Ex-CIA Operative Blasts White House

Posted on July 25, 2005

Former CIA intelligence official Larry Johnson took the microphone for the Democrats' weekly radio address Saturday and let President Bush have it on Plamegate. Johnson said, "The president has flip-flopped on his promise to fire anyone in the White House implicated in a leak." Johnson used to work with Valerie Plame. CNN reports:

Johnson, a registered Republican who voted for Bush in 2000, said he and Plame have been friends since they began their training at the CIA in 1985. In Saturday's radio address, Johnson said he was "stunned" by government officials' "ignorance about a matter so basic to the national security structure of the nation."
He strongly responded to some Republican allegations that minimized Plame's role in the CIA. "We must put to bed the lie that she was not undercover," he said. "Instead of a president concerned first and foremost with protecting this country and the intelligence officers who serve it, we are confronted with a president who is willing to sit by while political operatives savage the reputations of good Americans like Valerie and Joe Wilson."
"We deserve people who work in the White House who are committed to protecting classified information, telling the truth to the American people and living by example the idea that a country at war with Islamic extremists cannot focus its efforts on attacking other American citizens who simply tried to tell the truth," Johnson added.

Johnson isn't the only ex-CIA operative to speak out on the scandal. They all say that Plame was a covert operative and to call her a desk jockey is inaccurate and misleading.