In Part 1 those paying attention learned about the short and curious timeframe of Valerie Plame's CIA classified status in the Counter Proliferation Directorate and her apparent first trip abroad in that status. The curious part is the very brief timespan that bridged her husband's adventure, beginning approximately six weeks before he traveled to Niger in February, 2002, and a trip made by Plame approximately 10 days after Wilson was debriefed on March 5. That's eight weeks total.

Plame may well have served overseas in the five years before her outing by Robert Novak but we don't know that because Patrick Fitzgerald was quite adamant that's all he could speak to. What we do know though is that Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-GA), in his questioning of Plame during the Waxman hearings, went to extraordinary lengths to establish a five year window ending five years "from today" which was March 16, 2007. Cummings took the liberty of simply moving the specific requirement of The Intelligence Indentities Protection Act - serving overseas in the five years prior to any identity disclosure - from July 1997 to March, 2002. From Cummings exacting question, we can reasonably infer Plame first traveled in a classified status no earlier than ten days after her husband was debriefed by the CIA in his living room on March 5th.

Why Send Joe?

Well, for one reason, the CIA sent him to Niger three years earlier in 1999. According to his book that trip also dealt with "uranium matters". Obviously the CPD felt comfortable with Joe and his qualifications for the mission, whatever that might have been.

Not everyone agreed though.

In a meeting called by CPD on 2/19/2002 to discuss the merits of sending the former ambassador, state department intelligence analysts (INR) expressed skepticism that the uranium transaction could be carried out at all and, secondly, the former ambassador's trip would be redundant since the embassy in Niger was quite capable of getting "to the truth on the uranium issue."

(Indeed, two days before Wilson arrived in Africa, Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick disseminated a report describing a meeting with Nigerien officials, General Carlton Fulford, and herself on the very subject of uranium transfers. She had reached the same conclusion that Joe Wilson would come to a week or so later.)

Others in attendance noted that "the trip would do little to clarify the story on the alleged uranium deal because the Nigeriens would be unlikely to admit to a uranium sales agreement with Iraq, even if one had been negotiated."

That seems like a duh.

Even an e-mail from a CPD analyst said, "it appears that the results from this source will be suspect at best, and not believable under most scenarios."

Notwithstanding these objections from intelligence experts, the CPD was determined that Joe Wilson should go to Niger and he departed two days later on February 21.

The question is not then "What I didn't find in Africa," as Wilson titled his now infamous op-ed piece; the question is what the hell was Joe Wilson doing in Africa again, and, only six weeks after his wife had joined the Counter Proliferation Directorate?

Next time we'll explore the question, "Why not tell Dick?"

Need a source?

It really is too bad that you can't get your facts straight.

One example is that Valerie Plame was not outed in March of 2002. The article by Novak was in June of 2003.

The rest of your post is unbearably irrelevant.

What matters is that no fewer than 4 members of the administration talked to at least 6 reporters and told them about Valerie Plame and her job at the CIA. Not that the fact that she worked at the CIA was likely to make it more credible that Iraq tried to buy yellowcake from Niger for a non-existant nuclear weapons program. So why did they tell reporters about Plame working at CIA? It was an attempt to make Wilson less credible. Why didn't they work on making their own information more believable? Remember that about the same time that Cheney's office was talking to reporters, Ari Fleischer was telling reporters that the State of the Union shouldn't have had the 16 words in it.....

article appeared in March, 2002?

I did make a typo in saying Cummings moved the window from "July 1997"....that should have been July 1998, five years prior to Novak's column.

Is that what you're referring to?

Aside from that I'm not talking about reporters, or Libby, or Ari Fleisher, or who talked to who when, or perjury, or obstruction. Are you so dense as to not understand that?

j

Could your nose be any further up in Bush's knickers? Keep apologizing for Bush, Rove, Cheney, Libby...although you would take a different tack if the Democrats had leaked a covert CIA agent's name.

Your reference to March 5, 2002 was the item I was talking about.

I know that you are neck deep into trivia related to whether or not Plame was covert. You must be too dense to understand that it is a settled matter. The CIA has verified that she was covert and that she had been tdy on overseas missions on something like 6 occasions in the 5 years prior to July 2003.

What you don't seem to grasp is that the administration circulated a memo, marked secret, which stated that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked at the CIA. They ignored that classification and talked to reporters. That, all by itself, means that they were, at the very least, indifferent to her covert status. The players in this didn't go thru any sort of analysis to decide if they could reveal her identity. They didn't ask anyone if they would harm national security. They didn't care.

Now, after the fact, you are attempting to nitpick the IIPA to try to distract from that criminal indifference. It ain't working.

how exposure to straightforward simple documented facts manifests itself in some folks.

Must be a function of box size.

You seem to think your post was one of straightforward documented facts.

1. What was Joe Wilson doing in Africa only six weeks after his wife had joined CPD?

A: What does this mean? Did you walk to work or pack a lunch?

2. The whole part of your post that fits into the nonsense about Plame's "short and curious classified status" makes no sense at all.

The only part that is fact is that Wilson went to Niger in February of 2002 and that Plame made a trip 10 days after Wilson was debriefed....So what? Are you surprised that Plame was continuing to do her job?

The CIA released enough of Plame's job record to prove that she was covert.

Why send Joe? Did Joe Wilson serve in the embassies in both Niger and Baghdad? Did he know people in both governments? Wilson himself thought that he could provide no additional information, but agreed to go anyway, because if he could help at all he was willing to do so. He made no money on the deal and if you're attempting to say that it was all a setup, why didn't Wilson write the Op-ed the day after Bush's state of the union speech? Why wait until 5 months later?

If you are done with that particular set of red herrings, perhaps you'd like to tell us why the White House admitted that the president should not have used the info on yellowcake and Niger? Could it be because Wilson was right? There was no attempt to get yellowcake and Iraq had no nuclear weapons program to use it in even if they had tried to get it.

According to Fitzgeralds filing (exhibit a) Valerie Plame was working at CPD as of 1/1/2002. Between January 2002 and July 2003 when she was mentioned in Novak's article, she traveled overseas 7 times to 10 countries. In each of those trips she traveled in a covert status.

Any other assignments remain classified and would be irrelevant to the conversation about the Novak article. Novak himself says he was told not to use her name in his article, but it seems he decided that, since they didn't say "pretty please" that they didn't really mean it....or some such nonsense.

It seems obvious to me that the CIA and CPD are Globalist Socialist wholley owned subsidiaries. Valerie is about as credible as a secret agent as is Oprah Winfrey. This pair sounds like career government parasite Useful Idiots to me. Agents of chaos.

If I was Boosh, I'd have had them expunged.

If we rely on the likes of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson for "intelligence" after castigating the likes of Secord, North, Poindexter, I have to observe that America is hopelessly lost to Marxist Elite Banker Industrialists,now. Patriots are operating blind. No wonder we admit to mistakes so easily.

Anyone who thinks that Saddam wasn't trying to get a nuke is off their rocker. When you give someone more than a year to hide their pea, and then you refuse to look in the likely places it was hidden and telegraph that self restriction, of course you won't find any smoking guns.

Leave it to the likes of Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson to exonnerate the Jihadders. They work for the same boss just like the Rosenbergs.

Dd

Predicto,

Please take your medication.

Maybe you should read the Waxman transcript again. Page one ...

"Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., just said he has been told by the CIA, in a statement authorized by CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, that "Miss Wilson's CIA employment status was covert." (Plame does go by the name Valerie Wilson, but is most often referred to in the media as Valerie Plame, her maiden name, because that is how she first came to be known when her name was leaked.)."

First rule of logic. "If you start your premise with a lie it makes all arguments you may have 'mute'

Now it won't be necessary for you to write Sting 3. However if you feel the need to write one at least start your post out with "Once upon a time"

best

b/a