Playing the Plame Game

Normally I don’t blog about current events. I feel that there are plenty of more informative and funnier blogs out there dealing with them, however I just have to say my piece on the whole Valerie Plame affair. However before I delve into my jackassitude about the issue I want you guys to understand where I am coming from. Not to put to fine a point on it I think the people that compromised her cover should be taken out on to the lawn of the White House and executed on live television. I don’t care who it was or what their motivations were; journalists and administration officials are equally culpable in this case.

I hold intelligence agents in very high regard (and its not just because spies are cool.) These people, particularly those with nonofficial cover (or NOCs), are out there putting their lives on the line in order to try and gather a little bit of information that will help protect us or promote our national interests, whatever they may be. We ask so much from these people and should they get caught, or even worse have to make the ultimate sacrifice, the best we can offer them is an anonymous star on the wall of CIA headquarters.

Now in a time where we are increasingly aware of the dangerous world we live in and the enemies of the U.S. have demonstrated their ability to coordinate a massive strike on our soil, we need these agents on the ground even more than ever. At this critical moment in our history someone decided to out an agent. All I can wonder is what damage has this done to recruiting efforts? Now when a recruiter says, “Hey, so you wanna be a NOC?”
I bet people don’t go, “Ohhhh, a NOC, that would be so freakin’ sweet." Now they’re all, “NOC? Are you nuts? I’ll go do all this secret shit that I can never acknowledge doing, probably not get to kill people in fun and interesting ways, and eventually be outed by some crap weasel named Scooter? Thank you, no.”

And don’t even get me started on journalists “protecting” their sources in this case.

Now I feel like I have sufficiently expressed my outrage. Here is the one picture I keep seeing of Valerie Plame:


Could she look any more like a spy? Seriously, it is either the exotic ethnic babe in leather/latex or the otherwise unassuming girl in headscarf and BIG sunglasses.