"The Clandestine Service"... Yeah, right

Now that I've started to pay attention to the Plame wars, I find them weirdly addictive. Henry Hanks has tons of links. He pointed to this very interesting comment on Pejman's Yousefzadeh's blog:

I am by no means an expert, but I have worked in intelligence and with the CIA (now retired). The WaPo wording describing Ms.Plame's position ("case officer in the clandestine service") sounds like something somebody would say who's never been in the CIA. Somebody who knows their sh*t, would ask: Was she in the Directorate of Operations; if so, was she a field operative; and what clearance levels did she/does she have. In my active years, I had a TS clearance and then that clearance was further modified with a special "need to know" classifier. These classifiers were a way of controlling/minimizing exposure of sensitive info and compartmentalizing intelligence to minimize risk if their was a "failure". If somebody was a field operative, their classifications were so deep and so obscure that I guarantee you no stinking columnist knew about them (my wife knew nothing about my job, clearances - still doesn't). Which all suggests to me that VP probably is and was a vanilla desk analyst with a technical specialty in some field associated with wmds. I highly, highly doubt she was a covert, field operator and the WaPo wording is very amateurish. And another thing, Ms. Plame's name is listed on a public web site - definitely not SOP for a covert field operative. None of it fits.