Radio host John Batchelor wades into Wilson-Plame Affair

Pundita's favorite radio host and news anchor John Batchelor recently aired a bombshell interview in which a retired West Pointer recalled that Ambassador Joseph Wilson had "bragged" to him in 2002 that his wife worked for the CIA.

Now Batchelor has gone to the blogosphere (Welcome, John!) to recount the story and nail down the meaning of a "covert agent." Finally, a little clarity! Visit Red State for Batchelor's full report. Selected passages here:

My colleague Major General Paul Vallely, USA (ret.), West Point '61, wrote me ... that Wilson had bragged of his wife the "CIA desk officer" to Paul and all other ears in the green room at Fox News in D.C. in the winter spring of 2002. ...

Paul told the same story to me on air on Wednesday, November 2 ... Joe Wilson called his wife a "CIA desk officer."

This is nearly the only accurate statement that Wilson is now making. He uses the ambiguity of spytalk to avoid clarity. "CIA desk officer" is vague. "Covert agent" is not vague, but it must be carefully studied with regard the 1982 law:

(4) The term "covert agent" means--

(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency--

(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and

(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States; or

(B) a United States citizen whose intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information, and--

(i) who resides and acts outside the United States as an agent of, or informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency, or

(ii) who is at the time of the disclosure acting as an agent of, or informant to, the foreign counterintelligence or foreign counterterrorism components of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; or

(C) an individual, other than a United States citizen, whose past or present intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information and who is a present or former agent of, or a present or former informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency.

Reason simply: when Wilson bragged of Valerie Plame to fashionable media savvy Washington in the winter/spring of 2002, he was speaking the facts of the matter. According to her present employment status, she was not covert -- she factually was a "CIA desk officer."

Critically, according to the 1982 law, Valerie Plame, while at one time a "covert agent," serving overseas, was no longer overseas, nor had she been since 1997.

Also, again according to the law, the five-year time limit protection expired in 2002.

(Puzzle: did Joe Wilson, revealing his wife's employment to Vallely in the Fox green room in 2002, violate the 1982 law's time limit clause?)

In any event, by 2003, the relevant year, anyone who ever cared to listen to Wilson -- at a major TV station, at cocktails parties, in the usual Washington elbow rubbing rooms -- knew that his wife was working as a "CIA desk officer." ...

11:30 PM update
For more on General Vallely's comments to John Batchelor about Ambassador Wilson, see World Net Daily Nov 5 report. (H/T Dan Riehl)