The Washington Post reported today :
The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.
The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.
The CIA officer’s name was sent to an entire press list of White House reporters. According to the Post, the names “of at least three CIA station chiefs in Pakistan have
been exposed in recent years. In one case, a CIA officer became a target
of death threats after his cover was blown, forcing the agency to rush
him out of the country.”
Seven years ago, Democrats like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, used the Bush administration’s leak of CIA D.C. desk officer Valerie Plame, as a club to smash over the head of then President George W. Bush and and Vice President Dick Cheney. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s Chief of Staff, was a political casualty in that controversy and was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison, fined $250,000, and was on two years of supervised release. Instead of a pardon, Bush only commuted Libby’s sentence. In 2006, Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said that he was the source who first revealed the identity of Plame to syndicated columnist Robert Novak back in 2003.
The video above and transcript below are Hillary Clinton’s thoughts on government officials who leak CIA covert operative identities. :
And we’re going to make it very clear to everyone who works in the government that they can’t go out and make a profit on their government work. They have to serve the people and they better not even think about disclosing the identity of CIA covert agents if they expect to be around…
You heard what the president did today, didn’t you? Now as I recall the president said that if anybody in his White House were found to have any part in disclosing the identity of Valerie Plame, they would be fired. Apparently that’s just one of those statements by the president that just doesn’t hold up. And what we saw today was elevating cronyism over the rule of law..
This administration has no regard whatsoever for what needs to be held sacred. And when I’m president we’re going to get back to cherishing the Constitution to upholding the rule of law and putting forth the best values of America for the entire world to see again.