These investigations generally end up going nowhere. Does it really matter whether she was an operative or an analyst? So what if her cover is blown? The CIA has plenty of other operatives. The real question should be why we need people like this in the first place.

The obvious answer to that question is that we need them because there's a market for the illicit sale or smuggling of weapons of mass destruction and we, the United States of America, are the inventors and producers of most of these killing devices. All we would have to do is to stop inventing and producing them and there would be no market, at least not a market where we have to worry about protecting our share.

But this isn't ever going to happen is it? President Bush walked out of the Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, reopened Reagan's infamous "star wars" program, opened space to warfare, now wants to resume nuclear bomb testing to make certain our stockpiles are still workable, and wants to develop smaller "field nukes" so the infantry can take out 50,000 people at a time—smaller portable nukes with one-third the power of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

After Pearl Harbor, American industry made the phenomenal overnight conversion to wartime production and we've never gone back. Companies kept their armaments divisions and now our economy is hopelessly linked to the continued development and production of weaponry. If a nuclear swat team descended on the United States with the power to shoot anyone within 50 feet of a nuclear component at least a third of our workforce would be forced to hide.

In other words, we need clandestine operatives to protect or stem the flow of our nuclear secrets and we will always need them. These career operatives have the duty to ferret out both buyers and sellers of our nuclear expertise and open the door for sting operations just like Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) operatives try to intercept the enormous flow of drugs into the largest market in the world.

None of this would work if the buyers and sellers didn't expect it.

Ionesco summed this situation up nicely in a comedy play about a house of ill repute that allowed customers to play any role they wished. If a man wanted to be a judge, robes and a courtroom setting would be provided. If he wanted to be a Bishop or a priest, clerical garb and a church setting would be provided. A general could have a uniform, troops and a barracks, and so forth.

Trouble was that the girls often tired of these games and wanted to get down to business. Time is money you know. The judge would then plead that he couldn't be a judge unless the girl was a criminal ready for trial and sentencing; the priests couldn't play their role unless the girls were willing to confess their sins and accept penance, and the general couldn't be a general unless the girls remembered their oaths to follow orders without question.

It's the same with CIA operatives. They have no function unless there are engineers, scientists, and others willing to sell nuclear secrets and customers willing to buy them on the other end. Without this, the game is over.

The operative's job is to become known as a buyer or seller of such secrets without tipping his or her hand by establishing contact and a certain amount of rapport with the bad guys so they can be flushed out.

The whole thing becomes as much of a dangerous game as picking a politician you can trust, with possible entrapment every step of the way. Lives are at stake.

Exposing an undercover operative is a serious offense and should be punished, but what does this say about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction? What good is a Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty between nations if we know and expect a market for the back door buying and selling of nuclear secrets?

When George Bush has his mini-nukes, how long will it be before everyone else has them and aren't we then increasing the potential for terrorism?

If you think George W. Bush has made a debacle of Iraq and our economy, stand by for what may be his crowning achievement by spreading the potential for nuclear holocaust.