A friend says: “Regarding Giraldi, it is very rare to see or read an ex cia officer having good things to say about Israel. Whether it is Ray McGovern, Phil Giraldi, Robert Baer or Michael Scheuer, and those are just the ones I can mention off the top of my head, I think they think American foreign policy has been hijacked to the detriment of long term American interests by the Israeli Lobby. They have all had their warnings and advice ignored as the U.S. makes decisions based on internal politics instead of statesmanship, so this blinds them and they let their feelings color their writings.”
Why people care about Valerie Plame and her anti-Semitic tweet
In a vacuum, this would be a troubling headline: “Former CIA operative tweets anti-Semitic article.” Bigotry in the ranks of the U.S. intelligence community is bad. Obviously.
But when the former CIA operative in question is Valerie Plame Wilson, the interest level is much higher — particularly among journalists, who remember her as a central figure in a decade-old case that exposed the lack of protection afforded to reporters who use confidential sources, which persists to this day.
Just last month, the Valerie Plame Affair, as the episode came to be known, gained newfound relevance when Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the Justice Department is “reviewing policies affecting media subpoenas” as part of the Trump administration’s effort to crack down on leaks.
To non-journalists, Plame’s tweet looks like the next installment in the ever-popular series Fall from Grace, which is not an actual reality TV show but probably will be, at some point.
After her CIA cover was blown, in 2003, Plame became a best-selling author, penning a memoir titled “Fair Game,” and a pair of spy novels.
In 2010, a movie adaptation of “Fair Game” hit the big screen, with Naomi Watts starring as Plame.
This is why people care what Plame says on Twitter. On Thursday, she tweeted a link to an article headlined “America’s Jews are driving America’s wars.” Among the many anti-Semitic passages in the piece is this Nazi-esque recommendation:
For those American Jews who lack any shred of integrity, the media should be required to label them at the bottom of the television screen whenever they pop up, e.g. Bill Kristol is “Jewish and an outspoken supporter of the state of Israel.” That would be kind-of-like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison — translating roughly as “ingest even the tiniest little dosage of the nonsense spewed by Bill Kristol at your own peril.”
Plame deleted the tweet and posted follow-up messages, in which she was alternately defensive and apologetic.
1) First of all, calm down. Re-tweets don’t imply endorsement. Yes, very provocative, but thoughtful. Many neocon hawks ARE Jewish. https://t.co/m5oGgKPo2a
— Valerie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame) September 21, 2017
2) Just FYI, I am of Jewish decent. I am not in favor of war with Iran, or getting out of the Iran nuclear treaty. There are simply https://t.co/AR3Jsl1yml
— Valerie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame) September 21, 2017
3) too many who are so ready to go to war. Haven’t we had enough for awhile?
4) Read the entire article and try, just for a moment, to https://t.co/wyd3uJ06nt— Valerie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame) September 21, 2017
put aside your biases and think clearly. https://t.co/dHsVF8ZCH6
— Valerie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame) September 21, 2017
I missed gross undercurrents to this article & didn’t do my homework on the platform this piece came from. Now that I see it, it’s obvious.
— Valerie Plame Wilson (@ValeriePlame) September 21, 2017
Though she pleaded ignorance of “the platform this piece came from,” Plame has tweeted at least eight other articles from the same website since 2014, as journalist Yashar Ali pointed out.
Did you skim these pieces too? https://t.co/9eeVYDzN6f https://t.co/j5UZpm1DPv
— Yashar Ali (@yashar) September 21, 2017
