Monday, October 22, 2007

Why Did Cheney Target Plame?

1. Plame worked for a CIA unit tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction and the A.Q. Khan network, which sold nuclear secrets and materials to "rogue" nations.

2. Cheney knew all about Khan in 1989 and did nothing to stop him.

3. Cheney's company, Haliburton, received a hefty fine in 1995 for selling dual-use nuclear equipment to Libya, then considered the most roguish of rogue nations. This scam would have brought Haliburton into close contact with the Khan network.

4. A Khan associate named B.S.A. Tahir, based in Dubai, was helping to supply centrifuge equipment to Libya. (Dubai front companies are used to ship American goods to "forbidden" countries.) Tahir works for a business concern called the Scomi Group. Scomi links up with Haliburton via a German concern called Cognis. The exact nature of these linkages are complex. (If you really must know all the details, go here and re-read the middle section until your eyes explode.)

Labels: Cheney, Iran, Nuclear Weapons Smuggling, Plame

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Bush outed CIA Spy whop worked on Iranian Nukes

n 2003 Ms Plame was an unknown undercover CIA operative until her husband, the former ambassador Joseph Wilson, was sent to Niger to erify intelligence that Iraq had acquired nuclear materials through Niger.

The claims, based on British intelligence, would find their way into Mr Bush's 2004 State of the Union address as part of his justification for going to war against Iraq, despite Mr Wilson's report that the allegations were probably inaccurate.

Soon after, Mr Wilson told The New York Times that the White House and the CIA knew the claims were false, and not long after that several journalists were told that Mr Wilson's wife was a CIA agent.

The sting in the tail was the allegation that Ms Plame had suggested her husband be given the research job in Niger.

The revelations that she was a spy were devastating to Ms Plame's prospects in the CIA. She was a covert operative, who since 22 had been sent on intelligence-gathering jobs in embassies and in the private sector.

The details of her assignments are still classified, and large parts of her memoir have been cut out as a result of litigation by the CIA to curb details of her spying career.