Valerie Plame's Undercover/NOC Identity
As I understand it there are two kinds of CIA agents. Regular CIA Employees wear "CIA" nametags and drive to Langley every morning. Undercover agents operate "under cover" - they tell their families and friends that they work for agencies other than the CIA. Valerie Plame was under the cover of the Brewster Jennings company.
Undercover agents can carry black passports for diplomatic immunity, but on NOC (No Official Cover) missions undercover agents are instructed to carry no papers and are presumably given the famous "disavow any knowledge of your actions" speech. An agent who gets a black passport on one mission could take another mission without one and vice-versa. Whether or not you remain "a NOC agent" after you return from a NOC mission and put your black passport back in your briefcase is a minor semantic argument, like asking whether leighton remains a "truck driver" when he gets out of his truck.
Valerie Plame "worked in an undercover capacity" according to Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce of News Day who were the first to establish this in 7/22/03 and were subpoenaed by Fitzgerald.
Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday yesterday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity - at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.
...
A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
Timothy Phelps later clarified that she was "undercover...in transition from an even deeper underground mission as a NOC":
Our story was the first to establish that Plame was undercover. In fact not only was she working for the secret “D. O.” or Directorate of Operations at agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but she was also still in transition from an even deeper underground mission as a “NOC” for Nonofficial Cover, posing as a businesswoman during agency-sponsored trips to Europe.
This column by Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times sheds a little more light on her "transition":
First, the CIA suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his arrest for espionage in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.
Second, as Mrs. Wilson rose in the agency, she was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from "noc" - which means non-official cover, like pretending to be a business executive. After passing as an energy analyst for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a CIA front company, she was switching to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having "CIA'' stamped on her forehead.
Plame's "transition" from Brewster Jennings cover to State Department cover and her new non-NOC missions might be the reason for the confusion. What is not confusing is that plame was an undercover agent and some of her previous missions were clandestine and without official cover:
But within the C.I.A., the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery. Ms. Plame, a specialist in non-conventional weapons who worked overseas, had "nonofficial cover," and was what in C.I.A. parlance is called a NOC, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create. -New York Times, October 2003
Valerie Plame was an undercover operations officer until outed in the press by Robert Novak. A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. -Larry Johnson, former CIA official and Plame classmate
the special counsel refers to Plame as "a person whose identity the CIA was making specific efforts to conceal and who had carried out covert work overseas within the last 5 years" - representations I trust the special counsel would not make without support. -Judge David Tatel, quoting Patrick Fitzgerald
The semantic "NOC or not" discussion is a red herring. Valerie Plame was an undercover agent, Brewster Jennings was a cover organization, and leaking this information was a federal crime no matter what color passport she happened to carry:
if national defense information which is involved because her affiliation with the CIA, whether or not she was covert, was classified, if that was intentionally transmitted, that would violate the statute known as Section 793, which is the Espionage Act.
Dick Cheney directed Scooter Libby to commit a violation of the Espionage Act by knowingly leaking Valerie Plame's undercover identity and cover organization to the New York Times.
Undercover agents can carry black passports for diplomatic immunity, but on NOC (No Official Cover) missions undercover agents are instructed to carry no papers and are presumably given the famous "disavow any knowledge of your actions" speech. An agent who gets a black passport on one mission could take another mission without one and vice-versa. Whether or not you remain "a NOC agent" after you return from a NOC mission and put your black passport back in your briefcase is a minor semantic argument, like asking whether leighton remains a "truck driver" when he gets out of his truck.
Valerie Plame "worked in an undercover capacity" according to Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce of News Day who were the first to establish this in 7/22/03 and were subpoenaed by Fitzgerald.
Intelligence officials confirmed to Newsday yesterday that Valerie Plame, wife of retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson, works at the agency on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity - at least she was undercover until last week when she was named by columnist Robert Novak.
...
A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
Timothy Phelps later clarified that she was "undercover...in transition from an even deeper underground mission as a NOC":
Our story was the first to establish that Plame was undercover. In fact not only was she working for the secret “D. O.” or Directorate of Operations at agency headquarters in Langley, Virginia, but she was also still in transition from an even deeper underground mission as a “NOC” for Nonofficial Cover, posing as a businesswoman during agency-sponsored trips to Europe.
This column by Nicholas Kristof of the NY Times sheds a little more light on her "transition":
First, the CIA suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name (along with those of other spies) to the Russians before his arrest for espionage in 1994. So her undercover security was undermined at that time and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.
Second, as Mrs. Wilson rose in the agency, she was already in transition away from undercover work to management, and to liaison roles with other intelligence agencies. So this year, even before she was outed, she was moving away from "noc" - which means non-official cover, like pretending to be a business executive. After passing as an energy analyst for Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a CIA front company, she was switching to a new cover as a State Department official, affording her diplomatic protection without having "CIA'' stamped on her forehead.
Plame's "transition" from Brewster Jennings cover to State Department cover and her new non-NOC missions might be the reason for the confusion. What is not confusing is that plame was an undercover agent and some of her previous missions were clandestine and without official cover:
But within the C.I.A., the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery. Ms. Plame, a specialist in non-conventional weapons who worked overseas, had "nonofficial cover," and was what in C.I.A. parlance is called a NOC, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create. -New York Times, October 2003
Valerie Plame was an undercover operations officer until outed in the press by Robert Novak. A few of my classmates, and Valerie was one of these, became a non-official cover officer. That meant she agreed to operate overseas without the protection of a diplomatic passport. -Larry Johnson, former CIA official and Plame classmate
the special counsel refers to Plame as "a person whose identity the CIA was making specific efforts to conceal and who had carried out covert work overseas within the last 5 years" - representations I trust the special counsel would not make without support. -Judge David Tatel, quoting Patrick Fitzgerald
The semantic "NOC or not" discussion is a red herring. Valerie Plame was an undercover agent, Brewster Jennings was a cover organization, and leaking this information was a federal crime no matter what color passport she happened to carry:
if national defense information which is involved because her affiliation with the CIA, whether or not she was covert, was classified, if that was intentionally transmitted, that would violate the statute known as Section 793, which is the Espionage Act.
Dick Cheney directed Scooter Libby to commit a violation of the Espionage Act by knowingly leaking Valerie Plame's undercover identity and cover organization to the New York Times.