The Hearing’s Revelations — Why They Matter

UPDATE: Larry Johnson just told me that he will be a guest on Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight to discuss the hearing. And, Howie In Seattle sent me a link to the video of the full session, at YouTube.

By SusanUnPC ... These are among the key revelations and facts that came out of today’s hearing.

1. General Michael Hayden, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency — appointed twice to top positions by President George W. Bush — stated for today’s record that Valerie Plame Wilson’s status as a CIA employee was “under cover” and that her employment was “classified information.”
2. Politics must not interfere with the vital business of intelligence agencies because the president must be able to make decisions about national security based on intelligence analysis that is unbiased.
3. It is shocking that officials in the Bush administration carelessly batted about the name of a CIA employee without regard for her employment status or the confidentiality of her daily work.
4. A long career was ruined in an instant after Bush administration officials calculatedly disclosed Valerie Plame Wilson’s employment with the CIA in an attempt to discredit her husband’s conclusions after his trip to Niger.
5. The hearing provided further evidence that someone in Dick Cheney’s office called a low-level CIA employee and put unprecedented pressure on him to get information about any Iraqi dealings with Niger, and it was that pressure that led to the CIA dispatching Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger. (Larry Johnson will have further insights on this point.)

1) General Michael Hayden, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency — appointed twice to top positions by President George W. Bush — stated for today’s record that Valerie Plame Wilson’s status as a CIA employee was “under cover” and that her employment was “classified information.”

In his opening statement today, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, revealed that he had met personally with Gen. Hayden and discussed with Gen. Hayden what could and could not be revealed in the hearing. Rep. Waxman read this statement directly from Gen. Hayden:

During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was under cover.

Her employment status with the CIA was classified information prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958.

At the time of the publication of Robert Novak’s column on July 14,2003, Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment status was covert.

This was classified information.

Ms. Wilson served in senior management positions at the CIA, in which she oversaw the work of other CIA employees, and she attained the level of GS-14, step 6 under the federal pay scale.

Ms. Wilson worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA.

Ms. Wilson served at various times overseas for the CIA.

Without discussing the specifics of Ms. W’ilson’s classified work, it is accurate to say that she worked on the prevention of the development and use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States.

In her various positions at the CIA, Ms. Wilson faced significant risks to her personal safety and her life.

She took on serious risks on behalf of her country.

Ms. Wilson’s work in many situations had consequences for the security of her colleagues, and maintaining her cover was critical to protecting the safety of both colleagues and others.

2) Politics must not interfere with the vital business of intelligence agencies because the president must be able to make decisions about national security based on intelligence analysis that is unbiased.

Valerie Plame Wilson, in her opening statement today, explained the essential need for intelligence analysis untainted by politics:

[T]estimony in the criminal trial of Vice President Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, who has now been convicted of serious crimes, indicates that my exposure arose from purely political motives.  

Within the CIA, it is essential that all intelligence be evaluated on the basis of its merits and actual credibility.  National security depends upon it.  The tradecraft of intelligence is not a product of speculation. I feel passionately as an intelligence professional about the creeping, insidious politicizing of our intelligence process.  All intelligence professionals are dedicated to the ideal that they would rather be fired on the spot than distort the facts to fit a political view.  Any political view or any ideology.  

As our intelligence agencies go through reorganizations and experience the painful aspects of change, and our country faces profound challenges, injecting partisanship or ideology into the equation makes effective and accurate intelligence that much more difficult to develop.  

Politics and ideology must be stripped completely from our intelligence services or the consequences will be even more severe than they have been and our country placed in even greater danger.  

It is imperative for any President to be able to make decisions based on intelligence that is unbiased.  The Libby trial and the events leading to the Iraq War highlight the urgent need to restore the highest professional standards to intelligence collection and analysis and the protection of our officers and operations.  The Congress has a Constitutional duty to defend our national security and that includes safeguarding our intelligence.  That is why I am grateful for this opportunity to appear before this Committee today and to assist in its important work.

3) It is shocking that officials in the Bush administration carelessly batted about the name of a CIA employee without regard for her employment status or the confidentiality of her daily work.

Again, in her opening statement, Valerie Plame Wilson directly addressed the carelessness — I would add the adjective venal to carelessness — of members of the Bush administration — all of whom had “signed oaths to protect national security secrets”:

In the course of the trial of Vice President Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, I was shocked at the evidence that emerged.  My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior government officials in both the White House and the State Department.  All of them understood that I worked for the CIA, and having signed oaths to protect national security secrets, they should have been diligent in protecting me and every CIA officer.  The CIA took great lengths to protect all of its employees, provided at significant taxpayer expense, painstakingly devised creative covers for its most sensitive staffers.  

The harm that is done when a CIA cover is blown is grave, but I can’t provide details beyond that in this public hearing.  But the concept is obvious.  Not only have breaches of national security endangered CIA officers, it has jeopardized, even destroyed entire networks of foreign agents, who in turn risk their own lives and those of their families to provide the United States with needed intelligence.  Lives are literally at stake.  Every single one of my former CIA collegues, my fellow covert officers, to analysts to technical operations officers, even the secretaries, understand the vulnerabilities of our officers and recognize that the travesty of what happened to me could happen to them.  

We in the CIA always know that we might be exposed and threatened by foreign enemies.  It was a terrible irony that administration officials were the ones who destroyed my cover.

I would like to add this: We have a single instant case in which the identity of a CIA officer was outted by the administration. But what of the countless other CIA and other intelligence agency officers?

What concerns have all of those thousands of officers had — since the day that Valerie Plame Wilson’s cover was destroyed — that they might meet the same fate if somehow they or one of their family members raised the ire of the Bush administration?

And what concerns have been raised for all of the thousands of contacts and “assets” of these intelligence officers, in all of the U.S. intelligence agencies? Are they nervous that their U.S. intelligence officer will have his or her work exposed for political reasons? Has this further chilled the vital dissemination of information heretofore exchanged under risky circumstances?

As Rep. Waxman said, based on his conference with Gen. Hayden:

Ms. Wilson’s work in many situations had consequences for the security of her colleagues, and maintaining her cover was critical to protecting the safety of both colleagues and others.

That security is gone. That safety is gone. And who among the thousands of intelligence officers and their “assets” know who next might get the Bush administration “treatment” which destroys their security and their safety?

4) A long career was ruined in an instant after Bush administration officials calculatedly disclosed Valerie Plame Wilson’s employment with the CIA in an attempt to discredit her husband’s conclusions after his trip to Niger.

Valerie Plame Wilson no longer works for the Central Intelligence Agency. That fact tells the story. But her opening statement again reveals the loss to Mrs. Wilson of her career, and the loss to the American people of the product of her career work:

I worked on behalf of the national security of our country, on behalf of the people of the United States until my name and true affiliation were exposed in the national media on July 14, 2003, after a leak by administration officials. …

In the run-up to the war with Iraq, I worked in the Counter Proliferation Division of the CIA, still as a covert officer, whose affiliation with the CIA was classified.  I raced to discover solid intelligence for senior policy makers on Iraq’s presumed weapons of mass destruction programs.  While I helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington, I also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.  

I love my career because I love my country.  I was proud of the serious responsibilities entrusted to me as a CIA covert operations officer. … [A]ll of my efforts on behalf of the national security of the United States, all of my training, all of the value of my years of service were abruptly ended when my name and identity were exposed irresponsibly.

Chairman Waxman went further:

The disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s employment with the CLA had several serious effects.

First, it terminated her covert job opportunities with CIA.

Second, it placed her professional contacts at greater risk.

And third, it undermined the trust and confidence with which future CIA employees and sources hold the United States.

This disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s classified employment status with the CIA was so detrimental that the CIA filed a crimes report with the Department of Justice.

Before the Iraq War, I heard from former weapons inspector Scott Ritter and some far-left critics that Saddam Hussein had no WMDS (weapons of mass destruction). But I found it difficult to believe, back then, that Saddam Hussein had destroyed every remnant of his WMD programs — that he, for instance, didn’t at least have some aging chemical weapons lying around. It just didn’t make sense, given what I knew of the Iraqi leader. (What I did know, back then, was that that even if he did have some WMDs, he wasn’t an imminent threat to the United States, and that the U.S. should instead dedicate itself to eradicating the Al Qaeda terrorist network. And what I know now is that Saddam had a powerful reason for not revealing that he had no WMDs: He had to keep Iran, his fiercest regional enemy, in fear of his military might and future WMD attacks. The myth of his WMD program was Saddam’s deterrent to attack from Iran.)

What I’m trying to say is this: I had no way, myself, of independently verifying the status of Saddam’s WMD programs.

As an ordinary American citizen, I therefore relied — and gave my confidence to — the unknown-to-me intelligence officers who could concentrate full-time, with numerous secret assets, on determining the status of Saddam’s WMD holdings.

Back then, I had no idea that there was a woman named Valerie Plame Wilson who was working constantly on ferreting out the facts about Saddam’s WMD program — facts that the president could assess rationally, beyond any political considerations.

I had no idea there was a woman named Valerie Plame Wilson who “helped to manage and run secret worldwide operations against this WMD target from CIA headquarters in Washington [and who] also traveled to foreign countries on secret missions to find vital intelligence.”

But I assumed, as would any citizen, that there were intelligence officers hard at work on the issue.

I didn’t need to know their names. I wouldn’t want to know their names. But, if somehow I had learned their names and known what they did, I would have never — ever — revealed those identities to anyone. Why? Because it’s old-fashioned “loose lips sink ships” common sense.

While it was an honor to hear her testimony today, I wish I had never heard of Valerie Plame Wilson. And I wish she were still doing her job. It sickens me that Bush administration officials, for the most base political reasons, destroyed the career of this woman who was doing the work I, and all of you, were counting on.

Each of us U.S. citizens pays these officers for that work. We entrust these officers to give our political leaders accurate information.

We further entrust our political leaders — no matter their political party or particular ideological bents — to assess intelligence data and analysis in an unbiased manner and to protect those intelligence officers and their assets who are devoting, and risking, their lives to provide and analyze raw data.

Otherwise, our nation would end up going to war for false reasons, and our military forces would die unnecessarily.

Otherwise, our standing among the nations of the world would be irrevocably threatened, and our nation, for the near and perhaps distant future, weakened and thereby endangered.

And we would be the “lonely America” — with its weakened, politicized, watching-their-backs intelligence agencies and military forces — plunged into a “spreading and deepening quagmire” that Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke of at a recent hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

It mattered that Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity was exposed for venal political purpose and her career destroyed.

It mattered for the sake of our national security.