Senate Panel to Examine Use of Cover by U.S. Spies -NYT

[Rose Siding]

The Senate Intelligence Committee will conduct hearings on American spy agencies' use of cover to protect the identities of intelligence officers, the committee chairman said on Sunday.

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said on the CNN program "Late Edition" that the committee was "going to go into quite a series of hearings in regard to cover." The practice of intelligence cover has come under scrutiny during the investigation of the disclosure of the C.I.A. employment of Valerie Wilson, who had worked under cover for the agency for 18 years before being publicly identified as a C.I.A. operative in 2003.

"You cannot be in the business of outing somebody" working under cover, Mr. Roberts said. He said, however, that there were questions about the depth of Ms. Wilson's cover, because after spending many years overseas, she had been based at the Virginia headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency at least since 1997.

"I must say from a common-sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the C.I.A. headquarters, I don't know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert," he said. "But generically speaking, it is a very serious matter."

......MORE........

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/25/politics/25leak.html?

[Pirate Smile]

1. Oh, great, like we can believe anything Roberts puts out.

What a friggin joke.

[maddezmom]

7. yeah, he said this after calling Wilson basically a liar

hope Fitzgerald gets to the end product and soon.

[shraby]

2. I wonder if any Dems will be allowed a seat on

that panel?

[kestrel91316]

5. The meetings will be held in secret, no Dems allowed I suspect.

[Rebellious Republican]

3. Here comes the White Wash! N/T

[RC]

4. Valerie Plame Wilson is a diversion

The real crime is outing her front company. That did serious damage to US intelligence. That is Aiding the enemy, blinding the US to what the bad guys in the rest of the world are doing. But then the biggest baddest terrorists are in the White House, aren't they?

[jsamuel]

6. DISTRACTION DISTRACTION DISTRACTION

That is all this is. They just want to try to distract again. It's so sad that they would rather investigate the covert policy of the CIA than those who out covert agents. But we all know why...

[UpInArms]

8. NYT: Senate Panel to Examine Use of Cover by U.S. Spies

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/25/politics/25leak.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1122254918-kI74+I3qZmO8vgiUSuY2Gw&oref=login

The Senate Intelligence Committee will conduct hearings on American spy agencies' use of cover to protect the identities of intelligence officers, the committee chairman said on Sunday.

The chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said on the CNN program "Late Edition" that the committee was "going to go into quite a series of hearings in regard to cover." The practice of intelligence cover has come under scrutiny during the investigation of the disclosure of the C.I.A. employment of Valerie Wilson, who had worked under cover for the agency for 18 years before being publicly identified as a C.I.A. operative in 2003.

"You cannot be in the business of outing somebody" working under cover, Mr. Roberts said. He said, however, that there were questions about the depth of Ms. Wilson's cover, because after spending many years overseas, she had been based at the Virginia headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency at least since 1997.

<snip>

Some Republicans have minimized the significance of the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity, noting not only her location at C.I.A. headquarters but also the fact that she did not have an in-depth cover story: her purported employer, a shell company created by the agency, was little more than a Boston post office box. They have also questioned whether the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act applied to her, because the law applies only to officers who have served overseas under cover in the previous five years.

But agency officials apparently believe that the law does apply to Ms. Wilson, possibly because she took overseas business trips during the five years before 2003. The C.I.A. sought an investigation, and the Justice Department and Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, concurred in choosing to pursue the case.

...more...

[Demeter]

9. No. I Don't Think So, Senator!

That's not how the information game is played. There's one thing nobody outside needs to know, it's how people stay alive while spying.

[acmavm]

10. Senate Intelligence Committee is now going to get into the act. I guess

its 'everybody cover the bush** administration's collective ass' time again.

[54anickel]

11. Oh for cryin' out loud!!! How much $$$ are we going to waste here,

and are they planning to somehow make whatever findings and changes they decide retroactive? Come on, the rules that are now in place are the ones that were broken. Can't they find something better to do on MY FRICKEN DIME?

[dave29]

12. how many spies will we out in this probe?

they are all idiots.

[Misskittycat]

14. Based on what the guys at the Friday hearing said, this probe

would seriously exacerbate the already-huge damage caused by this Adminitration. Is anything stupider than publicly airing questions about various levels of cover at the CIA? Why don't we just send Osama Bin Laden an airline ticket, get him a nice hotel room in D.C., and let him tour CIA headquarters.

[KittyWampus]

13. How About Getting Back To Commission Investigating Bush's Failures On 9/11

what the fuck ever happened to that?

They were supposed to go into Bush's failures after the election.

[wishlist]

16. Suspicious timing-obvious move to influence Plame indictments

Looks like another wagon is moving quickly to circle around the White House to protect Bushco.

Sen. Roberts is suddenly in high gear with these hearings that are certainly aimed to cast doubt on seriousness of the Plame leak while failing to resume the stalled investigation of the White House use of faulty intelligence to get us into war, which he conveniently halted before the election.

[truthisfreedom]

15. anybody who thinks that revealing Valerie Plame's secret activities is not

a serious breach of national security is an idiot. she has years and years of work that was undone by the traitorous acts of this administration, threatening lives and safety all over the world. trying to pretend that it isn't a big deal is collusion with traitors.

[mandomom]

17. Another commonsense standpoint

is that Roberts has insulted the intelligence of every American, not to mention the thousands of NSA and CIA workers who risk their lives with various forms of cover every day. A "desk" worker today could be doing surveillance while ostensibly on a South American cruise tomorrow.

[magnolia]

18. Can I play devil's advocate...

Maybe...there are republican members of the senate who actually have a conscience, who have been paying attention and have been getting a little worried. Maybe they want an excuse to jump ship by doing their own investigation.

Rove's goal has been to trivialize this subject as much as possible and to get it out of the news. This investigation will only add to the conversation and give the media something more to talk about. This can't be good for Rove.

All the senate can do is investigate....and come up with some kind of answer. If they decide that Plame wasn't covert, it's not like they can go to Fitzgerald and say..."Stop wasting your time on this. WE decided that she wasn't covert." I don't think so! And if he does have indictments...they aren't going to shout..."He can't do that...there was no crime."

Last point...all politicians are looking out for themselves. Most of them have hitched their wagon to the Rove star and it's been good for them. But when it's no longer good they will scatter like rats off a sinking ship.

Or maybe not......

[leesa]

19. So they are going to redefine "cover", eh? This Roberts guy is a real

criminal. He is covering up this treason as hard as he can.

[sidpleasant]

20. The CIA is the arbiter of covert status not a hick Senator

Let me explain this to you, Senator "too stupid to graduate from a school for retarded goldfish" Roberts. There's a criminal investigation into the exposure of Mrs. Wilson's name. This investigation came about because the CIA made what's called a "referral" to the Department of Justice. The referral was a formal request to the DOJ to investigate what the CIA believed was a possible crime. If Mrs. Wilson was not a covert agent in the opinion of the CIA - the only opinion that matters on this point - then exposing her name would not be a crime. Therefore - stop scratching your fat ass and pay attention now, Senator, because this the important part - the existence of the criminal investigation into Mrs. Wilson's outing is prima facie evidence that she was indeed a covert agent. No b.s. hearings by a bunch of idiot Republicans enthralled to Karl Rove will change that fact.

[zanne]

21. Is this going to be an excuse for...

not investigating Rove/Plame? I can hear them now: "But we ARE doing something about this problem".

[Lioness]

22. This is a thinly veiled republican effort

to make it "appear" as if Plume's outing was of no consequence. I hope more is forthcoming from the CIA, after all it was they who instigated the investigation.

If Roberts think he can "stick it to" the CIA, he may have his comeuppance in ways he never anticipated. He's forgotten who he's dealing with, and is obviously harboring the delusion that he is someone important.