Kabul CIA Station Chief Outed In Press Release On Obama Afghanistan Visit

A man crosses the Central Intelligence A

The President returned early this morning from a surprise Memorial Day visit to American troops stationed in Afghanistan, a non uncommon occurrence that has occurred several times during President Obama’s time in office and during the Presidency of George W. Bush, who took secret holiday trips to both Afghanistan and Iraq during his time in office. Unfortunately for the Obama Administration, this trip included a mistake that has impacted our intelligence assets in the region:

The CIA’s top officer in Kabul was exposed Saturday by the White House when his name was inadvertently included on a list provided to news organizations of senior U.S. officials participating in President Obama’s surprise visit with U.S. troops.

The White House recognized the mistake and quickly issued a revised list that did not include the individual, who had been identified on the initial release as the “Chief of Station” in Kabul, a designation used by the CIA for its highest-ranking spy in a country.

The CIA officer was one of 15 senior U.S. officials identified as taking part in a military briefing for Obama at Bagram air base, a sprawling military compound north of Kabul. Others included U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan James B. Cunningham and Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, Jr., the commander of U.S. and coalition forces in the country.

Their names were included on a list of participants in the briefing provided by U.S. military officials to the White House press office.

The list was circulated by e-mail to reporters who traveled to Afghanistan with Obama, and disseminated further when it was included in a “pool report,” or summary of the event meant to be shared with other news organizations, including foreign media, not taking part in the trip.

In this case, the pool report was filed by Washington Post White House bureau chief Scott Wilson. Wilson said he had copied the list from the e-mail provided by White House press officials. He sent his pool report to the press officials, who then distributed it to a list of more than 6,000 recipients.

Wilson said that after the report was distributed, he noticed the unusual reference to the station chief and asked White House press officials in Afghanistan whether they had intended to include that name.

Initially, the press office raised no objection, apparently because military officials had provided the list to distribute to news organizations. But senior White House officials realized the mistake and scrambled to issue an updated list without the CIA officer’s name. The mistake, however, already was being noted on Twitter, although without the station chief’s name.

It’s unclear if the revelation of the Station Chief’s identity will result in him having to be removed from the country, although one would think that would be standard procedure not only to maintain the secrecy of CIA operations but also for the protection of him and his family. One would also think there would be procedures in place to prevent something like this from happening.

FILED UNDER: Afghanistan War, Intelligence, National Security, The Presidency, , , , , , , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Eric Florack says:

    Tell me again of the competency of this bunch of Morons infesting the WH.
    Its even money we will hear shortly about how the whole thing was WS fault.

  2. Donald Sensing says:

    I am positive the media will lunge after this scandal with the same fervor they went after the Bush administration on who “outed” Valerie Plame, who was not even serving overseas at the time.

    I mean, the network news’ shows will lead with the scandal tonight, right?

  3. John Burgess says:

    While a Station Chief may or may not be declared to the host government — lots of variables come into play in making that determination — the USG policy is still to neither confirm nor deny the presence of intelligence officers at embassies.

    This was a goof.

  4. wr says:

    @Donald Sensing: Yes, because there is absolutely no difference between a stupid but inadvertent mistake and the deliberate exposure of a spy’s identity to cover up a government’s illegal activities.

  5. Eric Florack says:

    @wr: You mean, like Bebghazi?

  6. Neil Hudelson says:

    @wr:

    Right? And, sadly, Donald is no Florack–he’s actually a smart guy. He willfully ignores motive for partisan points. Sad.

  7. Neil Hudelson says:

    @Eric Florack:

    Oh! This is a new one! So now Benghazi was a deliberate act? Like, we planted the attackers? Oh do explain, but first let me get the popcorn.

  8. Eric Florack says:

    And if Plume is what ypure blathering about, there’s a major, major difference….
    Plume was not under cover, or dedicated.

  9. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    So, we see that Standard Deflection Tactic #1 won’t work — they can’t find a Republican to blame. So they move on to Standard Deflection Tactic #2 — Change the Subject!

    Now wrap your heads around this: the inadvertent outage fo a desk-bound non-covert CIA operative by Richard Armitage is worse than the incompetent outage of a covert CIA Station Chief in a very high-risk station for political gain (showing how important Obama’s trip is).

  10. CB says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13: @Eric Florack:

    What the hell is the matter with you people.

  11. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @CB: I won’t speak for Mr. Florack, but I seem to suffer from the delusion that there are actual liberal commenters here with bits of integrity.

    I really should see someone about that, but so far it’s mostly harmless…

  12. beth says:

    @CB: I guess they missed both times in the article where it said the name was on a list provided by military officials. I guess that’s close enough to being White House staff though.

  13. bandit says:

    @beth: It’s always someone else’s fault

  14. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @beth: OF COURSE the military provided the names to the White House. It’s their job to give the full, complete info to the White House. It’s up to the White House to scrub out the sensitive info.

    Which, of course, they failed to do here. As they have on many other occasions.

  15. anjin-san says:

    Ah, armchair spymasters Jenos and bithead are on the case! Dr. No and all the other bad guys had best take care…

  16. anjin-san says:

    like Bebghazi?

    Let’s recap Benghazi as it happened in bitheads imagination.

    Obama watched the whole attack take place live from the situation room. He was kind of distracted, as he was texting Jay Z to discuss plans for his next three vacations. The ambassador begged for help, which was readily available and could have easily saved the Americans, but Obama forbade it. Hillary was in a fuege state as a result of her brain injury, and did not spring into action until the cover up started. At some point, Obama lost interest entirely, and wandered off to bed, where he slept very soundly indeed. It should be noted that Obama was not wearing an American Flag pin when these events took place.

  17. anjin-san says:

    @ bithead @ Jenos

    I want you guys to be properly equipped for your next venture into armchair combat, or you next armchair spy adventure. Check these out.

  18. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    Do you EVER run out of excuses for President Boyfriend?

  19. anjin-san says:

    President Boyfriend

    Been rocking out to your Backstreet Boys records again?

  20. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @anjin-san: More of a Ready For The World fan, Annie. The Prince funk without Prince, kinda.

    And is it really that painful to admit that Obama and his crew effed up YET AGAIN?

  21. wr says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13: Wow, it’s like an entire convention of losers. You, Florack, Sensing. If a bomb went off in here… well, I guess no one would ever be able to tell the difference.

  22. wr says:

    @anjin-san: Actually, I think you’re way off. In Bit’s head, Obama was actually on the ground in Benghazi, leading the protests.

  23. anjin-san says:

    @ Jenos

    The Prince funk without Prince, kinda.

    Yea! Why watch the band led by the genius when you can watch someone else doing pretty decent knockoffs of his work?

    Good call. Guess you win this round dude.

    Seriously, if you want a little funk, here is where you go to find it

    or here

  24. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @anjin-san: Prince was a bit too raunchy for my tastes. “Darling Nikki” was pretty much misogyny. RFTW was just about right for me.

    And it really IS that painful to admit that Obama et al keep effing up, I guess. At least this time no one got killed… unlike certain other past instances I could mention.

    The current admission among semi-honest Democrats is that Obama is “a good politician but a lousy manager.” And — my pet theory — he’s surrounded himself with a lot of people who are equally bad at managing people and things so they don’t highlight his ineptitude.

  25. anjin-san says:

    pretty much misogyny

    This is coming from the guy who thinks jibes about “womyn” are soooo clever?

    At any rate, dismissing Prince as “too raunchy” because he has done some raunchy tunes is like dismissing The Beatles as “too strange” based on Revolution #9.

  26. Dave E. says:

    @anjin-san: So what was Obama doing that night after his call with Netanyahu and why is it such a secret?

  27. anjin-san says:

    @ Dave E.

    Probably what he does every night, work on the articles of surrender and the implementation of Sharia in the US.

  28. Dave E. says:

    @anjin-san: If you had a real answer you wouldn’t have to resort to snark. Why is it that “…the most transparent administration in history” has to keep the details of Obama’s actions that night so secret?

  29. anjin-san says:

    @ Dave E.

    Why don’t you link us to some of the demands you made for details of Cheney’s secret meetings with oil company executives in the White House?

    Then you will have a bit of credibility.

  30. bill says:

    @Donald Sensing: i think it’s buried already, i’m sure the locals know who it is and now we’re trying to bring him/her home without anymore leakage. the media were very nice in keeping a lid on this……as expected.

  31. anjin-san says:

    @ Dave E.

    You probably should not hold your breath waiting for people to “defend” Obama on the subject of Benghazi. The right has searched obsessively for some scandal related to Benghazi to use against Obama for years. They have come up with bupkis. Well, that’s not entirely true, there is “THEY CHANGED THE TALKING POINTS”

    I don’t recall any outrage from the right after the many embassy and consulate attacks during the Bush years. Or any over the thousands of Americans KIA in Iraq in a war over phantom WMD – all we got was a shrug and “this is war, men die.”

    Four Americans willingly went to a dangerous place to serve their country. Tragically, they were killed by our enemies. They were not the first, and they won’t be the last. Kindly stop dancing on their graves.

  32. anjin-san says:

    “a good politician but a lousy manager.”

    As opposed to Bush, who was an OK politician and a God-awful, train wreck of historic proportions, shoot me now I can’t take any more manager?

  33. Dave E. says:

    @anjin-san: Deflection and deflection, anything but asking for the truth. That truth must be very painful for the Obungler, or he wouldn’t be working so hard to keep it secret.

  34. anjin-san says:

    @ Dave E.

    In other words, You’ve got nothing. Thanks for sharing.

  35. Franklin says:

    This was a massive mistake, no doubt about it. Yet unintentional.

    And since the righties here changed the subject first (note THAT, Jenos … look at the first couple comments), the outing of Plame was pretty intentional as political retribution, as I recall. Or am I remembering it incorrectly?

  36. Dave E. says:

    @anjin-san: Deflection and now projection from you. Not that I expected anything different, but it is helpful to point out such dishonesty when one sees it.

    @Franklin: Powell’s assistant at the State Department, Richard Armitage, was the leaker and it was a mistake on his part. He was never charged.

  37. andrew says:

    “I won’t speak for Mr. Florack, but I seem to suffer from the delusion that there are actual liberal commenters here with bits of integrity.”

    If you came here looking for humanity you’ve come to the wrong place.

  38. anjin-san says:

    Deflection and now projection from you.

    I’m sure there are blogs where that is considered a snappy comeback, and not something left over from AOL chat rooms circa 2002. You might be more comfortable on one of them.

  39. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @anjin-san: I’m sure there are blogs where that is considered a snappy comeback, and not something left over from AOL chat rooms circa 2002. You might be more comfortable on one of them.

    You really do live in 2002, don’t you? Because that’s where several of your deflections come from (give or take).

    I complied a list of things you want to talk about here instead of the actual topic:

    * Benghazi

    * Valerie Plame

    * Boy Bands

    * 80s funk music

    * “womyn”

    * Cheney and Big Oil

    * Iraq war and WMD!!!

    * BOOOSH!!!!!

    And yeah, Florack brought up Benghazi first, but you didn’t complain about it — you welcomed the diversion.

    The only remotely relevant one, however, is Plame, in which both featured CIA operatives being “outed” inadvertently by clueless political hacks (Armitage and the Obama administration). However, some of the major differences are 1) the outing of this guy/gal was illegal; 2) the outing of this guy/gal actually put people in danger; 3) the outing of this guy/gal actually threatens to compromise ongoing operations.

    Just own up to it, Annie. The Obama administration effed up, bigtime — as they do so often. Obama’s an inept manager, and he’s surrounded himself with people who are at least equally incompetent because he doesn’t want anyone looking better than him.

  40. Bob Beller says:

    @Donald Sensing:
    The difference between this and Plame is that Valerie was flying a desk in DC because she’d already been outed in Russia and her previous position as an operative was well known outside the US. The media reported that very early in the story, but that fact seemed to disappear about the time they decided it was a good way to try and get Karl Rove.

    On this story, the military did screw up the list, but the press office should have double checked, and when it was brought to their attention the first time the list should have been retracted. However, the idea that “Obama” outed him as some have suggested is preposterous.

  41. edmondo says:

    Change you can believe in!

  42. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Let’s see, somebody in the WH inadvertently leaves a name on a press release and this is AUTOMATICALLY worse that the deliberate outing of a CIA undercover agent for purely political purposes thereby exposing networks all over the world. OK. Got it.

    So tell me Eric, Jenos, Donald, which is the worse intelligence screw up: the inadvertent outing of a CIA station chief (which make no mistake, is a BIG screw up) by most likely a single individual, OR the invasion of a foreign country on the justification of completely screwed up intelligence reports put together by dozens of political flacks installed by an administration for the soul purpose of telling it what it wants to hear?

    Hmmmmmm??????

  43. Tillman says:

    Plame affair: Wife’s husband writes an editorial about how a key point of the administration’s rationale for invasion is utterly false. Five days later, wife’s career prospects ruined after being outed in a Novak column.

    The two guys who inadvertently outed her, Armitage and Rove, did not reveal to Novak that she was covert (they probably didn’t know). The CIA spokesman Novak talked to before publishing the column also did not reveal that she was covert, but stressed “in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information” that Plame’s name shouldn’t be used in the column.

    Kabulstationchiefgate: A botched press release. Where the hell were the proofreaders?

    Final point of contrast: Plame was outed (intentionally or not) after her husband disputed the rationale for war openly in the press as the war was about to settle into its long insurrectionist phase. This station chief is being outed (comically unintentionally) as Afghanistan winds down, with our military presence there set to end later this year.

  44. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: Let’s see, somebody in the WH inadvertently leaves a name on a press release and this is AUTOMATICALLY worse that the deliberate outing of a CIA undercover agent for purely political purposes thereby exposing networks all over the world.

    I realize the phrase is “assumes facts not in evidence,” but in this case it’s “assumes liberal fantasies are reality, despite repeated proofs to the contrary.”

    And I think I can go along with the blame being at least on the military. They made the assumption that the Obamoids were remotely competent. Instead of simply including on the list “Joe Blow, CIA Chief of Station,” they should have said “Joe Blow, CIA Chief of Station (remember, this is a SECRET and you should remove his name from this list before you release it, because if his name and job gets out, that would be really, really bad.)”

    We have to remember that there are two default assumptions about the Obama administration are that 1) they are incompetent, and/or 2) they are corrupt. So in any dealings with them, keep that in mind before handing over anything sensitive, and spell out in explicit detail just why they should do the right thing.

    And Ozark… step back for a moment and look at things. This was a screwup, plain and simple. But instead of simply owning it, you feel this overwhelming urge to engage in shuttupery and using the extremely lame tactic of “at least my guy isn’t as bad as yours.” Doesn’t that give you the slightest pause?

    Well, if would, if you were in the least bit self-aware.

  45. Tillman says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    However, some of the major differences are 1) the outing of this guy/gal was illegal; 2) the outing of this guy/gal actually put people in danger; 3) the outing of this guy/gal actually threatens to compromise ongoing operations.

    1) Both are illegal if the outings were “intentionally” done. That’s why Armitage and Rove were not charged with crimes in the Plame investigation.
    2) Can you source this? They said the same thing about Plame, but that turned out to be an exaggeration.
    3) The outing of Plame set back the United States’ ability to track Iranian nuclear development.* She worked in nonproliferation (which is why she was at all involved with the Nigerian uranium yellowcake claim the Bush administration advanced for invading Iraq) and her work tracked materiel Iran was buying. So, no, operations were damaged by her outing.

  46. C. Clavin says:

    Dumb, dumb, dumb.

  47. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @C. Clavin: Dumb, dumb, dumb.

    Yeah, they are, Cliffy, but YOU voted for them and YOU still keep apologizing for them.

    Or am I misunderstanding you? Was that actually a confession? If so, good for you. Admitting you have a problem is the first step.

  48. Tillman says:

    @Eric Florack:

    And if Plume is what you’re blathering about, there’s a major, major difference….
    Plume was not under cover, or dedicated.

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    Now wrap your heads around this: the inadvertent outage of a desk-bound non-covert CIA operative by Richard Armitage is worse than the incompetent outage of a covert CIA Station Chief in a very high-risk station for political gain (showing how important Obama’s trip is).

    I neglected to point this out earlier, but Plame was covert and traveled often under cover identities. Further, the timeline of her outing was rightly suspicious even if the outing was inadvertent and merited investigation, especially because her husband vocally opposed the intelligence rationale for the Iraq war.

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    This was a screwup, plain and simple. But instead of simply owning it, you feel this overwhelming urge to engage in shuttupery and using the extremely lame tactic of “at least my guy isn’t as bad as yours.” Doesn’t that give you the slightest pause?

    It’s a reflexive action to dudes like you who feel the need to inflate every mistake and misstep of the Obama administration in order to justify to yourselves, deep inside that shriveled ideology gland in your brain, that Bush wasn’t really that bad. The Democrats do this shit all the time, Bush was just a victim of liberals making him look bad. It’s the same instinct that elevates Benghazi to the level of presidency-ending scandal. It’s the same instinct that insists on political equivalency (“both sides do it”). It’s a nice little delusion for the soul.

    You’ve been keeping it up for years. You’re surprised a conditioned response has developed?

  49. C. Clavin says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:
    A. Where is the apology in what I commented? You seem to have serious reading comprehension problems…perhaps some professional help???
    B. I did vote for “them”, and I would again in a New York minute. If nothing else the accidental outing of a CIA Operative is nowhere near as bad as the intentional outing of one in order to help sell one of the worst foreign policy blunders in history…ala Scooter and Dick.
    In addition “they” have rescued the economy, insured millions of uninsured, ended wars that Republicans couldn’t or wouldn’t, and rid the world of the likes of Ghaddafi, Anwar al-Awlaki, and Osama Bin Laden.
    Under “them” we are freer, healthier, richer, and safer. So yeah…I voted for “them”.

  50. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @Tillman: It’s a reflexive action to dudes like you who feel the need to inflate every mistake and misstep of the Obama administration in order to justify to yourselves, deep inside that shriveled ideology gland in your brain, that Bush wasn’t really that bad.

    Come back through the mirror, Dorothy. Every “mistake and misstep of the Obama administration” causes “dudes like you” to run back to “BOOOSH IS BADDDD!!!!”

    What makes it transcend from pathetic to pathological is that there are so many “mistakes and missteps of the Obama administration.” If they’d stop screwing up so much, you wouldn’t have to whine so much.

  51. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @C. Clavin: Where is the apology in what I commented?

    Cliffy, your “dumb, dumb, dumb” was a blank slate that you left open for anyone to interpret. You don’t get to whine when someone writes on the blank slate you left up.

    As for the rest of your cut-and-pasted laundry list… it’s wildly subjective and even more wildly irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is “the Obama administration’s latest eff-up in a long string of such.” Unless you’re arguing that there should be some kind of trade-off, much like the old practices of selling indulgences, which I don’t think even you are stupid enough to argue.

  52. C. Clavin says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:
    Yes…your reading comprehension problems are my fault.
    Idiot.

  53. anjin-san says:

    @ Jenos Idanian #13

    When some conservatives show up that sound like serious people, I would love to have a serious conversation.

    You sound like a 17 year old who has guzzled way too much Mountain Dew, so it’s not going to happen here.

  54. anjin-san says:

    t’s a reflexive action to dudes like you who feel the need to inflate every mistake and misstep of the Obama administration in order to justify to yourselves, deep inside that shriveled ideology gland in your brain, that Bush wasn’t really that bad.

    That’s about it. The Bush administration had so many iconic disasters, it has left the right in and endless search for “Obama’s Katrina”. “Obama’s Iraq”, and so on.

  55. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @anjin-san: The Bush administration had so many iconic disasters, it has left the right in and endless search for “Obama’s Katrina”. “Obama’s Iraq”, and so on.

    You will almost never see those phrases from the right, almost always from the left. Because it pushes the left’s preferred narrative.

    For example, Katrina. By constantly linking it to Bush, the effect is to cover up the gross, criminal negligence of Mayor Ray Nagin (Democrat, now convicted felon) and Governor Kathleen Blanco (also Democrat), as well as so many of the horror stories that ended up to be… well, bullshit. And if you get wrapped up in correcting those lies, you’ve let yourself be distracted from the issue at hand.

    To wit, the idiotic ineptitude of the Obama administration, as most recently demonstrated by this fiasco.

  56. anjin-san says:

    To wit, the idiotic ineptitude of the Obama administration, as most recently demonstrated by this fiasco.

    Well, I see you are in full “Rain Man” mode now. Have a nice day.

  57. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @anjin-san: So, when you can’t change the subject, you run away. Got it.

    Just what is the timeline for the “this is old news” angle?

  58. Tillman says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    Come back through the mirror, Dorothy.

    I think you mean Alice. As for the rest, I prefer to think of it as reminders to conservatives who remain strangely reluctant to discuss the Bush administration’s tenure. Hell, some of them have gone so far as to blame Obama for stuff he couldn’t possibly be blamed for.

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    You will almost never see those phrases from the right, almost always from the left. Because it pushes the left’s preferred narrative.

    Almost always, you say? They seem to run the gamut politically with the right-wingers being a bit more crazy, such as Jennifer Rubin calling sequestration Obama’s Katrina and Breitbart.com doing the same with Hurricane Sandy (the federal responses to the two being magnitudes different). Meanwhile, “Obama’s Iraq” is almost exclusively a rightwing label for Obamacare from what I can tell with this one Google search I had to do to show how full of it you are. If they’re trying to not play into the left’s narrative, they are doing a horrible, horrible job of it.

    I thought you said you weren’t going to comment as often as you used to, not that you were going to retrench further into this alternate reality you’ve constructed.

  59. Tillman says:

    Comment in moderation, probably for link overload. Like, five links. I wonder if the moderation queue also considers links to others’ comments as part of the limit.

  60. anjin-san says:

    @ Jenos

    @anjin-san: So, when you change the subject, can’t take any more of my blinding stupidity, you run away move on to something worthwhile.

    Got it.

    FTFY

  61. C. Clavin says:

    @Tillman:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:
    Come back through the mirror, Dorothy.
    I think you mean Alice.

    It’s pointless to try and inject accuracy into swamp-fever rage.

  62. wr says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13: “Cliffy, your “dumb, dumb, dumb” was a blank slate that you left open for anyone to interpret. You don’t get to whine when someone writes on the blank slate you left up.”

    Exactly right — if the reader has the mentality of a smug 14 year-old.

    So I guess that’s working out for you, little girl.

  63. anjin-san says:

    @ wr

    You are such a hater 🙂

  64. anjin-san says:

    Come back through the mirror, Dorothy.

    Someone needs to clue the Dormouse in that we are not in Kansas anymore.

  65. DrDaveT says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    It’s their job to give the full, complete info to the White House.

    If this is true — and I seriously doubt it — then the fault is wholly on the White House staffer who fielded this. But.

    Far more likely is that the military is supposed to provide a list to the White House that has been sanitized to the proper clearance level of the White House staffer and the protocol chief and the caterer and everyone else who is going to see the list. It is almost inconceivable that all of those people are cleared to know who the CIA station chief is for Kabul. In which case, someone in the military committed a triple breach of security — failure to properly label the list with its correct level of classification, failure to control access to that list in appropriate facilities / containers / courier system, and disclosure of classified information to unauthorized persons. I seriously would not like to be in that person’s shoes when DSS and the JAG get through with them.

  66. CB says:

    @#$%^!

  67. Tillman says:

    @CB: Couldn’t have said it better myself.

  68. Rob in CT says:

    Fail.