Spooks. Intelligence collectors. Agents and handlers. Interceptors and radar operators. Long range reconnaissance. First in and last out of any war zone, potential or actual. Out in front of friendly defenses. Sometimes under cover, without uniforms and therefore, without Geneva Convention protection.
But even when they don't wear uniforms, they serve our country and protect our freedoms. They do it for little pay, often no recognition at all, and sometimes at risk of making the ultimate sacrifice in the performance of their duty.
The first American casualty in the War on Terror was CIA operative Mike Spann. And over forty years before, the first American to die in Vietnam was Army Specialist James T. Davis a signal intercept operator working under cover for the National Security Agency.
So no one, NO ONE, can claim to support "the troops" and not give a damn about the men and women who collect the intelligence that lets the rest of the troops do their jobs.
But that's exactly what I heard from Republicans on the House Oversight Committee last week as they questioned witnesses concerning the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson.
It started with the opening remarks of ranking Republican Tom Davis. He couldn't seem to make up his mind whether to blame the CIA instead of the White House...
So this looks to me more like a CIA problem than a White House problem. If the agency doesn't take sufficient precautions to protect the identity of those who engage in covert work, no one else can do it for them.
or to blame the media...
[for forcing the White House to] focus on more serious problems.
He also seemed to want to dismiss the entire proceedings, instead of recognizing the damage done to one of the "troops" of the intelligence community. The "troop" (and by extention, all troops) just aren't worth his time.
Then there were the revelations of witness James Knodell, Director of the Office of Security at the White House. According to Mr Knodell, there was never any investigation at all of the leak of Plame's covert status, despite public promises by George W. Bush to the contrary, . Nor did anyone connected to the leak (Rove, Libby... who else?) so much as bother to report it to Knodell's office, as required by both law and executive order, whether the leak was intentional or inadvertent:
Knodell said that he had started at the White House in August 2004, a year after the leak, but his records show no evidence of a probe or report there: "I have no knowledge of any investigation in my office," he said.Rep. Waxman recalled that President Bush had promised a full internal probe. Knodell repeated that no probe took place, as far as he knew, and was not happening today.
[snip]
Knodell testified that those who had participated in the leaking of classified information were required to own up to this and he was not aware that anyone, including Karl Rove, had done that.
Think about that for a moment. A CIA agent in covert status was compromised and no one thought it was important enough to report?
Let's assume they didn't know she was covert. They had to know her activities were classified; there just isn't any other possibility given the work she was involved with. That information was disclosed to the media as well, and it should have been reported to Knodell's predecessor. If it had been, the CIA would have been notified immediately and could have taken action to preserve her work and to protect her contacts. Instead, the information was out "on the street" for who knows how long before the CIA found out. Were her contacts put in danger? Did they go into hiding or sever their reporting chains? Did we lose access to valuable sources and the information they fed us? There's no way to know, but that's why these things are protected so closely. This is not a video game or a James Bond movie. These are real people with real lives and real families; they don't take unnecessary chances for a reason.
Of course, there's every reason to believe that Rove, Libby, etc knew damn well that Plame was covert and that outing her was illegal beyond the relatively easy to get around requirement to safeguard classified info. Why else would they go to such lengths to cover up where the leak came from? What else could Rove have meant when he told Matt Cooper, "I've said too much already." And why else do they refuse to answer these very questions now?
But whatever they knew or didn't know, it all comes back to this. They don't care. Plame is just another "troop" to use or disgard when it suits some political purpose. Like a soldier without the Israeli IED detector because Raytheon has a contract to produce an American version. Or a marine at Falujah two days after the November 2004 election, when everyone knew the city should have been taken the March before. Like the wounded veteran living in squalor. Like the family member whose loved one's remains are shipped home as cargo to avoid flag draped coffins on TV.
For the Bush White House, the politics of each decision takes priority over the real lives the decision may ruin or the real pain it may cause.
