Court Silences CIA Operative Despite Yellowcake Scandal: Via Threat Level.

Valerie Plame Wilson cannot publicize details of her work as a CIA operative, even though a government official already outed her as an agent in an attempt to discredit her husband, Joseph C. Wilson, a federal appeals court says.

Plame Wilson, who served as chief of the unit responsible for weapons proliferation issues related to Iraq, argued that confidentiality agreements she signed to win her employment more than two decades ago should be nullified. The CIA has prohibited her from discussing her pre-2002 employment in her 2007 memoir, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House.

She maintained the confidentiality agreement should be set aside because government officials leaked to the press that she was an agent. Also, as part of a battle to obtain retirement benefits, her 20-year-employment status became part of the congressional record.

Given that she has been revealed as a operative, the First Amendment allows her to sidestep her confidentiality agreement, she argued.

But the appeals court, in siding with a lower court and a CIA review board prohibiting her from describing her work prior to 2002, said the nation’s national security could be compromised (.pdf) by the disclosures she’d planned in her book. In addition, the court said, it was irrelevant whether it was widely known that she was working under cover. [ Read more ... ]

Iraqi Spy Warrant Saga Camouflages NSA Grab for Domestic Wiretap Infrastructure: "

The U.S.'intelligence community's attempts to clarify its complaints to Congress that the nation's privacy protections'hindered the'NSA's spying on'Iraqis suspected of kidnapping American soldiers actually not only demonstrates the intelligence community's bureaucratic slowness, but also the breadth of the powers temporarily handed to them by Congress this summer and the misleading rhetorical tricks it will play to get that power permanently.

Prior to the August update to the nation's spy laws, the NSA was barred from wiretapping landline phones and the internet inside the United States, unless they had a warrant from a secret, acquiescent spying court. [ Read more ... ]

New Financial Tool for Iraq Fight | World Latest | Guardian Unlimited: "The Bush administration announced a new tool Tuesday aimed at putting a financial squeeze on people who run networks that recruit and send would-be terrorists into Iraq.

President Bush unveiled an executive order that allows the administration to block bank accounts and any other financial assets that might be found in this country belonging to people, companies or groups that the United States deems are working to threaten stability in Iraq. [ Read more ... ]

Iraqi Biometric Database Swells:Sprinkled among the M-4 carbines and other combat gear that ships regularly to U.S. troops in Iraq one will now find a good number of iris and fingerprint scanners. Yes, the U.S. Army is building a rather large database of biometric info on suspected militants in Iraq, as USA Today reports here. More:

'This year, U.S. troops in Iraq are to receive 3,800 handheld scanners, up from 200 now in use, to equip every squad in the country, said Col. Michael Meese....The devices can both collect and display data, letting troops view someone's background and decide whether he should be detained. [ Read more ... ]

Ex-C.I.A. Chief, in Book, Assails Cheney on Iraq - New York Times: "George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence, has lashed out against Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration officials in a new book, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a 'serious debate' about whether Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat to the United States.

The 549-page book, 'At the Center of the Storm,' is to be published by HarperCollins on Monday. By turns accusatory, defensive, and modestly self-critical, it is the first detailed account by a member of the president's inner circle of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the decision to invade Iraq and the failure to find the unconventional weapons that were a major justification for the war.

'There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat,' Mr. Tenet writes in a devastating judgment that is likely to be debated for many years. Nor, he adds, 'was there ever a significant discussion' about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion. [ Read more ... ]