Not that this will matter one iota to the apologists for the Bush Administration

Well, well, well, so Valerie Plame was covert at the time she was outed by Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Scooter Libby after all. Not just a secretary, or a desk jockey, or the coffee girl, or whatever pejorative the wingnuts have thought fit to use to describe her:

An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.

The summary is part of an attachment to Fitzgerald's memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

The nature of Plame's CIA employment never came up in Libby's perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

The unclassified summary of Plame's employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, "Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States."

Plame worked as an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame, "engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business." The report says, "she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times." When overseas Plame traveled undercover, "sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias -- but always using cover -- whether official or non-official (NOC) -- with no ostensible relationship to the CIA."

So, there we have it. Valerie Plame was a covert agent, always using official or nonofficial cover, and the Bush Administration put her life and her work at risk for cheap political revenge.

There's no way to put lipstick on this pig. This is treason, plain and simple -- treason and impeachable. And that the Democrats lack the balls to do something about it is appalling.

UPDATE: Just in case the gasbags on the right start denying that they ever said Valerie Plame was not covert, Glenn Greenwald kindly documents many of the instances of wingnuts talking out of their asses on the subject -- to save you the trouble of looking them up yourself.