Probably not. Even if she had a current, up-to-date security clearance, unless she was cleared for that particular information, she shouldn't have been told. That entire "Need-to-know" concept.

what he (Xoxotl) said.

Ditto Xoxott.

Rovemania grips media.

Some people in the press are gonna lose it if Plame-gate doesn't get Rove somehow.

The Plame stuff was simply marked (S) for secret in the report that was passed around (I forget which it was, maybe the INR report), which is the second-lowest level of classification, and not really in the need-to-know system.

All FBI agents are top-secret cleared, so every FBI agent has the right, if I understand it correctly, to read all top-secret documents. And that's one level higher than the (S) for secret.

I think others have pointed out before that there is sometimes some compartmentalization on even low-level secrets, but the only designation we know about Plame was (S) for secret, not (SCI) for secret compartmentalized information.

I'm not sure about that, Ace. Back in my Army days, I had a Secret security clearance, as I worked in Army Medical and had to deal with children and infants alot, as well as having access to medical records for some high-ranking officers such as Generals & Admirals. As such, I had to go through a screening and get a clearance.

That being said, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be authorized to know about "undercover" CIA agents' identities.

I don't know myself. But S is a pretty low level of classification. And Miller had apparently been broadly cleared to view documents relating to WMD's in Iraq.

Ace,

The 'need-to-know' concept applies to all levels of security clearance. Access to clasified information is controled by 1) clearance, and 2) a need to have access to that information in order to perform an assigned duty, task, or function. Need-to-know always applies.

Also, there are three levels of access: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. You can say that Secret is the "second lowest" level, and that would be accurate. But it is just as accurate to describe Secret as the second highest level.

There are many special security programs, such Secret-Compartmented Information (SCI -- the one you mentioned), that place further restrictions on classified material. But they do not supplant the basic security requirements for access (clearance and need-to-know), nor are they to be considered "higher levels" of access.

Just because I have access to SCI Top-Secret information doesn't automatically allow me access to confidential information which doesn't pertain to my duties, what ever they may be.

But it is just as accurate to describe Secret as the second highest level.

It's my understanding that that's not accurate, and that the "real secrets" begin with categorizations above Top Secret, categorizations which are not named because the codenames themselves are secret.

And that real secrets are protected by these specific codewords, so that one person could be cleared to see, say, SWORDFISH information but someone with a higher general clearance could not because clearance is strictly controlled by need to know at that level.

It's TPM, not TMP (from TalkingPoints Memo).

The thing is, if Miller rec'd any information as a result of her security clearance, she couldn't report it. Same info, no sec. clearance, she COULD report it.

But she says she was NOT working on a story when given the Valerie Flame (sic) name in her notes.

That's interesting. She's a reporter, getting inside scoops -- but she KNEW it wasn't for a story (her excuse for the sloppiness).

How could she know that? Why wouldn't she have the understanding it MIGHT be used for a story?

Many many more questions raised here.

This from the same woman who apparently used Ahmed Chalabi (or vice versa) to put pro-invasion stories in the NYT. Stories that now appear to be unsourced propaganda.

Go read what emptywheel, ReddHedd, and digby are digging out from Miller's past.

What's got the neocons in such a tizzy is that the Plame investigation is getting at the origin of the lies of the war.

And a recent poll indicates that a majority believe Bush should be impeached if he lied about the justification for the war.

Ace, I can't speak to today's standards, although I can't imagine them being less stringent,

Even holding a TS/crypto clearance, I couldn't get access to Secret stuff without need to know. Need to know trumped clearance level.

Given Miller's clearance to imbed with a special ops team, and their weaps, tactics and location, I have trouble seeing it extended to "who works for the CIA"

I could be wrong.

Oh, and this Miller clearance stuff isn't such news after all. Here's the story from 2004. There is a LOT more to come out...
-----------------
According to Pomeroy, as well as an editor at the Times, Miller had helped negotiate her own embedding agreement with the Pentagon—an agreement so sensitive that, according to one Times editor, Rumsfeld himself signed off on it. Although she never fully acknowledged the specific terms of that arrangement in her articles, they were as stringent as any conditions imposed on any reporter in Iraq. “Any articles going out had to be, well, censored,” Pomeroy told me. “The mission contained some highly classified elements and people, what we dubbed the ‘Secret Squirrels,’ and their ‘sources and methods’ had to be protected and a war was about to start.” Before she filed her copy, it would be censored by a colonel who often read the article in his sleeping bag, clutching a small flashlight between his teeth. (When reporters attended tactical meetings with battlefield commanders, they faced similar restrictions.)

As Miller covered MET Alpha, it became increasingly clear that she had ceased to respect the boundaries between being an observer and a participant. And as an embedded reporter she went even further, several sources say. While traveling with MET Alpha, according to Pomeroy and one other witness, she wore a military uniform.

When Colonel Richard McPhee ordered MET Alpha to pull back from a search mission and regroup in the town of Talil, Miller disagreed vehemently with the decision—and let her opinions be loudly known. The Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz reprinted a note in which she told public-affairs officers that she would write negatively about his decision if McPhee didn’t back down. What’s more, Kurtz reported that Miller complained to her friend Major General David Petraeus. Even though McPhee’s unit fell outside the general’s line of command, Petraeus’s rank gave his recommendation serious heft. According to Kurtz, in an account that was later denied, “McPhee rescinded his withdrawal order after Petraeus advised him to do so.”

When they make the opera version, Judy will seal the security deal with a Faust-like pact with the devil. Since I was one of those folks pointing out Miller's fabrications way back in the day, I take special pleasure in having this chapter of the propaganda machine brought out. Judy got special access, and Judy delivered the goods. And the NYT editors came through too. What did they get in return for the paper's reputation?

From link above:

When the Times published its editor’s note last week, it read, “Editors at several levels who should have been challenging reporters and pressing for more skepticism were perhaps too intent on rushing scoops into the paper.”

This was a bit too sweeping. While there were no heroes within the Times, there were editors who raised serious and consistent doubts about Miller’s reportage. During the run-up to the war, investigations editor Doug Frantz and foreign editor Roger Cohen went to managing editor Gerald Boyd on several occasions with concerns about Miller’s overreliance on Chalabi and his Pentagon champions, especially Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. For instance, Frantz rejected a proposal for a story in which Pentagon officials claimed to have identified between 400 and 1,000 WMD sites, without providing much backup evidence to justify their claims. “At the time, people knew her reporting was suspect and they said so,” one Timesman told me. But Raines and Boyd continually reaffirmed management’s faith in her by putting her stories on page 1. (Both Boyd and Raines declined to speak for this story.)

While traveling with MET Alpha, according to Pomeroy and one other witness, she wore a military uniform.

An obvious sign she had become a thrall of Rove.

Judy got special access, and Judy delivered the goods.

Well, obviously it's a bad thing for a journo to have access to unprintable classified information since it could undermine her ability to be sufficiently anti-Bush. It's the "Ignorance is Fisk" rule.