Part 3
In part 1 I cited five major anomalies in the conventional explanation of Plamegate. In part 2 I explained why one of those five anomalies really wasn't an anomaly: the Busheviks were not incredibly lucky that they could attack Wilson by claiming his wife sent him on a boondoggle. Whatever WMD, WMD-subcomponent or WMD plans from whichever country, somebody in Plame's department would know the ideal person to investigate and the CIA staffer and the investigator would necessarily have close personal ties.
If the report was negative and was leaked to the press, they had a built-in way of smearing the participants. So Plame's outing wasn't accidental "collateral damage" but was something they knew they might have to do back when Cheney asked the CIA to investigate the Niger claims. This modifies the conventional explanation somewhat, but the destruction of Plame's network of contacts and sources is still seen as accidental collateral damage. But was it?
The Busheviks are famous for viciously attacking anyone who criticises them or exposes one of their lies. The list is endless: O'Neill, Clarke, Kerry, McCain, Clelland, to name but a few. Even when the critic is a Republican, they attack just the same. We're no longer surprised by this behaviour; in fact we have come to expect it. However, on at least two occasions the attacks have not been made in retaliation but as a pre-emptive measure in order to prevent potential exposures of their lies.
Jose Mauricio Bustani, the head of the UN's Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) was personally trying to persuade Iraq to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, which would allow OPCW to inspect Iraqi facilities. Such an inspection would, of course, have revealed that Iraq had no chemical weapons, nor the means to manufacture them, and that would have removed one of the major arguments for the war. So, to prevent that happening, the Busheviks pushed very hard to get Bustani fired, only one year after he had been unanimously re-elected to another five-year term. The Busheviks succeeded, so there was no OPCW announcement that Iraq didn't have chemical weapons after all because there were no OPCW inspections prior to the war.
Prior to the Iraq war, Mohamed El Baradei, head of the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency, was dismissive of the Bushevik's claims about Iraq having nukes, or even trying to develop the technology needed to make them. El Baradei was working to persuade Saddam to allow IAEA inspections teams into Iraq (he succeeded). So, naturally, the Busheviks tried as hard as they could to discredit his team, to discredit him, and get him fired (they failed).
Was anyone else a potential threat who might, at any moment, expose Bushevik lies about Iraqi WMDs (or about WMDs in any of the other countries on their list to invade, such as Iran or Syria)? Well, yes. The CIA department that Valerie Plame worked for, which investigates the proliferation and trafficking of WMDs. Maybe Cheney, Libby, Bolton or one of the other war-for-oil team heard something worrying on one of their many, unprecedented visits to Langley to scrutinize raw intelligence and to pressure analysts into producing reports biased towards portraying Iraq as having WMDs.
Or maybe the Busheviks simply decided it was too big a risk to leave that department operational. The people in that department were patriots who had put their lives on the line by operating as spies in foreign countries without official cover (no diplomatic passport, so no protection from prison or death). The sort of people who would, if the administration lies were egregious enough, leak the truth to the press.
The problem is, even if the Busheviks twisted Tenet's arm to fire a few key figures and got away with it (there would be a risk that others within the CIA would figure out the reason, be outraged, and leak all sorts of nasty secrets they had on the Busheviks) it wouldn't help. As I explained in part 2, once a contact has been recruited (which requires a close personal bond) that contact can be turned over to a different handler (without a close personal bond) if necessary by using the threat of exposing that contact to his country's authorities.
So the Busheviks would have to find a way of destroying not just the department but its network of sources and contacts. How could they achieve that? We know of one way that would work because that department and its network of sources and contacts has effectively been destroyed. People talk of Plame's network being destroyed because foreign countries would scrutinize everyone she ever met. But the front company Brewster-Jennings and Associates was also revealed and it's certain that others in Plame's department also used that company as a front. It's possible there were other front companies, but it's also likely that foreign nationals recruited by Plame would also deal with people from those other front companies. The links would be traced backwards and forwards and most of the contacts and sources of the entire department would be exposed.
So is it possible the whole Niger Document/Plamegate scandal was actually conceived as a means of removing the potential threat from that CIA department? At first sight it looks very unlikely because of the incredible amount of luck it seems to require, but in fact it requires no luck at all. As I explained in part 2, if the report came back unfavourable and was leaked the Busheviks were guaranteed they could attack the investigator by attacking the CIA operative who suggested his name because they would have strong personal ties. But by the same token, if the Busheviks really wanted to destroy Plame's department and its contacts and sources by outing one of the covert Langley operatives, they were virtually guaranteed that they could do so by seeming to retaliate against the investigator. And if, somehow, things didn't work out for them then they could always try again with a different WMD.
This alternative explanation of events resolves the major anomalies listed in part 1 and turns bizarre, inexplicable oddities into intrinsic parts of the plan.
More in part 4.