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Why Can't The Gray Lady Read? (Rove not on AF1 with Powell and memo?)
CQ ^

Posted on 07/16/2005 7:26:49 AM PDT by hipaatwo

The New York Times reports on a memo that Colin Powell reportedly carried aboard Air Force One on a trip to Africa the week before Robert Novak named Valerie Plame as a CIA agent. The importance of this memo revolves around the people who accompanied the President and Powell on the Africa trip and the fact that it describes the circumstances of Joe Wilson's hiring for the mission to Niger. However, the report by Richard Stevenson makes several factual errors that even a quick perusal of the Intelligence Committee report would correct.

The first error committed by Stevenson is one of omission. The Times has been beating a supposed Karl Rove connection to death over the past few weeks. However, if one looks at the contact dates for the two conversations Rove had with reporters -- July 9 for Novak, July 11 for Matt Cooper -- obviously Rove didn't go to Africa and didn't have access to the memo. After all, both reporters called Rove, not the other way around, and both started their conversations on different topics that hardly would have been so pressing that they would have been redirected by satellite to AF1.

So if the memo does hold any key to the leak, Rove can't be the leaker.

The other errors misrepresent what happened in Niger and how the CIA selected Joe Wilson as its investigator. Stevenson writes this about the Niger information:

On Thursday, a person who has been officially briefed on the matter said that Karl Rove, President Bush's senior adviser, had spoken about Ms. Wilson with Mr. Novak before Mr. Novak published a column on July 14, 2003, identifying the C.I.A. officer by her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Rove, the person said, told Mr. Novak he had heard much the same information, making him one of two sources Mr. Novak cited for his information.

But the person said Mr. Rove first heard from Mr. Novak the name of Mr. Wilson's wife and her precise role in the C.I.A.'s decision to send her husband to Africa to investigate a report, later discredited, that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire nuclear material there.

Had Stevenson actually read the SSIC report, he would know that the report in fact was substantiated by Wilson's investigation. Iraq had on at least one occasion in the three years prior to Wilson's trip attempted to open secret trade negotiations with Niger:

[Wilson's] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999,(REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted "expanding commercial relations" to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq."

Given that Niger exports a total of four commodities, that assumption of Iraqi interest in uranium ore should have appeared rather solid. No one goes into secret talks to discuss the purchase of livestock, cowpeas, or onions, the only other Nigerien exports. This demonstrated that Saddam still planned on pursuing WMD and had actively searched for new resources for a nuclear-weapons program. Stevenson got this exactly wrong.

The other major factual error comes in Stevenson's description of the role of Valerie Plame in Wilson's selection. He underplays Plame's efforts to get her husband involved in the Niger mission:

The notes, which did not identify Ms. Wilson or her husband by name, said the meeting was "apparently convened by" the wife of a former ambassador "who had the idea to dispatch" him to Niger because of his contacts in the region. Mr. Wilson had been ambassador to Gabon.

The Intelligence Committee report said the former ambassador's wife had a different account of her role, saying she introduced him and left after about three minutes.

Talk about cherry-picking! Yes, the above does describe what Plame did, but it leaves out a few other items. Again, had Stevenson bothered to read the relevant portions of the SSIC report, he would have found that Plame was much more enthusiastic about hiring hubby Joe:

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 DELETED requesting concurrence with CPD's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger and requesting any additional 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 him "there's this crazy report" on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region ...

On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO's Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate 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." The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

Plame didn't just make an off-hand suggestion and then play hostess once. She repeatedly suggested Wilson for the job, wrote a memorandum requesting him for the mission, and then delivered the assignment to Wilson herself.

All this begs the question: why was Plame so set on using her husband for the job? Wilson told the SSIC that she had characterized the initial report of Iraq-Niger contacts as "crazy". After Wilson returned, he reported that the Iraqis had indeed tried to start trade talks in secret with Niger, and that the Nigerian PM believed that to be an effort to get yellowcake uranium. However, after the invasion of Iraq, Wilson started leaking a warped version to journalists such as Walter Pincus, also described in the SSIC report and determined to be false.

It looks like Plame wanted a specific result from the Niger investigation, and she selected the man who she felt would guarantee it.

Finally, Stevenson holds off until the last paragraph a little fact that tends to undermine the entire notion of this AF1 memo sourcing Novak's column:

The information in the State Department memorandum generally tracked the information Mr. Novak laid out for Mr. Rove in their conversation, according to the account of their exchange provided by the person briefed on what Mr. Rove has told investigators.

But it appears to differ in at least one way, raising questions about whether it was the original source of the material that ultimately made its way to Mr. Novak. In his July 14, 2003, column, Mr. Novak referred to Ms. Wilson as Valerie Plame. The State Department memorandum referred to her as Valerie Wilson, according to the government official who reread it on Friday.

Given that her identity as Valerie Plame caused the entire brouhaha -- after all, Wilson was known to be married -- it seems unlikely that Novak got his information directly or indirectly from this memo. Why didn't Stevenson put that in the lead of the article? It seems somewhat more important than a ten-paragraph recap of the history of the leak.

Given the Times' deep involvement in this case, I'd say that these mistakes are either grossly inexcusable or deliberate attempts to warp the record -- perhaps both.


TOPICS: News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: cia; cialeak; karlrove; plame; ropeadope; rove; wilson
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To: OXENinFLA

FYI to post #38 and #40.


41 posted on 07/16/2005 10:49:38 AM PDT by hipaatwo (When you're in trouble you want all your friends around you...preferably armed!)
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To: hipaatwo
"This is one of the most reckless and nasty things I’ve seen in all my years of government," Schumer said. "Leaking the name of a CIA agent is tantamount to putting a gun to that agent’s head. It compromises her safety and the safety of her loved ones, not to mention those in her network and other operatives she may have dealt with. On top of that, the officials who have done it may have also seriously jeopardized the national security of this nation."

Let's backtrack a minute, Chuck.

Joey Wilson endangered Americans when he told the world, through his op-ed in the NY Times, that America probably went into Iraq under false pretenses.

42 posted on 07/16/2005 11:04:36 AM PDT by syriacus (Joe took the Islamicists' side when he said that the President lied)
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To: johnny7
BOLTON... IT HAD TO BE BOLTON!!

The fact that it was Carl "kiss up kick down" Ford who provided the memo to Colin Powell before he got on Air Force One is a curious coincidence, eh? Is Ford the leaker?
43 posted on 07/16/2005 11:15:22 AM PDT by advance_copy (Stand for life, or nothing at all)
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To: hipaatwo; Peach; lysie; Mo1

See post 37 and post 40. Very good recaps and analysis except for tying Judith Miller into the story, which is still a missing piece IMO.

Thanks hipaatwo, feel better.


44 posted on 07/16/2005 11:28:56 AM PDT by prairiebreeze (My dad, a WWII veteran always said that America's best ally was...Britain. He was right.)
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To: syriacus

any e-mail addresses for this Stevenson clown at the Slimes and/or fax numbers for the Slimes??


45 posted on 07/16/2005 11:30:11 AM PDT by God luvs America (When the silent majority speaks the earth trembles!)
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To: Dems_R_Losers
JUST what I as going to post!!! This is a new and important fact!!

Either Joe Wilson had business in Niger (possibly uranium, since I can't imagine him trading in onions and cowpeas) OR Plame lied in order to get her husband to Niger. Either choice indicates all is not well with the Wilsons.

46 posted on 07/16/2005 11:33:33 AM PDT by Miss Marple (Karl Rove is Plame-proof.)
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To: advance_copy

Foggybottom is full of Dem-bootlickers. It won't be the first time this administration has been stabbed by compromised hacks.


47 posted on 07/16/2005 11:40:53 AM PDT by johnny7 (“'Deservin ain't got 'nothin to do with it!” -Will Money)
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To: advance_copy

I still haven't seen a copy of the memo, but have heard it was written by kick-down/kiss-up criticizer Carl Ford. This gets more and more interesting, in that, wasn't it after Carl Ford testified that Biden and Dodd started demanding that they see the NSA intercepts on certain individuals? Egads; so now we have Rocerkfeller memo; the Wilson testimony about the forged documents (about which he said he mis-spoke, yeah right!), the bolton hearings, Voinivich crying, and Judith Miller still sitting in jail. Where will it end; and when????


48 posted on 07/16/2005 11:50:40 AM PDT by Laverne
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To: Howlin

Here is the report. Be sure you read the whole article, plus some detailed commentary by a couple of posters in the replies.


49 posted on 07/16/2005 12:18:27 PM PDT by Miss Marple (Karl Rove is Plame-proof.)
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To: Miss Marple

I need to know when Wilson and Plame were married. Does anyone know?


50 posted on 07/16/2005 12:46:11 PM PDT by Dems_R_Losers (If the WMD intelligence was so bad, why does Valerie Plame still have a job?)
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To: Dems_R_Losers
I have been searching. I found that they met in 1997, Wilson was divorced in 1998, and that she was also married before. That is all in the Vanity Fair article, which I had never read in its entirety.

And believe me, it is slow going, because every detail of the Plame/Wilson combo's lives reads like a bad novel. Way too much Brie, kitchen remodelling, foreign service tidbits for my taste.

Also, how come this article went into such detail? Cities in which she worked, attendance at the London School of Economics, etc. Seems to me that if she HAD been covert, those details should have been kept from the press. Some spy she is!

51 posted on 07/16/2005 1:05:24 PM PDT by Miss Marple (Karl Rove is Plame-proof.)
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To: Miss Marple
I think I found on another thread that they were married in April of 1998. That would have been right after Wilson left the White House and was setting up his "investment company." Just a year later she is recommending him to her CIA bosses for a trip to Niger because he has an upcoming business trip there. Here's a career diplomat who suddenly decides to go into business in Niger, one of the more dangerous places in the world? What business could he have had there, when the only exports from Niger were livestock, cowpeas, onions, and uranium?

Very convenient for him to marry a senior WMD analyst at the CIA right at the time he goes into the uranium business, eh?

Did you really believe that drivel in the Vanity Fair article about them seeing each other across the room and falling in love immediately? That whole article was ridiculous, I thought so at the time I first read it. A completely planted hagiography of both of them. Not the first time Vanity Fair has done this either, in its zeal to further its agenda against President Bush. That magazine has printed more bullshit and outright lies about the Bush Administration than The Nation or any other left-wing rag you can name.

I suspect that this was no marriage for love. Ms. Plame may end up being a victim here, not of Karl Rove or the White House, but of her own greedy husband who married her because of what she could do to help him make dirty money in the uranium business. And then he got her to recommend him for these CIA trips to Niger so he could cover his own tracks and make sure his pals in the Niger government who were helping him in his business didn't have anything that could be traced to Saddam Hussein. I think he spilled the beans when he talked about those forged memos months before the CIA supposedly even got them. And he thought Valerie had covered her tracks at the CIA, but neither of them realized that her emails had been saved. They are both in a boatload of trouble now.

52 posted on 07/16/2005 1:36:59 PM PDT by Dems_R_Losers (If the WMD intelligence was so bad, why does Valerie Plame still have a job?)
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To: Dems_R_Losers

I've mentioned this before, but still have no answers.
Wilson made his donations listing his employer as J C Wilson International Ventures Corp.

I have searched any and every corporation database I can fine. I can find no listing for this company (active, inactive, dissolved, revoked, etc). Nothing.

I did find this at :

http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/03/sp_iraq_wilson040303.htm
(an interesting online discussion-)
"...Also, could you tell us a little bit about your company JC Wilson International? Thank you.

Joseph C. Wilson: WE do political risk assessment for companies wanting to do business in Africa Europe and the Middle East.
As to advisers: Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Bill Kristol et al.
Perle's study group produced a report for Bibi netnayahu in the mid 90s called A Clean Break, A new strategy for the realm
Read also the Project for a new American Century
Michael Ledeen from the American Enterprise INstitue is another leading figure. He is Mr. Total War, go to Iran after this..."

On the right is a link to his companies web page, but it inks to http://www.ihc.ucsb.edu/
(INTERDISCIPLINARY HUMANITIES CENTER (IHC) University of CAlifornia)

Doing a search on this site I found :
(located within their annual report)

THE GLOBAL PEACE, SECURITY AND HUMAN RIGHTS LECTURE SERIES
Hosted talks by Ambassador Joseph C.Wilson (author); Hassan M.Yousufzai (activist); Philip Gourevitch (journalist and author); Sandra Mackey (journalist, author, CNN commentator); Ashmed Rashid (author and reporter); Samantha Power (Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, John F.Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University)

But I did not find a corporate website for this company.



53 posted on 07/16/2005 1:40:06 PM PDT by Protect the Bill of Rights
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To: Dems_R_Losers
I agree 100%. I posted on one of these threads that I thought his choice to investigate Niger made no sense, if you were trying to find out if Niger was selling uranium. You would send an undercover agent pretending to be someone interested in buying uranium, if you wanted to find out the truth.

Sending Wilson only made sense if you wanted to WARN the government of Niger that the jig was up. Now that we know he was already scheduling business trips to Iraq prior to this trip, he is an even more suspicious character.

And that Vanity Fair article hit the red zone on my gag-o-meter. I think Wilson wrote it himself; it sounds just like his overly dramatic renditions.

54 posted on 07/16/2005 1:44:36 PM PDT by Miss Marple (Karl Rove is Plame-proof.)
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To: Protect the Bill of Rights
Here is a link to the business but shocker, it's dead now. Someone scrubbed it from the net.

Wilson now "consults on business projects in Africa as JC Wilson International Ventures," "a firm specializing in Strategic Management and International Business Development. He is also an adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC."

http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Joseph_C._Wilson_IV

55 posted on 07/16/2005 1:56:28 PM PDT by hipaatwo (When you're in trouble you want all your friends around you...preferably armed!)
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To: hipaatwo

good read


56 posted on 07/16/2005 2:03:21 PM PDT by EverOnward
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To: Dems_R_Losers

This is one of the links I was thinking about; I can't say I've read it recently, so I can't summarize what it says:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1256475/posts


57 posted on 07/16/2005 2:10:21 PM PDT by michaelt
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To: hipaatwo

Could minor Ambassador Joe Wilson himself have been the source in blowing his own Wife's cover?

It is distinctly possible, (though it may be unlikely that Joe Wilson himself directly was NY Times Judith Miller's source), since Joe Wilson himself evidently routinely bragged openly to strangers about her CIA employment, prior to such "cover" being "blown" in the press.

Here's an example of Joe's apparently routine and open bragging about Valerie being a "CIA agent," which became known directly to me over a year ago:

He certainly bragged about it per a famous and highly reliable source's (named below) account of his own face-to-face encounter with Amb. Joe Wilson prior to Valerie Plame's "outing" as a CIA agent/employee.

Based upon a personal conversation (we were in a small group eating; it was NOT an "off the record") I had with eminent historian Victor Davis Hanson (we were at a luncheon table together during a trip to Europe), it appeared entirely possible that Joe Wilson himself was the (or one source, if not the original one) possible source in revealing his own wife's status as a CIA agent or employee.

Victor Davis Hanson (Wilson presumably knew Victor Davis Hanson wrote regularly for NRO (National Review Online), had done OpEds for the Wall street Journal, and other publications, and had his own Website with a widespread following) said he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were both in the same "Green Room" before a televised debate-discussion on Iraq, etc. and Joe first warned the TV make-up person not to get powder on his $14,000 Rolex watch, then he bragged to Victor about several things (possessions and trips to Aspen, etc.), like his expensive car (I think it was a Mercedes), and then bragged about his beautiful wife who, Joe Wilson said (braggingly) was a CIA operative.

I asked Victor Davis Hanson Why he didn't write up this account.(?) He replied that Joe Wilson would probably simply deny it, since only he (VDH) & Joe Wilson were in the Green Room together before the broadcast.

However, it is now easy to surmise that Joe Wilson is a crass, materialistic, self-promoting, vain, egotistical, bragaddocio-opportunist, so this account is perfectly consistent with Valerie Plame's TWO photo shoots in Vanity Fair. (Or was it Vogue? No, probably too crass for Vogue, n'est pas?)


58 posted on 07/17/2005 3:50:39 PM PDT by FReethesheeples (Gonzales appears to be quite WEAK on Property rights!)
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