State Department memo didn’t say Plame was CIA secret agent

The New York Sun has obtained a State Department document contradicting earlier reports that Bush administration officials were told in July 2003 that Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent.

Plame, wife of Joseph Wilson, shortly afterward was revealed as a “CIA operative” by columnist Robert Novak. Wilson and other Democrats have tried to claim the Bush administration was punishing Wilson, a critic of the liberation of Iraq, by revealing his wife as a “secret agent,” opening her to physical attack.

However, there is no evidence that Plame in 2003 had been an undercover CIA agent for at least five years.

The Air Force One memo. The Sun reports:

Contrary to published reports, a State Department memorandum at the center of the investigation into the leak of the name of a CIA operative, Valerie Plame, appears to offer no particular indication that Ms. Plame’s role at the agency was classified or covert.

The memo, drafted by the then head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and addressed to the then secretary of state, Colin Powell, was carried aboard Air Force One as President Bush departed for Africa in July 2003. A declassified version of the document was obtained by The New York Sun on Saturday….

“In a February 19, 2002, meeting convened by Valerie Wilson, a CIA WMD manager, and the wife of Joe Wilson, he previewed his plans and rationale for going to Niger,” the memo from the State Department intelligence chief, Carl Ford Jr., said.

Sought or bought? Wilson went to Niger in late February 2002, talked with officials who didn’t believe Saddam recently had bought uranium from Niger but also talked with at least one who believed Saddam recently sought uranium from Niger. Inexplicably, Wilson later called “false” President Bush’s 2003 claim that Saddam sought uranium from Africa.

The most obvious reason Novak was told that Plame worked for the CIA is that everyone was wondering why the CIA was foolish enough to send Wilson to Niger when Wilson was clearly a hysterical partisan. The answer: Wilson’s CIA wife recommended him.

Frank Warner

Comments

[Christopher Taylor]

What bothers me the most is that on this CIA-sponsored mission to find information in Iraq, Wilson came back and reported promptly to... the New York Times. Then he eventually sent a letter to Congress contradicting the NYT article, and testified later. Exactly how is that work for the CIA again?

[Frank Warner]

Yeah, send me on a mission.