Bush commutes Libby sentence

[Thecla]

She was still classified as "covert" and for the ignorant masses she may have been, but she was known within the world intelligence community as an operative since her first outing back in the 1980's iirc by the Soviets.

So what are you trying to say here? That if the former Sovet Union has identified a US CIA agent, then it's ok for all and sundry to do so as well? Valerie Plame/Wilson was absolutely a covert CIA agent:

http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections...employement.pdf

At least, until various people in the Bush administration deliberately, or inadvertantly, blew her cover. (Though Libby, it seems, was the only one stupid enough to lie about it.) The use of ".." around covert is not much better than talk-radio obscurantism.

I heard quite an interesting radio interview with Valerie Wilson's neighbors a while back: they were absolutely astonished that she worked for the CIA, and assumed she was a normal upper-middle class Washington DC mother. She was, as far as they were concerned, a "consultant" with the government, which they took as Washington code for "unemployed".