Valerie Plame: Not an Undercover CIA Agent

As the heat on Karl Rove escalates, and Republicans in the White House await news from the federal grand jury, a former CIA covert agent who supervised Valerie Plame early in her career refutes the fact that she was an “undercover agent.”

A former CIA covert agent who supervised Mrs. Plame early in her career yesterday took issue with her identification as an “undercover agent,” saying that she worked for more than five years at the agency’s headquarters in Langley and that most of her neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.
“She made no bones about the fact that she was an agency employee and her husband was a diplomat,” Fred Rustmann, a covert agent from 1966 to 1990, told The Washington Times.

“Her neighbors knew this, her friends knew this, his friends knew this. A lot of blame could be put on to central cover staff and the agency because they weren’t minding the store here. … The agency never changed her cover status.”
Mr. Rustmann, who spent 20 of his 24 years in the agency under “nonofficial cover” — also known as a NOC, the same status as the wife of Mr. Wilson — also said that she worked under extremely light cover.
In addition, Mrs. Plame hadn’t been out as an NOC since 1997, when she returned from her last assignment, married Mr. Wilson and had twins, USA Today reported yesterday.

And so why is Joe Wilson blathering all over Washington – calling for Rove to lose his security clearnace or for Bush to fire him?

Patrtisan politics? Oh No….. no one could accuse the former Clinton ambassador of that.

The distinction matters because a law that forbids disclosing the name of undercover CIA operatives applies to agents that had been on overseas assignment “within the last five years.” “She was home for such a long time, she went to work every day at Langley, she was in an analytical type job, she was married to a high-profile diplomat with two kids,” Mr. Rustmann said. “Most people who knew Valerie and her husband, I think, would have thought that she was an overt CIA employee.”
Asked whether his wife had been compromised before the press leak, Mr. Wilson said, “I have no idea,” though he said that her work has had to change since the leaks.

More tempest in a teapot…….as the story slowly burns itself out…..thankfully.

In the meantime, President Bush yesterday gave his longtime confidant an unusual show of support, walking out side by side with Mr. Rove on the White House South Lawn as he headed to his helicopter to leave for a trip to Indiana.

The president almost always walks out alone, with his aides following behind.

Later in the day, about 100 protesters — chanting, “Hey, hey, ho, ho, Karl Rove has got to go” — picketed outside the White House while Mr. Bush was in Indiana.The protesters were organized by the liberal group MoveOn.org, which provided signs that read: “Stop the Cover-up: Fire Karl Rove.”

Oh Please!

Michelle Malkin has a good round-up of Blogger Reactions, MORE ROVE-MANIA..AND THE MEDIA MYSTERY DEEPENS (UPDATED)

Update, 9:20 am: John Podhoretz calls Plamegate one of the “hey, big whoop” stories of all time:

So we learn, at last, from the New York Times, that Robert Novak called Karl Rove and said he heard Joseph Wilson’s wife, who was NOT a clandestine agent at the time, worked for the CIA. To which Rove replied — of the women who was NOT a clandestine agent at the time and who he almost surely had no reason to know had at some point in the previous years BEEN a clandestine agent — “I heard that too.”

This surely qualifies as one of the “hey, big whoop” stories of all time. And I am not saying this because I am some partisan gunslinger. Simple fairness says that an official called by a journalist who volunteers a piece of gossip and then responds, “I heard that too,” is not retailing a piece of incendiary information intended to destroy lives and place CIA assets in harm’s way.

And I’m going to be blunt here. Anybody who says different has an agenda that has nothing whatever to do with Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame, the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, or much of anything else besides doing damage to the Bush administration and character-assassinating Karl Rove.

Betsy Newmark: “I think we’re about at stage eight of the twelve-stage process of media scandals…”

Update II: I think Wilson’s remarks about his wife’s status were misinterpreted. Looks like what he was saying was that she was no longer a clandestine operative once her cover was blown. I think.

Tom Maguire breaks down the Times’ story.

Jon Henke on The Oops Theory and more.

Technorati Tags: Valerie Plame, Karl Rove, CIA, Moveon.org, politics