John Byrne
Published: Tuesday May 2, 2006
In light of reports that CIA Agent Valerie Plame was working to track Iran’s effort to obtain nuclear weapons when her identity was leaked, U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) today called on CIA Director Porter Goss to provide an assessment of the damage to national security from the incident, RAW STORY has learned.
The call comes after MSNBC confirmed a RAW STORY report that Plame was working on Iran.
In RAW STORY's original Feb. 13, 2006 report, by Larisa Alexandrovna, intelligence officials said that while Goss has not submitted a formal damage assessment to Congressional oversight committees, the CIA's Directorate of Operations did conduct a serious and aggressive investigation.
Current and former intelligence officials familiar with the damage assessment say that what is called a "counter intelligence assessment to agency operations" was conducted on the orders of the CIA's then-Deputy Director of the Directorate of Operations, James Pavitt.
Former CIA counterintelligence officer Larry Johnson said that such an assessment would have had to be done for the CIA to have referred the case to the Justice Department.
"An exposure like that required an immediate operational and counter intelligence damage assessment," Johnson said. "That was done. The results were written up but not in a form for submission to anyone outside of CIA."
Lautenberg’s letter to Goss follows. The New Jersey Democrat was the first Senator to call for Karl Rove’s security clearance to be revoked or suspended while his role in the CIA leak case is under investigation.
Read our our original report here.
Raw story Link here
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