(2005-12-09) Maximus Plamegate Cia

Fabius Maximus on PlameGate and the CIA. Scooter Libby's indictment does not even attempt to establish that Plume's status was protected under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. It appears impossible to do so according to the little information publicly known... The indictment alleges that her employment at the CIA was "classified" and the "underlying crime" is the release of classified information... Some have speculated that a covert goal of the Libby indictment is to establish a de facto version of the UK's Official Secrets Act. If he succeeds with this a major blow to American liberties, the civil libertarians on the Left will have been his key enablers. How loud will be their screams of outrage when one of their own is prosecuted on these terms?... Quotes George Friedman saying The greatest capability of the CIA - and the intelligence community in general - is covert operations that gather information from a nation's leadership. The CIA is not perfect at this, but it is outstanding. However, an event that involves Non-State Actor-s (such as Castro, prior to the Cuban revolution) or more important, in which the leaders of the nation-state are themselves unaware, leaves the CIA helpless... The problem the CIA has is that it also failed in what was supposed to be its sweet spot - covert gathering of intelligence from senior state officials in Iraq concerning a war that had been going on, in effect, since 1990. There were no surprises here, no discontinuities, no funky, off-the-wall groups. This was mainline intelligence-gathering.