Whoopsidaisy! Most Competent Administration In History Accidentally Outs CIA Station Chief in... Kabul

Oh well, it's not like Kabul is a dangerous place in which to be outed as the CIA's Top Spy.

The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

Surprise! I just gave your name to Al Qaeda!

The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.

OMG.

No one compiling this list or disseminating it knew, I guess, what "Chief of Station" means, nor bothered to ask anyone what it meant.

The disclosure marked a rare instance in which a CIA officer working overseas had his cover — the secrecy meant to protect his actual identity — pierced by his own government. The only other recent case came under significantly different circumstances, when former CIA operative Valerie Plame was exposed as officials of the George W. Bush administration sought to discredit her husband, a former ambassador and fierce critic of the decision to invade Iraq.

As Althouse points out, this version of the Plame Affair -- the passive-voice version of it favored by the leftwing media -- is designed to obscure the fact that it was Iraq War opponent and general friend of progressive reporters Richard Armitage who blabbed about this.

Back to the story. After distributing the list of people to six thousand reporters, someone asked the press office: Did you really intend to out the Station Chief?

Initially, the press office raised no objection, apparently because military officials had provided the list to distribute to news organizations. But senior White House officials realized the mistake and scrambled to issue an updated list without the CIA officer’s name. The mistake, however, already was being noted on Twitter, although without the station chief’s name.

Even when asked about it, they remained inalert to the problem of outing the CIA station chief.

It is unclear whether the disclosure will force the CIA to pull the officer out of Afghanistan.

Please, of course it will. He's now on every troublemakers' Must Kill or Kidnap list.

Of course, we expect the press office English Majors to be idiots about counterterrorism.

You know who's also idiots about counterterrorism, though? The State Department's Counter Terrorism Bureau, that's who.

he State Department’s Counter Terrorism (CT) Bureau apologized on Tuesday for promoting a controversial Muslim scholar whose organization has reportedly backed Hamas and endorsed a fatwa authorizing the murder of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

The apology came on the heels of a Friday Washington Free Beacon report detailing the CT Bureau’s promotion of Sheik Abdallah Bin Bayyah, the vice president of a radical Muslim scholars group that was founded by a radical Muslim Brotherhood leader who has called “for the death of Jews and Americans.”

Bin Bayyah himself is one of several clerics who endorsed a 2004 fatwa, or religious order, endorsing the killing of U.S. soldiers fighting in Iraq.

I guess it asks too much of Obama's Best and Brightest that the Counter Terrorism Bureau should know which radical clerics have called for the death of American soldiers.

posted by Ace at 06:49 PM

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