Posted on 07/17/2004 4:30:30 PM PDT by Shermy
Here's my attempt at "fisking" to Joseph Wilson's recent letter attempting to absolving himself from the Senate Intelligence Report's Bipartisan findings. My comments are in red.
Caution: one might need be a semantics and linguistic expert to decipher the "literary flair" of Joseph Wilson's numerous public statements. But I'll give it a try.
_________________________________________
The Hon. Pat Roberts, Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
The Hon. Jay Rockefeller, Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Dear Sen. Roberts and Sen. Rockefeller,
I read with great surprise and consternation the Niger portion of Sens. Roberts, Bond and Hatch's additional comments to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Assessment on Iraq. I am taking this opportunity to clarify some of the issues raised in these comments.
—This is an interesting first move by Wilson. The Senate Intelligence Report itself has plenty of damning information, bipartisanly approved. Wilson targets the “Additional Comments” appended to the report by these Senators. (All the senators had such additional comments discussing various matters. ) It is a deflective move, in my opinion. However he does address the bipartisan findings, unfairly, as discussed below.
First conclusion (from Sen. Robert's comments): "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee."
That is not true. The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife, sent to her superiors that says, "My husband has good relations with the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." There is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides.
— “Anodyne.” Whatever. The fact is Valerie “suggested” and “recommended” him, which he denied repeatedly in the past and still does so with this lame logic. The Report also reveals this was not the first time Valerie recommended him for a trip to Niger. She did so in 1999. The reasons are blacked out in the report (as is much of the text). There was a coup in 1999 in Niger which might be related to the reasons for the trip.
The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] reports officer stated that "the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name'" (page 39) and a State Department intelligence and research officer stated that the "meeting was 'apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch him to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue." In fact, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. Neither was the CPD reports officer.
— Joe is a little tricky here. He skips over the fact that his wife wrote a memo too. The fact that the CPD reports officer, presumably in near contact with Valerie, was not at the meeting has no bearing on the truthfulness of the officer’s assessment. One need not be inside the "meeting". Indeed, the subject of his trip was raised before the "meeting". The meeting didn't pop up out of nowhere.
Let's take a look at the actual words of the Report, whose findings are bipartisanly approved.
“Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife “offered up his name” and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002 from the former ambassador’s wife says, “my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” This was just one day before CPD sent a cable (..redaction..) Requesting concurrence with CPD’s idea to send the former ambassador to Niger and requesting any additinoal information from the foreign government service on their uranium reports. The former ambassador’s wife told committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told hm “there’s this crazy report” on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq.
The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on the CIA’s behalf (..long redaction..). The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region (..redaction..).
After having escorted me into the room, she [Valerie] departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest.
--- This is the first time he admits Valerie was at the meeting. In the Senate Intelligence Report she states she was there for “three minutes” at the beginning. Wilson has always been deceptive about the meeting, and his wife's recomendation. Here's one example from his interview with Talon News in October 2003. Wilson: I don't know anything about a meeting, I can only tell you about the meeting I was at where I was asked if I would prepare to go, and there was nobody at that meeting that I know. Now that fact that my wife knows that I know a lot about the uranium business and that I know a lot about Niger and that she happens to be involved in weapons of mass destruction, it should come as no surprise to anyone that we know of each others activities.
TN: Did your wife suggest you for the mission?
Side point: the current investigation often described as an inquiry into who allegedly "leaked" Plame's name to Novak is broader. It also involves, at least, who leaked similar information to Newsday reporters, and who leaked the documents Mr. Gannon references here. Apparently Mr. Gannon, the Wall Street Journal, and maybe others received the State Department memo detailing Plame's involvement. The Senate Intelligence Report reveals, for the first time, there's a memo authored by Plame herself.
Wilson: No. The decision to ask me to go out to Niger was taken in a meeting at which there were about a dozen analysts from both the CIA and the State Department. A couple of them came up and said to me when we're going through the introductory phase, "We have met at previous briefings that you have done on other subjects, Africa-related."
Not one of those at that meeting could I have told you what they look like, would I recognize on the street, or remember their name today. And as old as I am, I can still recognize my wife, and I still do remember her name. That was the meeting at which the decision was made to ask me if I would clear my schedule to go.
TN: An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?
It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip I had previously taken to Niger to look at other uranium-related questions as well as 20 years living and working in Africa, and personal contacts throughout the Niger government.
Wilson makes a simple matter complex. His wife suggested him, he then had an interdepartmental meeting, it was decided there he go. The Report notes the CIA thought the trip would not be fruitful because the Nigerien officials would not admit wrong-doing, but that the trip was "worth a try." And to comment further on "conflicts of interest", Wilson has one. He does business with the same Nigerien officials he interviewed, including the Minister of Mines. In the January 2004 Vanity Fair article about Mr. and Mrs. Wilson he mentions that at some unspecified time he sought to gain a gold mining concession in Niger for some interests in "London". Whether this is related to Wilson's work for the Rock Creek Corporation, which one report says is or was "controlled" by Saudi-Ethiopian billionaire Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi, that's a web to be untangled by some adventuresome journalist.
Wilson was suggested for the 1999 trip by his wife too. He says here it was uranium related, which is an interesting leak on his part since the Report redacts all reference as to the purpose of the 1999 trip.
Neither the CPD reports officer nor the State analyst were in the chain of command to know who, or how, the decision was made. The interpretations attributed to them are not the full story. In fact, it is my understanding that the reports officer has a different conclusion about Valerie's role than the one offered in the "additional comments." I urge the committee to reinterview the officer and publicly publish his statement.
Wilson’s argument is that Valerie didn’t suggest him because she didn’t hire him. It’s a silly argument. And her role is clear not just in Sen. Roberts' "additional comments", but in the bipartisanly-approved text of the report itself.<.font>
It is unfortunate that the report failed to include the CIA's position on this matter. If the staff had done so it would undoubtedly have been given the same evidence as provided to Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce in July 2003. They reported on July 22 that:
"A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked 'alongside' the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. 'They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,' he said. 'There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,' he said. 'I can't figure out what it could be.' 'We paid his [Wilson's] airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there,' the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses." (Newsday article "Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover," dated July 22, 2003).
Wilson's "proof" here is an anonymous attribution to a supposed official written by two journalists subject to the current leak investigation. Who this leaker is, if he or she actually exists, would be interesting to know. The journalists claim Valerie didn't recommend Joe, but if you read carefully the actual quoted comments, none say that. “But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit.” That’s true, but not for Joe. He does business there.
In fact, on July 13 of this year, David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, did call the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed my account that Valerie did not propose me for the trip:
"'She did not propose me,' he [Wilson] said -- others at the CIA did so. A senior CIA official said that is his understanding too."
Another unnamed alleged source.
Second conclusion (From Sen. Roberts' additional comments): "Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided."
This proposed conclusion addresses Wilson’s claims about details of the forgeries, and his accounts how he knew Cheney got the details of his trip (the latter he doesn't address). A large part of his pubic comments were to suggest Cheney got his report. As the Report states, Cheney did not.
---This conclusion states that I told the committee staff that I "may have become confused about my own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that the names and dates on the documents were not correct." At the time that I was asked that question, I was not afforded the opportunity to review the articles to which the staff was referring. I have now done so.
On March 7, 2003, the director general of the IAEA reported to the U.N. Security Council that the documents that had been given to him were "not authentic." His deputy, Jacques Baute, was even more direct, pointing out that the forgeries were so obvious that a quick Google search would have exposed their flaws. A State Department spokesman was quoted the next day as saying about the forgeries, "We fell for it." From that time on the details surrounding the documents became public knowledge and were widely reported. I was not the source of information regarding the forensic analysis of the documents in question; the IAEA was.
— Joe proves Roberts' point - he relied on press reports. One possibility for Joe's repeated claims about the press reports might be to dissuade consideration of the possibility that his wife told him about the documents. A high-ranking American official who investigated claims for the CIA that Iraq was seeking uranium to restart its nuclear programme accused Britain and the US yesterday of deliberately ignoring his findings to make the case for war against Saddam Hussein. The retired US ambassador said it was all but impossible that British intelligence had not received his report - drawn up by the CIA - which revealed that documents, purporting to show a deal between Iraq and the West African state of Niger, were forgeries. The ex-diplomat says he is outraged by the way evidence gathered by the intelligence community was selectively used in Washington to support pre- determined policies and bolster a case for war.
Wilson's July 6, 2003 New York Times piece was not his first public appearance via the media on Niger matters - just the first one by name. For at least two months before July 6 he had been talking to the press, and talking about the forgeries. Here’s excerpts from a June 29 “Independent” article.
When he saw similar claims in Britain's dossier on Iraq last September, he even went as far as telling CIA officials that they needed to alert their British counterparts to his investigation. ...
...The former diplomat - who had served as an ambassador in Africa - had been approached by the CIA in February 2002 to carry out a "discreet" task: to investigate if it was possible that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger. He said the CIA had been asked to find out in a direct request from the office of the Vice-President, Dick Cheney.
During eight days in Niger, he discovered it was impossible for Iraq to have been buying the quantities of uranium alleged. "My report was very unequivocal," he said. He also learnt that the signatures of officials vital to any transaction were missing from the documents. On his return, he was debriefed by the CIA.
One senior CIA official has told reporters the agency's findings were distributed to the Defence Intelligence Agency, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Justice Department, the FBI and the office of the Vice President on the same day in early March. Six months later, the former diplomat read in a newspaper that Britain had issued a dossier claiming Iraq was seeking to buy uranium in Africa. He contacted officials at CIA headquarters and said they needed to clarify whether the British were referring to Niger. If so, the record needed to be corrected. He heard nothing, and in January President George Bush said in his State of the Union speech that the "British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa".
The first time I spoke publicly about the Niger issue was in response to the State Department's disclaimer. On CNN a few days later, in response to a question, I replied that I believed the U.S. government knew more about the issue than the State Department spokesman had let on and that he had misspoken. I did not speak of my trip.
My first public statement was in my article of July 6 published in the New York Times, written only after it became apparent that the administration was not going to deal with the Niger question unless it was forced to.
— But the government was "dealing" with the Niger question, as the Report indicates. Wilson means that there should be something "forced" publicly. This might be related to the fact that as early as May 2003 he became a foreign policy adviser to the John Kerry presidential campaign.
I wrote the article because I believed then, and I believe now, that it was important to correct the record on the statement in the president's State of the Union address which lent credence to the charge that Iraq was actively reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. I believed that the record should reflect the facts as the U.S. government had known them for over a year.
The contents of my article do not appear in the body of the report and it is not quoted in the "additional comments." In that article, I state clearly that "as for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors -- they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government -- and were probably forged. (And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)"
The first time I actually saw what were represented as the documents was when Andrea Mitchell, the NBC correspondent, handed them to me in an interview on July 21. I was not wearing my glasses and could not read them. I have to this day not read them. I would have absolutely no reason to claim to have done so.
— Why does Andrea Mitchell have them? Why wouldn’t he read them, isn’t he a bit curious? He's freindly with Mitchell, he could have asked them later. Wilson is defensive about never having seen the documents, or anything else that might give the impression that he got information from his wife, whether he did or not.
My mission was to look into whether such a transaction took place or could take place. It had not and could not. By definition that makes the documents bogus.
— This reasoning does not make the documents bogus, and does not define anything. Wilson commonly answers different questions than asked. After all, he was a successful diplomat. If one asks him “did the Iraqi seek uranium in Niger as stated by Bush” he answers, effectively, “no, they did not and could not buy uranium from Niger.”
The text of the "additional comments" also asserts that "during Mr. Wilson's media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the President had lied to the American people, that the Vice President had lied, and that he had 'debunked' the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa."
My article in the New York Times makes clear that I attributed to myself "a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs." After it became public that there were then-Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick's report and the report from a four-star Marine Corps general, Carleton Fulford, in the files of the U.S. government, I went to great lengths to point out that mine was but one of three reports on the subject. I never claimed to have "debunked" the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. I claimed only that the transaction described in the documents that turned out to be forgeries could not have occurred and did not occur. I did not speak out on the subject until several months after it became evident that what underpinned the assertion in the State of the Union address were those documents, reports of which had sparked Vice President Cheney's original question that led to my trip. The White House must have agreed. The day after my article appeared in the Times a spokesman for the president told the Washington Post that "the sixteen words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union."
--- For explanation, Wilson is saying here that the early reports to the U.S. from a foreign intelligence source were based on the forged documents, though the U.S. didn't see the actual documents until late 2002. I can’t find Wilson saying “debunked” in quotations, but this is one of his early leaks to the press using a similar term, from May 2003. When I raised the Mystery of the Missing W.M.D. recently, hawks fired barrages of reproachful e-mail at me. The gist was: "You *&#*! Who cares if we never find weapons of mass destruction, because we've liberated the Iraqi people from a murderous tyrant."
The New York Times
Missing In Action: Truth
By Nicholas D. Kristof
I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged. (Note-Wilson couldn't have known some documents were "forged" at the time of his trip, which this sentence seems to imply otherwise).
The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted -- except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway.
"It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for a year," one insider said. Another example is the abuse of intelligence from Hussein Kamel, a son-in-law of Saddam Hussein and head of Iraq's biological weapons program until his defection in 1995.
...Now something is again rotten in the state of Spookdom.
Wilson often stated that the names and dates were wrong on the forgeries. I'm not sure what the IAEA specifically said in February 2003. The bipartisan Report states:
"The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article ("CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid," June 12, 2003) which caid, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because `the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'" Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusin 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 former ambassador said that he may have "misspoken" to the reporter when he said he concluded the cdocuments were "forged." He also said he may have become confused about his own recollectin after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have though he had seen the names himself. (!) The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of government officials which should have been on the document.
Interestingly, the Senate Intelligence Report notes that the earlier reports from foreign intelligence about the transaction had no inconsistencies about names and dates save for one "Wednesday" should have been a "Friday". Which is intriguing, because it was assumed these earlier reports reflected the information in the forged documents that were later turned over to the U.S. The Report notes that there is an ongoing FBI "disinformation" investigation.
I have been very careful to say that while I believe that the use of the 16 words in the State of the Union address was a deliberate attempt to deceive the Congress of the United States, I do not know what role the president may have had other than he has accepted responsibility for the words he spoke. I have also said on many occasions that I believe the president has proven to be far more protective of his senior staff than they have been to him.
— So someone on Bush's senior staff “lied”. However, the bipartisn report debunks that, and Bush cited “British” intelligence. Interestingly, Bush might have lucked out choosing the British reports which weren't tainted by the forged documents. The Report suggests his speech writers, who didn't know any of the doubts about the American intelligence, chose to use the British comment because they felt it safer, as it could be linked by the public to publicly released information - by the British themselves. Indeed, the British have consistently and publicly, and before Wilson's New York Times article, stated that their intelligence about Niger wsan't based on the forged documents. Bush's use of the word "British," gave the anti-Bush spinners an additional complexity to address, or step around.
The "additional comments" also assert: "The Committee found that, for most analysts, the former ambassador's report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal." In fact, the body of the Senate report suggests the exact opposite:
In August 2002, a CIA NESA [Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis] report on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities did not include the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium information. (page 48)
In September 2002, during coordination of a speech with an NSC staff member, the CIA analyst suggested the reference to Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa be removed. The CIA analyst said the NSC staff member said that would leave the British "flapping in the wind." (page 50)
— Etc. I omitted many of Wilson's finds for brevity. Essentially Wilson cherry picks comments from the Report that don't really address the point Sen. Roberts is making. By reciting many Wilson seems to hope the reader forgets what Sen. Roberts actually said. It would be take too much time to debunk each of the inferences Wilson suggests, so I will only recite what the Report, agreed to by all Senators:
Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was an unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.
It is clear from the body of the Senate report that the intelligence community, including the DCI himself, made several attempts to ensure that the president did not become a "fact witness" on an allegation that was so weak. A thorough reading of the report substantiates the claim made in my opinion piece in the New York Times and in subsequent interviews I have given on the subject. The 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address, as the White House now acknowledges.
I undertook this mission at the request of my government in response to a legitimate concern that Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. This was a national security issue that has concerned me since I was the deputy chief of mission in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq before and during the first Gulf War.
At the time of my trip I was in private business and had not offered my views publicly on the policy we should adopt toward Iraq. Indeed, throughout the debate in the run-up to the war, I took the position that the U.S. be firm with Saddam Hussein on the question of weapons of mass destruction programs, including backing tough diplomacy with the credible threat of force. In that debate I never mentioned my trip to Niger. I did not share the details of my trip until May 2003, after the war was over, and then only when it became clear that the administration was not going to address the issue of the State of the Union statement.
It is essential that the errors and distortions in the additional comments be corrected for the public record. Nothing could be more important for the American people than to have an accurate picture of the events that led to the decision to bring the United States into war in Iraq. The Senate Intelligence Committee has an obligation to present to the American people the factual basis of that process. I hope that this letter is helpful in that effort. I look forward to your further "additional comments."
Sincerely,
Joseph C. Wilson IV, Washington, D.C.
I'm running out of time, so I'll challenge only one word in this remaining text: "Sincerely."
Finally, I post here some lines from Sen. Roberts' additional comments, which explain my reference to Wilson's "literary flair" at the start of this post:
In an interview with Committee staff, Mr. Wilson was asked how he knew some of the things he was stating publicly with such confidence. On at least two occasions he admitted that he had no direct knowledge to support some of his claims and that he was drawing on either unrelated past experiences or no information at all. For example, when asked how he “knew” that the Intelligence Community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book, he told Committee staff that his assertion may have involved “a little literary flair."
And you done good.
However,
1) Summation is; Wilson is a liar, a big far liar, not as big as Michael Moore, but a big...etc.
2) Just try getting quoted anywhere other than FR [FOX might plagiarize, go ahead and let 'em do it]. And,
3) The 48+/- percent who supported Wilson then, support Wilson now, and will support Wilson tomorrow.
Thanks, you did a lot more than I'd have attempted.
No better proven than by this:
"I did not speak out on the subject until several months after it became evident that what underpinned the assertion in the State of the Union address were those documents, reports of which had sparked Vice President Cheney's original question that led to my trip."
"Those documents", of course, being the "forged documents" which purportedly discredited any uranium deal between Niger and Iraq.
However, we know "those documents" had nothing to do with Bush's assertion in the SOTU -- he specifically cited "British intelligence".
And, we know "those documents" couldn't have "sparked" Cheney's original request that led to Wilson's trip -- because nobody knew they existed in March, 2002. They didn't come to light until that summer, as I recall.
There is an almost juvenile insistence, by Wilson and the Democrats, to continue to cite the "forged documents" even though we now know they played no role in any critical decision. They keep clinging to this "stalking horse" because, as the truth becomes known, they have no leg left to stand on.
Which leads me to believe that the "forged documents" were created as "disinformation" in the first place -- in order to be discredited and, thus, mask any transaction(s) which might really be taking place.
In fact, I now wonder if the Democrat faction in the CIA may have created and planted them with the Italians...
We need to keep Wilson talking. Thanks to his bigmouth syndrome, we learned his 1999 trip had something to do with uranium, too. Why would the Clinton administration have suspected such a thing, I wonder...???
The more he talks, the less credibility he has, the more he damages the Kerry foreign policy.
Helluva job, Shermy. Helluva job!
ROFL!
(NOTE: for those who haven't been following this story all that closely, with the very first reports in Novak's column it was clear there was something very fishy going on ~ some of us even then suspected purposeful sabotage of our intelligence apparatus. And, as it turns out, that's what it was ~ and apparantly under the direction of the very same forces who are now foisting John Kerry off on the unsuspecting Democrats.)
Actually, he may be right..to a degree. The Senate Report is heavily redacted, but it does seem that 2 or 3 "reports" from a "foreign intelligence service", probably France, were partially or totally related to the forged documents. The forgeries themselves were only turned over to the U.S. in late 2002.
And reading between the lines, there's some tantalizing matters. The French only "initially" relied on the documents. And if the forgeries actually have wrong dates and names, this would not comport with the reports supposedly about them - which only have one date wrong.
The retired US ambassador said it was all but impossible that British intelligence had not received his report - drawn up by the CIA - which revealed that documents, purporting to show a deal between Iraq and the West African state of Niger, were forgeries.
How would he know the British received the report? He's publicly criticized the Brits for not turning over there intelligence. (They might have more recently - there's big sections about it redacted in the Senate Report.) Also, this statment seems to say Wilson told the British newspaper that his memo revealed the documents were forgeries. How could he know that?
When he saw similar claims in Britain's dossier on Iraq last September, he even went as far as telling CIA officials that they needed to alert their British counterparts to his investigation. ...
I never read elsewhere that the September 2002 British Dossier spurred Joe Wilson to act. Only that the January 2003 SOTU speech did.
During eight days in Niger, he discovered it was impossible for Iraq to have been buying the quantities of uranium alleged. "My report was very unequivocal," he said. He also learnt that the signatures of officials vital to any transaction were missing from the documents. On his return, he was debriefed by the CIA.
Again, he couldn't have known about the forgery issue at that time, non?
SO WILSON WENT NIGER TO FIND OUT IF SADDAM PURCHASED URANIUM,
No. Wilson went to Niger because some individuals in the CIA, acting on their own initiative, arranged for him to go at the suggestion of his wife. What their real motives are is not known for certain, but it is presumed that he was sent to talk to some former officials in Niger to see if he could learn anything new to add to what reports the CIA had already obtained and what it had been given by other intelligence services, among them Italy and the UK, which indicated that Iraq was SEEKING to purchase uranium in Africa. It didn't matter if it had succeeded in buying uranium, the interest was in whether or not Iraq was still interested, still motivated to pursue a nuclear program. Obviously if it wasn't, it would not be seeking uranium much less buying it. Iraq claimed it quit its nuke program in its dossier- if it was seeking uranium then its claim to the UN is false, and is a violation justifying keeping sanctions in place.
It wasn't Wilson's job to analyze his info. It was his 'job' to make inquiries, not judgements. I put 'job' in quotes because he is not to our knowledge an employee of the CIA. His only current job description seems to be 'self employed' and "Kerry advisor.'
HE FOUND NOTHING TO PROVE SUCH ALLIGATIONS.
He wasn't trying to find evidence to prove Iraq bought uranium. He was sent to find out if Iraq TRIED to purchase uranium. There is a big difference between the two though apparently you don't see it. He did indeed find evidence of the latter- but chose to obscure his findings because he either knew very well what it meant and feared that others would come to the inevitable conclusion, or he wss a complete moron. It meant that Iraq had no intention of ending its quest for a nuclear weapon. He should know that, married as he is to a WMD expert.
THE ADMINISTRATION'S ATTACK DOGS WENT AFTER HIM.
There is no evidence to support that theory.
HE SHOULD HAVE LIED
He should not have lied. That's the problem with Wilson- he lies like an arthritic dog with only one leg. He lies even when he doesn't have to.
Wilson shouldn't have been selected to go to Niger in the first place. He should have declined to go to Niger because of his conflict of interest when asked. since he went anyway, he should have had the balls to put his name on his report and submit it on paper. He should have known that his intel on Niger was not all intel on Niger instead of assuming that HE was the first and last word on the matter. He should have known that others were better judges of his intel than he because others had access to more info on which to base a judgement. He should not have written an op ed full of BS designed to undermine not merely his own findings in Niger but also to undermine the position of the US and UK, to undermine our personnel, and to undermine others unknown who had done their jobs without fanfare. He should have kept the confidence of others intead of seeking face time and profit for himself. He should not have knowingly made accusations against those with whom he disagreed when he had no evidence, not one shred to support his claims.
He should not have permitted himself to be cast as a conservative when his record spoke otherwise.
AND SAID YES SADDAM PURCHASED ENOUGH URANIUM TO MAKE A THOUSAND BOMBS SO MAY BE HE WOULD HAVE BEEN PROMOTED TO SECRETARY OF STATE?
He would not have been promoted by this administration to Secretary of State in payment for a lie and you know it. He appears to be banking on getting a reward of some form from a wannabe President Kerry or some other individual or group in exchange for a series of lies.
tHIS WILSON AFFAIR IS TAKING TOO MUCH INC AS IT IS. THEY SHOULD GIVE IT A REST.
No, it should not be given a rest. Wilson is not only working for Kerry but he deserves exposure for his dishonesty and his motivations. He has some questions to answer for his other connections to Rock Creek Co. And he and his wife have things to answer for in regard to the exposure of the front company- unless she lied about her employer on an FEC form without a go-ahead from the CIA. She could have just written US Government down as her employer- why did she lie or why did she expose the front company if it was such a thing?
Those who selected and sent Wilson to Niger have some things to answer for. The Kerry campaign has some things to answer for, and the book publisher has some things to answer for, and the CIA has to answer for not investigating the Navy's report on Niger uranium in Benin.
the Navy's report on Niger uranium in Benin.
What's that about?
Want to put this Link here before I lose track of it:
Report on Prewar Iraq Intelligence
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
A PDF document , 500 + pages
When the former ambassador spoke to Committee staff, his description of his findings differed from the DO intelligence report and his account of information provided to him by the CIA differed from the CIA officials' accounts in some respects. First, the former ambassador described his findings to Committee staff as more directly related to Iraq and, specifically, as refuting both the possibility that Niger could have sold uranium to Iraq and that Iraq approached Niger to purchase uranium. The intelligence report described how the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to rogue nations, and noted that Nigerien officials denied knowledge of any deals to sell uranium to any rogue states, but did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium. Secon, the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium transaction. In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should of appeared on any documentation of such a deal. The onlyh mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former Prime Minister Miyaki. Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the informatino was the (..redeacted..) intelligence service. The DO reports officer told Committee staff that he did not provide the former ambassador with any information about the source or details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and, noted that there were no "documents" circulating in the IC at the time of the former ambassador's trip, only intelligence reports from (..redacted..) intelligence regarding an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Meeting notes and other correspondence show that details of the reporting were discussed at the February 19, 2002 meeting, but none of the meeting participants recall telling the former ambassador the source of the report (..redacted..).Which leaves us with the question - who are Wilson's "CIA contacts" that gave him this information? And when did it happen?
See pages 59 and 68, right after this comment:
On November 22, 2002, during a meeting with State Department officials, the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs Director for Nonproliferation said that France had information on an Iraqi attempt to buy uranium from Niger. He said athat no uranium had been shipped, but France believed the reporting was true that Iraq had made a procurement attempt for uranium from Niger.
Watch for this expression to be used on tomorrow's talking head shows. The defense attorney style questioners will give him a chance to defend himself and lie in any way he wants.
Let me guess.
The lovely and gracious Ms. Valerie?
And when did it happen?
Another wild guess.
Within twelve hours after Ms. Valerie herself was briefed?
***************************
Ol' Joe protesteth far too much regarding Ms. Secret Agent's role in his hiring or regarding any "intelligence sharing" that may have gone on.
Yes and what the Heck was this game all about?
Since Kerry was on the Senate oversight committee maybe he felt that any information counter to the conclusion that Wilson was endeavoring to construct would be very harmful ??
It might also mean he had information direct from someone in the CIA that the rest of the committee did not have.
We're off to see the Wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Plame!
Well, his wife is a natural subject. And looking back at all his verbal dodges, is his purpose to create a plausible scenario that it wasn't his wife? I assume his wife was not permitted to tell him anything.
BTW, it could be other contacts. He was a member of the National Security Council for a brief period. He could be described as a "Senior Intelligence Official" - though not temporally accurate since 1998.
Ping.
"The lovely and gracious Ms. Valerie?"
My first guess, too. . .
.
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