Treasongate: For the Nth time, She Was Covert

by eriposte

In a previous post I mentioned the WSJ piece confirming the use of a special notation in the State Department memo to denote that Valerie Wilson's identity was a secret.

Now, thanks to a heads-up from Ga6thDem, we have another confirming report from the great Walter Pincus (joined by Jim VanDeHei) in the Washington Post. I am also happy to see that the article (at least for now) is a front pager.

Another moment of Zen it is:

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

...The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

Read the whole article. It confirms the other recent stories too: the memo's main goal was to debunk the uranium claim (associated with Niger) and Karl Rove "testified that he learned Plame's name from Novak a few days before telling another reporter she worked at the CIA and played a role in her husband's mission, according to a lawyer familiar with Rove's account".

So again, Mr. "I didn't know her name..." seems to have just been fooling around a bit with Americans.