According to the Financial Times<\/i><\/a>, the outing of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative was as more a shot across the bow of the intelligence community rather than an individualized retaliation at Joseph Wilson:<\/p>\n Vince Cannistraro, former CIA operations chief, charged yesterday: “She was outed as a vindictive act because the agency was not providing support for policy statements that Saddam Hussein was reviving his nuclear programme.” Strong words from a man who served on the National Security Council during the Reagan administration. According to the Financial Times, the outing of Valerie Plame’s identity as a CIA operative was as more a shot across the bow of the intelligence community rather than an individualized retaliation at Joseph Wilson: Vince Cannistraro, former CIA operations chief, charged yesterday: “She was outed as a vindictive act because the agency was not […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-87","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"h-entry","8":"hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.brianarner.com\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nThe leak was a way to “demonstrate an underlying contempt for the intelligence community, the CIA in particular”.
\nHe said that in the run-up to the Iraq war, the White House had exerted unprecedented pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to find evidence that Iraq had links to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda and that Baghdad was trying to build a nuclear bomb.
\nWhile the intelligence agencies believe their mission is to provide accurate analysis to the president to aid policy decisions, in the case of Iraq “we had policies that were already adopted and they were looking for those selective pieces of intelligence that would support the policy”, Mr Cannistraro said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nSince the beginning, I’ve suspected this Plame episode was part of a larger intelligence battle. Had the White House merely wanted to retaliate Wilson for his role in the Yellowcake controversy, they could have done so directly. But they wanted to intimidate potential whistle blowers: stay in line with the government policy–or else. So that’s why they struck Plame–they wanted to highlight the vulnerability of intelligence agents.
\nThis story hasn’t got much buzz recently, while the Department of Justice ramps up its leak investigation. But I suspect we’re going to hear more intelligence people talking to the media if we don’t get answers from the DOJ soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"