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Googling for CIA Agents
yali writes "As the heat turns up on the investigation into how an undercover CIA officer's identity was leaked to the press a technology columnist at the SF Chronicle, David Lazarus, shows how easy it is to identify individuals via the Internet. Even with little information, using widely available tools like Google and LexisNexis, it is possible to turn up startlingly relevant details." From the article: "I then went back to Google and got a map of Plame's neighborhood and directions to her home. Google also allowed me to study a high-resolution satellite photo of Plame's house. I could see that the property appears to be in a quiet residential community and looks approachable from all sides. It also offers ready access by car to major thoroughfares."
Ahem.
It's both.
So close and yet so far from the world's perfect ID number
Don't know how you got modded as insightful since you obviously didn't read the article. Note the comment in the article where it states:
You don't know much about the Agency do you? Do you have any idea how many analysts work there? Do you realize that all analysts are not "agents" working in secret as supposed employees of the State Department? Do you realize that agents working under-cover are often analysts? Determining who is actually a "spook" can be difficult and that is the problem with this case. If Ms. Plame was actually an under-cover operative, then an egregious violation of protocol and law has occurred.
As an aside: You should also know that there are a significant number of employees working for the agency that are doing nothing in the way of classified work.
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Let's remember that this is the NYT reporter who wrote stories citing that anonymous sources knew that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Her husband, when pressed (cuz it's kinda dopey to complain about bureaucrats being outed...) admits as much.
No he didn't.
"In stating that "My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity," Wilson was simply noting that Plame's identity was no longer secret after Novak publicly revealed it."
http://mediamatters.org/items/200507150003
The AP has already run a correction to the story you link to. Nice try though.
We actually do not know for sure what her status was as that information has never been released to the public and knowing the history of the employer, likely will not be.
OTOH, you can have great fun outing CIA agents by googling "Brewster Jennings" and seeing who claims to work for them.
You should know that there are many, many companies and organizations hire "consultants". Brewster Jennings is a company that was indeed real, but set up as a cover company who may have in fact hired other folks that were not "cover". I am unaware of any specifics that have been published on this. However, you should also know that there are many other real companies that hire consultants. Companies that deal in construction, or real estate, or defense products, or science can all have "consultants" installed and working as cover for other purposes. Many of these companies can be found as customers of Dun & Bradstreet, but I will tell you that there are legitimate companies and cover companies they do business with and they can both do classified work or neither. My point is that just because someone is listed as an employee of such a company, that really means nothing as to their status or identity as a potential NOC. To paraphrase Freud, "A secretary may in fact just be a secretary."
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She didn't officially work for the US government in any capacity, neither for the CIA or the State Department, where almost all the non-NOCs operatives pretend to work.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
> 'Brewster Jennings & Associates' was a CIA front, or at the very
> least it had been infiltrated by CIA.
Yeah, or for the slower witted spies, you could just wait for Novak to publish his second article where he identified Brewer Jennings & Associates as a CIA front company:
> In making her April 22, 1999 [to Gore], contribution, Valerie E.
> Wilson identified herself as an "analyst" with "Brewster-
> Jennings & Associates." No such firm is listed anywhere, but
> the late Brewster Jennings was president of Socony-Vacuum
> oil company a half-century ago. Any CIA employee working
> under "non-official cover" always is listed with a real firm, but
> never an imaginary one.
This was at the beginning of Novak attempting to dismiss Wilson's conclusions about his trip because he was "partisan" (even ignoring the fact that Wilson gave money to Bush and Gore, and he served under both parties' presidents). It's considered to be a logical fallacy, but it hasn't stopped Republicans from trying it in the past two years of this WMD debacle. The fact that they exposed information about the CIA for political gain is unconscionable.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Nevermind the fact that Patriot isn't even in use here, and has nothing to do with this subject. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your trolls. I am sure some /.er will moderate you up for it.
He never said Cheney sent him. That's simply a lie. What he said was that the office of the vice president requested the CIA look into this Niger matter. The CIA chose Joe Wilson as he already done this sort of work before (Valerie did not send him to Niger on here own. That's just silly.) He was an ambassador to Niger and Gabon and knew all the players in the area and had completed covert work for the CIA before.
Here's the quote
"In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."
Media repeated false GOP talking point on authorization for Wilson trip to Niger
Thalasar
The article talks about Googling not for CIA agents in general, but for a very specific agent, one whose identity had been leaked to the press (in a possibly illegal manner, gottal love habeas corpus). I doubt he'd have any luck with finding information Random Spook #3269823.12, unless some "senior administration officials" feel the need to tell us his or her identity...
CIA wouldn't have refered the matter to DoJ, and DoJ wouldn't have formed a Grand Jury unless they thought someone broke some laws, Mr Rustmann's analysis notwithstanding.
And the official position of CIA (not just 'someone who supervised her') is that she was a NOC. You can spin that however you like, but I doubt the Special Counsel will listen to you.
-EvilMagnus