Just Briefly...

About Valerie…

Valerie Plame Gives Committee Secret Decoder Ring
by Scott Ott

(2007-03-16) — Valerie Plame, whose CIA career ended when columnist Robert Novak blew her cover in July 2003, today testifies before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee whose members will receive a special secret decoder ring so they can understand her without revealing sensitive intel in a public forum.

Ms. Plame (aka Valerie Wilson) lived such a secret life that when she and her husband, former ambassador Joe Wilson, appeared in a photo spread in Vanity Fair magazine, she was compelled by CIA covert spy protocol to wear dark sunglasses.

The former agent will speak in a top-secret cipher language. Committee members will break the encryption as she speaks using the secret decoder device.

Dang! Somehow I missed the decoder ring thingie. Maybe C-SPAN had some sort of simultaneous translation/decoding technology in play? No matter. I missed half of what she said anyway. Too distracted by that harridan in the background…

Here’s the AP report on her testimony this morning. Take it with a grain lump of salt.

Apropos of nothing, but I’d sure like to see more articles like this. Of course the article fits my personal mindset, temperament, and habits these days. I suppose the money is in the hot spots, so that’s where nearly all the publicity and advertising will go. But how many times in life have you found yourself in a strange place (i.e., city) where you wanted to find a nice little, quiet, comfortable bar where you could have a conversation with someone without shouting to be heard? In my case, that’s happened a LOT. Quiet little upscale watering holes do exist, but they sure can be difficult to find. Perry’s is such a place and was the default watering hole for that ol’ gang of mine… primarily because it was near my place of business in SFO. We were there every Friday evening, unless were at the “other place,” which is/was the quintessential dive bar.

Ah… dive bars. Another genre entirely, but they tend to be quiet. This place (the reviews are amusing and somewhat accurate), referenced above, was right around the corner from my office in SFO (a two minute walk, even if you tarried a bit), and was one of my absolute favorites at the time. They had the most bizarre lingerie show I’ve ever seen (every Wednesday), but that’s another story entirely.