'Turd-Blossom' in Deeper Shit

IN the ongoing saga of Karl Rove and the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA agent more turds keep rising to the surface of this punch-bowl than you can shake a stick at.

Something many defenders of 'Turd-Blossom' seem to forget in their fervor is that on July 30, 2003, the CIA filed a "crime report" regarding this matter. This, essentially, referrs the matter to the DOJ for criminal prosecution.

They also seem to remain willfully ignorant of the fact that Brewster Jennings & Associates, the CIA front company that Ms. Plame listed as her official employer, was severely comromised and other CIA officers who used the company as a front were also compromised. Whether this has led to the loss of life as these operations were rolled up remains to be seen.

According to Larry Johnson, a former CIA official, Ms. Plame was also operating under NOC or, non-official cover. This meant that Ms. Plame when traveling abroad under a non-diplomatic passport, could have been arrested as a foreign agent and been executed by a regime hostile to US interests.

Contrary to the assertions of some that Ms. Plame was nothing but a "file-clerk, Vincent Cannistraro, former CIA counter-terrorism operations chief, has stated differently. He has stated that Ms. Plame ran NBC non-proliferation operations, recruiting agents to seek out information on NBC proliferation. Information which would be particularly useful to the US here...now.

Many of 'Turd-Blossom's' supporters also cite the narrowly worded "Intelligence Identities Protection Act" which makes it a federal crime to intentionally reveal any information identifying an undercover operative. They claim that he didn't reveal her name, and only referred to her as "Joe Wilson's wife". This is simply the poorest sort of sophisty and hair-splitting. And even if 'Turd-Blossom' did not commit a crime under the letter of this law, he certainly violated its spirit. But there are other laws which may have been broken, not the least of which is " The Espionage Act of 1917". And there is also the little matter of Turd-Blossom's violation of the "Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement" he signed as a condition of employment and which he violated by disclosing Ms. Plame's identity.

But this case goes deeper than just the revelation of a CIA operative's name in pursuit of political payback. It goes to the heart of the Administration's justicfications for the war with Iraq and threatens to send that already teetering house of cards crashing to the ground.