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."

Comments

And?

[BWJones]

So the reporter was able to identify her by name and her maiden name. He was also able to dig up information as to where she lives and details regarding their home. What he was unable to do with this search is define what it is Ms. Plame actually did for a living. This information could be dug up via a search of tax records documenting her employer, but even this will not describe responsibilities within that employer. For instance, any W-2s I might have had would say that the listed person was an employee of the State Department or the Central Intelligence Agency but they would not say anything about what job was actually performed.

Re:And?

[BWJones]

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.

Re:And?

[DavidTC]

She was a NOC, someone with 'non-offical cover'. Some people know what that means, but many apparently don't.

For those who don't, anything listing her job would have had her working at that CIA front, 'Brewster Jennings & Associates'. Completely unrelated to the government.

Which also means she was DISAVOWED if she got caught, not sent home with a stern note and public complaints like those with diplomatic immunity pretending to work for the state department.

Many times spouses of NOCs don't even know who they really work for. Although presumably hers did, considering who he worked for.

OTOH, you can have great fun outing CIA agents by googling "Brewster Jennings" and seeing who claims to work for them.

Re:And?

[Anonymous Coward]

> you can have great fun outing CIA agents by googling "Brewster Jennings" and seeing who claims to work for them.

And numerous eastern european spook agencies where Plame worked for all those years have already done this. I'm sure they've also looked through their past records to find who met with who from that company a few years back.

I remember back shortly after this Plame story first broke way back when, a friend of a friend said the rumors going over on the Hill (take with whatever salt you feel necessary) said as many as 70 of our sources had vanished. If that's true, most of them probably went into hiding, the remainder would have gotten quietly "picked up." Either way, they're not talking to our people anymore.
It's dangerous being an informant for a foreign government, especially when that government's spy agencies can be jerked around like this by some half-ass political hack like Karl Rove, the Mayberry Machiavelli.

Re:And?

[sneakers563]

Not only that. Think about all the people in foreign countries that had contact with her, maybe even worked with her. Now suppose those people live in countries with not-so-friendly, not-so-concerned-with-human-rights governments. What about them? Make no mistake: outing an agent doesn't just consign them to a desk job for the rest of their lives. In some ways, they're the ones least affected by it. It endangers the lives of countless others in very real ways.

Re:And?

[Mark_in_Brazil]

OTOH, you can have great fun outing CIA agents by googling "Brewster Jennings" and seeing who claims to work for them.

Actually, that's the real problem with the "outing" of Valerie Plame. Brewster, Jennings was a great CIA asset, with close ties to ARAMCO and other major oil companies and ministries. Now it is useless as a front for US intelligence.
What's the problem with this? Well, there's been a lot of talk of oil production having reached its peak and begun its decline. Financial Times recently reported that the Saudis had admitted that OPEC oil production won't be able to meet world demand within 20 years.
I don't know whether petroleum production has yet reached its peak and started to decline, and I don't know when OPEC will not be able to meet world demand. Wouldn't it be nice if at this time of uncertainty, the USA had some kind of asset capable of investigating these things from up close?
Too bad a political vendetta destroyed major intelligence assets that could have helped with just that.

You're Not Field Officers

[cynic10508]

Nerds playing at being intelligence operatives. Cute.

Her Biggest Mistake

[ndansmith]

She probably shouldn't have joined that "CIA Spooks Only" group at Google groups.

Did they...?

[AtariAmarok]

Did Google present some nice associated ad-links for James Bond cameras, trenchcoats, and Le Carre books while you were doing these searches?

Next week's column

[Anonymous Coward]

What's his scare tactic for next week? How about "Did you know that your name and address are recorded in a privately-produced book that's located in every house and street corner in your town? For a city like New York, that's over 10 million copies of your private information."

Wow!

[pete-classic]

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.

A house in a residential area? With easy access by car? And no moats or dragons near by? This must be some sort of top secret CIA house of the future!

Sensationalism at its finest.

-Peter

Philip Agee and Identifying CIA agents

[billstewart]

Philip Agee (interview about Plame/Wilson affair) worked for the CIA from 1957-1968, and left because he disagreed with what the CIA was doing - assassinations, overthrowing governments that weren't politically convenient for the US, supporting Latin American , that sort of thing. In 1975, he wrote a book "Inside the Company: CIA Diary" about his experiences there, which the CIA tried to prevent from being published, and sometime around that time he wrote about how to identify CIA agents from publicly available information - things like the kinds of jobs at US embassies or US military bases that were usually CIA agents. (Imagine if Google had been available back then!) Barbara Bush accused Agee of being a traitor, and George H.W. Bush got Congress to pass a law making it illegal to out CIA agents, and the US and its allies revoked his passport, making it harder for him to travel. I heard Agee speak at Berkeley in ?1979? - very interesting character.

The Don't-Out-CIA-Agents law that was passed to bust future Agees is now being used to possibly bust G.W.Bush's henchmen, probably his handler Karl Rove. The law makes it more illegal if you have access to classified information (which Rove does, but may or may not have used) and use that to reveal the identity of covert agents, but also makes it illegal to out them using publicly available information.

The White House has been weasel-wording about "Rove didn't tell Cooper Plame's name, just that she was Wilson's wife", but not only does the law talk about identifying people, not just specifically naming them, but somehow Novak, Cooper, and probably Judith Miller all found out she was an agent, so it wasn't just a "casual remark" intended to "correct mistaken impressions" - it was a well-organized campaign, and Novak apparently talked to two different Administration sources. Not only is Rove guilty, but he's trying to cover it up.

Re:Stating the obvious

[Thanatopsis]

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