Comments on: The CIA’s Anti-Bush Cabal http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2006/07/the_cias_anti-bush_cabal.html Secrecy News from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy Sat, 28 Nov 2009 00:31:30 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc hourly 1 By: TM Lutas http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2006/07/the_cias_anti-bush_cabal.html/comment-page-1#comment-595 TM Lutas Wed, 12 Jul 2006 22:01:00 +0000 http://fasweb.beacontec.com/blog/secrecy/2006/07/the_cias_anti-bush_cabal.html#comment-595 The plain fact of the matter is that if Valerie Plame was *not* a covert officer, there should have never been a referral to Justice over her outing. Since Fitzgerald seems to have made a determination that, in fact, there was no law broken by outing her (though possibly we got a liar on Cheney's staff) we're left with the uncomfortable question of why the referral was made in the first place. It's not like the CIA couldn't just look up her HR jacket and count back 5 years before sending the paperwork over. The referral is thus troubling as are several other incidents involving the CIA during this administration. Eventually, that's got to get sorted out. Hoekstra is either on to something explosive (ie, he's justifiably paranoid because such a cabal exists) or he needs to be removed and replaced with someone with a more level head (paranoids chasing shadows should not head intelligence oversight committees lest they destroy what they are supposed to oversee). In no way, shape, or form, can this be left as a political he said/she said kerfuffle. In ways large and small, people are going to die over this sort of thing if it's mishandled. That we probably won't be able to trace things back as to which of the casualties were due to our errors does not make the challenge any less serious. The plain fact of the matter is that if Valerie Plame was *not* a covert officer, there should have never been a referral to Justice over her outing. Since Fitzgerald seems to have made a determination that, in fact, there was no law broken by outing her (though possibly we got a liar on Cheney’s staff) we’re left with the uncomfortable question of why the referral was made in the first place. It’s not like the CIA couldn’t just look up her HR jacket and count back 5 years before sending the paperwork over.

The referral is thus troubling as are several other incidents involving the CIA during this administration. Eventually, that’s got to get sorted out.

Hoekstra is either on to something explosive (ie, he’s justifiably paranoid because such a cabal exists) or he needs to be removed and replaced with someone with a more level head (paranoids chasing shadows should not head intelligence oversight committees lest they destroy what they are supposed to oversee). In no way, shape, or form, can this be left as a political he said/she said kerfuffle. In ways large and small, people are going to die over this sort of thing if it’s mishandled. That we probably won’t be able to trace things back as to which of the casualties were due to our errors does not make the challenge any less serious.

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