As an aside, Dr. Lee (of Los Alamos fame…) had a Chinese national as his secretary. Oddly enough she departed for the Motherland a couple of months before he got bagged.

And yes, the Chicom government refused the FBI’s request to interview her (not to mention their story that they were UNABLE to ascertain her whereabouts…an amusing admission for a police state to make).

Small wonder a search of Lee’s possessions turned up NOTHING.

That’s disturbing.

Question for you, Captain. What’s the reg on punishing a covert operative who discloses their status to anyone not in the need to know? Just curious…

Now, let’s consider this. The first thing I thought upon hearing a blurb on this this morning was NOT “that damn Clinton admin” etc.

The thing I thought was that this rang for me similar to the “Terrorist futures market” or even the Plame affair, and I wonder if we are being well-served by relentlessly nitpicking our intel and counter-intel agencies for everything that “smells funny”.

News flash… they are in a nasty business whose normal playing field is a house of mirrors, or perhaps an Escher drawing. The whole fascination of the intel business is in our doing rotten but necessary things because there is a greater payoff as a result in the object of the “game”, and that is protecting the nation and it’s allies and interests.

Was this money to Hamas a smart move? How the hell do any of us know? Was it REALLY a payment to the fourth in command there who is working for us, or some such thing, so we dress it up as something else? Gee, let’s get freeking Congress to demand the truth! Yes, we were actually paying a double agent, Senator WaPo, and Congressman MSNBC, now you know…. Happy?

Look, watchdogging is important, but we either give these guys some leash, or get the hell out of the game. There ain’t gonna be perfection, crummy things will happen, bad people may come out ahead so that even bigger, badder people will get hurt, and all sorts of decisions will get made that political posturers will be capable of griping over. (Let’s order the CIA to NEVER deal with human rights abusers. Uh huh, yeah, nice going, genuises.)

Intel agents are soldiers, especially now, and war is an ugly business. Deal with it, or get out of the game.

I’m with you on this Andrew. When I first heard the story on the radio, I got little in the way of details or context. But when I read the story it looked like it might have been a little more subtle and reasonable a project. So I’m not denouncing the Clintonites for this one, but I do think it’s worth reporting. It’s an interesting story, and sheds some light on the underside of this war. And the Chinese female spy is too coincidental for me. Remember the FBI guy that got busted a few months ago for cavorting with a Chinese female operative? The American Muslim convert angle is interesting too—the one in the story chose to work with our gov’t against the Hamas terrorists. That’s encouraging.

Unfortunately, there’s no cut and dried answer on that one. On the civilian side, U.S. Code 18 (and its NUMEROUS subchapters…) is the main source of criminal statutes for that sort of wrong doing.

If the disclosure was to a foreign national, the MINIMUM reaction is the suspension of the discloser’s security clearance and dismissal (or suspension) from any classified projects they happened to be involved in.

Disclosure involving an American national has similar results: temporary suspension from any classified projects until (in either case…) a debrief/interview where a FULL description/statement of the incident is written down and witnessed by the interviewer. Please bear in mind this only a rough thumbnail sketch of the process and there are a number of determining factors: the clearance of the person compromised (the higher, the sharper the reaction) and nature of any classified issues under that person’s perview at the time (again, the higher, the sharper the reaction…).

Now bear in mind the final factor: knowledge of the disclosure having occurred. By the numbers, the person who becomes compromised voluntarily discloses that the incident occurred (YES, character does matter…); this is key to the process. Without voluntary compliance, the event goes unreported UNLESS there are witnesses.

That is why professional integrity and unquestionable character are the MINIMUM benchmarks, and that is the best explaination as to why folks like myself loath the previous administration. They abandoned any standard that they regarded as a hinderance to their goals. Most of you reading this post haven’t the least clue of the institutional carnage the Clintons left in their wake.

For those who call me a liar or a lunatic, I don’t care; my only concern is the future of my children, the nation they will inherit, and my fidelity to those oaths I have sworn. Compared to that, the ill opinions of strangers are less than nothing.