Way back in 10/2/2003 I had sent in a letter to a news agency which didn’t get printed. This was just after hearing about the Valerie Plame’s outing. As you may know the wheels of justice move very slowly here in the states, so perhaps this letter may be of more interest today now that we are beginning to see the truth of what really happened in this case. I thought that I may share this letter with you, so here it is. “As most of us know by now, gathering intelligences is the best tool for fighting this new kind of war we find ourselves in today. How could anyone in the Whitehouse believe that outing such an important undercover agent could help us in this fight? I believe that if I were an agent in the field that I would be worried that my name could be leak also. Why should anyone want to be an under cover agent after this? I truly hope that there's a better reason for this outing other than just playing politics. I understand that both parties play the leaking game, but this time they are playing with peoples life’s in a very real way. I believe we should support our agents in the field as we would support our troops. Russell Berwick, “ As I recall, I had to tone down my letter because I was pretty upset at the time. Now that four years have passed, I have clamed down some, but I would still like to have my question answered, none the less. As I was reading the report about Valerie Plame speaking to congress today I noticed that she also had some of my same concerns as well. To quote her, she said; “If our government cannot even protect my identity, foreign agents who might consider working with the Central Intelligence Agency and providing needed intelligence would think twice.” Let’s think about this for a second. When we wonder why our intelligence was so wrong concerning the WMD’s and Iraq we have to come to the conclusion that we need better intelligence. This should be our number one concern. We need people in the field that have reliable information and the only way we can get that is to have more and better agents in the field. We need more agents that can penetrate our enemies and be able to understand the language. Surly anyone can understand that? So why in the world would people in the White House do something that would prevent this from happening just when we needed it the most? Why in the world would any foreigner risk there life and there families life’s in bring us some important information now? Would you? So it’s not hard to see how this may harm us the next time we need to prevent another 911 from happening. To me this is just more proof of what I call rapid devo that seems to be happening today. Like rapid evolution only in reverse. It’s almost as if our enemies were working in the white house to hurt us. I know that may seem a bit far fetch, but I wish someone could tell me were I’m wrong. I know I’m not the smartest person in the world, but I can’t help but wonder if there are any intelligent people in that white house after hearing about this. Just when we need someone to throw us a lifesaver we have the Capitan of the ship throw us the anchor. Like I said in my letter, we should support our agents as we would support or troops. The agents are like the eyes and hears of our troops. I truly hope that there is some good explanation for this that I am not seeing. I’m not one of those Democrats that believe President Bush is the cause of every problem that you can think of. I have given him much of my support because I support the troops. It is for this reason of supporting our troops, that I find myself getting angry over this. Even after four years I have claimed down some but still have strong feeling about this. If it turns out to be, as I feared in my letter, some case of playing politics then some heads need to roll. We need to make it very clear that this can not be tolerated. If you had read one of my earlier posts, I had talked about when I was a young man in Texas. I talked about how we were threatened with life in prison for having only one joint in our pocket. Today I was reading about how Governor Richards of New Mexico was poised to sign a bill to make New Mexico the 12th state to legalize medical marijuana. I think that this is a very wonderful thing which is very long over due but maybe you can see how I find it hard to understand how outing one of our agents should be a lesser crime than having a joint in your pocket. How can I grow up with the threat of life in jail for a joint and believe that outing one of our agents should be not a big deal? We need to get our priorities straight. Before it’s too late.