Did Valerie Plame Bomb the Chinese Embassy?
By Robert A. Hahn Posted in User Blogs — Comments (20) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The Freeper Doctor Raoul has uncovered an interesting document on the web site of Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, a left-leaning media watchdog group.
Dating from April, 2000, the article discusses an April 17, 2000 New York Times piece concerning the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999. Read this:
According to the Times' account, although the CIA has its own targeting unit, it was instead the agency's Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD), "a small office whose focus [is] the spread of missiles and nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons," that proposed the embassy target. The CPD has no experience or expertise in targeting or in the Balkans. It nominated the target on its own initiative, apparently without being solicited by NATO or the Pentagon.
According to FAIR, "the CPD is a covert operations unit, located within the CIA's Directorate of Operations rather than its Directorate of Intelligence. Counter-proliferation officials have been embroiled for years in a fight with the Clinton administration over its policy of 'engagement' with China."
It appears that George W. Bush may not be the first U.S. President whose foreign policy ran afoul of the superior wisdom emanating from this little group in the CIA. Here's what these folks did to Clinton:
The Times' sources say that the CPD's intended target, located near the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, was the Yugoslav Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement (FDSP). The targeting was done by a CPD analyst using an unclassified 1997 map of Belgrade provided by the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA). The map, which was not intended to be used for aerial targeting, did not identify street address numbers.
The Times' sources claim that the analyst misidentified the embassy as the FDSP when he attempted to pinpoint the FDSP's address on the map by extrapolating from addresses on parallel streets. "To target based on that is incomprehensible," an official told the Times.
Wait, it gets better:
On his own initiative, the analyst then downloaded a targeting form from a secure Pentagon computer, filled it out and sent it to the Joint Chiefs of Staff "appearing to be a more advanced proposal than it was," according to Myers.
It would appear that this little group in the CIA, now famous for being the home-away-from-home of Ms. Valerie "007" Plame, which had no responsibility whatsoever for designating targets in the Serbian campaign, decided they would designate one anyway. Then they slipstreamed it into the flow of orders headed into the Pentagon, and the next thing Clinton knew he had bombed the Chinese embassy.
People who would do this would think nothing of leaking classified information to the media to hose up the foreign policy of another President.
This group in the CIA needs a good looking-into. This will be the second time these folks have decided to implement their own foreign policy at odds with that of the elected officials who supposedly run our government.
Here's an interesting blast from the past:
http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/4/10/83512
Of course, discount its accuracy as necessary, but it does raise the two enormous problems this diary highlights.
1 - Is the CIA so small that the "CPD" is involved in both messes? If so, what did the "disciplining" 5 years ago accomplish, and who exactly was disciplined and are they involved in present activities? OR
2 - Is the CIA big enough that the Yugoslav targeting snafu was a staff effort wholly unrelated to present WMD staff efforts in Iraqi/Niger analysis. If it's that large a staff, how many other things are they screwing up? I'll concede we may never hear of the successes, and even given covert credit for their possibly forever hidden role in the unprecedented 3 week takedown of an entire national military hierarchy as accomplished in Iraq.
In either case, Porter Goss has his work cut out.
but sadly your answers are classified, at least until the next leak to the press.
I'd always sort of assumed that we hit the embassy "accidentally" after they started relaying Serbian transmissions for them. Seems fair. On the other hand, this sort of "cleverness" (downloading the form, etc.) strikes me as the sort of too-clever-by-half that got us Iran-Contra, among other things.
The good news is that at least Clinton wasn't reviewing the target lists. The bad news is that apparently nobody was reviewing the target lists.
Seems like both the left and right fringes are going overboard on this story. Entertaining reading if nothing else.
I am becoming more and more convinced that the United States that existed during World War II, where people were Americans FIRST and members of a political party fourth (after church and family), is dead.
The current state of affairs is way too partisan. I am convinced that Joe Wilson would not have tried to sabotage his mission to discover whether or not the Iraqis tried to buy yellowcake from Nigeria if a Democrat had been in the White House.
I'll admit that I haven't read Joe's book. But to me he seems like the perfect example of how partisanship is putting Americans and Brittons and even Spaniards in danger.
The democrats are going to have to stop acting like children if they want to get back to being a meaningful force in shaping policy and judicial philosophies.
As long as the dems cater to those who deep down inside do not believe that the United States that exists today is the greatest country in the world, I will vote, campaign, and speak out against them.
Rove's or some other administration officials possible crimes aside, why wasn't anyone out there asking Wilson why he was out there feeding classified info to the press?
Why was Wilson lying to the press?
Why does the outing of Plame matter so much, when State and the CIA were leaking like sieves before and after the Plame affair? Why doesn't anyone care that our intelligience departments are full of people with loose lips?
Although I don't know how he would have been if Gore was in office (I am not convinced Gore would have cared about Iraq's attempts to buy yellowcake), I do think Wilson is an egotistical media hound. One thing reading through all these interviews is how full of himself and pompous Wilson's words read on paper. Now he may have come across as less full of himself in real life, but his words just sound like somebody overly puffed up with their own self importance.
Remind me what Valerie Plame's hypothetical involvement in the bombing of the Chinese Embassy has to do with the outing of her covert status in the CIA?
You've lost me here. Please explain.
Anything in the diary that mentions the "outing of her covert status in the CIA". So, I'm afraid -you've- lost me here. Please explain.
-bro
at the CIA and specifically the unit she works for than some kind of defense for her outing.
Basically somebody realized her unit was where the idiots who targeted the Chinese embassy were employed, and made mention of it.
Got it. I thought there was some sort of suggested linkage or causality between Plame's speculated embassy bombing involvement and her outing as a covert agent.
That one had something to do with the other.
But, you're right. They're two entirely unrelated issues. I misinterpreted the thrust of the initial post.
In the literal sense, it sounds like Valerie Plame most definitely did not bomb a Chinese Embassy. In a slightly less literal sense, unless 'his' became a generic pronoun, it still sounds like she didn't. Change the title?
fasinating reading, fasinating theory.
When was reading it I kept thinking that Wilson was at one time "THE Ambassabor to IRAQ!" Makes you wonder if Saddam turned more than Scott Ritter. Isn't Scott now in France?
Amazing the details we all gloss over when not paying enough attention. I certainly missed it when I read Mr. Danger's initial post.
The title of this diary is "Did Valerie Plame Bomb the Chinese Embassy?". And the Freeper link details the actions (or bumbling, as the case may be) of a male NOT female analyst in selecting the wrong target in Belgrade. In this case, the Chinese Embassy.
So unless Valerie Plame is in fact a man baby (said in Austin Power accent), the title of this diary is at best inaccurate and at worst misleading.
The article refers to "he" and "his". So where (asked rhetorically) is the linkage to Plame?
Perhaps Mr. Danger was joking around, and I'm missing his humor. Or perhaps the wits over at Freeper were attempting to do the same. Dunno.
Unless the "Analyst" had been specifically identified as a female, proper english dictates the male pronouns.
So the "analyst" responsible for the targetting of the Chinese Embassy, referred to by a male pronoun as dictated by proper English, could in fact be male OR female, but probably not both.
This is all beginning to make more sense.
Then it would have to be they or them or maybe Michael Jackson.
Wait. What are we talking about again?
Was Valerie Plame delivering Chinese food to the Yugoslavian Embassy or something? And if so, did Karl Rove order the Kung Pao Chicken or was that Scooter Libby?
Please clarify.
the libs would hate at any other time.
In general the libs loath the CIA, which is the ironic thing about this whole Plamegate case-at any other time they would be all for outing CIA agents and what they do.