The truth hurts.
Outed CIA officer was working on Iran, intelligence sources say
by Larisa Alexandrovna
The Raw Story <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Outed_CIA_officer_was_working_on_0213.html">http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Outed_CIA ... _0213.html</a><!-- m -->
"While many have speculated that Plame was involved in monitoring the nuclear proliferation black market, specifically the proliferation activities of Pakistan's nuclear "father," A.Q. Khan, intelligence sources say that her team provided only minimal support in that area, focusing almost entirely on Iran.
Plame declined to comment through her husband, Joseph Wilson.
Valerie Plame first became a household name when her identity was disclosed by conservative columnist Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. The column came only a week after her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, had written an op-ed for the New York Times asserting that White House officials twisted pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Her outing was seen as political retaliation for Wilson's criticism of the Administration's claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger for a nuclear weapons program."
The Deal- Why is Washington going easy on Pakistan’s nuclear black marketers?
by Seymour M. Hersh
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A Bush Administration intelligence officer with years of experience in nonproliferation issues told me last month, “One thing we do know is that this was not a rogue operation. Suppose Edward Teller had suddenly decided to spread nuclear technology and equipment around the world. Do you really think he could do that without the government knowing? How do you get missiles from North Korea to Pakistan? Do you think A.Q. shipped all the centrifuges by Federal Express? The military has to be involved, at high levels.” The intelligence officer went on, “We had every opportunity to put a stop to the A. Q. Khan network fifteen years ago. Some of those involved today in the smuggling are the children of those we knew about in the eighties. It’s the second generation now.”
In public, the Bush Administration accepted the pardon at face value. Within hours of Musharraf’s television appearance, Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State, praised him as “the right man at the right time.” Armitage added that Pakistan had been “very forthright in the last several years with us about proliferation.” A White House spokesman said that the Administration valued Musharraf’s assurances that “Pakistan was not involved in any of the proliferation activity.” A State Department spokesman said that how to deal with Khan was “a matter for Pakistan to decide.”
Khan Nuclear Network Survives Despite U.S. Efforts
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A.Q. Khan, a Pakistani engineer who bought and sold nuclear knowledge and supplies in the international black market, appears to be safe from prosecution. Pakistan isn't pursuing charges against him, and cases in Germany and Switzerland are languishing. Meanwhile, experts say Khan's network is still up and running.
How CIA "protected" A.Q. Khan by Hasan Suroor
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He was caught stealing designs from a Dutch uranium plant. Former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers in a radio programme says the CIA saved Khan from going to prison.
LONDON: In a disclosure that is likely to embarrass American authorities, the former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers has revealed how the CIA protected the controversial Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and saved him from going to prison after he was caught stealing secret designs from a Dutch uranium plant in 1975.
Mr. Lubbers, who was Minister of Economic Affairs at the time, told a Dutch radio station on Tuesday that because of pressure from the CIA no action was taken against Dr. Khan and he was quietly allowed to return to Pakistan.
Democracy Now!
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CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, a couple months after we buried Casey, we were invited to go up to Fort Lewis, Washington state, to -- what we were told -- have a sit-down with the President, so he could express, you know, the good wishes of a grateful nation. And so, our entire family went up there. We went to the post hospital. We had to go through some very intense security screening. And we sat down in this little tiny room, in one of the hospitals’ waiting rooms. And we sat there. The President came in.
We brought about four or five pictures of Casey from the time he was a baby until he was a soldier. We wanted him to see the pictures of Casey. We wanted to talk about Casey. We decided as a family that we weren’t going into any kind of political discussion with him. We wanted to use the short time we had with him to describe what a marvelous person was taken from our family. He didn’t look at the pictures. He didn’t want to talk about Casey. You know, he kept calling Casey "the loved one,” you know, to depersonalize Casey as much as he could. He didn’t even say “him” or, you know, he, of course, didn’t use his name or his rank. He called me "Mom" the entire time. Right before George Bush came in, they made us take off all our name tags. So he called me “Mom,” Casey “the loved one,” and just acted like it really -- we were at a tea party.
AMY GOODMAN: And what did you say to him, the President of the United States?
CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, he came up to me and he took my hand and he looked in my eyes, and he said, “Mom, I can’t imagine losing a loved one in a war, whether it be an aunt or an uncle or a brother or a sister.” And, you know, I stopped him before he can go through the whole litany of how Casey could be related to me, besides being my son. And I said, “Wait a second, Mr. President” -- that’s when I still called him “Mr. President” -- “Casey was my son, and you have children. Imagine one of your children being killed.” And he didn’t say anything. And I said, “Trust me, you don’t want to go there.” And he said, “You’re right. I don’t.” So that was about the one-on-one contact that we had. Then he talked about how Casey was in a better place and things like that.
AMY GOODMAN: You have written in your letter, the letter that you sent out on Memorial Day, that you have come to the conclusion that Casey died for nothing. Can you explain how you came to this conclusion?
CINDY SHEEHAN: Well, I set out on this quest really to make Casey's death count for something, to make it meaningful, not to be, you know, counted as death and destruction, as occupying a country that was no threat to the United States of America, not for lies. I didn’t want to think that he died for lies, that he died because my government is callous and has no regard for human life or human suffering. I wanted his death to count for peace. I want it to count for love. I want it to count for justice. And, you know, in this system we have, it’s ruled by the corporations, it’s ruled by the corporate war profiteers. They use people like they’re things and not people.
And I am just really devastated and frustrated with an American population, you know, not counting the people who listen to your show or who watch your show, an American population that doesn’t give the Iraq war one, you know, bit of attention, doesn’t think about it, doesn’t have to think about it. They don’t want to think about the death and destruction and the pain that’s being caused by the government that they’re giving their tacit support to by their silence. You know, we care more about who’s the next American idol, what was in Anna Nicole’s refrigerator when she died, than the hundreds of thousands of innocent lives that have been sacrificed for the greed for power and money that this country is always on the prowl for. So it just makes me think that Casey is going to go down in a long line of people who have been sacrificed to the corporate war machine in this country.
