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SBD
Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2004
Posts: 1022
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 Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 9:26 am Post subject: Walter Pincus knew Valerie since 1996 |
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| Quote: | Walter Pincus knew Valerie since 1996
Washington Post | January 12, 1996 | Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer
Posted on 11/21/2005 1:05:16 AM PST by SBD1
Agencies Debate Value of Being Out in the Cold; Spies Under 'Nonofficial Cover' Are Among Most Sensitive Operations The Washington Post January 12, 1996, Friday, Final Edition
January 12, 1996, Friday, Final Edition
SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A18
LENGTH: 1099 words
HEADLINE: Agencies Debate Value of Being Out in the Cold; Spies Under 'Nonofficial Cover' Are Among Most Sensitive Operations
BYLINE: Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writer
BODY: She was a CIA case officer working in Europe covertly, holding herself out as the representative of a Texas foundation that was interested in world economics.
Unlike most CIA case officers overseas who work out of U.S. embassies and purport to be diplomats, she was operating under what CIA calls "nonofficial cover" (NOC).
When tradecraft errors led to her entrapment by French counterintelligence, she left the country and her case eventually became a public embarrassment for both Washington and Paris.
"NOCs," a former senior intelligence official said recently, "are the most difficult and costly clandestine operations to support, and the most dangerous. If you are caught," he went on, "there is no diplomatic immunity. It's frequently jail or, in some countries, even death."
Today, as the roles and missions of American spying are being reviewed, administration and congressional sources say, one of the most sensitive debates in the U.S. intelligence community is whether to step up the overseas use of NOCs, not only by the CIA but also by the Pentagon's Defense Humint Service and the FBI, both of which also can work abroad under cover.
Four years ago, faced with new post-Cold War targets such as terrorism and counter-proliferation, then-CIA Director Robert M. Gates "tried to significantly increase the number of these people [NOCs] in a way that would have changed the agency's operations directorate," a retired official said recently.
Gates will not discuss his still-secret plan to expand use of NOCs, but the former director continues to believe the time has come to cut back on the practice of having CIA officers abroad primarily operating out of embassies. "When you were recruiting a Pole, Hungarian or Soviet," he said in a telephone interview, "the easiest way was on the diplomatic circuit. . . . But as we try to deal with this new range of issues, you are not going to meet any people [involved in terrorism or proliferation] on that circuit. You need to be in other circles."
Gates said, for example, a NOC with technical background working as a physicist has a better chance of striking up a relationship with someone associated with nuclear proliferation targets than a CIA case officer working as a diplomat in a U.S. embassy.
The CIA has always had some NOCs, but because of the sensitivity of their cover, almost no one wants to discuss them as they operate today, nor whether their numbers have increased. "The matter is under active discussion," said a congressional source familiar with intelligence operations. CIA spokesman Dennis Boxx said he could not discuss the matter.
In the past, some NOCs were employed by CIA proprietaries, which are companies founded and operated secretly by the agency. Others worked alone as consultants or representatives of American companies, and a few were attached to overseas offices of U.S. corporations with only one or two people in the company knowing their CIA connection. In one case more than a decade ago, a CIA NOC worked as the paid public relations adviser to a country's president.
"I can remember one case where a NOC functioned in a capital abroad because he was close to a senior government official there and got feedback on visiting leaders," said one retired CIA official. "Another [NOC], an Arab American, spoke to Arabs as they passed through the country in which he held down a nonrelated job," he added.
Using NOCs, said one former top CIA official familiar with the practice, "sounds better than in fact it is." Although the technique "has value in highly selective situations where a person gains access to special information," he said, "the risk has to be commensurate with the gain, and it often isn't."
Because they operate alone and outside embassies, NOCs need their own secure communications and a safe way to keep their highly classified files.
"They are very expensive," the former top official said, "and very difficult to manage or control since they have to be isolated and insulated from other U.S. government employees."
In addition, they have to carry on their cover employment along with spying and the "two jobs become very stressful," the official said.
They also often have to be paid more than their colleagues because "they have to act as high fliers on GS-14 salaries, spending on things that give [government] auditors heart attacks," one official said. "Even their insurance program has to be different because of the dangers they face," he added.
A second CIA official said, "The backup inside the agency is much greater than normal operations." Beyond the usual three or four officers that serve each embassy-based case officer abroad, additional personnel at CIA headquarters work to support each NOC so that those agents have direct coverage 24 hours a day, other sources said.
The type of person recruited to be a NOC usually is different from a newly hired case officer. "The best [NOCs] are normally older people, experienced in the business they use as cover and often already fluent in several languages," one former senior CIA official said. But they can produce difficult personnel problems.
State Department officials are uncomfortable with NOCs, a senior department official said recently. Ambassadors, who as heads of the country team are supposed to be aware of all clandestine CIA activities within their borders, are not informed about NOCs.
The recent flap over the CIA's female NOC who was operating in Europe illustrates the problem.
Several years ago, she approached a French government official and offered him money to write some reports on economic activity in that country that she said her foundation would distribute to American businessmen as her work.
The Frenchman was impressed by her and wanted the money so he supplied her with several papers using inside government information to which he had access. He did not know she was an American spying on France. "It was good cover, and, for a time, it worked," said an intelligence expert familiar with her activities.
When the woman's spying role became apparent to a male friend, however, he turned her in to French counterintelligence, which began a surveillance that exposed her activities.
The French government brought the matter to the attention of the U.S. Embassy in Paris; Ambassador Pamela Harriman had not been aware of the woman's activities.
The former CIA official said the French situation is a case where the intelligence gained through the economic information the woman obtained was not worth the risk.
LOAD-DATE: January 12, 1996 |
Doesn’t this story sound familar? It sure sounds like the story I posted last week where former CIA Russman, Plames’ former boss, hints that this NOC was Valerie with similar language to the above story.
| Quote: | NOC NOC. Who’s There? A Special Kind of Agent
Time Magazine Michael Duffy and Timothy J. Burger October 27th, 2003
Some Bush partisans have suggested that the outing of Plame is no big deal, that she was “just an analyst” or maybe, as a G.O.P. Congressman told CNN, “a glorified secretary.” But the facts tell otherwise. Plame was, for starters, a former NOC — that is, a spy with nonofficial cover who worked overseas as a private individual with no apparent connection to the U.S. government. NOCs are among the government’s most closely guarded secrets, because they often work for real or fictive private companies overseas and are set loose to spy solo. NOCs are harder to train, more expensive to place and can remain undercover longer than conventional spooks. They can also go places and see people whom those under official cover cannot. They are in some ways the most vulnerable of all clandestine officers, since they have no claim to diplomatic immunity if they get caught.
Plame worked as a spy internationally in more than one role. Fred Rustmann, a former CIA official who put in 24 years as a spymaster and was Plame’s boss for a few years, says Plame worked under official cover in Europe in the early 1990s — say, as a U.S. embassy attache — before switching to nonofficial cover a few years later. Mostly Plame posed as a business analyst or a student in what Rustmann describes as a “nice European city.” Plame was never a so-called deep-cover NOC, he said, meaning the agency did not create a complex cover story about her education, background, job, personal life and even hobbies and habits that would stand up to intense scrutiny by foreign governments. “[NOCs] are on corporate rolls, and if anybody calls the corporation, the secretary says, ‘Yeah, he works for us,’” says Rustmann. “The degree of backstopping to a NOC’s cover is a very good indication of how deep that cover really is.”
For decades, a varying number of NOCs (the exact figure is classified) have been installed abroad in big multinational corporations, small companies or bogus academic posts. The more genteel rules of traditional espionage do not apply to NOCs. When the Soviets caught a diplomat doing spy work during the cold war, they roughed him up a little and sent him home. Unmasked NOCs, on the other hand, have met with much harsher fates: CIA officer Hugh Redmond was caught in Shanghai in 1951 posing as an employee of a British import-export company and spent 19 years in a Chinese prison before dying there. In early 1995 the French rolled up five CIA officers, including a woman who had been working as a NOC under business cover for about five years. Although the NOC caught in Paris in 1995 was simply sent home, “it might not have been so easy in an Arab country,” says a former CIA official familiar with the matter. “[NOCs] have no diplomatic status, so they can end up in slammers.” |
So, if I am correct, then Pincus knew Valerie back in 1996 when he wrote that story. In 1996, she would still be Valerie Plame since she didn’t marry Joe until 1998. This explains why her maiden name was used because it probably took some of them a while to put 2 and 2 together to conclude Valerie Wilson is Valerie Plame from 1996 Paris flap!!
SBD |
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kimberly
PO2
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 377
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| Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 10:25 am Post subject: |
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| WOW SBD, great digging! I need to go back and catch up on what you've been doing on all this so I can put it all together! |
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kimberly
PO2
Joined: 03 Sep 2004
Posts: 377
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| Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2005 1:11 pm Post subject: |
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SBD, if Plame was brought in in 1996, does that mean she has not been covert since then?
Perhaps O/T, but relative to Fitz's 'understanding' of Plames status.
I posed this question somewhere on Free Republic. It was acknowledge, but no 'answer'. Do you think that Fitz's new wording in the 11/18/05 Government Response might be 'backpedaling' or is it just meaningless? None of the documents preceeding this have ever used the word 'purported' in re: to Plames employment with the CIA. As I read the text, it says that Fitz only PURPORTS her to be a CIA official. Is he no longer sure?
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/legal_proceedings.html
“The charges arose from an investigation concerning alleged leaks to reporters of classified information regarding the employment of a purported CIA official by one or more government officials.” |
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