Former CIA operative speaks at KU event / LJWorld.com

Lawrence and Douglas county

April 19, 2008

Despite being inexorably linked by Judith Miller's going to jail for 85 days after refusing to reveal sources who told her Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA operative, the two women had never met until Friday.

After speaking as part of a panel discussion at Kansas University's Media and the Law seminar in Kansas City, Miller crossed paths with Plame who was to speak in a later panel. Miller said she simply wanted to introduce herself.

"We were supposed to meet previously but by then this whole mess (Miller being pressured to reveal her sources) had already started," Miller said.

In the discussion, Miller argued that reporters need the protection of a federal shield law if they are to continue to hold the government accountable to the public. She said the reporter's privilege that has historically been found by courts to extend from the First Amendment has slowly been eroded to the point where legislative action is necessary.

"We're going back to the times of the Alien and Sedition Acts," Miller said.

While she said the versions of the federal shield law advancing through Congress now are not perfect, she hopes they pass and can then be strengthened later.

Kansas City, Mo. — After criticizing the executive branch of the U.S. government for what she said was the denial of her First Amendment rights, Valerie Plame Wilson blamed the inaccurate intelligence leading up to the Iraq War on Kansas' U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts.

Plame, the former CIA operative who was outed by media accounts in 2003, was at the center of a years-long effort by federal prosecutors to determine who was responsible for disclosing her identity to the media. Ultimately, it was revealed that the disclosure came from members at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

In her remarks, at a news conference before appearing at Kansas University's Media and the Law Seminar, Plame cited the alleged violation of her First Amendment rights, as one part of a larger effort by the Bush administration and its allies to conceal previously public information. Plame lumped Roberts in with the Bush administration's allies and said he should hold some responsibility for allowing the Senate Intelligence oversight committee, which he chaired until Republicans became the minority in the Senate, to fail in its duties.

"Congressional oversight committees have failed miserably to exercise prompt oversight," Plame said. "They're at the root of the politicization of the intelligence apparatus. I would assert that Sen. Pat Roberts is the root of the problem."

Plame has criticized Roberts and the intelligence committee ever since a bipartisan report on pre-Iraq intelligence criticized her and her husband. She called it "the big lie."

A spokeswoman for Roberts denied Plame's allegations.

"The Intelligence Committee's conclusions about Plame's role in intelligence gathering prior to the Iraq war were unanimously supported by Republicans and Democrats, and indicate that she is not a credible source. Valerie Plame is hawking a book and appears willing to say anything to get media attention," said Sarah Little, Roberts' communications director.

As for the alleged First Amendment violations, they stem from a decision by the CIA to redact between 10 and 15 percent of her recent memoir, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House." Plame said the censorship violates her First Amendment rights because the facts that have been redacted are already in the public domain.

As an example, she cited the fact that she was not allowed to acknowledge CIA employment prior to 2002, despite an entry in the Congressional Record detailing her years of service and overseas deployments.

"I felt like, to use an old Soviet-era term, a nonperson," Plame said. "It felt like a second betrayal."

Plame's attorney, David Smallman, alleged the CIA not only wanted to redact information from the book, but also wanted to prevent its publication entirety by making last-minute additional redactions. The disclosure was part of a recently filed appeal in her First Amendment lawsuit. Smallman also represents the Investigative Reporters and Editors group, which he said has found an effort to take previously public information and classify it.

"IRE has found over the past six years that much information that had previously been public has started being pulled back," he said.

Smallman said the pattern applies to the effort to squelch Plame's book.

Discussion

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19 April 2008
at 9:06 a.m.

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smitty (Anonymous) says…

Caution is advised before admitting you attended this speech. To agree with any statements about Roberts and the CIA may guarantee you a staring role in the next banned book. Don't worry, be happy.
19 April 2008
at 9:45 a.m.

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doubledogleg (Anonymous) says…

Plame blammed Roberts for inaccurate intelligence leading up to war. That's ridiculous! The CIA messed up. Most reasonable folks who aren't Democratic hacks understand this fact. By the way, why on earth would KU give her a platform to speak?
19 April 2008
at 11:39 a.m.

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yourworstnightmare (Anonymous) says…

Despite what you think about Plame, she was a CIA operative. Exposing her as such was a crime. The people involved broke the law and are criminals. This case should be further investigated, and the criminals behind it prosecuted.
19 April 2008
at 1:14 p.m.

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true_patriot (Anonymous) says…

The “most reasonable folks” line is a laugh a minute. The evidence was clear before the invasion of Iraq that we didn't have anything but the lowest grade intelligence, and certainly not anywhere near the level required by our intelligence operations to justify going to war. Roberts actively colluded in convincing 70% of “reasonable folks” of untruths like Iraq having WMD, Iraq having connections ot 9-11, and Iraq having connections to Bin Laden, even when we knew those connections did not exist. He then colluded in delaying Congressional investigations into the sham until after the 2004 election, and then pushed hard and succeeded in shelving them. Why prevent them if he had nothing to fear?Career veterans at the Pentagon and across our intelligence agencies were shouting at the top of their lungs in 2002 and early 2003 to warn us what was happening on the inside to fabricate and sell a case for war, but they were drowned out by a compliant media, GOP leaders like Roberts, and lazy, apathetic Americans who sit in front of their TV's believing the drivel that passes for news, rather than doing their patriotic duty to do the research and listen to the voices of military, state, and intelligence experience who were putting decades-long careers in service to their country on the line in order to warn us against falling into the gigantic mess we're now in.While elements inside the CIA do share some blame for caving to the Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheny Iraq plan, there was overwhelming evidence against those neocon claims about Iraq, and only the flimsiest shreds of evidence offered in support, none of which turned out to be true, exactly as claimed by those on the inside. If normal Americans could put the intel available to them together and reach an accurate conclusion before the invasion, then anyone in Congress or the White House should have been that much more able to, and someone in a position like Roberts would have been the most able to. Therefore, even if the CIA had gotten it completely wrong, which they didn't, that still wouldn't have been an excuse now for those that either knew better and lied to America and the world, or who somehow were so incompetent and negligent that they couldn't put the obvious pieces together as well as a normal American with non-Roberts-level access to information, in which case those leaders shouldn't be allowed anywhere near our government, much less involved with any sort of intelligence oversight or foreign policy management.Which is it - incompetence or corruption?
19 April 2008
at 3:51 p.m.

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yourworstnightmare (Anonymous) says…

Roberts ran interference for Bushco and made sure that the senate intelligence committee was kept in the dark and was inactive.Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
19 April 2008
at 4 p.m.

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Multidisciplinary (Anonymous) says…

Thanks smitty. Now that song will play in my head for at least a hour, no matter what else I'm doing.But thanks for the memories too, two little girls singing along with Bobby on the tv. Priceless.
19 April 2008
at 5:28 p.m.

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dorothyhr (Dorothy Hoyt-Reed) says…

Bush's crew committed treason, because Plame and her husband disagreed with them. Plain and simple. She may not have been undercover anymore, but there were still people in the countries where she operated that were put a risk. It was unforgivable. Good intelligence is what will really win any war against terrorism. How many CIA operatives got the message to toe the line from this incident. By the way, the info that Plame's husband came back with ended up being accurate. Why didn't they listen to him? Because they wanted the war.