[tomder55]

She reveals on 60 Minutes to Katie Couric tonight that she was involved in covert actions against Iran's nuke program. The plot she was involved in had something to do with handing off bogus nuke blueprints to Iran so that when their bomb exploded it would fizzle.
The Raw Story | CBS confirms 2006 Raw Story scoop: Plame's job was to keep nukes from Iran

CBS states further that Plame "was involved in one highly classified mission to deliver fake nuclear weapons blueprints to Tehran. It was called Operation Merlin, and it was first revealed in a book by investigative reporter James Risen."

The Guardian reported on Operation Merlin earlier this year ,and according to them it plays out more like Keystone Cops rather than a well thought out intel. Operation .George Bush insists that Iran must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. So why, six years ago, did the CIA give the Iranians blueprints to build a bomb? | Special reports | Guardian Unlimited

The first part of their report tells of a female CIA officer who's bungling resulted in all of our assets in Iran being outed ;which resulted in many arrests and possibly worse.

The CIA officer had made a disastrous mistake. She had sent information to one Iranian agent that exposed an entire spy network; the data could be used to identify virtually every spy the CIA had inside Iran.

Mistake piled on mistake. As the CIA later learned, the Iranian who received the download was a double agent. The agent quickly turned the data over to Iranian security officials, and it enabled them to "roll up" the CIA's network throughout Iran. CIA sources say that several of the Iranian agents were arrested and jailed, while the fates of some of the others is still unknown.

This espionage disaster, of course, was not reported. It left the CIA virtually blind in Iran, unable to provide any significant intelligence on one of the most critical issues facing the US - whether Tehran was about to go nuclear.

It then goes on to describe Operation Merlin ,a Clinton era operation. The plan was to give bogus nuke blueprints ,but instead they gave Iranian nuclear scientists real Russian blueprints that were easily detectable , superficially modified .

The story dates back to the Clinton administration and February 2000, when one frightened Russian scientist walked Vienna's winter streets. The Russian had good reason to be afraid. He was walking around Vienna with blueprints for a nuclear bomb. To be precise, he was carrying technical designs for a TBA 480 high-voltage block, otherwise known as a "firing set", for a Russian-designed nuclear weapon.. .

The Russian's assignment from the CIA was to pose as an unemployed and greedy scientist who was willing to sell his soul - and the secrets of the atomic bomb - to the highest bidder.. . But Tehran would get a big surprise when its scientists tried to explode their new bomb. Instead of a mushroom cloud, the Iranian scientists would witness a disappointing fizzle.. . The Russian studied the blueprints the CIA had given him. Within minutes of being handed the designs, he had identified a flaw. "This isn't right," he told the CIA officers gathered around the hotel room. "There is something wrong."

In Vienna, however, the Russian unsealed the envelope with the nuclear blueprints and included a personal letter of his own to the Iranians. No matter what the CIA told him, he was going to hedge his bets. There was obviously something wrong with the blueprints - so he decided to mention that fact to the Iranians in his letter. They would certainly find flaws for themselves, and if he didn't tell them first, they would never want to deal with him again.. .

Just days after the Russian dropped off his package at the Iranian mission, the National Security Agency reported that an Iranian official in Vienna abruptly changed his schedule, making airline reservations to fly home to Iran. The odds were that the nuclear blueprints were now in Tehran.

The Russian scientist's fears about the operation seemed well founded. He was the front man for what may have been one of the most reckless operations in the modern history of the CIA, one that may have helped put nuclear weapons in the hands of a charter member of what President George W Bush has called the "axis of evil".

But it was the Bush Administration that recklessly endangered national security ;not the CIA. This fits in with the general impression that the CIA is closer to the caricature that Ian Flemings depicts in his Bond books then anything resembling a competent asset to the US.

[N0help4u]

I say we make her some yellow cake~~~~Do you know her birthday??

[Dark_crow]

I don't want to get into whether she was 'covert' or not. I would like to point out that anyone who works in the Washington office is not a 'deep cover' operative. Those covert operations are not run from Washington but rather by station chiefs assigned to foreign offices. No one in Washington would have a deep cover name to pass on, those designations are assigned by station chiefs and most often are the only ones who know them. This whole matter is a bunch of chimera and it's my guess no one knows outside of a very few individuals what the facts are because so much false information is mixed with the facts. There is one thing however, if it plays out more like Keystone Cops it is because it was planned that way. If Valerie Plame had the information about the deep cover operatives it is claimed she had she would be dead.

[tomder55]

I don't know . Perhaps being a blonde trophy wife of an American Ambassador is the perfect cover for a covert agent. She certainly should've realized the risks she was putting her career in when she sent hubby on a junket ,and then hubby decided to go high profile about the trip. But all reports I read indicate her cover was blown by Aldridge Ames a long time ago.