Scattered thoughts on Valerie Plame Wilson

1. The admission. James Knodell, Director of the Office of Security at the White House, confessed that there was no internal investigation of the leak, even though Bush sort of, er, um, promised a full internal investigation of the leak. Some of you may be old enough to recall that Nixon once promised a full internal investigation of the Watergate crime, which everyone was sure that he would conduct with due diligence.

But really, are we surprised? Step one in any investigation would have been to talk to Valerie Plame Wilson. We have never received the slightest indication in all this time that anyone from the White House popped by to say Hi, although she did speak to FBI investigators in 2003.

2. Victoria Toensing: She appeared today in an exciting episode of Squirm, Bitch, Squirm! I notice that she ran out of squirming room when grilled on her misreporting that Plame-Wilson had not operated overseas in five years. Toensing, who helped to draft the bill in question, uses abstruse rationalization to "prove" that VPW was not covert "under the act."

She says that no-one at the White House knew VPW was covert. How would Toensing know such a thing? Did she -- frightening thought! -- crawl into the mind of Dick Cheney?

She also says that her CIA source laughed when asked if a field operative would ever work out of headquarters for any length of time. I suspect she pulled that "source" out of the same asshole-dispenser that disgorged her "five years" whopper. You don't have to read very deeply in the literature of espionage to know that an Agency employee may at certain times run an operation from a desk and at other times will go out into the field.

Why was VPW back at headquarters? One possible answer arises from lukery's fascinating claim regarding Marc Grossman. More on that anon.

Toensing also blames the CIA (as neocons often do) because they did not prevent the leak. If I read that now-famous chart correctly, she's saying that no-one at the Agency should ever have trusted anyone in the administration, especially not at the Office of the Vice President.

Can't disagree.

3. So who told Cheney and Rove? We still don't know, but I will develop a theory below.

Let me go out on a limb and suggest that the reason why Cheney went to Spook Central had much to do with Brewster Jennings (the cover firm employing VPW), which had an annoying (to him) habit of trying to stop the proliferation of WMDs. In the past, we've discussed the theory -- and it is only a theory -- that individuals linked to the A.Q. Khan network were tapped to plant WMDs in Iraq.

4. We come to the most important part of the story: Brewster Jennings. The evidence is piling up that this scandal stems not from get-Joe-Wilson motives, but from get-Brewster-Jennings motives. If you have any interest in that angle -- and you damn well ought to -- then lukery has today's Most Important Article In The World, right here and here.

FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds did not know about the Wilsons specifically, but she had run across Brewster Jennings. Sibel, you will recall, was translating conversations dealing with the American Turkish Council, which some now see as a nest of criminals:

Sibel's case also involves the nuclear black market - some Turkish members of the ATC have supplied Pakistan's A.Q. Khan network with hardware, as have American companies that Sibel overheard on the wiretaps. Perhaps even more disturbing, as reported in Vanity Fair, other wiretaps indicate that "Turkish groups had been installing doctoral students at U.S. research institutions in order to acquire information about black market nuclear weapons." Daniel Ellsberg says that, according to Sibel, bribes were paid to people at the State Department to facilitate this activity.

These are extraordinary claims, of course, and we have a lot of evidence to support the claims - including, but not limited to, the fact that Valerie Plame's front company, Brewster Jennings, had been conducting a counter-intelligence operation against the ATC for years.

Plame was investigating the ATC. That was her sin, or one of her sins.

So who, exactly, is behind the American Turkish Council? Here is Sibel Edmonds:

AIPAC helped form the American Turkish Council - look at the board members, look at the people. You will see the same people involved in both fronts, because it is the same operation.

According to former CIA man Phil Giraldi:

But beyond that, the Edmonds revelations become more serpentine and appear to involve AIPAC, Israel and a number of leading neoconservatives who have profited from the Turkish connection. Israel has long cultivated a close relationship with Turkey since Ankara's neighbours and historic enemies - Iran, Syria and Iraq - are also hostile to Tel Aviv.

Giraldi then goes on to point out that Turkey needs to get its hooks into Congress in order to keep aid flowing, including access to military technology.

Someone has to be in the middle to keep the happy affair going, so enter the neocons, intent on securing Israel against all comers and also keen to turn a dollar. In fact the neocons seem to have a deep and abiding interest in Turkey, which, under other circumstances, might be difficult to explain. Doug Feith's International Advisors Inc, a registered agent for Turkey in 1989 - 1994, netted $600,000 per year from Turkey, with Richard Perle taking $48,000 annually as a consultant. Other noted neoconservatives linked to Turkey are former State Department number three, Marc Grossman, current Pentagon Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman, Paul Wolfowitz and former congressman Stephen Solarz. The money involved does not appear to come from the Turkish government, and FBI investigators are trying to determine its source and how it is distributed. Some of it may come from criminal activity, possibly drug trafficking, but much more might come from arms dealing.

Grossman, says lukery, "outed" Brewster Jennings in 2001 -- long before Robert Novak got wind of it. Looks like the neocons may have been out to deep-six that operation that early. Everything changed that year.

Which brings us back to a question asked in point two, above: Why was VPW working out of headquarters after 2001?

And we also return to point three. Who told Cheney and Rove?

5. The movie. People tell me VPW looks like Sharon Stone, and I am sure she would do a good job. I just happen to think that Sheryl Lee is the most underrated actress in recent history and I want to see her get a big role. Gillian Anderson would be a fun piece of casting...