Valerie Plame Wilson discusses “Fair Game” at Firedoglake this morning

I have to finish my book by Friday. At the same time, I’m taking a break this morning for Valerie Plame Wilson’s visit to www.firedoglake.com. She’ll be there at 10:30 a.m. Pacific to discuss her new book, “Fair Game”. Evidently, Ms. Wilson was on “60 Minutes” last night as well. While I very much wanted to hear what she had to say, I’m only sorry that CBS chose to have Katie Couric conduct that interview. I’m pondering the following this morning, brought to us by Larry Johnson, who also worked with the CIA. These comments were originally printed at Mr. Johnson’s blog, No Quarter.  http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2007/10/21/valerie-plame-wilson-and-the-ultimate-betrayal/#more-975 His comments are also in a DailyKOS diary this morning. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/10/21/211336/47

In 2004 the FBI received intelligence that Al Qaeda hit teams were enroute to the United States to kill Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and Valerie Plame. The FBI informed Valerie of this threat. This was just more “good” news piled on the fact that her intelligence career was in shambles, that intelligence assets she had recruited/managed were destroyed, and that she was unable to rebut publicly false and malicious smears of her character and reputation by a bunch of partisan Republican hacks. As the mother of two pre-school children, her first thoughts were about protecting her kids. She took the threat seriously and asked for help.

When the White House learned of these threats they sprung into action. They beefed up Secret Service protection for Vice President Cheney and provided security protection to Karl Rove. But they declined to do anything for Valerie. That was a CIA problem.

Valerie contacted the office of Security at CIA and requested assistance. They told her too fucking bad and to go pound sand. They did not use those exact words, but they told her she was on her own.

Before learning of this I credited George Tenet with doing a good job of restoring morale at the CIA but criticized him strongly for playing politics with the White House and helping set the table for scamming the American public into the Iraq war. Now, in light of this revelation, I realize the man is a despicable coward. He refused to come to the aid of one of his CIA officers who faced a specific death threat. In fact, Georgie boy never once reached out to Valerie to provide any comfort or encouragement. He wanted to stay on good terms with the White House so he effectively cut her loose.

So if you have wondered why Joe and Val are a little pissed off, this might help shed some additional light on the matter. Not only did the Bush Administration out a covert intelligence officer working on the most sensitive national security issues in a time of war, but when that officer faced a direct threat to her life and her family’s safety because of that public exposure, they did not do a goddamn thing to help. I don’t know about you, but that fries my ass.

It is absolutely unbelievable that the White House would choose to not only destroy Valerie Plame Wilson’s intelligence career, trashing a network she spent eighteen years assembling, endangering everyone she formerly worked with, and compromising the national security of the United States — they also left her and her family vulnerable to attack. In the meantime, the personal attacks continue.

If anything at all, this makes the events of the past three years, especially the Libby trial, even more stomach-turning. Our government is being run by those who will go to any length to discredit and destroy those who get in the way of their hidden agendas. Where can we go to get our country back?

-S

p.s. If you’d like to purchase Ms. Wilson’s book, please go to http://www.amazon.com/Fair-Game-Betrayal-White-House/dp/1416537619/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-8135920-8121748?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1193077056&sr=1-1