Lest you object, is the Chinese internet identical to yours? Hence the plural, as anticipated by a prophet.

What’s this mediagenic guy gonna do when faced with a question he doesn’t like? Delete it? Point the channel changer at it?
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He will not let you impugn Juan Cole. How he is going to stop you, unless Larry helps him out by deleting you is still being debated.

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/Countdown-LJohnson-CIA-firing.wmv

OLBERMANN: Time now to call in Larry Johnson, former CIA officer, former deputy director of the State Department‘s author—Office of Counterterrorism.

Larry, welcome back.

LARRY JOHNSON, FORMER CIA OFFICER: Hi, Keith.

OLBERMANN: Did the case against Mary McCarthy smell at all fishy to you even before her denial that she was the source of the leak to “The Washington Post”?

JOHNSON: Absolutely. I was one of the first ones out of the box saying that, for several reasons.

If you look at Dana Priest‘s article, there were multiple sources, many who had ties to the counterterrorism center, that were not identified by name or even very many particulars. But it was clear that wasn‘t Mary‘s background.

I used to work for Mary back in 1998-‘89, and she moved on up into the senior ranks of management, where she was handling—she was at the National Security Council, National Warning Office, other things. So she wouldn‘t have had any of the operational details that were reflected in Dana Priest‘s article.

OLBERMANN: You knew her. Are you sticking up for her because she‘s a friend, a former colleague with whom you enjoyed working? What?

JOHNSON: No. Actually, I left the agency because I didn‘t like her management style. But that had to do with some other issues unrelated to her integrity as an analyst. I‘ve always found that she had a lot of integrity as an analyst, particularly with the testimony of people like Rand Beers and John Helgerson (ph), who I know.

When they vouch for Mary as a—as someone who was a worker who could be trusted, that says a lot, because these men are not partisans, even though the tendency in Washington now is, anybody that who speaks up to defend anyone who says something critical about Bush is suddenly akin to a terrorist sympathizer.

OLBERMANN: So if she was an ideal candidate to be trusted, what do you think‘s going on? I mean, do you believe that someone might be framing her? Is she a scapegoat or (INAUDIBLE)–

JOHNSON: No, she‘s, I—

OLBERMANN: … did—if she had these connections nefariously to Dana Priest, might we better call her a sacrifice, a sacrificial lamb?

JOHNSON: No. What‘s going on here, Keith, is, this is the White House effort to intimidate the press. Porter Goss has politicized the CIA now. There‘s no doubt. Several years ago, you had most of the people in the Public Affairs Office, they were intelligence professionals. What you have there today are (INAUDIBLE), with the exception of one individual, most of the people up there now are political hacks, folks who cut their teeth up on Capitol Hill playing partisan politics.

And the last thing we need to have is our intelligence agency politicized. And yet what‘s going on here is, anyone that speaks out critical of the Bush White House, when you have Paul Pillar, for example, who came out and said the White House was wrong in trying to link Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden, what did the White House do? They put the word out through their operatives, they tried to smear Paul Pillar.

Mary McCarthy, I think, is the latest victim of this. And they tried to make an example of her. And one thing I can say about Mary, we may have had our disagreements, but she‘s tough, and she has integrity.

OLBERMANN: The subject of authorized versus unauthorized, this has become the black and white of the 21st century. Whoever the source of the “Washington Post” report was, is the worst transgression, in your eyes, leaking the existence of repurposed Soviet-era gulags into CIA prisons in Eastern Europe, or blowing the cover of a covert op like Valerie Plame Wilson?

JOHNSON: No intelligence capabilities were destroyed by the leak of the secret prisons. In fact, that came from multiple sources within the intelligence community who were alarmed that the United States was starting to engage in the very practices we used to condemn the Soviets for.

Whereas in the case of Valerie Wilson, not only was her cover destroyed, but an undercover company was destroyed. Intelligence assets that were involved with trying to determine, detect, and protect America against weapons of mass destruction, they were destroyed in that leak.

That was a case where the Bush White House participated in smearing and attacking innocent Americans. That‘s a far different thing, and I think far more heinous, than someone who tries to blow the whistle, or a group of somebodies, who blow the whistle on administration practices which take us down the road toward something that looks a lot like what we had when the Soviets were running gulags.

OLBERMANN: Former CIA officer Larry Johnson, former colleague with Mary McCarthy, not necessarily former friend. Many thanks for your time and your insights.

JOHNSON: Thank you, Keith.

You noticed what I noticed. Very similar stuff between Joe Wilson in February 2003 and the VIPS. Especially when Larry says he only knew Val as Val P.

Which reminds me, I wouldn’t mind if politics returned to the ethic of sport, not war.
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Curious clue, huh?
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Have you read Joe Wilson’s 2/6/03 LATimes op ed?
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