Rivers of ink have been spilled regarding the supposed “outing” of her name and her relationship to Wilson, starting with this article
"Wilson, while refusing to confirm his wife's employment, said the release to the press of her relationship to him and even her maiden name was an attempt to intimidate others like him from talking about Bush administration intelligence failures"
To this date I continue to hear even on the radio speculations about “who had her name and who mentioned her name first”
Now that it is documented that her name and her relationship to him were available to anybody with internet access, we see that a large part of the scandal has been simply invented out of thin air.
Now, the part that about compromising her job.
In a previous posting it was also documented that 36 news agencies and reporter’s groups stated in an affidavit that even the original op-ed by Wilson had the potential to compromise her cover:
"Wilson Op-Ed. Did no one at Langley think that Plame's Identity might be compromised if her spouse writes a nationally distributed Op-Ed piece discussing a foreign mission about a volatile political issue that focused on her subject matter expertise?"
Thus we are now talking about a matter of degree of exposure. The original op-ed increased the risk of her cover being blown because as documented before, her maiden name and her relationship to him were available on the internet and because, as D. Corn states, the nature of her job was
“ the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material”
thus being identified on the internet as wife of an individual who bragged openly and widely of being CIA contractor carrying WMD missions is not quite consistent with being on DEEP COVER. Thus the op-ed had already partially compromised her identity, even without Novak’s article, unless WMD dealers do not have internet access, do not know how to use google and do not read the NYT.
Novak’s article further increased the potential of exposure by publishing that she was a CIA employee, one of many thousands in DC, although several individuals have stated that this information was relatively common knowledge among the press and even her neighbors.
Thus what was the final nail in the coffin? What completely ensured that Ms. Plame’s ability to carry out further operations would not be possible? Perhaps when as C. May states, an indignant article , that received significant play in the MSM, published the following statements, none of which were mentioned in Novak’s article
“and his wife was outed as an undercover CIA officer.”
“A pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover"
“The White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer”
Perhaps the author of such article would like to comment on the source of the information that Ms. Plame/Wilson was an undercover officer, had “non official cover” or that she worked as energy analyst, since none of this information was available prior to the publication of the article.
The real issues about outing a cover agent are 1) knowledge of the covert status and most importantly, 2) intent of blowing the cover. The questions then are:
1) If Ms. Plame's cover was so deep, and outing her identity so dangerous, why did Wilson allow her maiden name to be posted on his internet bio at the Middle East Institute in 2002 where it was available in July 2003 at the time of his Op-Ed in the NYT?
2) Given the established public nature of her maiden name documented above, why didn't Wilson think that writing an Op-ed about the CIA and her subject matter expertise in the NYT and then giving public interviews about it could plausibly increase the risk (even if it was only marginally) to her job, her cover and potentially her life?
3) Given that he was so casual about making very public statements related to his wife's field of expertise and place of employment, it would be logical for any rational observer to conclude that Wilson had a lackadaisical attitude to protecting any subjects related to her wife's job. Thus the questions are, would any rational husband in the world do anything public that would create ANY risk, even minimal risk, to his wife's job and potentially her life? Would anyone even think that a husband would be so reckless?
4) Thus, knowing this information, why would any other rational person, regardless of position, when learning about her place of employment would even think or speculate that her CIA employment was of a covert nature or that there would be any sort of risk associated with mentioning it?
