MSNBC confirms: Outed CIA agent was working on Iran

"A full 10 seconds of silence passed after a reporter asked Sleazy and Rumsfeld what the intense secrecy and security surrounding their visit to Iraq signified about the stability of the country three years after the U.S.-led invasion. Rice turned to Rumsfeld to provide the answer. Rumsfeld glared at the reporter.




On Chris Matthews' Hardball Monday evening, 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.

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."

The two things are probably related--tracking Bush junta operatives trying to PLANT nukes in Iraq after the invasion, and Brewster-Jennings covert agents and contacts monitoring and countering the acquisition of nuclear weapons technology in Iran. There was a very curious story about Manucher Ghorbanifar trying to dupe the CIA into thinking the Iranians had stolen Iraq's nukes or nuke material and taken it to Iran (around the time of the Bush invasion). The story evaporated upon investigation, and Ghorbanifar had tried to hide the fact that he was behind it. Ghorbanifar, the notorious Iranian arms dealers with his fingers in Iran-Contra, had been discredited by the CIA as a liar. He was present at the Rome 2001 meeting--with Michael Ladeen and other Neo-Cons, and Italian fascists--where the Niger forgeries were more than likely cooked up.

I've yet to figure out what Ghorbanifar's motive may have been, in the phony Iraq-nukes-to-Iran feint. Like the Niger forgeries, it was easily exposed. Perhaps it was intended to lure out and identify the honest people in the CIA.

Now think back to summer 2003. There is nothing that Bush needed more than a "find" of WMDs in Iraq. The failure to find such weapons is one of the key reasons the Bush junta is in such political trouble today. They lied; everybody now knows they lied. But what if they had succeeded in planting nukes in Iraq--and these had been "found" by the U.S. troops who were "hunting" for the weapons that everybody knew weren't there (accompanied by NYT faux reporter/war propagandist Judith Miller)? And what if they'd gotten away with it? This would have vastly changed the political landscape--or at least the war profiteering corporate news monopoly narrative of our political landscape--then and now.

It seems to me more likely that Ghorbanifar was at that Rome meeting as a procurer of illicit weapons--weapons to be planted in Iraq--than that he was there to cook up the "crude" Niger forgeries. Illicit weapons are his business.

We have also to consider what looks to me like haste and panic in the way the Bushites outed Plame and Brewster-Jennings in the week of July 7-14, 2003. I tend to think that that haste and panic had an immediate cause--and it was not Wilson's article (published July 6), which was expected, but rather something unexpected. My guess is that the unexpected thing was that David Kelly--the Brits chief WMD expert, who had been whistleblowing to the BBC since late May, about the "sexed up" pre-war Iraq WMD intel--when he was interrogated at a "safe house" (first week of July), revealed that he knew about the plot to plant nukes in Iraq. This guess is profoundly influenced by the fact that David Kelly was found dead, in highly suspicious circumstances, four days after Plame was outed (July 18). His office and computers were searched, and four days later (on July 22), Brewster-Jennings--the entire CIA WMD counter-proliferation network--was ADDITIONALLY outed (also by Novak).
The key may be in the otherwise disreputable Hutton report--which reveals that on July 7 Tony Blair was informed that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things"--COULD say, not HAD said. What were the "uncomfortable things" that Kelly COULD say--that may have gotten him killed? Ten days later he was dead, and, a couple of days later, BJ was outed, putting all those covert agents and contacts at risk of getting killed, and disabling all their projects.

And all this occurred in the heat of the "hunt" for WMDs in Iraq. It's too much coincidence. I think that these things are connected--David Kelly's whistleblowing, interrogation and death, and the Plame/BJ outings.

As for Iran, it seems clear now that it was the Bush junta's main target all along. Iraq, greatly weakened by the first Gulf war and by 12 years of sanctions and "no fly zone" bombings, was a pushover, at first brush. It's an utter disaster now, but it was easy to "shock and awe" a very weak country with no air force and to invade it, and smash it up. It is the launching pad for Iran. That's what that Vatican-sized U.S. compound in Baghdad--and the string of permanent U.S. bases--are all about. The junta's actions in Iraq have nothing to do with "stabilizing" Iraq, and never did. Their goal is permanent U.S. occupation of the Middle East. But they did have to be concerned about American and world opinion. That's why "finding" nukes or other WMDs in Iraq was so important--and who can doubt that this gang of criminals would have planted the weapons if they could have? In fact, it's damned puzzling that they DIDN'T "find" any such weapons--that they didn't get away with it. They'd set it all up, with the Niger forgeries, and 24/7 propaganda about Iraq WMDs in the U.S. war profiteering corporate news monopoly press.

I think planting nukes in Iraq was step one, and permitting Iran to obtain nuclear weapons technology was step two. And counter-proliferation experts like David Kelly and Valerie Plame, and the Brewster-Jennings network--people who thought it was their job to work toward peace, not to manufacture war--stood in their way.