Why so little said here on "Plamegate"?

[Mickey]

Former CIA operative.  Still serious, as it puts assets at risk...but I haven't yet heard that operations were blown and national security was compromised as it might be if an active operative were compromised.  So let's at least be accurate with our vocabulary, shall we?

 

Wait...what am I saying?  Never mind...let's all just play fast and loose with the facts and mold them to fit our preconceived notions.  This is, after all, about political mudslinging, not justice.  It's Monica Lewinski all over again, but without the salaciousness.

485921[/snapback]

I don't think, from a secrecy standpoint, that the CIA would release any information as to "assets" put at risk by this mess. Thus, not having heard that operations were blown or national security compromised is not necessarily proof that it wasn't. I am not sure that such actual harm is a necessary showing to establish the crime. Further, there are other laws potentially involved besides the IIPA so if we are to speculate as to potential criminal charges and eventual convictions, we should expand the discussion beyond just the IIPA. Lastly, once we get to this stage of the inquiry, all we are really discussing is whether someone is going to go to jail as opposed to whether or not someone's actions were despicable enough to be forced to resign or at least reviled.

 

For me, I think the political effect of all this is of more concern now than whether Rove ever sees the inside of a jail cell.

[Kelly the Dog]

Former CIA operative.  Still serious, as it puts assets at risk...but I haven't yet heard that operations were blown and national security was compromised as it might be if an active operative were compromised.  So let's at least be accurate with our vocabulary, shall we?

 

Wait...what am I saying?  Never mind...let's all just play fast and loose with the facts and mold them to fit our preconceived notions.  This is, after all, about political mudslinging, not justice.  It's Monica Lewinski all over again, but without the salaciousness.

485921[/snapback]

That ain't the point. You can't look back in retrospect and say no operations were blown or national security compromised. It's just as bad and as big a crime but they simply didnt know what she may or may not have been involved in, what it may or may not have compromised. The point of the law(s) is to protect her and others working with her that were under cover. Unless they got a full dossier from Tenet saying exactly what she was and wasn't doing to find out whether she was or wasnt active, was or wasn't part of a covert operation. And if that was the case, they really were going after her.

[GG]

Further, there are other laws potentially involved besides the IIPA so if we are to speculate as to potential criminal charges and eventual convictions, we should expand the discussion beyond just the IIPA. 

485940[/snapback]

 

You mean looking at someone at the CIA who leaked the info that the CIA had referred the leak case to Justice Department for review? That CIA leak itself is against the law....

[Wacka]

You keep ignoring thet the 1982 law against leaking names of active ( or were active within the last five years) DOES NOT APPLY. She was compromised 9 years earlier and was A DESK JOCKEY (analyst) in the CIA HQ. She probably had a CIA parking sticker on her car, so she could get in the lot. It is not against the law to say that someone works at the CIA.

 

From what I heard today, the NYT (that bastion of truth) says that all Libbey is guilty of is forgetting who told him something minor 2 years earlier. Do you remember everyting the boss talked to you about in some meeting two years ago, much less last week?

 

 

Keep on worrying aboutindicting people for a faulty memory about minutiae, instead of giving concrete plans for solving problems.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

That ain't the point. You can't look back in retrospect and say no operations were blown or national security compromised. It's just as bad and as big a crime but they simply didnt know what she may or may not have been involved in, what it may or may not have compromised. The point of the law(s) is to protect her and others working with her that were under cover. Unless they got a full dossier from Tenet saying exactly what she was and wasn't doing to find out whether she was or wasnt active, was or wasn't part of a covert operation. And if that was the case, they really were going after her.

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No, that ain't the point. But implying a former undercover operative is an active one plays to the emotions (being the difference between "Someone broke the law" and "Someone put someone's life at risk") and clouds the issues.

[Kelly the Dog]

No, that ain't the point.  But implying a former undercover operative is an active one plays to the emotions (being the difference between "Someone broke the law" and "Someone put someone's life at risk") and clouds the issues.

486170[/snapback]

Even if she wasn't still active, surely colleagues and contacts still were. The point is, they probably didn't know exactly what her duties were, or how many still active operatives worked with her over the years, and what all their contacts were, and what all of them were doing. How they could be compromised. And, as I said, if they actually dig that deep into her past and her present and all of her contacts, and then went after her as they did, it almost certainly was a orchestrated, calculated, revenge move against Joe Wilson. Hardly any coincidence that the day Cheney told Libby about Valerie Plame was the exact same day of the Washington Post front page article referencing "a diplomat" (later to be, of course, Wilson) that went to Niger who may have been sent from Cheney's office. Protecting themselves is fine. Going after Wilson is fine. Talking amongst themselves about CIA agents is fine. Outing Plame the way they did and then (likely) lying to a Grand Jury about it, probably not. It's just not something you do in allegedly "a war time".

[Mickey]

You mean looking at someone at the CIA who leaked the info that the CIA had referred the leak case to Justice Department for review?  That CIA leak itself is against the law....

485977[/snapback]

How do you know it was the CIA that leaked the information and not someone at the Justice Department or some other person unconnected with either? Exactly how was the Justice Department going to keep secret the investigation, the grand jury hearings, the subpoenas, the appointment of a prosecutor, his budget, etc, etc, etc? Didn't we all already know that Valerie Plame had been outed by Novak? I don't see how, after that, security interests would be further harmed by the public discolsure of the CIA referral to Justice asking them to investigate the outing of Plame. What law was broken by leaking the referral by the CIA to the Justice Department? Why hasn't the Justice Department investigated this supposedly illegal leak?

 

Let me add another Step,

 

Step 1A: Change the subject.

[Mickey]

You keep ignoring thet the 1982 law against leaking names of active ( or were active  within the last five years) DOES NOT APPLY.  She was compromised 9 years earlier and was  A DESK JOCKEY (analyst) in the CIA HQ. She probably had a CIA parking sticker on her car, so she could get in the lot. It is not against the law to say that someone works at the CIA.

 

From what I heard today, the NYT (that bastion of truth) says that all Libbey is guilty of is forgetting who told him something minor 2 years earlier. Do you remember everyting the boss talked to you about in some meeting two years ago, much less last week?

Keep on worrying aboutindicting people for a faulty memory about minutiae, instead of giving concrete plans for solving problems.

486015[/snapback]

You keep consistently ignoring that additional laws are involved here, not just the IIPA.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

Outing Plame the way they did and then (likely) lying to a Grand Jury about it, probably not. It's just not something you do in allegedly "a war time".

486208[/snapback]

 

And I didn't say it was fine. My point - again - is that there's no need to distort the facts to make it sound worse than it already is. They "outed" a former undercover operative. No, it's not right...but it's also not throwing a CIA officer in-country to the wolves, as some would make it out to be. What the hell is the problem with calling it what it is, and not over-inflating it?

[N.Y. Orangeman]

And I didn't say it was fine.  My point - again - is that there's no need to distort the facts to make it sound worse than it already is.  They "outed" a former undercover operative.  No, it's not right...but it's also not throwing a CIA officer in-country to the wolves, as some would make it out to be.  What the hell is the problem with calling it what it is, and not over-inflating it? 

486442[/snapback]

 

IMHO, It isn't about the damage to Ms. Plame; it is about the damage to systems/people Ms. Plame worked for and with in her tenure, if any. That potential damage, while unknown, isn't overinflated IMO.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

IMHO, It isn't about the damage to Ms. Plame; it is about the damage to systems/people Ms. Plame worked for and with in her tenure, if any.  That potential damage, while unknown, isn't overinflated IMO.

486453[/snapback]

 

And my point - again - is: it's already serious, so why keep overstating it?

 

What is SO HARD about this concept? If it's already bad, why make it sound worse? It almost sounds like you bozos can't honestly discuss it, so you'll just pull sh-- out of your asses.

[SilverNRed]

And I didn't say it was fine.  My point - again - is that there's no need to distort the facts to make it sound worse than it already is.  They "outed" a former undercover operative.  No, it's not right...but it's also not throwing a CIA officer in-country to the wolves, as some would make it out to be.  What the hell is the problem with calling it what it is, and not over-inflating it? 

486442[/snapback]

How do you "out" a former undercover operative when she's already driving from her house to Langley every morning to get to work? It's not like she was trying to stay out of the limelight when she sent her husband on a mission to Niger that he had no business being a part of (and ended up lying about according to the Senate Intelligence Committee).

 

It's like trying to uncover who in the White House "leaked" that the sky is blue.

[Kelly the Dog]

And my point - again - is: it's already serious, so why keep overstating it?

 

What is SO HARD about this concept?  If it's already bad, why make it sound worse?  It almost sounds like you bozos can't honestly discuss it, so you'll just pull sh-- out of your asses.

486469[/snapback]

To me, you "under-stated" when you brought up the issue that looking back on it, we didn't find out that the "outing" didnt compromised any major undercover operation. I responded to that under-statement that they didnt know that at the time, and it's immaterial and unimportant and lessening the issue to look back and say they didnt hurt anyone.

[Kelly the Dog]

Just a little grist for the mill. Some of you I'm sure know all or most of this. Most of you likely won't admit it, but knew next to nothing about it.

 

Niger/Uranium: FACTS everyone NEEDS to know

by Todd Johnston

Mon Oct 24, 2005 at 03:27:33 PM PDT

 

PLEASE, PLEASE RECOMMEND THIS DIARY

I have never started a diary this way, but what follows is too important to get lost over decorum.

 

The issue of whether Iraq sought to buy yellowcake from Niger is and has always been irrelevant. The White House -- Bush, Cheney, Rice, Hadley; the intelligence community -- Tenet and CIA, DOE, and the State Department; Valerie Plame, and Joe Wilson, have all understood this from day one. Plame herself called the idea "crazy."

 

What has been utterly misunderstood, misrepresented, and lost amid the babble of speculation and intrigue, is that Iraq didn't need yellowcake. They'd had a million pounds of it sitting around "in country" for over a decade, but with no viable means whatsoever of making it into nuclear weapons.

 

It is all about the cover-up.

 

* Todd Johnston's diary :: ::

*

 

The science is what's missing. Understand that and the real fraud will smack you right between the eyes, that someone rammed the Niger/yellowcake 'angle' down the intelligence community's throats. And everyone in the IC knew it, choosing to either toe the line or mutter quietly in the halls.

 

Except Joe Wilson. He picked the scab that mattered, pointed to the elephant in the room. Niger. God willing, I'll find a way to make these subtle but important distinctions clear. Please bear with me.

 

Mine and refine

 

In nature, uranium is an ore much like iron. You dig it out of the ground as a big lump of uranium mixed with crud. The crud has to go, so by one of a few processes the crud is stripped away leaving mostly uranium. BTW, the industry's technical term for "crud" is "other." Crud's funnier.

 

The so-called "pure" uranium that's left over is very weakly radioactive and not especially dangerous. Also, like cheese in the sun, it doesn't stay "pure" for long because it reacts with the air, sometimes in ways that are unpleasant.

 

So countries like Niger, who mine and sell uranium force it to react a specific way to make a product that can be safely stored for a long time. They turn it into yellowcake. [1]

 

Yellowcake is nothing more than uranium right from the ground that has been refined and stabilized. Short of eating it, breathing it, or batter-dipping yourself in it, yellowcake is not all that dangerous either.

 

**This is really important.**

On a drive from NJ to CA, at the PA state line you are indeed closer to CA. But if you have to pee, I wouldn't recommend holding it.

 

On the drive to build a nuclear weapon from uranium, "yellowcake" is the PA state line. FYI, should you make to the mid-west, Israel will start launching U.S. cruise missles at you.

 

Process and enrich

 

The whole point of a nuclear weapon is making a big "boom." And that is really frickin' hard or a terrorist would have done it a long time ago.

 

Like everything else in the universe, uranium is made of atoms. And like everything else in the universe, somebody screwed up because 1 out of every 100 uranium atoms is slightly different from the other 99. THAT's the one that goes "boom." So, you have to find that one stinkin' atom out of a hundred, toss away the other 99 (depleted uranium), and do this again and again until you have enough.

 

Like a bazillion times. Because, as President Bush so clearly illustrated, it takes about a softball-sized chunk of enriched uranium to make a nucular weapon. And there are like a bazillion atoms in a softball. If a few regular old non-booming uranium atoms slip in, that's OK, but 90 out of 100 have to be the 'funny' kind.

 

A lump of uranium where 90 out of 100 atoms are the dangerous kind is weapons-grade uranium.

 

Making weapons-grade uranium from yellowcake sucks, and it takes a long time. First you have to turn the yellowcake into a gas, and then that gas into a different gas, etc., etc. and ONLY THEN can you start searching through a gas for the atoms that go "boom." Remember that scene in the Karate Kid, where Mr. Miagi and what's his face are trying to catch flies with chopsticks? Harder than that.

 

Preparing yellowcake so you can start looking for the right atoms is typically called "processing" and repeatedly separating out that single atom and tossing away the other 99 is called enriching uranium. You are making the uranium "richer" in the kind that go "boom."

 

* Low-enriched uranium (LEU) has more than 1 funky uranium atom per 100, but less than 20.

 

* Highly enriched uranium (HEU) is anything with more than 20 per 100.

 

* Nuclear reactor fuel has 3 or 4 funky uranium atoms per 100.

 

* Weapons grade uranium has more than 90 funky uraniums atom per 100. [2]

 

OK, breathe. Now that you are officially a nuclear physicist, some historical persepctive is in order:

 

* In 1991, Iraq was discovered to have about 500 metric tons (~1 million lbs.) of yellowcake they'd 'forgotten' to mention. George Herbert Walker Bush, his coalition pals, and the International Atomic Energy Agency were so alarmed that Iraq had yellowcake, they decided to leave it in Iraq. The "prudent" course of action as they saw it: put it drums, seal it up, and check the seals once a year. They knew an entire year was not long enough for Hussein to make anything dangerous out of yellowcake. [3, .pdf]

 

* That yellowcake was inspected and remained untouched until Hussein barred the U.N. inspectors in late 1998. [see 3 above]

 

* On Oct. 6, 2002, the CIA sent a fax to the White House that stated "the procurement [of yellowcake] is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide [yellowcake] in their inventory. [4, para. 7, emphasis added]

 

* During Dec. 9-11, 2002, before Bush's SOTU claim that Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake from Africa, U.N. Inspectors verified that the yellowcake from 1991 was in Iraq, undisturbed, and still sealed. [see 3 above]

 

I hope you've made it this far. This background is crucial to truly understanding what happened, and what may yet happen, i.e. Iran (with an "n") who is processing uranium, not enriching it yet. Here's the payoff:

 

Repeated claims that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, initiated and bolstered solely by the CIA's Directorate of Operations were irrelevant. The idea was never credible, never implied Iraq was re-starting their nuclear programs, and never taken seriously. Iraq had all the yellowcake it needed and 4 years to use it ('99-'02) -- they had no facilities to enrich uranium.

 

Ask yourself: why would Iraq try to buy 500-550 mT of yellowcake when they already had the same amount, during a period and no one was inspecting it?

 

Care to guess where Iraq originally bought it's yellowcake back in the late 80's? About 1/2 of it came from Niger, receipts they turned over in the early 90's. Receipts from the 80's for 500-550 mT of yellowcake.

 

And finally, yes finally, ask yourself who in the Bush administration during '02-'03 didn't understand the unspannable gap between yellowcake and a nuclear bomb:

 

* George W. Bush? Who's father left 500 mT of yellowcake in Hussein's possession?

 

* Dick Cheney? The Secretary of Defense in 1991? The energy mogul with interests in nuclear power?

 

* Condoleeza Rice? The head of NSC who got her undergraduate degree at age 19 and her master's at 20? Who served on the board of Chevron and had a tanker named after her?

 

* George Tenet? Whose agency said buying yellowcake "was not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions?"

 

Colin Powell knew. That's why he left out references to yellowcake in his speech to the U.N., focusing instead on the "aluminum tubes." Though still a lie, at least those tubes were supposedly part of a centrifuge, a device used to enrich uranium.

[TPS]

How do you "out" a former undercover operative when she's already driving from her house to Langley every morning to get to work?  It's not like she was trying to stay out of the limelight when she sent her husband on a mission to Niger that he had no business being a part of (and ended up lying about according to the Senate Intelligence Committee).

 

It's like trying to uncover who in the White House "leaked" that the sky is blue.

486474[/snapback]

 

You obviously know more than the CIA does, since they asked the AG to investigate the matter..

[blzrul]

You obviously know more than the CIA does, since they asked the AG to investigate the matter..

486563[/snapback]

Of course. Secret agents don't drive, they either have limos driven by masked chaffeurs or they use fancy cloaking devices that just whisk them away, invisible to the world. The offices are in caves and undisclosed locations like Batman and Cheney. Likewise they don't grocery shop, get sick, or go to the bathroom like the rest of humanity.

 

And some people really believe that sh--. They HAVE to because it's the only way they can continue to pretend to believe they can defend the idiots who don't give a rat's ass for them or theirs.

 

[Taro T]

Of course.  Secret agents don't drive, they either have limos driven by masked chaffeurs or they use fancy cloaking devices that just whisk them away, invisible to the world.  The offices are in caves and undisclosed locations like Batman and Cheney.  Likewise they don't grocery shop, get sick, or go to the bathroom like the rest of humanity.

 

And some people really believe that sh--.  They HAVE to because it's the only way they can continue to pretend to believe they can defend the idiots who don't give a rat's ass for them or theirs.

 

 

486577[/snapback]

Huh? Which they is that they?

[HoyaBill]

Not sure if someone mentioned this, but it's worth repeating even if it had been: even if Plame was no longer working as a clandestine officer, she still had contacts back "in the field" who are now in jeopardy. More importantly, next time someone thinks about committing espionage on behalf of the CIA, will they stop and think: "I can't trust these people to keep MY secret safe either." THAT, is why this is a big deal, IMO.

 

When Hansen spied for the Soviets many many Russians died for helping the US. More importantly, no one will ever know how many decided NOT to help the Americans because they didn't know if their secret could be kept.

 

 

Just food for thought for the "she wasn't undercover any more so it's not a big deal" crowd.

[Crap Throwing Monkey]

To me, you "under-stated" when you brought up the issue that looking back on it, we didn't find out that the "outing" didnt compromised any major undercover operation. I responded to that under-statement that they didnt know that at the time, and it's immaterial and unimportant and lessening the issue to look back and say they didnt hurt anyone.

486478[/snapback]

 

But again...my point is, why do you feel compelled to make your case by stating non-factually that an undercover agent was "outed", when she was NOT under cover at the time? You - and damn near everyone else at this point - feel compelled to misrepresent the facts of the case because...?

[N.Y. Orangeman]

To me, you "under-stated" when you brought up the issue that looking back on it, we didn't find out that the "outing" didnt compromised any major undercover operation. I responded to that under-statement that they didnt know that at the time, and it's immaterial and unimportant and lessening the issue to look back and say they didnt hurt anyone.

486478[/snapback]

 

 

Exactly.