Memo to CBS: Send Couric to journalism school.

Crooks and Liars:

Outed CIA covert operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joe Wilson, gave an interview to Katie Couric on 60 Minutes. In the first segment, Plame Wilson spoke frankly about being betrayed by this administration, as well as her assessment of the damage done to the nation’s security by revealing her identity:

But the second segment is where Couric goes off the rails and shows her flair for White House talking points. It’s almost as if she implies that Plame Wilson should have expected the White House to out her because the work she did touched on the question that sent her husband, Amb. Joseph Wilson, to Niger.

COURIC: You never for a moment thought this could potentially jeopardize my career?

PLAME: It’s called ‘living your cover.’ This had nothing to do with what I was doing. He was part of the debate.

COURIC: But admit it, it comes awfully close to what you were doing, even covertly. I mean, you were trying to ascertain if Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. He’s writing an article saying ‘it’s really not valid, this one assertion.’ I mean, can’t you see how those two things might collide and in a very dangerous way?

Couric: “Do you think President Bush was in on this?”

Plame: “I don’t know about that, but I, like most other Americans saw President Bush say on TV that he would fire anyone from his administration found to be involved in the leak of my name. It turns out, the president is not a man of his word.”

From Raw Story:

CBS News has confirmed, in advance of a 60 Minutes interview with outed CIA agent Valerie Plame to be run this Sunday, that Plame "was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons."

"Our mission was to make sure that the bad guys, basically, did not get nuclear weapons," Plame told 60 Minutes. Plame also indicated that her outing in 2003 had caused grave damage to CIA operations, saying, "All the intelligence services in the world were running my name through their databases" to see where she had gone and who she had met with.

RAW STORY first revealed Plame's Iran mission and the damage done to CIA operations by her outing in a February 13, 2006 story by Raw investigative editor Larisa Alexandrovna, titled "Outed CIA officer was working on Iran, intelligence sources say." In that article, Alexandrovna wrote:

According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran.

Speaking under strict confidentiality, intelligence officials revealed heretofore unreported elements of Plame's work. Their accounts suggest that Plame's outing was more serious than has previously been reported and carries grave implications for U.S. national security and its ability to monitor Iran's burgeoning nuclear program. ...

Intelligence sources would not identify the specifics of Plame's work. They did, however, tell RAW STORY that her outing resulted in "severe" damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation. ...

Three intelligence officers confirmed that other CIA non-official cover officers were compromised, but did not indicate the number of people operating under non-official cover that were affected or the way in which these individuals were impaired. None of the sources would say whether there were American or foreign casualties as a result of the leak.

And I notice from Couric's interview with Plame that she never asked about Plame's work in Iran.