Why spies like these...

[SuperScout]

... is it any wonder why the WMD question is still unanswered? Remember ol' Yellow Cake Joe? He was the expert that the CIA sent over to Africa to find evidence of yellow cake purchases by the Saddamites. His detailed and thorough research included extensive sittings in the hotel's bar, doing such indepth work and analysis that he should have applied for overtime pay with the CIA. Doesn't his actions sound a lot like those reporters, way back in Bitnam, who parked their lazy asses in the Carravelle Hotel in Saigon, and wrote their spell-binding stories of life in the boonies? Now, here comes that hard-working Joe, claiming that
the Bush administration violated his wife's privacy by revealing that she worked for the CIA.

But now Spygate accuser Joseph Wilson is sharing with reporters intimate details about his relationship with the allegedly secretive Valerie Plame, offering an account of the couple's "heavy make-out" session just before she told him she worked for the CIA.

Wilson, who said recently he would have sacrificed anything to guard his wife's privacy, offers the steamy details in the January 2004 issue of Vanity Fair magazine. Can we spell hyprocrisy here?

Based on Wilson's recollections, Vanity Fair reports: "Meeting in Paris, London and Brussels, [the relationship between Plame and Wilson] got very serious, very quickly. On the third or fourth date, he says, they were in the middle of a 'heavy make-out' session when she said she had something to tell him."

Wilson said that at that point his date interrupted their steamy tryst and decided to come clean. "She was, she explained, undercover in the CIA." Now, here's where the Forrest Gump Personnel Disqualifier for Employment should have been used: stupid is as stupid does. How the hell did she ever get hired? Oh, yeah, I forgot, she and Wilson were hired by the George Tenet version of the CIA, a pathethic holdover of the Clinton years.

"It did nothing to dampen my ardour," he told VF. "My only question was: Is your name really Valerie?" Shazamm, he was thinking again, but with the wrong part of his anatomy! Wonder if he asked to see her secret decoder ring?

Wilson's decision to go public with details from his wife's sex life prompted dismay at the Washington Post, where editors have been trying to sell his complaint that the Bush White House blew his wife's cover as a serious national security scandal.

"Capitol Hill aides in both parties said Wilson had badly hurt his credibility with his apparently enthusiastic participation in a spread in the January issue of Vanity Fair," the Post complained last month.

"The article includes Wilson's steamy account of his early romance with Plame," the paper noted. "Congressional aides said the article bolstered the contention of Wilson's critics that no one had done more than him to draw attention to Plame, and that the couple had eagerly contributed to their celebrity."

Mr. Wilson himself seemed unfazed by the apparent conflict, telling the Post that his only complaint was that his wife "had to be clothed as generic blonde" in Vanity Fair photos to protect her identity.

Despite volunteering his wife for a new round of publicity, Wilson's allegation that her privacy had been violated is still being taken seriously at the Justice Department, which appointed a special prosecutor to review the case last week.

Well, if the DoJ people are taking the investigation seriously, they shouldn't take either Wilson or his hot-blooded paramour seriously.

[Seascamp]

It all seems to be comic opera cross fertilized by the Keystone Cops sometimes and hardly the stuff of James Bond taking on Gold Finger. More like Ms. Chambers doing Gold Member and members, as it were. I suspect someone in or close to the Bush administration blew the whistle on that sordid mess out of not being able to hold in a good joke or for some greater or lesser purpose, who knows. James Bond may have been portrayed as being a maxed-out horn dog but I don?t recall him whispering sweet nothings just before the gongs went gong. But it is possible that field craft things have changed, I don?t know.

During the VN War we called the CIA field agents ?Fluffies? and they caused us no end of grief, the best of which included a full briefing of a supposed RVN high up Naval Officer that turned out to be very high up in the I Corps VC infrastructure. Wow, talk about serving up the play book, all the planned plays and game tactics, we sho done it by jingo. Anyone with half a brain had to say ?what?s wrong with this picture? and eventually did and opined the Saigon CIA office was just working alive with AN Cong agents, which turned out to be true. I was in Singapore and in and out of Saigon (HCMC) during the 25th anniversary celebrations of April 2000 and that was something to bare witness too, boy howdy. Right there in the English language Asian Times was this grinning dude and a full story about him being the top liaison Guy between the CIA and the RVN equivalent of the CIA and the RVN President?s own private version of the CIA. Of Course he was a very senior AN Cong agent that was plugged right into the heart beat of it all, swell huh. The overall theme of the 25th anniversary celebrations was ?we kicked America's butt and here?s proof?. I gave serious consideration to mimicking a Brit accent during that time but reckoned that was disingenuous so I just sucked up the blush of embarrassment and pressed on. Life as a Yank is the pits sometimes, I reckon.

Scamp