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“Nobody can call a spade a spade any more.”

Well, what’s the spade in this story and who’s wielding it?

The whole yellowcake/Wilson-Plame kerfuffle was originally set off by a New York Times article, What I Didn't Find in Africa, Published on Sunday, July 6, 2003 by Joseph C. Wilson 4th. It was not, however, set off immediately. The story languished, largely ignored, through August and on
into September. It was then that the handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret) jump-started a revival process, by making the rounds on the TV news shows circuit, accusing the Bush Administration of leaking the name of his wife, who had been a CIA operative of some still not clearly defined status. On this second time around the Press caught their cue from Wilson’s
revival attempt, and the hounds were soon at full bay.

But first . . . . The famous “sixteen words”:
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

In his July 6, 2003 formal written report to the NY Times, the handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret) did not state he reported to the CIA in March of 2002 that certain yellowcake documents were forged. He referred to news articles about an alleged forgery, which everyone seemed to assume were the same documents. In doing so, Ambassador Wilson benefited himself by playing a game of “Back To The Future” wherein he refered to events and facts that were not known until some nine months after his trip to Niger and his subsequent report to the CIA.

Reportedly, the forged documents were first picked up by Italian intelligence and the information leaked to the Italian tabloids about the time of Wilson’s CIA trip to Niger. A few months before the March 20, 2003 Iraq War begun, the Italians released the documents themselves to certain select parties; the CIA, State, and, it is believed, to British and French Intel. At that time, the documents were publically exposed as a forgery by the IAEA. (Interestingly enough, it was our State Dept.
which gave the information to the IAEA) The documents were confirmed as a forgery by British Intelligence when Blair stated the documents were known as a forgery to them, and had nothing to do with the information they had developed about Iraq’s attempts to obtain yellowcake uranium in
Africa. The documents were later confirmed by the CIA as an “obvious forgery,” not even cleverly done.

The forgeries made a big splash in the news and the administration hoped they would be a confirming piece of intel, but those hopes were dashed by the IAEA. The famous sixteen words in the President’s SOTU speech, about which so many words have been written, made no reference to those documents. All those words uttered about one sentence have turned out to be a lot of hot air. The sentence stands nowhere refuted in any particular.

British Intelligence stands by their sources to this day. Vetted and re-vetted, confirmed and re-confirmed, their report has stood the test of review by the Blair Government and by that of a parliamentary special commission. It is to every president’s interest to have available the best intel possible. In that case, it appears to have come from the Brits. Nice to have them on our side.

[and, we subsequently know that the British Intelligence on this matter was again confirmed during an investigation into the suicide of a British Intel officer, and again confirmed in the recent Butler Report. Now, that’s four confirmations from four distinct bodies. How much is enough?]

In September of 2003, when finally asked, the IAEA confirmed that they, like British Intel, had evidence of attempted purchases of yellowcake in Africa by the Hussein regime. With all the speculations and wild rumors flying around pretending to be “news stories”, none of the reporters had thought to ask the IAEA what they knew, except one person . . . Clifford D May.

According to Bob Novak (Mission to Niger, July 14, 2003), it was Plame who suggested that her hubby be sent Nigeria, and, again, according to Novak (and his information comes from highly placed sources inside the CIA), the subsequent report of the handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson (ret) was so indifferently done that it was deemed unworthy to be brought to the attention of people on up the line. So, who advised President Bush not to use the
famous 16 words? He received no such advice. The original criticism, from the start of this farce, was directed to the failure to advise against the 16 words.

No where in his report did Novak attribute the revelation of the lovely and vivacious Valerie Plame as a CIA operative to “White House sources.” No such language appears in his columns or in the transcripts of his interviews. In fact, Novak went out of his way to stress that the sources of his information did not come from White House sources.

If Miss Val was, in fact, a NOC, then neither her maiden name nor her married name should have been used in connection with the CIA, reportedly, her maiden name was supposed to be secret. If it was a secret, it wasn’t much of a secret (see Bob Novak - Meet the Press, 5 Oct.). Clifford May, former NY Times reporter and currently president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies,
reported that he had been informed of Ms. Plame’s CIA employment, and not by anyone in the White House, but rather by a former government employee - and informed in such an off-hand manner as to lead him to believe this information was well known to insiders. There are others who have reported being aware of the same information (Brit Hume of Fox News, through various Washington insiders of his acquaintance, for example).

Actually, the report of the handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret) to the CIA has never been put in the public domain (technically - CIA Director George Tenet did issue a statement on 11 July, 2003 discussing Ambassador Wilson’s verbal report), and certainly not even
in a technical sense before the IAEA made their disclosure, so theirs was the first public announcement. The CIA has yet to have released a transcript of the verbal debriefing given by Ambassador Wilson to that body, and it seems that Ambassador Wilson submitted no formal written report to anyone, other than his formal written report to the New York Times, published on 6 July, 2003).

To be sure, there were news rumors of reports flying about during the last few months before the Iraq War; these reports all purportedly unable to confirm a sale of yellowcake to the Hussein regime. Leaving aside the question, whence all the rumors? there are several other intriguing issues:

Presumably, having been dispatched on an intelligence gathering mission at his wife’s urging, the
handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret) signed a standard CIA confidentiality agreement.

Presumably, then, before submitting his written report to the New York Times and launching a whirlwind tour of the talk shows and interview circuits, Ambassador Wilson secured a release of his confidentiality agreement with the CIA. If he did not, then that’s intriguing. If he was not
required, in the first place, to sign such an agreement, that’s more intriguing. If he sought no such confidentiality release at all, that’s even more intriguing. And, all of these questions are much more
intriguing than who first mentioned Miss Val’s name as a NOC, unless you want to go back to 1994 as Nicholas Kristof did.

But, what’s most intriguing is that no one seems to have thought to ask the handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret) about his confidentiality status with the CIA, nor sought a comment from the CIA on the matter. Likewise, events raise the question whether
Ambassador Wilson considered his primary responsibility to report back to the CIA, or to report back to the New York Times. Certainly, his most formal report was submitted to the New York Times.

Equally intriguing is that, in all this uproar and outraged howling over sixteen words uttered some ten months before October of ‘03, no one (including Ambassador Wilson, himself) seems to have caught onto the fact that his verbal report to the CIA contains material constituting another
confirming source for the British Intelligence report upon which President Bush based his initial comment. Which simply demonstrates that the object of this whole exercise was, from the start, over something other than the accuracy of the famous “sixteen words,” or the outing of a covert CIA
agent, whose status was something less than covert in the first place.

The handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret) began his rants against the Bush Administration with a flat-out, unequivocal charge that Karl Rove had instigated the leak ‘exposing’ Miss Val’s connection to the CIA. When pressed, he had to admit he had no basis for
his charge, but he went on to state that he was sure that the leak had at least the tacit approval of Rove. When pressed further over the next several days, Ambassador Wilson finally had to confess that he had absolutely no information indicating that Rove had anything at all to do with the leak.

It doesn’t appear that the lovely and vivacious Valerie Plame (aka Mrs. Joseph Wilson) has neither had her career ended, nor her safety compromised. A legitimate knock on the leak possibly could be that it compromised individuals who may have come in contact with Miss Plame in her NOC
capacity prior to 1995. The CIA hasn’t been specific about that.

In September of 2003 the IAEA confirmed the British Intel Report, so they actually strengthened the Administration’s case. According to George Tenet, the report of the handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret) did not address the issue of forged documents
purporting to show that Iraq sought uranium purchases in Africa. That removes any motivation for the Bush Administration to undermine Wilson’s so-called report or bust Miss Val’s so-called cover, and, in fact, it would appear that Ambassador Wilson, in fact, provided the Bush Administration with a third source of intel confirming the British Intelligence report.

It has been reported Miss Val and her husband have both publicly stated that her safety has been compromised, that her career is ended, and that they have requested personal security from the government. Maybe so, but there have been no news articles reporting an actual request submitted
through channels, nor of the government providing any security. Miss Val seems to continue to go to work, and her intelligence experience, along with Ambassador Wilson’s diplomatic experience would suggest they ought to know enough to follow up on their little charade, if they wish to sustain the integrity of their cover. However, there is no indication they did.

It is difficult to reconcile all these accusations with other events. When the handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret) was returned to Washington DC to finish out his career in the Clinton Administration, it transpired that in 1997 he and Miss Valerie Plame met for the first time. What followed was a passionate courtship that set all Washington atwitter.
Reportedly, Maureen Dowd positively gushed over the affair. In 1998, the two happily became married and set up a love nest in the DC area - Miss Dowd still gushing. In early 2000, the newlyweds became proud parents of twins - presumably Miss Dowd still gushing.

It is difficult to comprehend how Miss Val could have been involved in overseas undercover operations in the midst of all this courtship and marital bliss, particularly since it included the bearing and caring of twins.

For the answer to this puzzlement, we can turn to Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times (no less). In an 11 October article, entitled Secrets of the Scandal, he relates what he calls “a few pertinent facts:”

1) Prior to his arrest in 1994 for espionage, Aldrich Ames gave up Valerie Plame’s name to the Russians, or so the CIA thinks. Believing her undercover security to have been compromised, the CIA brought her back to Washington for her own safety (that’s in 1994).

2) Miss Val was moving up in the agency, and, prior to her “outing,” she was already in transition to management, away from her “NOC” status to diplomatic protection under her new cover as an official at State.

3) As she moved up in the CIA, Miss Val’s “intelligence connections became known a bit in Washington,” as Kristof puts it, but he insists that her job “remained a closely held secret.”

So, it would seem that even Liberal columnists/journalists sometimes commit journalism, in spite of their best efforts to stifle the impulse. And, it would seem that just about everything in Novak’s column of 14 July is confirmed by a second source, including an explanation why CIA sources did
not press Novak very hard to keep Miss Val’s identity secret. And, it would seem that, to whatever extent she was ever in danger, Miss Val enjoyed that status since 1994.

Along with other cited sources supporting Mr. Novak’s statement that Miss Val’s CIA employment was not much of a secret, we can now see why her employment was not much of a secret. So Mr. Novak’s statement stands, backed up by multiple other sources.

A sidebar: Oddly enough, had Ames not outed her and had the CIA not recalled Miss Val to Washington, it is entirely possible that she would not have met her future hubby and the father-to-be of their twins. Romance flourishes even in the bowls of the CIA (surely much to Miss Dowd’s
gushing pleasure).

It’s been asserted that Ambassador Wilson’s unsupported allegation to the effect that Karl Rove was involved in the leak, was nothing more than “a failure to properly qualify an opinion.” That’s some failure, and quite the improperly stated qualifier. From a categorical assertion - not an opinion - that Rove instigated the leak, to a lame “but it had to have been done with Rove’s tacit approval,” to not
a clue whence the leak. Bonaparte had less distance to retreat when he fled Moscow. But he makes other allegations (Wilson, not Bonaparte) not just unsupported, but contradicted, by his own report.

Examining, in some detail, Ambassador Wilson’’s formal report to the New York Times:

In his report, the handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret) disclosed nothing which would discredit what the Bush Administration had been saying - merely the allegation that it did. From the outset, Ambassador Wilson’s report to the NY Times was a mass of contradictions.

From the outset is literally the case, beginning with the title, What I Didn't Find in Africa. The first thing Ambassador Wilson didn’t find in Africa was virtually all of Africa. Ambassador Wilson could have more truthfully entitled his report to the NY Times “What I Didn’t Find in a Café That Serves Sweet Mint Tea in Niamey, Niger.”

In the body of his report, Ambassador Wilson did assign a more modest role to his efforts, intimating that his was but a “small role” in a larger effort to discover more about Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium in Africa. Yet, a little later in his written report he identifies himself as the one who was the subject of “Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger.” Hold on! One little old retired ambassador was the inspiration for all those stories? And, did not these news stories infer a much larger effort to find documentation regarding uranium sales? Yet Ambassador Wilson indicates the effort was confined to his little eight-day effort. It seems these
articles were a good deal more rumor than news. And his declaration raises the suspicion that Ambassador Wilson, himself, was the source of those rumors. In his report to the NY Times, Ambassador Wilson mentions a “memorandum of understanding” (for an Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger) about which VP Cheney’s office had questions,
presumably seeking a firmer validation of its authenticity. This, then, was to be the primary objective of Ambassador Wilson’s mission to Niger. Yet, he recounts no further effort to determine the authenticity of the memorandum, making but one brief mention of it later on, saying that he never saw the memorandum, but that news accounts were pointing out glaring errors in the document.

But, hold on! Ambassador Wilson benefited from future events in writing about an event of some sixteen months earlier. Back to the future is alive and well, and residing in intelligence reports submitted by retired Ambassadors. The news accounts to which Ambassador Wilson referred occurred during the last months prior to the outbreak of major hostilities in March of 2003, about
the same time the IAEA exposed that same memorandum as an obviously forged document, and about nine months after the Ambassador’s mission to Niger.

Furthermore, this is the extent to which the CIA responds to a request for information from the VP’s office? One retired diplomat, unsuited by training or disposition to carry out his assignment. One document of questionable parentage, the primary object of an investigation, but about which nothing further is said. What became of the larger effort to which Ambassador Wilson inferred? Why did
Miss Val ever propose such an unqualified person for such an assignment? Maybe because he was her hubby? Or maybe because they both wanted to sabotage an intelligence operation?

It would be fair, however, to assume that not all in Ambassador Wilson’s oral debriefing at the CIA would necessarily be included in his written report to the NY Times, so surely some mention of the memorandum of understanding document must have found its way into the debriefing he gave to the CIA. Well . . . did it?

Again, referring to the statement of 11 July, 2003 by George Tenet, wherein he states (among other things) “There was no mention in the report [Ambassador Wilson’s debriefing] of forged documents - or any suggestion of the existence of documents at all.” So, it develops that the handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret) was entirely silent on the one subject which, by
his own understanding, was the most important object of his mission to Niger.

Among the other things in Director Tenet’s statement, we find this: “Because this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad, it was given a normal and wide distribution, but we did not brief it to the president, vice president or other senior officials.” It develops then, that, despite Ambassador Wilson’s assertion he was certain his report
had been reviewed at the highest levels of the administration, senior officials were, in fact, not in
receipt of his report. Considering the quality of the report, one can understand why.

Ambassador Wilson did report one interesting bit of information, which he surely regarded to be of little consequence at the time, being unable to comprehend playing “back to the future” in reverse. In his 11 July statement Director Tenet describes the transaction as follows: “He [Wilson] reported back to us that one of the former Nigerian officials he met stated he was unaware of any contract being signed between Niger and rogue states for the sale of uranium during his tenure in office. The
same former official also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss
‘expanding commercial relations’ between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales.”

If we play a little “back to the future,” and relate this to a certain sixteen words uttered by a president in his SOTU some ten months later, the incident takes on a different light. So, it would appear that rather than discrediting the administration's claims about attempted uranium acquisitions from Niger, Ambassador Wilson provided additional support to British Intelligence some fifteen
months before the issue even became controversial.

The above, except for a small mention in brackets, was known by, or prior to, October, 2003, based on newspaper and TV reports of the time. They demonstrate that virtually all of what we know now was known in 2003, and that it was the handsome and distinguished Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV (ret), his wife, the lovely and vivacious Miss Val, and certain reporters other than Bob Novak, who
were the liars.

So, let’s do call a spade a spade, and admit that the morons of the press don’t get to spread their partizan lies like they did twenty years ago, because they now have FR, among others, dogging their heels every step of the way.