Plame Affair - Possible Consequences of The Public Disclosure of Wilson's CIA Identity

Possible Consequences of The Public Disclosure of Wilson's CIA Identity

There has been debate over what kinds of damage may have resulted from the public disclosure of Valerie Wilson's identity as a CIA operative in Novak's column and its fallout, how far and into what areas of national security and foreign intelligence that damage might extend, particularly vis-à-vis Plame's work with her cover company, Brewster Jennings & Associates. Plame has characterized the damage as "serious," noting, "I can tell you, all the intelligence services in the world that morning were running my name through their databases to see, `Did anyone by this name come in the country? When? Do we know anything about it? Where did she stay? Well, who did she see?'" In an op-ed published by the Los Angeles Times, Joe Wilson wrote "She immediately started jotting down a checklist of things she needed to do to limit the damage to people she knew and to projects she was working on."

On October 3, 2004, The Washington Post quotes a former diplomat predicting immediate damage: "very 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. ... That's why the agency is so sensitive about just publishing her name."

In contrast, in an October 27, 2005, appearance on Larry King Live, Bob Woodward commented: "They did a damage assessment within the CIA, looking at what this did that Joe Wilson's wife was outed. And turned out it was quite minimal damage. They did not have to pull anyone out undercover abroad. They didn't have to resettle anyone. There was no physical danger to anyone, and there was just some embarrassment."

In an appearance the next night, October 28, 2005, on Hardball, Andrea Mitchell was quoted as saying: "I happen to have been told that the actual damage assessment as to whether people were put in jeopardy on this case did not indicate that there was real damage in this specific instance."

Following Mitchell's appearance on Hardball, on October 29, 2005, The Washington Post's Dafna Linzer reported that no formal damage assessment had yet been conducted by the CIA "as is routinely done in cases of espionage and after any legal proceedings have been exhausted." Linzer writes: "There is no indication, according to current and former intelligence officials, that the most dire of consequences — the risk of anyone's life — resulted from her outing. But after Plame's name appeared in Robert D. Novak's column, the CIA informed the Justice Department in a simple questionnaire that the damage was serious enough to warrant an investigation, officials said."

Mark Lowenthal, who retired from a senior management position at the CIA in March 2005 reportedly told Linzer: "You can only speculate that if she had foreign contacts, those contacts might be nervous and their relationships with her put them at risk. It also makes it harder for other CIA officers to recruit sources."

Another intelligence official who spoke anonymously to Linzer cited the CIA's interest in protecting the agency and its work: "You'll never get a straight answer about how valuable she was or how valuable her sources were."

On October 28, 2005, the Office of Special Counsel issued a press release regarding Libby's indictment. The following is stated regarding Plame:

Prior to July 14, 2003, Valerie Wilson’s employment status was classified. Prior to that date, her affiliation with the CIA was not common knowledge outside the intelligence community. Disclosure of classified information about an individual’s employment by the CIA has the potential to damage the national security in ways that range from preventing that individual’s future use in a covert capacity, to compromising intelligence-gathering methods and operations, and endangering the safety of CIA employees and those who deal with them, the indictment states.

In a November 3, 2005, online live discussion, in response to a question about the Fitzgerald investigation, The Washington Post's Dana Priest, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist specializing in matters of national security, stated: "I don't actually think the Plame leak compromised national security, from what I've been able to learn about her position."

In a January 9, 2006, letter addressed to "Scooter" Libby's defense team, Patrick Fitzgerald responded to a discovery request by Libby's lawyers for both classified and unclassified documents. In the letter, Fitzgerald writes: "A formal assessment has not been done of the damage caused by the disclosure of Valerie Wilson’s status as a CIA employee, and thus we possess no such document." He continues: "In any event, we would not view an assessment of the damage caused by the disclosure as relevant to the issue of whether or not Mr. Libby intentionally lied when he made the statements and gave the grand jury testimony which the grand jury alleged was false."

On March 16, 2007, Valerie Wilson told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform: "But I do know the Agency did a damage assessment. They did not share it with me, but I know that certainly puts the people and the contacts I had all in jeopardy, even if they were completely innocent in nature."

During Libby's trial, Judge Reggie Walton told the jury: "No evidence will be presented to you with regard to Valerie Plame Wilson’s status. That is because what her actual status was, or whether any damage would result from disclosure of her status, are totally irrelevant to your decision of guilt or innocence. You must not consider these matters in your deliberations or speculate or guess about them." During court proceedings, when the jury was not present, Walton told the court: "I don’t know, based on what has been presented to me in this case, what her status was...It’s totally irrelevant to this case...I to this day don’t know what her actual status was."

Larisa Alexandrovna of The Raw Story reports that three intelligence officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity, told her that

While Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss has not submitted a formal damage assessment to Congressional oversight committees, the CIA's Directorate of Operations did conduct a serious and aggressive investigation.

According to her sources, "the damage assessment ... called a 'counter intelligence assessment to agency operations' was conducted on the orders of the CIA's then-Deputy Director of the Directorate of Operation James Pavitt... . 'significant damage to operational equities.' "

Alexandrovna also reports that while Plame was undercover she was involved in an operation identifying and tracking weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran, suggesting that her outing "significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation." Her sources also stated that the outing of Plame also compromised the identity of other covert operatives who had been working, like Plame, under non-official cover status. These anonymous officials said that in their judgement, the CIA's work on WMDs has been set back "ten years" as a result of the compromise.

MSNBC correspondent David Shuster reported on Hardball later, on May 1, 2006, that MSNBC had learned "new information" about the potential consequences of the leaks: "Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the Administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well. The White House considers Iran to be one of America's biggest threats."

In March 2007 Richard Leiby and Walter Pincus reported, in The Washington Post, that Plame's work "included dealing with personnel as well as issues related to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and Iran." CBS news would later confirm Plame was "was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons," and may have been involved in Operation Merlin.

On September 6, 2006, David Corn published an article for The Nation titled "What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA", reporting that Plame was placed in charge of the operations group within the Joint Task Force on Iraq in the spring of 2001 and that, "when the Novak column ran," in July 2003: "Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator – to rise up a notch or two – and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again.

According to Vicky Ward, in "Double Exposure", "In fact, in the spring, Plame was in the process of moving from NOC status to State Department cover. Wilson speculates that "if more people knew than should have, then somebody over at the White House talked earlier than they should have been talking."

In testifying before Congress, Mrs. Wilson described the damage done by her exposure in the following way:

The CIA goes to great lengths to protect all of its employees, providing at significant taxpayers' expense painstakingly devised and creative covers for its most sensitive staffers. The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave, but I can't provide details beyond that in this public hearing. But the concept is obvious. Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized and even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence. Lives are literally at stake.

In her memoir, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House, Valerie Plame Wilson states that after her covert and then-still-classified CIA identity "Valerie Plame" appeared in Novak's column in July 2003, she feared for her children's safety but was denied protection by the Agency. On October 26, 2005, her former CIA colleague Larry Johnson told Wolf Blitzer, on the CNN program The Situation Room, that she "had received death threats overseas from Al-Qaeda"; according to Johnson, after the FBI contacted her and told her of the threat made by al-Qaeda, she called the CIA and asked for security protection but was told: "you will have to rely upon 9-1-1."

On November 12, 2010, The Washington Post published a letter to the editor written by R.E. Pound. According to the Post, Pound served in the CIA from 1976 to 2009. Pound writes, "I was at one point charged with looking into possible damage in one location caused by Valerie Plame's outing. There was none...It was wrong to expose Plame. It was ludicrous for her to claim that the exposure forced an end to her career in intelligence."

Main article: Valerie Plame#Career