Appar­ent­ly, Sen. Roberts claimed that the fact Valerie Plame worked at CIA HQ means she was­n’t under cov­er. For­mer CIA agent Lar­ry John­son explains the error:

Folks, there is no excuse for this lev­el of incom­pe­tence. There are thou­sands of under­cov­er CIA employ­ees who dri­ve through the three gates at CIA Head­quar­ters in McLean, Vir­ginia every­day. And this Sen­a­tor from Kansas who chairs the Sen­ate Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee has the audac­i­ty to blame CIA for intel­li­gence fail­ures? How can he rec­og­nize fail­ures when he does not even under­stand the very sim­ple basics about peo­ple who work under­cov­er at CIA. He should spend more time read­ing up on the CIA and less time mem­o­riz­ing Ken Mehlman talk­ing points.

I’m inclined to agree. We went to war in Iraq because the admin­is­tra­tion pushed used the CIA as a tool. When the evi­dence on the ground failed to sup­port their claims, they exposed their own agent in retribution. 

Now, my Sen­a­tor, the chair of the Sen­ate Select Com­mit­tee on Intel­li­gence (SSCI, pron. “sucky”), is per­pet­u­at­ing that abuse. If it were the first time, that would be one thing. It isn’t. That com­mit­tee had declared its inten­tion to make two reports on pre-war intel­li­gence. One would exam­ine the basis for the CIA assess­ments (did their data sup­port their con­clu­sions) and the sec­ond was meant to address the com­plaint that senior polit­i­cal appointees (includ­ing VP Cheney) had applied pres­sure to shape the conclusions.

The first inves­ti­ga­tion found that the CIA blew it, big time. The sec­ond was scut­tled after the elections.

Would that inves­ti­ga­tion have offered insight into why the CIA blew their pre-war assess­ments of Iraqi WMD? All we know for sure is that some anony­mous ana­lysts at the time had com­plained of inap­pro­pri­ate inter­fer­ence. VP Cheney made unprece­dent­ed vis­its to Lan­g­ley, speak­ing to the ana­lysts and their supervisors.

Did that change the analy­sis? Did peo­ple set aside uncer­tain­ty and coun­ter­vail­ing evi­dence to pro­vide the analy­sis that the admin­is­tra­tion was tout­ing anyway? 

Sen. Roberts and the SSCI could have told us, but were too busy back­ing up a war that’s falling apart.