Mission Impossible

I've yet to write on Valerie Plame or the "Plame Affair," whatever the media is calling it. I've not done so because, among other reasons, viewing the facts of the story together with the dates and dallyings of Ms. Plame, I want to know when she had time to be a "noc" (nonofficial cover) deep covert agent for the CIA. Her story reads like the script to those late night B movies that never get interesting.

Ms. Plame graduated Lower Moreland High School, Huntingdon Valley, PA in 1981. She then attended and graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a BA in International Relations in 1985. According to a Vanity Fair article after college graduation Plame..."moved to Washington, D.C., and married her college boyfriend. She worked at a clothing store, biding her time, waiting for her acceptance from the C.I.A." Some sources state the CIA recruited Plame but I lean toward the Vanity article stating she applied, which is the usual case. When recruiting, the CIA look for grads who have potential access to material or people, i.e. the offspring of foreign officials, children of foreign military, or even career American service men and women, etc.

Lets presume she was accepted immediately at Langley after graduation in 1985 and began her initiation on the Farm (CIA campus), to learn the dismantling and handling of the AK-47, handling a knife up close and personal, blowing up cars, self-defense, how to recruit foreign nationals, how to hunt others, avoid being hunted, and other nifty spycraft, which generally takes more than a stay at summer camp. So perhaps graduating the farm in 1987.

Okay, now Val goes on to learn Greek (according to Vanity), add a year for intense 24/7 Greek fluency learning and some weekends off, we arrive at 1988 or 1989 when she was sent to Athens where she had State Department cover, which is official cover, not "noc". And where she told friends her only boss was the State Department. Plame was not in Greece long, 1988-89 to 1991 because she returned to school again. After the Gulf War she was sent to the London School of Economics, and from there to the College of Europe, an international-relations school in Bruges, earning MA's at both. The Gulf War ended in 1991, which means Plame entered school sometime in or after 1991, around the time she left Athens.

Plame sought her higher education in Europe around 1991, earning 2 degrees in 2 different countries at 2 different universities, lets give her credit for brainy, lets guesstimate she finished up those degrees in 1993-94. She stayed on in Brussels, telling friends she was working for an energy consulting firm, Brewster-Jennings (her phony cover company).

While earning her advanced degrees in London and Belgium, I suppose in between classes she could have spied. But after graduation she remained in Belgium pretending to work for the phony firm above. However, when Aldrich Ames was arrested, Plame, along with other agents, was called back to the states because of fear Ames had given names to Russia. Ames was arrested in 1994, around the time Ms. P. was finishing her advanced degrees. She would have been recalled to the states about this time if the Ames scenario is accurate.

Vanity cites 1997 as the year Plame moved back to the Washington area but they don't say from where. She also met her hubby Joe Wilson IV in February of 1997 at a party in the Washington home of the Turkish ambassador. But Vanity says Plame was also based in Brussels at this time and that Wilson and Plame carried on a romance in Paris, London, and Brussels. Wilson and Plame were married in 1998 and moved from a rented Watergate apartment to an affluent D.C. neighborhood. If Plame was not recalled in 1994 after the Ames case broke then she was hanging in the wind until 1997. Not very likely, but in 1997 according to Vanity her romance with Wilson was conducted in those European cities. Must have been brief as they married in 1998. Since 2000 and the birth of her twins she's been a mom and what some call an "analyst" for the CIA.

I keep returning to the question in this silly "leak" as to when did Ms. Plame have the time and years it takes to locate, recruit, earn the trust, train and develop field assets (who as paid traitors aren't the sweetest people) for her CIA bosses?

To be considered "covert" an agent must meet certain requirements: The status as undercover has to be classified, and she has to be assigned to duty outside the United States at the time, or in the past five years. This doesn't mean jetting to Paris or London for a week's work. It means a permanent foreign country assignment. When the "Plame Affair" column was written (7/2003) she'd been in Washington for at least 6-9 years and was working at a desk job in Langley (a no-no for a person with a need for cover). Reportedly Plame was known as a CIA employee on the D.C. cocktail circuit so obviously neither she or the government considered her status covert. She doesn't qualify as "covert."

The whole Plame story doesn't pass the whiff test. It smells to me like a woman who had an elegantly good time in Athens, Paris, London, Brussels, traveled and educated herself on the taxpayers tab. Seems to me when her education and travels ended she became a paper pushing analyst whose name when "leaked" endangered neither herself or anyone else. If the "Plame Affair" was performed to make Bush look bad, the pure foolishness of it is enough to make a clever spy laugh, and/or cry, at the inadequate brains behind it. Even sadder is it may be what passes as investigative journalism these days.