I’ve been trying to evaluate some of the claims made by Michael C. Ruppert in his “COUP D'ETAT: The Real Reason Tenet and Pavitt Resigned from the CIA on June 3rd and 4th”
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/060804_coup_detat.htmlI find it interesting that he links the resignations of CIA Director Tenet on June 3 2004 and then James Pavitt, the CIA’s director of operations on June 4 with the announcement that Bush and Cheney had retained lawyers due to the Valerie “leak probe”.
“Bush and Cheney have both hired or consulted private criminal defense attorneys in anticipation of possible indictments of them and/or their top assistants in the Plame investigation. On June 3, just hours before Tenet suddenly resigned, President Bush consulted with and may have retained a criminal defense attorney to represent him in the Plame case.”
He’s absolutely correct that these events coincided, and I find that Tenet’s resigning for “personal reasons” suspect as it was immediately followed by Pavitt’s resignation.
“Bush 'Willing to Cooperate' With Leak Probe” Washington Post, June 4, 2004.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A12499-2004Jun3.html“Bush Knew About Leak of CIA Operative's Name” Capitol Hill Blue, Jun 3, 2004,
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=32&num=4629“George Tenet Resigns as CIA Director” MSNBC, June 3, 2004.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5129314/I’ve also been considering the claims as to Plame’s undercover CIA role at Brewster Jennings. I’ve found several referrences that say that Plame has acknowledged this role,
Such as…
“Little is known of Plame's professional career. She has described herself as an energy analyst for the private company Brewster Jennings & Associates, which was subsequently acknowledged by the CIA as a front.” ….at,
http://www.dkosopedia.com/index.php/Valerie_Plameand also at,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plamehttp://www.answers.com/topic/valerie-plameThere is also this article (“Apparent CIA front didn't offer much cover” 10/10/2003 The Boston Globe) that quotes “Vince Cannistraro, the CIA's former counterterrorism chief,” as saying “that when operating undercover outside the United States, Plame would have had a real job with a more legitimate company. The Boston company "is not an indicator of what she did overseas," he said.”
The article also includes the following
“Brewster Jennings was the name of the president of the former Socony-Vacuum oil company, a predecessor of Exxon Mobil Corp. But the Jennings family denies any connection, said a grandson, Brewster Jennings, a real estate investor in Durango, Colo. He said that since the firm was named as a CIA front he's heard from many friends and family members who "find tremendous humor in all this."”
http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2003/10/10/apparent_cia_front_didnt_offer_much_cover/Now I don’t know if her covert role will ever be fully appreciated by the public, and it seems to me that any claims as such, as made above will always be vulnerable to criticism due to the secrecy that naturally surrounds it. What the gist of nearly all of the claims about her covert role do imply is that she had a role with Brewster, Jennings & Associates and that this company has been tied to “energy, oil and the Saudi-owned Arabian American Oil Company, or ARAMCO. Brewster Jennings had been a founder of Mobil Oil company, one of Aramco's principal founders.” (quote from Ruppert’s Coup de’Tat).
These claims are being taken to task by a lot of persons these days, there is a good effort going on over at DailyKos “Must-Read Update! Plame Leak Exposed Brewster Jennings Asset on Oil, WMD”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/7/3/16838/88864Stepping aside from that issue, I find it interesting that if Ruppert’s claims are true, and Plame’s outing did compromise a clandestine role into a CIA shadow company, “ARAMCO, that constituted 12% of the world's total oil production” at the time.
I wonder, if her outing was of the significance that Ruppert claims to US oil interest, could this have anything to do with rising oil prices. Now this is purely correlative, but I find the coincidental upturn in oil prices following the revelation of Plame as a covert agent in 2003 is worth looking into.
World Events and Crude Oil Prices 2001-2005
Excess Crude Oil Production Capacity
from WTRG Economics,
http://www.wtrg.com/prices.htmSo, I end with this, yet unanswered question. Did the outing of Valerie Plame, as Ruppert claims, unravel a long running covert operation that helped maintain US interests in world oil supplies/prices? Could the shock wave from the revelation have led to the current upturn in oil prices?
I wonder.