 4, 2009 13:23:10 GMT -5
Wali Karzai wasn't a CIA agent. He was paid as an informant, "landlord", and for his connections.
Neither was he "outed" by the NYT article. The info was common knowledge in some circles, the NYT merely took it mainstream. You can hardly reveal a secret that wasn't one.
The question of how the newspiece benefits the Obama admin suggests they have a nefarious purpose in "leaking" it. Somebody explain how that would work.
More likely what's going on is the Obama people recognize that the puppet gumment they inherited is a basket not worthy of holding all the US eggs, and that we are going to need to re think the policies of the Bush admin, as they relate to our actions going forward. The Karzai brother just being one facet of a big mess that is Afghanistan.
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Post by Doug on Nov 4, 2009 15:26:18 GMT -5
I think that what he is, is called an asset.
<I read all dem spy books ;D >
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Post by TDR on Nov 4, 2009 15:51:13 GMT -5
Well he's prolly a liability from now on.
Not to mention he can't get life insurance.
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Post by millring on Nov 4, 2009 16:09:07 GMT -5
I didn't see the responses in this thread. I'll look into what I'd heard. No a person isn't appointed to the CIA.
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