Of Plame, Ames, the necons -- and (possibly) Mossad

While compiling the rumor-roster published below, I became interested in the oft-heard report that Aldritch Ames, the spy for the Russians, first exposed Valerie Plame's CIA status.

In an interview with Wolf Blitzer, former CIA man Larry Johnson sets the matter as straight as it's likely to get right now:

My understanding is that, as a result of the Aldrich Ames betrayal, the damage assessment there came up with the possibility that she may have been compromised, so she's moved back to the United States, home-based here, but continues to operate from here, traveling overseas as a consultant with Brewster-Jennings. So, she was continuing to work overseas.

Brewster-Jennings, you will recall, was a CIA front.

How important were these spilt beans? First, we still don't know precisely what he revealed about Plame. Nor do we know when he passed the information along, although he must have done so before his 1994 arrest.

Second, we've been told that since 1993, Russia and the United States have had coinciding interests regarding nuclear proliferation issues. One wonders what the Russians would have had to gain by harming this woman's career. They had no obvious motive to broadcast whatever they may have learned.

Upon reading Johnson's words, two thoughts suddenly occurred to me:

1. When did the Ames connection to Plamegate first enter public discourse? Who, outside the Agency, would have access to that kind of data? Are we dealing with a second leak?

2. One of the enduring mysteries of the scandal concerns the use of the name "Plame." The woman in question has used "Valerie Wilson" ever since she married Joseph Wilson. Why did Libby refer to her as "Valerie Plame"?

In the past, we've looked at indications that the leakers relied upon a specific as-yet undisclosed document. If the info came from an Agency source, surely the nomenclature would be more up-to-date. So -- presuming the existence of a document -- why would it use the name Valerie Plame?

I ask readers to consider a novel scenario:

Ames did disclose the truth about "Valerie Plame" to his masters. But the data did not stay locked up within Russian archives.

Somehow, that information made its way back to the neo-cons -- to the international network that hoped to bypass the CIA. First the neos used the data to harrass the Wilsons -- then they revealed the Ames connection in order to help Bush-friendly pundits fend off critics.

So how did the Ames angle first become public? Readers may be able to discover an earlier citation, but right now, the first mention of the matter I can find is this October 11, 2003 piece by New York Times editorialist Nicolas Kristoff:

First, the C.I.A. suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his espionage arrest in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.

Since we can presume that Nicolas Kristoff does not have unfettered access to the all the archives of all the world's espionage agencies, we must ask: Who told him, and why?

Kristoff is considered a liberal. Some would argue whether he deserves that label. For example, he once insisted that the failure of newsrooms "to hire more red state evangelicals limits our understanding of and ability to cover America today." (Hiring based on religious belief? Isn't that illegal?) Kristof did use Joseph Wilson as a source for a story on the Niger fraud, written before Wilson published his famous piece.

As we have seen many times in the past, the supposedly "liberal" NYT can serve as an ideal platform for a certain type of deliberate leak.

All of which brings us back to a fundamental question. How could Ames' information on Valerie Plame/Wilson make its way from secret Russian files to the photocopy machines used by the neocon network? One can think of several possible answers.

One possibility: The Russians gave the Ames-on-Plame data dump directly to the Bush administration pursuant to a high-level quid pro quo invisible to ordinary mortals. They wanted something from us; in return, they helped BushCo put out the fire caused by Joseph Wilson.

Another -- and in my view, more likely -- possibility is this: The neocons received the Russian information indirectly -- via Mossad.

Anyone who has followed spy stories over the past decade must have read accounts of Israeli penetration of the Soviet and Russian espionage establishment. See, for example, this little-known report out of China, which reveals that a Russian operative named Gregory Gifens switched his allegiance to Israel.

Jonathan Pollard, the spy-for-Israel within America's apparatus, relayed much information from Russian sources to Mossad.

Although I hesitate to mention the matter, many writers aver that Israeli technicians hid a "back door" within the Promis software once used by intelligence agencies throughout the world, including the KGB. (Why the hesitation? Because some of the stories surrounding the Promis scandal seem rather over-the-top.) This back door was used to leech secret data out of secure computer systems used by foreign governments. Thanks to the miracle of electronics, the KGB's primo stash went directly into Israeli hands. So, at least, runs the story.

Robert Maxwell -- the publishing magnate who, we now know, functioned as an Israeli spy -- acted as a channel between Mossad and an anti-Gorbachev faction within the KGB, shortly before the fall of Communism. Maxwell's motive (aside from the economic incentive) was to secure the release of thousands of Jews and dissidents. Who knows how much data was passed back-and-forth at that time?

One can go on, but the basic point remains: Any number of conduits might have placed scattered bits of Ames-originated intel before the eyes of Mossad analysts. Those analysts would have made a mental note of everything they read, then they would have filed the data away. You never know when stuff like that might prove useful.

When Wilson became a problem, that data became very useful indeed.

As everyone knows, the neocons have strong ties to Likud. One need only mention the name "Larry Franklin" to understand how a document snoozing comfortably in a Mossad file cabinet might suddenly start zooming through the rarified circles inhabited by Libby and his compatriots.

When the necons understood that Wilson would not play ball with their bloodthirsty scheme, the call went out for derogatory information on the man. That's when a decade-old document from the bad old days of Aldritch Ames -- a document mentioning "Valerie Plame" -- got loose. And the rest is unfolding history.

Speculation? Yep. But this scenario has the virtue of answering quite a few questions.