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It is now known that Valerie was monitoring Iran's nuclear activities. According to Raw Story investigative reporter, Larisa Alexandrovna, former intelligence officials, have said that Valerie "worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran."
"The revelation that Iran was the focal point of Plame's work," Alexandrovna wrote, "raises new questions as to possible other motivating factors in the White House's decision to reveal the identity of a CIA officer working on tracking a WMD supply network to Iran, particularly when the very topic of Iran's possible WMD capability is of such concern to the Administration."
On May 1, 2006, the Chris Matthews' show, Hardball, on MSNBC confirmed what Alexandrovna reported in February in 2006, that Valerie was working on Iran's WMD network at the time she was outed.
On July 27, 2005, the Boston Globe described what happens when a CIA agent's cover is blown and said in part:
"Whenever a spy's cover is revealed, a chain of setbacks ensues. Foreign intelligence services then review everything they know about the undercover officer who was operating in their country. Such a review can lead not only to the discovery of informants who may have been recruited by the outed CIA officer but also to an understanding of the practices and techniques used by an undercover figure such as Plame, who posed as a businesswoman abroad.
"After one undercover CIA officer is exposed, others inevitably have a harder time persuading potential sources to pass secrets about their government's -- or their terrorist network's -- plans and capabilities."
In recent years, Valerie told people she worked for an energy consulting firm by the name of Brewster-Jennings & Associates and Novak disclosed that fact to the world on CNN when he said, "she listed herself as an employee of Brewster-Jennings & Associates."
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"There is no such firm, I'm convinced, " Novak added.
Upon the public exposure of this information, former CIA agents report that intelligence agencies all over the world would have started searching the data bases for any mention of Valerie or the firm and that over the years, hundreds of agents have worked under the cover of Brewster-Jennings.
On October 5, 2003, Valerie was described as a "NOC" in the New York Times by Elisabeth Bumiller, who explained what a NOC position entails and how the leaking of her identity was viewed by members of the CIA in general:
"But within the C.I.A., the exposure of Ms. Plame is now considered an even greater instance of treachery. Ms. Plame, a specialist in non-conventional weapons who worked overseas, had "nonofficial cover," and was what in C.I.A. parlance is called a NOC, the most difficult kind of false identity for the agency to create.
"While most undercover agency officers disguise their real profession by pretending to be American embassy diplomats or other United States government employees, Ms. Plame passed herself off as a private energy expert."
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Writing for Salon magazine in October 2003, Nixon White House Counsel, John Dean, of Watergate fame, discusses how the Bush administration's conduct trumps that of former President Nixon:
"I thought I had seen political dirty tricks as foul as they could get, but I was wrong. In blowing the cover of CIA agent Valerie Plame to take political revenge on her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for telling the truth, Bush's people have out-Nixoned Nixon's people. And my former colleagues were not amateurs by any means."
At the time of Valerie outing, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie basically agreed with Dean in saying that the disclosure of Plame's name could be worse than Watergate "in terms of the real-world implications of it."
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