I Spy With My Little Eye . . .

. . . something beginning with the letter S. (Answer: Sloppy spooks.)

by Reuel Marc Gerecht - November 9, 2005 - The Wall Street Journal (Opinion Journal)

Know the truth about cover--that it is the Achilles' heel of the clandestine service--and you will begin to appreciate how deeply dysfunctional the operations directorate has been for years. Only a profoundly unserious Counter-Proliferation Division would have sent Mr. Wilson on an eight-day walkabout in Niger to uncover the truth about uranium sales to Saddam Hussein and then allowed him to give an oral report.

It is becoming more and more apparent to anyone who cares about truth that the entire purpose of Joe Wilson's attack on the Bush Administration during a campaign was an attempt by the CIA to change the outcome of an election. Plame was not an agent they seriously attempted to protect. Wilson had been cavalier about her being in the CIA for years. No serious report was ever given to the CIA .... it was oral and vague and not protected by the CIA's normal non-disclosure agreement. No attempt was made to keep Wilson from lying about what he had said, and lying on a public stage. This was a political hatchet job from the beginning, and it is seriously damaging to our representative democracy for the MSM to continue to pretend that CIA involvement in politics can be covered up by this farcial pretense that Wilson and his wife's motivations cannot be discussed because she is a covert agent.