Per
Raw Story:
Reports Shuster in this rush transcript: "INTELLIGENCE SOURCES SAY VALERIE WILSON WAS PART OF AN OPERATION THREE YEARS AGO TRACKING THE PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIAL INTO IRAN. AND THE SOURCES ALLEGE THAT WHEN MRS. WILSON'S COVER WAS BLOWN, THE ADMINISTRATION'S ABILITY TO TRACK IRAN'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS WAS DAMAGED AS WELL."
Update [2006-5-1 19:48:28 by Glic]:C&L has the video.
More after the flip...
On Chris Matthews' Hardball Monday evening, just moments ago, MSNBC correspondent David Shuster confirmed what RAW STORY first reported in February: that outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was working on Iran at the time she was outed....
According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.
This confirms what we have known: her cover was BLOWN by the Bush administration. And while she was working on Iran. A NOC exposed for political reasons. Because her husband dared to tell the truth about the lies this administration told to take us to war. Got that?
Update [2006-5-2 7:56:2 by Glic]: This also confirms what RS's Larisa Alexandrovna wrote back in
February:
The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned.
According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran....Plame's team, they added, would have come in contact with A.Q. Khan's network in the course of her work on Iran.
While Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss has not submitted a formal damage assessment to Congressional oversight committees, the CIA's Directorate of Operations did conduct a serious and aggressive investigation, sources say.
Intelligence sources familiar with the damage assessment say that what is called a "counter intelligence assessment to agency operations" was conducted on the orders of the CIA's then-Deputy Director of the Directorate of Operations, James Pavitt.
Spin it Tony Snow.
Update [2006-5-1 19:13:48 by Glic]:WH Press Corp, let us help you do your job. In about 35 seconds of 'digging' and I found this:
From the February 3 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:
SNOW: Very quickly -- very quickly, you got this Valerie Plame case. Now, it turns out that [special counsel] Peter (sic: Patrick) Fitzgerald doesn't -- can't even identify any harm. She wasn't a covert agent. She wasn't compromised.
As a result, what you're doing is possibly sending a senior administration official off about a faulty memory over something that wasn't a crime.
Meanwhile, you got [CIA director] Porter Goss saying that there's serious damage here. Don't you think this deserves at least an opportunity to try to figure out what happened?
CROWLEY: Well, I'll take exception with you. The fact that we had a covert operative that was exposed, it's possible.
SNOW: She wasn't covert anymore. Even her husband says she wasn't covert for six years.
Also from Crooks and Liars, "Didn't John Gibson say that Karl Rove deserved a medal for outing Valerie? Another question needs to be asked of this President. If Iran is such a threat, why does Bush still have on his staff a man (Rover) who betrayed the identity of a CIA agent that was working on this very serious issue."
Well?
Update [2006-5-1 20:57:24 by Glic]: You gotta love Shuster :
And last week, Karl Rove testified again he may have spoken about the Wilsons with Time Magazine’s Matt Cooper.
Rove said he denied that under oath for the first year of the investigation because of memory problems. A case of bad memory is Scooter Libby’s defense.
But in regards to Karl Rove, lawyers in the case say prosecutor Fitzgerald is still troubled by the timing of Rove’s rolling disclosures: it seems that Rove’s memory perks up with every new indication someone else will expose him. When Rove finally began to update his testimony in October 2004, it was just days after Cooper was first held in contempt for refusing to disclose confidential sources. And Rove did not give Cooper a clear waiver to testify until after Cooper’s appeals had been exhausted 9 months later.
I think the press is starting to sense weakness - in Rove and in the administration - and the vulnerability of the man behind the curtain; let's hope he, and whomever else ends up getting indicted for this, is mercilessly pummeled on his/their way down. I'm looking at you, Dick.