To be more exact, I have not claimed that she was anything but a smart, intelligent employee. Indeed, it is that fact that makes one wonder about her status as an NOC. She was no dummy wandering through the world. So why did she allow her husband to go to Niger? Why did she agree for him to write the infamous NYT editorial? Why did she contribute money ...etc.

And why did the CIA not warn Novak off? Why was her fictional employer story as thin as ice?

All of these things bring attention to her. Something that no one acting under NOC would. And certainly the CIA would provide better support.

And then we have from your (thanks) WaPost link:

True, the CIA recalled her from Europe in 1997, fearing that her name might have been passed to the Russians by the mole Aldrich Ames. But, she writes, she still took different routes to work each day, "traveled domestically and abroad using a variety of aliases" and continued to hope for another foreign posting.

You have to love the "took different routes to work each day." I mean, no matter how many ways she took, they all ended at Langley. What this says is that she felt her cover was blown and the route changes for protection from attack, not for protection of her NOC status.

Even more interesting is what is in the CIA filing as shown in the Slate link.. It says:

prospects as a covert agent.

Legal filings are things of great accuracy in word usage. Prospects means:

Usually, prospects. a. an apparent probability of advancement, success, profit, etc.  
b. the outlook for the future: good business prospects.  

2. anticipation; expectation; a looking forward.  
   
3. something in view as a source of profit.  
   
4. a potential or likely customer, client, etc.  
   
5. a potential or likely candidate

Note that none the above refers to "present."

So I again note that no one has shown me that Mrs. Wilson was a covert agent.

The CIA's, her's and her husband's actions all point to someone who had been one in the past, but who was no longer one, and who had no prospects of returning to that status.

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

"Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame..."

Who ya gonna believe, the anonymous smear artist from the White House who won't even give his name, or the CIA, who say different and on the record?

Wait.  I think I know.  If it's anonymous and a smear, you go with that.

Please, this one has been debunked now for what, three years.

 Valerie Plame is still being prevented from talking about any of her CIA activities before 2002, specifically at the direction of the Bush White House and not the CIA.

It's funny Jim how you like to go on about the importance of government service and the military, yet here is a woman who comes from a family with a history of service to their country, Wilson's father an Air Force colonel, and her brother a Marine veteran wounded in Vietnam. Yet, you're willing to discount her words and continue to make excuses for the Bush administration, who violated the law when they exposed her identity.

 And they didn't do it for some high moral purpose in defense of America.  They did it to protect a tissue paper of lies that were constructed with the specific intent of deceiving the American people, in order to take this country into an unnecessary war.

Dick Cheney and George W. Bush did this because they knew that the American people would never support an unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, unless that country posed a direct threat to the United States. So what did they do?  They took it upon themselves to effectively strip us of our sovereignty when they conspired to create these fabrications as a pretext for war.

In point of fact they did what the Constitution specifically forbids them from doing, setting the executive branch of government and the president up as de facto king, who takes it upon himself alone to make decisions that affect the future direction of this country.  It was nothing less than a hijacking of the United States of America, and the American people were reduced to nothing more than passengers along for the ride, passengers who had to be lied to and kept in the dark, in order to keep us docile and compliant.

In fact the actions of George W. Bush and this rogue administration are entirely analogies with the actions of the 9/11 hijackers, who told the people on those planes that if they remained calm and followed instructions, everything would be all right.  They did this so that the people would not struggle and fight back, which they surely would have done if they had known they were about to be flown into buildings. Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame were like that people on flight 93, who found out the truth, and began telling everyone else what was really happening.  No doubt you believe that the people on that doomed flight were heroes, right Jim?

I say there is no defense for for the actions of this administration, they constitute the very definition of the word treason, the highest form of treason that one can engage upon within the context of a democracy, the betrayal of the people by our elected representatives, the president and his cabinet.

Until this president is held to account for his actions, then the future of the republic remains in dire jeopardy, since if he is not punished for this, the very highest of crimes, then others will surely follow in his footsteps, and perhaps Jim, you may not find yourself in agreement with the politics of other administrations who choose to subvert the Constitution.