Could Wilson say ‘Yes, she was undercover”? I mean, wouldn’t that be divulging classified info?

Surely, assuming Plame was outed by Novak and Wilson knew it, isn’t this the only answer Wilson could give to this question?

Well conceivably because there actually will have turned out to have been a crime committed (though I doubt it—and so, by the way, does Joe Wilson which he says in the same interview). And possibly as an escalation of the political pissing contest that seems to have been going on between the CIA and the White House (not that the two are necessarily mutually exclusive).

Why did the CIA request the investigation of the non-outing of a non-covert officer?

Why did Ashcroft agree to a special prosecutor for the investigation of the non-outing of a non-covert officer?

Why has the prosecution spent two years investigating the non-outing of a non-covert officer?

That’s absurd. Read—actually read—what Joe Wilson said. If she had been clandestine right up to the point her ‘cover’ was blown, he surely would have said so. And the follow-up question is, “But she hadn’t been a clandestine officer for some time before that?” And he replies by saying, “That’s not anything that I can talk about.” When he could have said simply, “No—that’s not true”. So she wasn’t clandestine when ‘outed’ and hadn’t been for some time but it remains unclear how much time.

My outrage can wait until all this gets sorted out.

She was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity BECAUSE NOVAK HAD BLOWN HER GODDAMN IDENTITY! The day before, she was clandestine. It’s as clear as fucking day.

That’s why the CIA recommended an investigation, and that’s why John Ashcroft appointed an independent prosecutor.

Let me repeat myself: Mel Goodman, a former CIA analyst, says “I’ve worked in Washington for the past 38 years, including 24 years at the CIA…and I know Ambassador Wilson….and I did not know that his wife was an agency employee.” Her friends and neighbors didn’t know. The CIA thought she was covert. Kevin Drum has collected quotes from four separate ex-CIA employees on the record saying Plame was undercover. This is not a sustainable argument.

BLITZER: But the other argument that’s been made against you is that you’ve sought to capitalize on this extravaganza, having that photo shoot with your wife, who was a clandestine officer of the CIA, and that you’ve tried to enrich yourself writing this book and all of that.

What do you make of those accusations, which are serious accusations, as you know, that have been leveled against you.

WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.

BLITZER: But she hadn’t been a clandestine officer for some time before that?

WILSON: That’s not anything that I can talk about. And, indeed, I’ll go back to what I said earlier, the CIA believed that a possible crime had been committed, and that’s why they referred it to the Justice Department.

She was not a clandestine officer at the time that that article in Vanity Fair appeared. And I have every right to have the American public know who I am and not to have myself defined by those who would write the sorts of things that are coming out, being spewed out of the mouths of the RNC…

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0507/14/wbr.01.html

Well, yes I know it’s the Washington Times, and it may be total BS, but the source is named—we’ll see. Same thing as to whether or not she was actually active an undercover agent and whether anyone in the field was compromised—I’m not convinced on that yet, either.

“A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an “undercover agent,” saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency’s headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.
“She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat,” Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.

Do you have any evidence to back that up? All the references I’ve seen said that no one who knew her and Wilson knew she worked for the CIA, and her CIA classmate Larry Johnson href=”http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/13/04720/9340” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/7/13/04720/9340 said she was still undercover.

Yes, Rove is slimy (not news, that) but even so, the outrage and the scandal feels more manufactured than genuine.

This seems like a hand that would be better not overplayed. I doubt there was an actual crime committed here. It seems to me that the thing to do is to make it clear what happened and then, afterwards, if Rove sticks around, well, so much the better in ‘08 if Rove is not, at that point, a distant memeory.