--- In [email protected], [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: <snip> > According to the latest grand jury leaks yesterday Rove found out > about Plame being a CIA operative, note, not a covert operative, by > the media. They called him. The first reporter to say Plame was a > former CIA covert operative was David Korn who wrote about that > after an interview with Joe Wilson. This whole thing sounds like > a set up and looks like its over. I've been saying Wilson outed his > own wife all along for political reasons.
The notion that Novak didn't identify Plame as covert was pretty well debunked by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo way back in October 2003: ---------------------- As we've noted before, one of the best pieces of evidence that Novak (and thus his sources) knew Valerie Plame was a clandestine employee of the CIA was that he said as much in his original column. There he called her an "Agency operative." People who follow the intel world say that phrase is almost always meant to refer to a clandestine agent or someone in the field, rather than an analyst. Now, since the story blew up a week and a half ago, Novak has been telling people that this reference was just some sort of slip-up, that in this case he meant `operative' only in the generic sense of a `hack' or a `fixer.' On Meet the Press Novak said he uses "the word too much [and] if somebody did a Nexus search of my columns, they'd find an overuse of `operative.'" Well, Novak does seem to use the word operative a lot. But as one of my readers pointed out to me this evening, `operative' can mean all sorts of things in different contexts. The question is how Novak uses it in this particular context. Following up on my reader's suggestion I did a Nexis search to see all the times Novak used the phrases "CIA operative" or "agency operative." This was a quick search. But I came up with six examples. And in each case Novak used the phrase to refer to someone working in a clandestine capacity. Here they are... <snip examples> I also did a quick search for Novak's references to "CIA analyst" or "agency analyst" I found three --- each clearly referring to people who were in fact analysts. In an 1993 column, Novak used a precise phrasing to refer to "CIA briefer Brian Latell, a 30-year career officer." Again, no vague use of 'operative.' I don't think this requires too much commentary, does it? Clearly, Novak knows the meaning of the phrase 'CIA operative' and he uses it advisedly. In the last decade he's never used the phrase to mean anything but clandestine agents. Let's cut the mumbo-jumbo: past evidence suggests that Novak only uses this phrase to refer to clandestine agents. In this case, when he has every reason to run away from that meaning of the phrase, he suddenly runs away from that meaning. Especially with all the other evidence at hand, that just defies credibility. Everything points to the conclusion that Novak did know. That would mean, necessarily, that his sources knew too. The `we didn't know' cover story just doesn't wash. Novak's fellow reporters have never pressed him on this point. Maybe now would be a good time ... http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_10_05.php#002066 (or) http://tinyurl.com/9hgpp To subscribe, send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Or go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ and click 'Join This Group!' Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
