OpinionJournal - Extra:
"THE PLAME KERFUFFLE / I Spy With My Little Eye . . . / . . . something beginning with the letter S. (Answer: Sloppy spooks.)
BY REUEL MARC GERECHT / Wednesday, November 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST
'And they [CIA employees] have to expect that when they do their jobs, that information about whether or not they are affiliated with the CIA will be protected. . . . And they run a risk when they work for the CIA that something bad could happen to them, but they have to make sure that they don't run the risk that something bad is going to happen to them from something done by their own fellow government employees.'
So spoke Patrick Fitzgerald, special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame investigation, about the need to preserve the cover of CIA case officers. His sincere concern for the woman's lost camouflage can also be heard among commentators on both left and right, even among those who recognize that Ms. Plame's publicity-loving husband, Joseph 'Yellowcake' Wilson, often doesn't have a firm grip on the truth. In particular, left-leaning liberals, not well known for their defense of the CIA, have charged forward to equate the maintenance of cover for Langley's operatives (who are, let us be frank, probably overwhelmingly antiwar and anti-Bush) with the country's national security. In their eyes, Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, former chief of staff for the vice president, is thus guilty, at a minimum, of a politically motivated disregard for a clandestine public servant on the front lines of freedom.
Needless to say, Langley, which started this whole affair with its referral of Ms. Plame's 'outing' to the Justice Department, couldn't agree more about the critical role of its secret operatives in the nation's defense. ((If it weren't for the CIA's use of rendition and secret prison facilities, a return of 1950s-era liberal love for the clandestine service might be in the works.)
Truth be told, however, the agency doesn't care much at all about cover. Inside the CIA, serious case officers have often looked with horror and mirth upon the pathetic operational camouflage that is usually given to both "inside" officers (operatives who carry official, usually diplomatic, cover) and nonofficial-cover officers (the "NOC" cadre), who most often masquerade as businessmen. Yet Langley tenaciously guards the cover myth--that camouflage for case officers is of paramount importance to its operations and the health of its operatives.
Know the truth about cover--that it is the Achilles' heel of the clandestine service--and you will begin to appreciate how deeply dysfunctional the operations directorate has been for years. Only a profoundly unserious Counter-Proliferation Division would have sent Mr. Wilson on an eight-day walkabout in Niger to uncover the truth about uranium sales to Saddam Hussein and then allowed him to give an oral report. [...]"
