Larisa Alexandrovna | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1971 (age 51–52) |
| Alma mater | Cleveland State University |
| Occupations |
|
Larisa Alexandrovna (born 1971) is an American journalist, essayist, and poet. She has served as the managing editor of investigative news of The Raw Story and contributes opinion and columns to online publications such as Alternet. She is also an American blogger for the Huffington Post and for her own journalism blog, at-Largely. Alexandrovna has had her work referenced in publications like Rolling Stone , Vanity Fair , and Newsweek . She is married to Scott Horton. [1]
Alexandrovna was born in Odesa, Ukraine to Jewish parents Aleksander Yurovich, a physicist, and Klavdia Borisovna, an accountant. In the Soviet Union, Jews were discriminated against by the state. She has written of her childhood that even as a child, she was able to understand that her family was treated differently:
What I was given was not what one would call edible or even in a class of food-like products. Again I did not tell my parents, because again I feared something terrible would happen should they react. I was six and I knew this. But my continued weight loss had my mother so concerned that she began selling off the little she had in jewelry in order to bribe my school officials to feed me, with food, the same food, served the same way, as the other children. Most Americans, especially white Americans, would never understand this and have no clue what racism, antisemitism, and hate are and what damage real hate can do. They faint in public when someone makes a slur but say nothing about US prisons populated with minorities. [2]
The family came to the United States after traveling an "entire year maneuvering our way throughout Europe in the common trajectory of Soviet refugees at the time." [3]
Alexandrovna attended Cleveland State University where she majored in English and Creative Writing. It was during this time that she was the poetry editor for the Cleveland Review, also covering local news and culture. In addition, she worked with Russian poet Zoya Folkova to translate her work into English. She also developed a lifelong friendship with her writing mentor, Dr. Alberta Turner. [4] In the mid-1990s, she moved to New York to work at Nasdaq, which she has said was a bad decision. [4]
Alexandrovna initially published only poetry and short fiction. During the 2000 election, she said that she formally began to write opinion and news pieces. She first became recognized for her reporting after she wrote an investigative piece about election fraud in Ohio in 2004, [5] which was later cited in What went wrong in Ohio, a report published by US Representative John Conyers (D-MI) and later cited in several prominent articles, including in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s controversial Rolling Stone article. [6]
Later articles on election fraud and domestic politics, [7] included covering the Real ID Act, [8] did not gain much attention domestically. However, a series of articles on the prewar intelligence on Iraq and alleged illegal activities of the US Department of Defense and reporting on the CIA leak case and Iran gained Alexandrovna respect as an investigative journalist.
On March 16, 2007, Valerie Plame Wilson told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, "But I do know the Agency did a damage assessment. They did not share it with me, but I know that certainly puts the people and the contacts I had all in jeopardy, even if they were completely innocent in nature." [9] Alexandrovna broke the story wide open that Plame was working on Iran, damage was done by her outing, and a damage report had been done. Citing "three intelligence officials, who spoke under condition of anonymity," Alexandrovna reported:
While Director of Central Intelligence Porter Goss has not submitted a formal damage assessment to Congressional oversight committees, the CIA's Directorate of Operations did conduct a serious and aggressive investigation.
According to her sources,
the damage assessment... called a "counter intelligence assessment to agency operations" was conducted on the orders of the CIA's then-Deputy Director of the Directorate of Operations, James Pavitt.... [and showed] "significant damage to operational equities."
Alexandrovna also reported that while Plame was undercover, she was involved in an operation identifying and tracking weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran. Alexandrovna suggested that her outing "significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation." Her sources also stated that the outing of Plame compromised the identity of other covert operatives who had been working, like Plame, under non-official cover status. The anonymous officials said that in their judgement, the CIA's work on WMDs has been set back "ten years" as a result of that compromise. [10]
Mainstream media initially ignored the story, but on May 1, 2006, the MSNBC correspondent David Shuster reported on the political news show Hardball that MSNBC had learned "new information" about the potential consequences of the leaks:
Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs Wilson's cover was blown, the Administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well. The White House considers Iran to be one of America's biggest threats. [11]
On September 6, 2006, David Corn published an article for The Nation , "What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA," in which Corn reported that Plame has been placed in charge of the operations group within the Joint Task Force on Iraq in the spring of 2001 and that "when the Novak column ran" in July 2003:
Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator — to rise up a notch or two — and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again. [12]
CBS News would later confirm Plame "was involved in operations to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons." [13]
In 2005, the Washington Post exposed the use of foreign black sites by the CIA in a program of extraordinary rendition, under which terrorism suspects were taken to undisclosed sites for detainment and interrogation. [14]
Critics of the Washington Post report believe that the publication caved under pressure from the White House by not exposing the locations of the sites. According to Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, [15] the Washington Post's decision to withhold the locations of the secret prisons was that since the revelations "could open the US government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad," the Post did its part to minimize these risks. However, according to FAIR, "the possibility that illegal, unpopular government actions might be disrupted is not a consequence to be feared, however — it's the whole point of the U.S. First Amendment." Furthermore, not disclosing the locations would make it impossible to have them closed, and thereby the Post was enabling the rendition, secret detention, and torture of prisoners at the locations to continue. Another consequence might be for US soldiers and civilians to be put at risk. [16]
Sources that had approached the Post with the location of the Polish facility turned to Polish intelligence operative David Dastych, who, in turn, approached Alexandrovna. According to The Raw Story , in a report authored by Alexandrovna and Dastych, the Polish black site is in Stare Kiejkuty:
The complex at Stare Kiejkuty, a Soviet-era compound once used by German intelligence in World War II, is best known as having been the only Russian intelligence training school to operate outside the Soviet Union. Its prominence in the Soviet era suggests that it may have been the facility first identified — but never named — when the Washington Post's Dana Priest revealed the existence of the CIA's secret prison network in November 2005. [17]
Both Alexandrovna and Dastych have stated that their sources told them that the same information and documents were provided to Washington Post in 2005. In addition, they also identified the methodology of concealing the black sites:
Former European and US intelligence officials indicate that the secret prisons across the European Union, first identified by the Washington Post, are likely not permanent locations, making them difficult to identify. What some believe was a network of secret prisons was most probably a series of facilities used temporarily by the United States when needed, officials say. Interim "black sites," secret facilities used for covert activities, can be as small as a room in a government building, which becomes a black site only when a prisoner is brought in for short-term detainment and interrogation.
They go on to explain, "Such a site, sources say, would have to be near an airport." According to Alexandrovna and Dastych, the airport in question is the Szczytno-Szymany International Airport.
In response to the allegations, the former Polish intelligence chief Zbigniew Siemiatkowski embarked on a media blitz and claimed that the allegations made by Alexandrovna and Dastych were "part of the domestic political battle in the US over who is to succeed current Republican President George W. Bush," according to the German news agency Deutsche Presse Agentur. [18]
^ Conyers Letter to FBI, US House Judiciary
^ Was the 2004 Election Stolen?, Rolling Stone
^ Questions surface regarding legitimacy of Baker-Carter election reform commission, Raw Story
^ Larisa Alexandrovna. "Outed CIA Officer Was Working on Iran, Intelligence Sources Say", The Raw Story, February 13, 2006.
Valerie Elise Plame is an American writer, spy novelist, and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. As the subject of the 2003 Plame affair, also known as the CIA leak scandal, Plame's identity as a CIA officer was leaked to and subsequently published by Robert Novak of The Washington Post. She described this period and the media firestorm that ensued as "mortifying, and I think I was in shock for a couple years".
The Office of Special Plans (OSP), which existed from September 2002 to June 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, and headed by Feith, as charged by then–United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to supply senior George W. Bush administration officials with raw intelligence pertaining to Iraq. A similar unit, called the Iranian Directorate, was created several years later, in 2006, to deal with intelligence on Iran.
Judith Miller is an American journalist and commentator who covered Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program both before and after the 2003 invasion, which was later discovered to have been based on inaccurate information from the intelligence community. She worked in The New York Times' Washington bureau before joining Fox News in 2008.
Joseph Charles Wilson IV was an American diplomat who was best known for his 2002 trip to Niger to investigate allegations that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase yellowcake uranium; his New York Times op-ed piece, "What I Didn't Find in Africa"; and the subsequent leaking by the Bush/Cheney administration of information pertaining to the identity of his wife Valerie Plame as a CIA officer. He also served as the CEO of a consulting firm he founded, JC Wilson International Ventures, and as the vice chairman of Jarch Capital, LLC.
The Niger uranium forgeries were forged documents initially released in 2001 by SISMI, which seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis. On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq violated United Nations sanctions against Iraq by attempting to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating weapons of mass destruction.
Brewster Jennings & Associates was a front company set up in 1994 by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a cover for its officers. The most famous is Valerie Plame, a "covert employee of the CIA" whose then-classified status was published in a syndicated newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak later said that his initial primary source was then-United States Deputy Secretary of State (2001–2005) Richard Armitage, though Armitage disagreed with Novak as to the extent of his role.
David Corn is an American political journalist and author. He is the Washington, D.C. bureau chief for Mother Jones and is best known as a cable television commentator. Corn worked at The Nation from 1987 to 2007, where he served as Washington editor.
Manucher Ghorbanifar is an expatriate Iranian arms dealer and former SAVAK agent.
The Plame affair erupted in July 2003, when journalist Robert Novak revealed that Valerie Plame worked as covert employee of the Central Intelligence Agency, although the seeds of the scandal had been laid during 2001 and 2002 as the Bush administration investigated allegations that Iraq had purchased Nigerien uranium.
The Plame affair was a political scandal that revolved around journalist Robert Novak's public identification of Valerie Plame as a covert Central Intelligence Agency officer in 2003.
The CIA leak grand jury investigation was a federal inquiry "into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee's identity", a possible violation of criminal statutes, including the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, and Title 18, United States Code, Section 793.
Dana Louise Priest is an American journalist, writer and teacher. She has worked for nearly 30 years for the Washington Post and became the third John S. and James L. Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism in 2014. Before becoming a full-time investigative reporter at the Post, Priest specialized in intelligence reporting and wrote many articles on the U.S. "War on terror" and was the newspaper's Pentagon correspondent. In 2006 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting citing "her persistent, painstaking reports on secret "black site" prisons and other controversial features of the government's counter-terrorism campaign." The Washington Post won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, citing the work of reporters Priest and Anne Hull and photographer Michel du Cille "exposing mistreatment of wounded veterans at Walter Reed Hospital, evoking a national outcry and producing reforms by federal officials."
Rocco Martino is an Italian secret agent. He was born in Tropea, province of Catanzaro.
James Risen is an American journalist for The Intercept. He previously worked for The New York Times and before that for Los Angeles Times. He has written or co-written many articles concerning U.S. government activities and is the author or co-author of two books about the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and a book about the American public debate about abortion. Risen is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Philip Giraldi is an American columnist, commentator and security consultant. He is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a role he has held since 2010. He was previously employed as an intelligence officer for the CIA, before transitioning to private consulting. Giraldi has received criticism for his anti-semitism and Holocaust denial, and has said "those American Jews who lack any shred of integrity" (Zionists) when they appear on television should be labeled "like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison."
The Plame affair was a dispute stemming from allegations that one or more White House officials revealed Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Valerie Plame Wilson's undercover status. An investigation, led by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, was started, concerning the possibility that one or more crimes may have been committed. The initial focus was on Scooter Libby; however, he was not the primary source of the leak.
Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House is a memoir by Valerie Plame Wilson. Wilson is the former covert CIA officer whose then-classified non-official cover (NOC) identity as "Valerie Plame" was leaked to the press in July 2003, after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV, had criticized the George W. Bush administration's rationale for the Iraq War. The outing made her the center of the American political scandal known as the Plame affair. Her public outing led to her decision to resign from the CIA in December 2005, when she attempted to retire early at the age of 42. Being told that she could not collect her pension until the age of 56, she determined to write this book both as a means of telling her own story in her own words and as a means of earning income to replace her deferred retirement annuity. She encountered resistance from the CIA in the course of chronicling her work with the organization.
Richard Lee Armitage is an American former diplomat and government official. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Armitage served as a U.S. Navy officer in three combat tours of duty in the Vietnam War as a riverine warfare advisor. After leaving active duty, he served in a number of civil-service roles under Republican administrations. He worked as an aide to Senator Bob Dole before serving in various posts in the Defense Department and State Department.
Fair Game is a 2010 biographical political drama film directed by Doug Liman and starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn. It is based on Valerie Plame's 2007 memoir Fair Game and Joseph C. Wilson's 2004 memoir The Politics of Truth.
Melissa Boyle Mahle is a writer and former Central Intelligence Agency officer.