The Novak Exception Journalists abandon their principles in the Plame kerfuffle.

WSJ.com ^ | 2/20/04 | N/A

[swilhelm73]

Here's one scoop we never thought we'd live to hear: "Journalists Call on Newsman to Disclose Confidential Sources." To understand this sudden pang of press conscience, it helps to know that the journalist in question is columnist Robert Novak.

At issue is his July 14 column explaining why the Bush Administration would entrust an investigation into the alleged Iraqi attempt to buy uranium yellowcake from Niger to Joe Wilson--a high-ranking National Security Council member from the Clinton years. The answer Mr. Novak reported receiving from Administration sources was that Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, worked at the CIA and had put her husband forward for the job.

[HAL9000]

Waas and Novak have been feuding for years. Here's a thought - Maybe Wilson and Plame are responsible for the purported massive leak of national security documents to Waas in 1998 - and now he's repaying the favor with his smear campaign against Novak. As an impoverished Salon writer, Waas was been unhappy about the unfavorable coverage he's received from the Dark Prince.

[Just mythoughts]

Did you note that Wilson was a member of Clintons National Security Council.... I have never heard that little tid bit before.

[cyncooper]

Pinging Dog to your thought.

Interesting...

[Just mythoughts]

So that is what put him on the National Security Council?

[cyncooper]

Did you note that Wilson was a member of Clintons National Security Council....

Yes. Here is his bio that has been referenced frequently here on FR:

FR ALERT: 2002 Official Bio of Joseph Wilson mentions his wife

Excerpt:

Ambassador Wilson served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998. In that capacity he was responsible for the coordination of U.S. policy to the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. He was one of the principal architects of President Clinton’s historic trip to Africa in March 1998.

~snip~

[piasa]

circa 1997 : (VALERIE PLAME OUTS HERSELF TO A C-in-C US ARMED FORCES IN EUROPE POLITICAL ADVISOR, WILSON, THAT SHE IS IN THE CIA, ACCORDING TO LATER REPORT BY MAUREEEN DOWD OF THE NY TIMES) Valerie Plame and Joseph Wilson both happened to alight in Washington, their jet-set schedules intersecting, and spotted each other across a cocktail party filled with foreigners."I saw this striking blonde," he recalled, still sounding smitten six years later. At first she said she was an energy analyst, but confided sometime around the first kiss that she was in the CIA. "I had a security clearance," grinned Wilson, then a political adviser to the commander of U.S. forces in Europe. - "Maureen Dowd : Ambassador Wilson and the Spy Who Loved Him, " NY Times, October 3, 2003

1997 : (WILSON RETURNS FROM OVERSEAS TO WASHINGTON AS SENIOR DIRECTOR OF AFRICAN AFFAIRS AT THE NSC) That same year [1997], Wilson also came back to Washington, as a senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council...A source, however, says that Wilson was not universally popular, because of what was perceived to be too strong sympathies for the interests of the Africans and Europeans. via FR's seamole, Jan 2, 2004*
* 1990s sometime in here : (WILSON WAS A CLINTON NSC ADVISOR) then later in the 1990s as a Clinton National Security Council staffer. - "The Honorable Mr. Wilson. Frog-marching into the history books.," National Review Online, NRO, October 01, 2003, 8:38 a.m. by James Robbins

JUNE 1997 - JULY 1998 : (CLINTON ADMINISTRATION : WILSON SERVES IN NSC) Ambassador Wilson served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998. In that capacity he was responsible for the coordination of U.S. policy to the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. - Wilson's own bio (* My note: Did he begin in June or July 1997? Some sources indicate he didn't go to the NSC until July)

JULY 1997 - JULY 1998 : (CLINTON ADMIN: WILSON WAS SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT AND SENIOR DIRECTOR FOR AFRICAN AFFAIRS AT THE NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL) - Wilson's bio at the web site of the Corporate and Public Strategy Advisory Group

JUNE 1997 - JULY 1998 : (WILSON ON NSC ; WAS ONE OF THE PLANNERS OF CLINTON'S TRIP TO AFRICA IN MARCH 1998) Ambassador Wilson served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998. In that capacity he was responsible for the coordination of U.S. policy to the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, He was one of the principal architecs of President Clinton's historic trip to Africa in March 1998.- His own bio, http://216.239.53.104/search?q=cache:TjVOq4W4lssJ:www.cpsag.com/our_team/wilson.html+%22valerie+plame%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
(This web site is that of the CPS : Corporate and Public Strategy Advisory Group where Wilson is listed as "part of the team")

[piasa]

The date Wilson claims to have gone to the NSC is curious because he gave two different start dates in different biographies- one of which would put him in the company of Democratic candidate retired General Wesley Clark.

JULY 10, 1997 - 2000 : (WESLEY CLARK BECOMES SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER EUROPE - IS ALSO C-IN-C US EUROPEAN COMMAND) - Freeper Dog, http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/944219/posts?page=37#37, see also http://www.nato.int/cv/saceur/clark.htm

[piasa]

.

[Diogenesis]

You have made each of your points convincingly, confirming
what was previously thought in each case.

Nonetheless, this was still a wrong decision by Novak,
and one for which there is not "plausible deniability"
even when it involved someone of such dubious value.

[Diogenesis]

Thanks for the detailed info.

[cyncooper]

I really appreciate your comment.

[Just mythoughts]

Thank you so much. Now that I read through this, I remember this stuff. Clinton/African tour and National Security Council are oxymora.

Joe Wilson sounded and acted like Clintons advance team, like the ones that clear cut in the "rainforest" for the best photo opportunity. More like Clinton Security Council instead of National Security Council. A travel agent.


Clintons African tour was to me his apologize for America tour.

[fuzlim]

From another source:

"At some point British intelligence obtained some documents purporting to show that Iraqi agents had attempted to procure literally tons of "yellowcake" uranium from the African country of Niger.

The documents later turned out to be forged. They weren't just forged, they were incompetently forged. The documents mentioned Nigerian government officials who hadn't been in office in years. There were all sorts of technical inaccuracies that made it clear that the documents couldn't possibly be real."

My question is, who forged the documents?

Is this another one of Ahmed Chalabi's stories?

[Just mythoughts]

Considering the speed with which that forgery was exposed, it always looked like it was done by the pro-Saddam supporters.

Weren't the French first in line to expose it as a fake, if not they sure were trying to make hay about it being a fake.

Maybe old Joe Wilson had a hand in it.

If Ahmed Chalabi was involved, we would have known about that by now, I don't believe he was that popular in some circles.

We may never know who, created that forgery.

[fuzlim]

Here's one version of the source of the yellowcake documents:

"Piecing the story together from two people directly involved and three others who were briefed on it, the tale begins at the end of 2001, when third-rate forged documents turned up in West Africa purporting to show the sale by Niger to Iraq of tons of "yellowcake" uranium.

Italy's intelligence service obtained the documents and shared them with British spooks, who passed them on to Washington. Mr. Cheney's office got wind of this and asked the C.I.A. to investigate."

Here's some more from a gent named Gordon Prather - nuclear weapons designer in New Mexico at the Sandia Corp - served in the Reagan administration as the Army’s chief scientist -appointed to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

"...What good would yellowcake -- a mixture of Uranium oxides -- have been to the Iraqis? Yellowcake contains less than 0.3% U235. You need uranium enriched to 90% U235 to make a nuke. You need to be able to convert yellowcake into uranium hexafluoride -- a solid at room temperature. Then you need to gasify UF6 and run it through cascades of gas centrifuges, tens of thousands of them. Iraq never had the capability of producing kilogram amounts of HEU, and what capability they had was utterly destroyed during the Gulf War and its aftermath and never rebuilt."

The documents themselves were so poorly forged that IAEA only took about 45 minutes after receiving them to pronounce them false.

One thing is sure now, no one wants to take responsibility for these documents. If I was head of the CIA I would be asking the Italians more about their source. As far as I know, there hasn't been any statement from them about the provenance of the documents.

Given the whole story and it's poor construction, I'll still put my money on Chalabi as the original source. Any attempt at forgery by a real player would probably have been of better quality.

Which brings up the whole question of the Iraqi National Congress...

[Consort]

I hear from pastry lovers that plame kerfuffles taste better than crumpets or scones.

[swilhelm73]

Actually the smart money is on the French government or someone within French intelligence producing the documents.

As we all know the French have a very close relationship with Niger's uranium industry.

The fakes were poor quality and the French government seemed to know pretty much right away they were fakes.

Much as it is hard to believe that Saudi employee Wilson was sent by mere coincidence and coincidently came back toeing the Saudi's line, it is also hard to believe that
it is a coincidence that these fakes were produced in the perfect manner for the lead anti-war power to disprove them.

For what it is worth a number of anonymous British intelligence sources turned up when the documents were shown to be false suggesting that this was the work of the French as part of their rather broad anti-American efforts.

Certainly the quality of the fakes here indicates that they did not come from a pro-war source.

Hostility to the INC in the press has been an interesting phenomenon. One has to wonder if there were more Saddam flunkies in the west then we now know of from the recent list of Saddam's 270 bought and paid for retainers.

We have already seen this with Ritter and his Saddam sponsored movie - a fairly brilliant way, if you stop and think about it - to bribe someone with minimal exposure.

[fuzlim]

But what would be the motivation of the French government in producing the documents?

If they wanted to embarrass Britain or the US one would think they would produce documents that would at least try to fool them. But these forgeries were really cheap.

I mean, using the signature of a person who had not occupied the purported position for over ten years! Like someone said, a twenty minute search on the internet would have shown these documents to be forgeries.

As far as Joe Wilson and his connections to the Saudis, near as I can figure he was asked to research the truth of the documents, did that, and reported (privately) the documents were untrue.

What else was he supposed to do? Tell the CIA the documents were true?

I have to say I simply don't get the connection between the necessary motivation and the French and the Saudis.

[swilhelm73]

The exact point of making poor quality forgeries is to use them to tarnish any other evidence.

British intelligence still stands by their charge that Saddam tried to acquire uranium in Africa, and that their evidence is not related to the forgeries. However, that charge has been completely obscured by said forgeries. Therefore we see just how useful creating these forgeries was for the French government.

Had the INC or some pro-war group been behind them, as you reference, why not make them much more believable, and at least not make them trivially easy for the leader of the anti-war coalition to disprove?

All the arrows point to the same place...France. Considering the fact that at the same time France was attempting to bribe other countries to oppose us in the UN, and threatening would-be members of the European Union from assisting us, this kind of treachery is hardly out of place.

As for Wilson, well, perhaps he could have actually done an investigation, which he did not, as, again, he admitted. Sending a noted anti-war activist with no background in this sort of investigation, and ties to a government opposed to American intervention would be at a minimum criminal negligence by whoever sent him. This of course presumes he was sent with any sort of good intent of course.

As we now know, with Wilson claiming he has no idea who sent him...and could not identify the person if he had too...combined with his wife's boss's (probable) forced retirement he was sent on Plame's recommendation. It should be pointed out that originally he did not deny this...

She and Wilson should probably be facing charges of high treason, though the media has insulated them unfortunately, as part of their broad anti-war effort.

[piasa]

Do us a favor and please source your news clips by title/author or link. In this case, too much of what passes as news is based almost entirely on "anonymous" officials and as it happens, political sources, and way too much disinfo has already come from the same sources over and over, some of them regurgitating info which originally came from other news citing the fraudulent "CIA" source known as "T J Wilkinson," and most citing "anonymous" individuals who, judging by the cited language and word choice, are apparently just coming from Wilson or from his associate, Ray McGovern.

It helps to know in this case which reporter wrote what, because in this case, at least one of the journalists deeply involved int he story has a wife involved in the intelligence biz, as well as a very tight relationship with Wilson, and thus there are some severe conflicts of interest in the matter. Because of the political nature of the case, a number of reporters have been pursuing their own agendas and we need to keep track not just of data, but from who the data emerged.