The importance of CIA Cover.

[FormerRepublican]

"WASHINGTON — Several months after her identity as a CIA operative was exposed in a newspaper column, Valerie Plame had dinner with five of her classmates from the agency's training academy.

Four had left the CIA, and they spent the evening catching up on what they'd done during their clandestine careers, as well as the jobs and moves that followed. But even though Plame's "cover" had been cracked wide open, her dinner companions didn't pry for details. Even in that tight circle, no one wanted to spill any more secrets.

"Cover is a mosaic, it's a puzzle," said James Marcinkowski, a former CIA case officer who attended the dinner. "Every piece is important because you don't know which pieces the bad guys are missing."

The Plame case brought intense new scrutiny on the White House this week amid disclosures that President Bush's chief political advisor, Karl Rove, is a central figure in the controversy surrounding the unmasking of Plame to the media.

The case also has called attention to the precious, concealing commodity the intelligence community calls "cover." The term refers to the amalgam of lies and props, from false names to phony front companies, that disguise a spy's identity and purpose."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20050716/ts_latimes/shadesofcover

With everyone saying the outing of Plame was no big deal, this kind of story is useful.