UPDATE: a commenter writes:
As a Company wife, I went with my hubby to the CIA Family Day in Sept 2003 (3 months after Novak outed her and 3 weeks after the CIA asked for an investigation) and there were 68 stars on the wall. When we went back in Sept 2007 there were 89 with a number of blank spaces next to the stars in the Book of Record for the deaths to clandestine agents (whose names cannot be revealed).
We will never know the damage done to not just National Security, but also the ability to recruit Agents for Human Intel (HUMINT), the number of civilians informants killed, the capacity to reassemble this group up under a different cover, the delay/ destruction of any crucial analysis of vital intell they were currently collecting and the analysts were waiting for, the damage done to other covert operations/officers who may have been affiliated, and the list could go on and on.
As the former Middle East expert/ very highly decorated/ former CIA clandestine agent Robert Baer has said time and time again, we are desperate for good old fashioned Human Intelligence officers and recruiting for this is dismal. I'm sure this "legal opinion" isn't going to help in anyway shape or form.
The lesson here is never try to tell the truth about a government lying about war, you will lose the criminal, you will lose the civil, and everyone at liberal websites will say, "Obama had to defend Bush. He had no choice." That may be true, fair enough. One question remains: where is the justice?
The Supreme Court announced Monday it will not give further consideration to a lawsuit brought by a fired CIA agent and her husband against high ranking Bush administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney.
The decision is a victory for Cheney and his former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, former White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove, and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. They and nine unnamed co-defendants were sued by Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband Joseph after her CIA cover was leaked to reporters.
This means an administration, if it is a right-wing one, has permission to put the American people in dire jeopardy by betraying national secrets if it suits their political agenda. If it is a liberal one, you will be scorched, and probably run out of office.
In the Dorgan-Waxman Committee Hearings of July 22, 2005, on the damage to the national security done by Plame's identification, an expert witness, Special Forces Col. Patrick Lang said that, as a result of Plame's identification:
"The possibility of penetrating these groups, the possibility of knowing that they're going to carry 10-pound bags of explosive in the subway stations, will go right down the drain."
This was in addition to similar testimony by other expert witnesses, including many former CIA officers. Walter Pincus in the Washington Post, October 4, 2003, quoted a former diplomat as affirming that:
"every foreign intelligence service would run Plame's name through its databases within hours of its publication to determine if she had visited their country and to reconstruct her activities."
"Every foreign intelligence service" would include the Pakistani ISI, riddled with Al Qaeda sympathizers.
Let us hope and pray that Thomas Jefferson was wrong, when he worried "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."
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