NON-OFFICIAL COVER….Via Mark Kleiman, this New York Times story tells us more about Valerie Plame’s job at the CIA:
Valerie Plame was among the small subset of Central Intelligence Agency officers who could not disguise their profession by telling friends that they worked for the United States government.
That cover story, standard for American operatives who pretend to be diplomats or other federal employees, was not an option for Ms. Plame, people who knew her said on Wednesday. As a covert operative who specialized in nonconventional weapons and sometimes worked abroad, she passed herself off as a private energy expert, what the agency calls nonofficial cover.
As Mark points out, this is exactly what David Corn reported in his original column that broke this story on July 16.
And as Mark further points out, this kind of “non-official cover” is the deepest cover of all.
