Interesting factoid from the Guardian (via Firedoglake)
Guardian Unlimited | World Latest | Inaccurate Info May Help CIA Leak Probe
Information attributed to Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff in New York Times reporter Judith Miller's interview notes is incorrect, offering prosecutors a potential lead to tracking the bad information to its original source.Miller disclosed this weekend that her notes of a conversation she had with I. Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby on July 8, 2003 stated Cheney's top aide told her that the wife of Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson worked for the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) unit.
Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, never worked for WINPAC, an analysis unit in the overt side of the CIA, and instead worked in a position in the CIA's secret side, known as the directorate of operations, according to three people familiar with her work for the spy agency.
The three all spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the current secrecy requirements of Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation into the leak of Plame's identity in 2003 to the media.
Ha ha. That made me chuckle for long, long seconds. Like dictionaries making fake words to protect their copyright...
as a refresher:
In her story published Sunday recounting her legal battle and imprisonment for refusing to testify earlier, Miller described her breakfast meeting conversation on July 8, 2003 with Libby and the point at which it turned to Plame.
``My notes contain a phrase inside parentheses: 'Wife works at Winpac.' Mr. Fitzgerald asked what that meant,'' Miller wrote.
``I told the grand jury that I believed that this was the first time I had heard that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for Winpac,'' she wrote. ``In fact, I told the grand jury that when Mr. Libby indicated that Ms. Plame worked for Winpac, I assumed that she worked as an analyst, not as an undercover operative.''
and that 'security clearance' Miller droned on about, turns out to be fabricated from back-of-the-comic-book advertisements among other ads for decoder rings, x-ray specs, WMDs, etc.:
At the Pentagon, officials also looked into Miller's claim that she had a security clearance while working as an embedded reporter during the Iraq war, shortly before her conversations with Libby.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he was unaware of Miller having a security clearance. He said security clearances are covered by privacy laws, so he couldn't talk about it.But Whitman said reporters who were embedded with military units during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars signed ground rules in which they agreed not to make public sensitive or secret information that they learned while with the unit.
``For a security clearance you have to go through any number of specific background investigative checks, and there are different agencies that do those. And depending on the level of clearance that's required, there's certain paperwork that has to be filled out and it has to be adjudicated,'' said Whitman.
He said commanders can't simply give a reporter a security clearance while in the field with the unit.
Umm, sorry, please try again....
Tags: Judy_Miller, /media, /Plame
