07 March 2007

Small Fry



The news of Scooter Libby's conviction came as I navigated down the Palisades Parkway on the western bank of the Hudson River, headed for the City.

If I complain about Washington too often, slap me. The infrastructure is older in New York, and there are many more important people there hurtling over it. I listened to the results without surprise.

The Defense had offered not credible evidence of Mr. Libby's systemic memory failure, after all. The Prosecutor's list of nine conversations in which Ambassador Wilson's wife, and where she worked, seemed to stand.

No one who believes that even moderately good mental facilities are necessary for government service could believe the contention with Tim Russert, at least the tenth in line, had disclosed the information which Scooter said he was hearing for the first time.

Case closed. The former Chief of Staff obstructed justice, and he lied to the Grand Jury.

I don't know what it really means any more than the jury did. They found the verdict on the merits of the case. But it was clear right through that Scooter's Boss, Mr. Cheney, and Mr. Rover and others had orchestrated the information campaign. The investigation had actually been about something else, and only the small fry got caught in the wringer. It was actually supposed to be about whether the identity of a serving CIA officer had been disclosed. The  conviction was only about a man who obstructed it, and lied about his role.

No one was convicted of the violation of the law that clearly occurred.

Why were they not in the docks? Was this just a depiction of how things work, testimony about whispers and misdirection wedded to cozy relationships between officials and journalists for which no one is responsible?

Maybe it is a good thing that Scooter lied. At least we can understand that, and present it to a Jury. The law that was violated was another artifact of the Cold War, and the uneasy juxtaposition of free speech and global conflict.

Philip Agee joined the CIA's directorate for Operations in 1957, and served in a variety of posts in Latin America and at Langley until 1968, when he had an epiphany about his work and his employers and quit. He claimed he was doing fine at the time, and in line for promotion. Others claim he was another drunk womanizer in the service.

He spent the next fourteen years writing a series of books documenting his experiences, first the best-selling “Inside the Company,” then a pair of “Dirty Work” exposes, and finally the continuing Covert Action Information Bulletin.

His first work is acknowledged by friend and foe as being a compelling account of how a case officer has to operate to be effective. First issued in Britain, where Agee was living in self-imposed exile, it was not published in the US until 1975. It vaulted to the New York Times bestseller list with a backdrop of the debacle in Vietnam. Its sordid revelations helped to spur the agitation to rein-in the Agency which resulted in the Pike and Church investigations in Congress.

According to Oleg Kalugin, a former KGB Major General who lives in Washington now and internal KGB documents revealed by former archivist Vasili Mitrohkhin, the story is more than an epiphany. It is treason, pure and simple.

Agee had approached the Russians at their embassy in Mexico City in 1973 to offer his services. They turned him down, thinking an operative with Agee's credentials had to be an agent provocateur. Agee wound up with the Cubans, and after realizing the apparent sincerity of the American, the Russians enthusiastically volunteered their support to the book.

Agee spent the next decade gleefully unmasking Agency operatives and sources by the thousands in his bulletin, which was bankrolled by Moscow. At least two murders can be directly attributed to Mr. Agee's information, and it is not unreasonable to credit him with dozens more by a service that once specialized in “wet work.”

The sucessors to the KGB appear to be positivily giddy these days, and there are people launching themselves out of buildings and being shot down in elevators and posioned in sushi shops. Not that Mr. Putin has anything to do with it, of course. We have looked into those pale dead eyes and seen his soul.

Stung by the assault on American intelligence capabilities, Congress passed the passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, or IIPA. It was directly targeted at Agee, who bounced from safe-haven to safe-haven.

He never spent a day in jail, though I acknowledge the constant movement probably was a bit of a bother. A real service would have had him launched out of a fifth-story apartment building and been done with him. He is currently living in Havana, and makes a living as a travel agent, specializing in assisting Americans who wish to visit Cuba for a good time.

I contemplated that delicious irony as I approached the George Washington and Triborough Bridges, hoping to make a flight at the old airport named for Mayor Fiorello Laguardia. It seems that no one pays for anything, except for the small fry, like the operatives Agee fingered, or Ambassador Wilson's wife, who thankfully is still very much with us.

I bumped over broken concrete and watched shiny European cars whiz by me as I tried to stay on the right roads. The City skyline gleamed above the gray salt-stained bridges, the proudest towers the ones that express the hope of the 1930s in Mid-town.

What I take away from it all, speaking as one of the small fry, is that if they ever call me before the Grand Jury, I will try to keep my facts straight. We are the only ones that ever pay for anything.

Copyright 2007 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

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