We all know what happened to Valerie Plame when Joe Wilson called Bushco's bluff on Iraq's pursuit of yellowcake.
What we haven't heard much about is a longtime CIA operative I've cleverly identified only as Mr.X, who was fired in 2004 and has filed a lawsuit alleging that:
his dismissal was punishment for his reports questioning the agency's assumptions on a series of weapons-related matters. Among other things, he charged that he had been the target of retaliation for his refusal to go along with the agency's intelligence conclusions.
Ah, punishment and retaliation,the standard-issue Bushco treatment for the unpatriotic who dare question their lies. There are two critical components to nuclear weaponhood: uranium oxide (yellowcake) and centrifuges, which are used to turn uranium into fuel for nuclear weapons.
The Wilsons paid their price for helping knock down the yellowcake purchase. Mr. X alleges he paid the price for reporting Iraq was ready to sell its centrifuges.
What reality-based "drivel" was Mr. X peddling in the agency?
The Central Intelligence Agency was told by an informant in the spring of 2001 that Iraq had abandoned a major element of its nuclear weapons program, but the agency did not share the information with other agencies or with senior policy makers, a former C.I.A. officer has charged.
In a lawsuit filed in federal court here in December, the former C.I.A. officer, whose name remains secret, said that the informant told him that Iraq's uranium enrichment program had ended years earlier and that centrifuge components from the scuttled program were available for examination and even purchase.
This all sounds very familiar: a seasoned veteran with intelligence diametrically opposed to the neocon version is ignored, harassed and smeared:
In court documents, the former officer says that he learned in 2003 that he was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation and accused of having sex with a female contact, a charge he denies. Eight months after learning of the investigation, he said in the court documents, the agency's inspector general's office informed him that he was under investigation for diverting to his own use money earmarked for payments to informants. He denies that, too.
Naturally, the details in this lawsuit are over-classified, according to Mr. X's lawyer. Mr. X tried to declassify his suit, but:
the C.I.A. had moved to classify most of his motion seeking declassification. He added that he recently sent a letter to the director of the F.B.I. requesting an investigation of his client's complaints, but that the C.I.A. had classified that letter, as well.
So, it appears Valerie Plame was not the only CIA Counter Proliferation Division (CPD) operative
taken out by Bushco.
Don't go looking for Mr. X's assertions in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on prewar intelligence, you won't find them - Mr. X didn't speak to the Committe staffers until December, 2004, months after their report was issued.
Deja vu, over and over.
Props to Kossak, From inside his cave yelling , who posted a comment about this article earlier.