Valerie Plame is now “Fair Game”

Hugo Floriani, Investigative Reporter

Valerie Plame Wilson is now fair game for inquires by refusing to answer even the simplest of questions about the story and trial associated with her name.

So we ask: Valerie, how long have you known former Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman?

Seems like a simple question, right?

Well, maybe not. You see, it turns out that, according to court records in U.S. v Libby, the Wilson's have long known Grossman.

According to sworn testimony in a deposition of Sibel Edmonds in 2009, Grossman was the man who outed Brewster Jennings & Associates as a CIA front organization, and Valerie Plame, who worked there, as a CIA employee. That happened two years before Lewis "Scooter" Libby asked Grossman about Joe Wilson and about his famous trip to the nation of Niger on behalf of senior officials in the Directorate of Operations Counter-proliferation Division of the CIA.

Wilson's trip to Niger in the spring of 2002 was about determining the veracity of Saddam Hussein's alleged attempt to purchase enriched uranium (yellowcake).

For you true-history buffs, here’s the story around that event:

In the Summer of 2001, Marc Grossman, a friend of the Wilson's, illegally, according to the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, divulged to Turkish operatives that Brewster Jennings, and consequently Valerie Plame who worked there, were associated with the CIA. This is according to sworn testimony by Edmonds.

Then, in the spring of 2002, the CIA asked Valerie Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, to go to Niger and determine if Saddam Hussein purchased yellowcake.

On September 26, 2003, the CIA asked the Department of Justice to investigate who outed Brewster Jennings and Valerie Plame as CIA. This came after Plame had already been outed by Grossman in 2001.

On October 1, 2003, Grossman's boss at the State Department, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage, took responsibility for outing Plame as CIA; however, he was told by the Dept. of Justice to keep the information secret..

On December 30, 2003, then U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was appointed "Special Counsel" by current FBI Director Nominee James B. Comey. Fitzgerald then went on a forty-month, taxpayer-funded fishing trip that caught Libby for allegedly lying to the FBI.

It’s clear why Plame won’t answer the question: How long have you known former Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman? Doing so would reveal how long she knew the man who actually blew her cover as a CIA “operative.” And that person wasn’t Libby or the late columnist, Robert Novak.

It was Mark Grossman.

All this begs the question: So what was the phony witch hunt that netted Libby really all about?

At IP2P, we’re trying to find out the answer to that question.