It ain't covert if you use your real name? Because everyone knows if you are spying you have to use a cool alias like James Bond, or Michael Knight.
Really, these right wingers are just stupid. It's entirely possible to do a covert mission under your real name. Why would a spy agency even go through the trouble to create a fake identity for an agent who already has a well established cover. Unless some stupid ass blows the cover.
It would have been a simple matter for Valerie Plame to have assumed the name "Natasha Fatale," thereby causing no end of confusion for our enemies. So it's her own fault.
Mark B. stole my thunder. Jeebus but wingnuts have been so damn dumb for so long, it no longer boggles the mind--we expect it.
Earlier Wingnutz: Plame wasn't covert because she just wasn't! She wasn't! Infinity; no tagbacks!
Now: OK, fine, she was covert. But she wasn't really covert. Not really covert. Anyway.
(reminds one of the old Richard Pryor routine about how kids lie: "I was running--but I wasn't really running...")
I remember hearing about one particular CIA operative in Africa who, in the 1970's, actually wore plastic glasses with a fake nose and moustache*. I don't know how reliable that story is, but I think the intelligence agencies have, in the past, been manned at times by people who acted like James Bond. Those were the crazies though, and times were a bit different. Blowing your cover in Africa wasn't particularly damaging, as most of the locals knew at the time (or guessed, usually accurately) who the CIA agents were. Needless to say, those weren't particularly effective operations.
*I believe the story can be found in John Stockwell's "In Search of Enemies". Good book to read in tandem with Seymour Hersh's "The Price of Power".
I'm afraid that the wingnuts are right. When I'm going covert my travel name is Sir Joaquin Q. Magilicutty, IV. I let my friends and family call me Quigley. That's how this agent rolls.
Now, I'm off on my next secret mission to "Google the Eagle" for God and Country.
jimmiraybo......uh,
When I travel abroad as a covert agent I always use my "secret" name: Pete Terbeater. So far, no one has caught on. However, now I'm worried that Floppy Curt will "out" me. So, just in case: God bless the Preznit!
I don't get these Jokers on the right. On the one hand they want to carpet bomb every inch of land outside of the USA to protect American citizens. On the other hand, they scorn (and do not wish to protect) US citizen secret agents who are hired to gather intelligence to protect US interests.
Apparently he thinks that her passport is stamped "Covert Agent of the CIA" so that no one is fooled by the fake name.
Thank goodness that the passports of Al Qaeda members are stamped "Terrorist." Just think of the trouble that could arise if they got into the US.
Lesley | 05.30.07 - 2:24 pm |
Because in the Wingnut Brain:
Real-life spy work = skulking in the shadows = fear = homosexual shriveldick
But:
Blowing shit up and pushing foreigners around = huge scary James Bond hydraulic jackhammer penis!!1 and all the ladies want it!!1
And:
Sitting safe at home flogging the war from Mom's basement = genuine war hero with even bigger hydro-jack penis!!1 Gwarrrrrr!!1
Another covert agent who used his real name would be Stereo Review writer Henry Pleasants, who even did a turn as station chief in Germany during the height of the Cold War.
Fellow Stereo Review writer (and beloved Eschaton commenter) Steve Simels has said on more than one occasion that Pleasants' "spook" activities were completely unknown to his co-workers.
Sometimes ya gotta ask...
WWJD about Floppy?
Aside from the fecking stupidity of his rationale, my mind is rather blown by the fact that Floppy is sitting at home second-guessing the CIA's own statement about one of their employees.
Floppy? You can't be an authority on something you know absolutely nothing about.
Now now, you know wingnuts never have to apologize, that's what goalpost moving is for!
~
NOC's travel under their real name because it's their affiation with the CIA that's secret. She had a cover company and its existance was also revealed by Novak's treason.
I had a dream once where I was working under cover for the CIA. And it was an open secret: I was so incompetent that somehow everyone knew who I was (I used my real name or some really stupid code name) and for whom I worked.
What they didn't know is what I was really doing. My incompetence served as a ruse to ferret out double agents. And since my ruse was that I was incompetent anyway, it was easy as pie to do my job! 
My husband and I both used to have TS clearances with tickets and often couldn't tell each other what we were working on. It was really amusing when years later we figured out we were working on opposite ends of the same project...
I used to have nightmares about SAC, too. Damn, those were some scary idiots in charge of the nukes... of course, now Dubya makes those times and those people look perfectly reasonable.
Something tells me most of these idiot wingers have never been near classified information. Or even near anyone of intelligence whatsoever.
Someone needs to 'splain it to them real slow like -- as if to Forrest Gump: her existence isn't the secret, it's her affiliation that's the secret. Valerie Plame was a pretty lady married to Joe Wilson who had two nice kids and worked for a company called Brewster Jennings. The secret (until some blabbermouth blew it) was that she really was a spy, working for the CIA, on Iraq weapons issues. Now, all the other nice people who worked for Brewster Jennings have been screwed, too. And all the nice people they pretended to do business with.
That's why we don't tell secrets.
See? Even my children understand this.
Shorter Floppy:
Let's see how stupid I can be when I really try.
It's doubtful that Dropping Feces has ever tried to be dumb. Based on Floppy's piss-poor tightrope act over the mountain of evidence vindicating Plame, that kind of dumb looks to be quite natural. It must be his birthright. The poor shit barely can sustain a level of pretzel logic that couldn't help him get a date at the Auntie Anne's kiosk on lunch break.
The people who still deny Plame's covert status aren't stupid--they're being deliberately obtuse. To admit at this late stage that they've been wrong all along is obviously not going to happen, so they've got no choice but to play dumb.
"Officer, I swear I can only count to 10, that's why I didn't know what the '30' meant".
Yea gods, It's like a flood of stupid, isn't it?
Sadly Miller, I don't think Floppy was trying to be stupid. That's what scares me the most...
I think too many of teh Wingnuts went to "Kids Spy Birthday Party" that is the ad on this page.
Sitting safe at home flogging the war from Mom's basement = genuine war hero with even bigger hydro-jack penis!!1 Gwarrrrrr!!1
Happenstance |
That's it. I am officially patenting the hydro-jack penis!!1 (Pat. Pending) so that the "82nd Chairborne" will have to pay to masturbate in mom's basement!
Someone needs to 'splain it to them real slow like -- as if to Forrest Gump
But that's just it - Forrest would get it right away. He'd just be baffled as to why so many "smart" people tied themselves in mental knots pretending not to get it.
Fellow Stereo Review writer (and beloved Eschaton commenter) Steve Simels has said on more than one occasion that Pleasants' "spook" activities were completely unknown to his co-workers.
There are also the Copeland brothers (Miles and Stewart) who didn't find out that their dad was a CIA agent until he retired.
Now, all the other nice people who worked for Brewster Jennings have been screwed, too. And all the nice people they pretended to do business with.
That's why we don't tell secrets.
See? Even my children understand this.
What drunken hausfrau said.
If your work happens to involve a security clearance, the situation is like this: When you encounter Classified information, sometimes it's been classified for obvious reasons (e.g. the identity of a HumInt source, who would soon be dead if his existence was announced). Sometimes there is a more subtle reason to keep it secret (e.g. the codewords used to distinguish the actual levels of classification). While sometimes there's no reason at all, except that bureaucracies are prone to gratuitous secrecy. The point is that you don't know whether something is classified for a good reason or not, so you learn to keep your mouth shut.
This makes for an ethos of reliability and self-control in the US three-letter agencies (and their counterparts in other English-speaking nations). This was all very well, until those agencies were acquired by an Administration of kleptocrats, who only care about one thing about any function of government: how they can profit from it personally or divvy it up among their cronies. From their perspective, any piece of classified information is simply part of the spoils, to be declassified for personal gain, or leaked to journalists as a way of buying their loyalty.
I'm not sure what I'm saying here. Except that there is a clash between one tradition of integrity and a second of corruption, in which the right-blogosphere has taken sides, explaining the level of hostility for the intelligence community coming from Aces, A-o'-S, Goldstein, etc.
Mark B writes: "Because everyone knows if you are spying you have to use a cool alias like James Bond, or Michael Knight. "
Or Brit Hume. Or Wolf Blitzer. Or...
... NAPOLEON SOLO!
Woodrowfan:
Precisely, and for all those that scoff at us "conspiracy nuts", I'd like to point out her cover company was an OIL company.
As was a company called "Zapata Oil", that was the cover for invading Cuba and assassinating JFK. You all freakin' well know who was supposed owner of THAT company, I don't need to go there.
"Oh, for the lack of those that have ear to hear."
debt consolidation loan bank debt consolidation loan bank debt consolidation loan bank. best las machine slot vegas best las machine slot vegas best las machine slot vegas.
Commenting by HaloScan
