Posted on 07/17/2005 8:37:17 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Why is special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald pursuing so zealously the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame, since it is all but impossible to prove that the leaker or leakers committed a crime?
So why is Fitzgerald acting like Inspector Javert in "Les Miserables"? The answer may lie in a sentence Walter Pincus of The Washington Post wrote on June 12, 2003.
President Bush mentioned the British findings in his State of the Union address in January 2003. In his leaks to Pincus, and earlier to New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, Wilson claimed Bush knew this was false. The key sentence in Pincus' story is this:
"Among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong,' the former U.S. government official said."
Wilson outed himself in an op-ed in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," which described his CIA-sponsored trip to Niger in 2002. On July 14, 2003, columnist Robert Novak wondered why Wilson, who had no intelligence background and strong anti-Bush views, had been selected for the Niger mission. "Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report," he wrote. That set off the Plame name game.
Maybe Fitzgerald is investigating a different crime.
What if someone in the CIA was leaking classified information to influence the 2004 election? Uncovering a crime like that would be worthy of Inspector Javert's doggedness.
I suspect the biggest shoe in this case has yet to drop, and liberal journalists won't be happy when it does.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
It is my contention that the big story in Niger is French uranium smuggling.
The visit to Niger by Iraqi officials, which Wilson neglected to mention publicly but reported privately, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Plame's belief a priori was that the very idea of uranium smuggling in Niger was "crazy", at least according to her husband, who may or may not be reporting her beliefs accurately (since almost nothing else he has said is true, you have to allow for the possibility that she is as much his victim as anyone else).
In his own words he has said that the very idea of illicit uranium sales was impossible, because (a) France is a responsible country and wouldn't do that (b) Niger is our ally in the war on terror and wouldn't do that and (c) IAEA monitoring made it impossible.
The truth was "(d) other". IAEA was not monitoring Niger's mines for several reasons. They weren't allowed to, they didn't have the manpower, and yellowcake is supposedly too low purity to be worthy of their interest. All this according to the IAEA itself.
And, as we now know, Niger was shipping uranium under the table. This seems to have not aroused the interest of anyone in the mainstream press. It didn't arouse the interest of anyone at CIA, either, since this episode exposes the fact that CIA had no one on the ground in Niger investigating the story. And when the story began to come out, they sent a guy who would make the story go away.
Wilson's fake investigation coincides with the commissioning, handing over, and exposure, of the fake documents paid for by France and produced by Niger, which were used to undermine Bush's remarks. Wilson claimed to have seen them, although he later backtracked when it was pointed out that he couldn't have legally seen them.
So Wilson's claim to have debunked the Niger story is in tandem with France's effort to debunk the story, a story which was in fact true. And lets be very clear; with reference to Bush's remark at least, it was true and Wilson knew it was true when he wrote his denial.
So is the big story that Wilson covered up Iraqi contacts with Niger? Or is it the fact that CIA's WMD experts covered up French and Nigerienne uranium smuggling? Were they incompetent, and didn't know about it, or did they prefer not to know? We have caught the CIA phonying up a story, and almost no one is interested. For those who believe that CIA's WMD people got it wrong in Iraq, this episode might be instructive. They definitely got it wrong in Niger. The only question is the degree of willful complicity.
He despised Bush and the neocons. He thought they were arrogant, fools, crazed...and that they were squandering America's treasure and reputation on trying to conquer a primitive people and culture which was being handled just fine with inspections and sanctions. And that the Administration was lying to American citizens about its reasons and intentions.
I didn't agree with him. I thought Muslims posed a much more serious threat and sanctions and inspections were failing...but I did not have to tell him about Saddam's nature or about the French, Russians and others. He knew all that stuff.
You make a lot of claims based on evidence I've never seen. so let's see it.
This man sounds like he thinks like Pat Buchanan.
Buchanan is another conservative opposed to Bush...and no dummy although I disagree with him about most things.
"French smuggling". Hmmm. Wilson was U.S. Ambassador to Gabon, a former French colony. Niger is a former French colony. I'm seeing a pattern here...
"Buchanan is another conservative opposed to Bush...and no dummy although I disagree with him about most things."
Well I have not decided upon the intelligence thing, that day he took up a pitch fork as campaign tool, gave me lingering doubts. Of course I am half joking, however, the Buchanan objection is as much religious as political.
"You make a lot of claims based on evidence I've never seen. so let's see it."
Yikes. A lot of this is kicking around in memory, and when you have to dig it up, it proves elusive. Here's the best I can do on short notice.
Most of this stuff is in the public domain, and has been kicked around at length here at FR, but it isn’t in the mainstream press all of the time. And, frankly, sometimes its when you pull disparate pieces of a picture together, a more interesting picture emerges.
France commissioned the phony documents, which were produced by the Niger embassy.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/justify/2004/0802niger.htm
This article blames a trickster, but careful reading points out two things; the French were in possession of real documents which they declined to mention during the controversy.
In any case, the “trickster” was on the French payroll, on a regular salary. He had provided real documents, which the French kept private, and then produced the supposedly fake ones with the help of the Niger embassy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/05/wuran05.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/05/ixworld.html
Seymour Hersch claims that disgruntled CIA officers created the forgeries in order to “get” Bush, but that seems a little far-fetched. But we do know that Wilson claimed to have knowledge of them long before he ought to have had such knowledge.
But they were eventually passed through to the CIA, and its not hard to imagine how he got access.
Niger’s involvement in illicit uranium dealings is covered in this Financial Times article:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1161297/posts
The remark concerning Libyan uranium is there as well.
Wilson’s op-ed piece is important. Here he makes the remark that IAEA was monitoring the mines, which was not true.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm
He repeats that remark in other places that I can’t readily find.
Ambassador Zahawie’s visit to Niger is well known, written up here:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/terencejeffrey/tj20030730.shtml
Zahawie denied that his visit had anything to do with uranium, according to him it was just social.
Wilson mentioned it and the presence of other Iraqis in remarks that got into the CIA memo, but publicly in his op-ed piece did not mention it. Obviously, it was germane.
One article quotes Wilson as saying that Baghdad Bob had come to Niger. I don't know if thats accurate or not, but I do know about Zahawie, and apparently there were others.
The fact that IAEA was not monitoring the mines in Niger is covered here:
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20031001-101113-2642r.htm
Also the mention that permits are required to travel into the mining areas, and you can’t get a permit to go there. Wilson didn’t go, and neither can anyone else. So, in effect, there is no way for anyone to know what is mined there and where it goes.
The important points, to me, are the fact that despite all the reams of print about the false charges about Niger, in the end the charges are true. Iraq did come calling. Niger was involved in uranium smuggling. Wilson knew that the Iraqis had been to town. Despite the fact that the Iraqis said it was social, Niger officials said it was about uranium.
Despite the fact that Niger was doing contraband deals in uranium, CIA had no one on the ground there. They didn't know about it, and after Wilson’s trip there they still didn't know about it. CIA’s WMD specialists were more eager to disprove the charge than they were to investigate it.
You can’t investigate it from a hotel in the capital, obviously, you have to get access to company records, tap their phones, maybe follow the trucks, see which ships they load in to, where are those ships headed, do any of the trucks turn north for the Libyan border, do any of the ships stop off in Tunisia or Libya along the way, does any of the stuff shipped to Brazil get transshipped to Libya, and so on.
Neither Wilson nor the CIA knew any more about any of that after his trip. But we know, now, that uranium was being shipped to Libya off the books. CIA didn’t know, and maybe CIA didn’t want to know.
Silence will be golden.
Silence will be golden.
"Silence will be golden."
I'm hoping that Fitzgerald will uncover the fact that Plame used her position (and expertise) within the CIA to set up a bogus story ("no Iraq-Niger yellowcake efforts"), to influence an election and throw it to Kerry, to whose campaign both she and her husband contributed, and for which Wilson openly worked.
If Fitzgerald is able to nail down those facts, then the media will have to report it. They won't have a choice.........and the spectacle of major "BLOWBACK" will be a delight to witness!
Such an outcome would serve these Wilson-Plame-Miller-Cooper snakes right!
Thanks for your comments, hope.
Char :)
Your link does not support that claim.
Your link does not support that claim.
He does not. He mentions that claim as one of several which had been proposed to him. Read the article. I linked it in post #118 (I hope I did so on this thread. If not ping me).
Yes it is...with the usual unsubstantiated claims. The fact is the British have never revealed their sources and there's good reason to believe their sources stink.
As far as I know it is true. Your supporting link is just Wilson's speech.
But I'll use that to talk about a point which is still bothering me. Wilson says he was sent to check on a "memorandum of understanding";
(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.)
Novak says this was the Italian report...but the CIA didn't receive that report until 10 months after Wilson's mission. Hersh says there were TWO Italian reports, the second about the forgeries and the first about a reported 1999 mission to Niger by an Iraqi official seeking to expand trade. Now my first thought was that Wilson had also confused the first and second reports when he wrote his article...but the Senate Intelligence Committee also confirms that Cheney's office asked the CIA to check on a "memorandum of agreement". A memorandum of agreement or understanding is not a report of an official seeking to expand trade. Further the Senate Committee makes it very clear - and Wilson also does - that the CIA made it a point NOT to tell Wilson what exactly they had in their possession and what it said. VERY SUSPICIOUS. Even stranger everyone knew that Wilson's wife had seen the documents because she'd commented that it was a crazy piece of crap. It's reasonable to assume that Wilson also knew EXACTLY what he was being asked to investigate. But he can't say because he wasn't cleared to see them, his wife can't say because she was cleared to see them, and the VEEP and the Senate Committee refuse to say. I say the whole thing stinks to high heaven.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/justify/2004/0802niger.htm
Quoting:
"According to senior European officials, in 1999 he provided French officials with genuine documents which revealed Iraq may have been planning to expand "trade" with Niger…"
Hence my point that the French had real documents that pointed to Iraqi "plans" to trade with Niger. This is 1999, several years before Bush is in office, years before war is imagined.
When later the bogus docs are exposed, the French remained silent concerning their earlier, genuine, docs.
In this article, the agent claims that the fake ones were given to him by Italian intel, but passed to him directly by Niger officials. Italy, obviously, denied that.
Quoting:
"He was then asked by French officials to provide more information, which led to a flourishing "market" in documents…"
Saying that they "commissioned" the fake docs is my term. They asked him for more docs, he got them fake ones, which were passed to the US. When they were exposed, the real ones were withheld. But my term "commissioned" implies intent, which may not be fair.
And, anyway, so far we've blamed the Italians. But lets continue.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/05/wuran05.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/09/05/ixworld.html
Quoting:
… "The Sunday Telegraph has been told that the man draws a monthly salary of €4,000 (£2,715) from the DGSE - the French equivalent of MI6 - for which he is said to have worked for the past five years.
He had an expense account and received bonuses in return for carrying out orders allegedly given him by the head of the French services' operations in Belgium.
… "Giacomo" was allegedly first engaged by the French secret service to investigate genuine fears of illicit trafficking in uranium from Niger. He collected a dossier of documents - some real, some forged by a diplomat - by offering large sums of money to Niger officials."....
This article drops all mention of Italian intel, and asserts that he is on salary to French intel, and that the docs came directly from Niger officials.
So we have a controversy. Did Italian intel trick "Giacomo"? Or is the second account correct, and he paid the Nigeriens for them?
According to me, if you look at what happened next, you know all you need to know.
Both articles agree that he works for the French, he provided some genuine docs, and then some fake ones, which came into his hands by Niger officials.
And both articles agree that the fake ones were handed to the Americans, and the genuine ones were not.
So my term "commissioned" may be unfair since it implies intent. But passing on the fake ones, and withholding the real ones, implies intent. Who precisely produced the real ones, and the fake ones, is less important that what was done with the real ones, and the fake ones. That tells the story.
He does not. He mentions that claim as one of several which had been proposed to him.
Quoting:
Another explanation was provided by a former senior C.I.A. officer. He had begun talking to me about the Niger papers in March, when I first wrote about the forgery, and said, “Somebody deliberately let something false get in there.” He became more forthcoming in subsequent months, eventually saying that a small group of disgruntled retired C.I.A. clandestine operators had banded together in the late summer of last year and drafted the fraudulent documents themselves.
“The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney,” the former officer said. “They said, ‘O.K, we’re going to put the bite on these guys.’ ” My source said that he was first told of the fabrication late last year, at one of the many holiday gatherings in the Washington area of past and present C.I.A. officials. “Everyone was bragging about it—‘Here’s what we did. It was cool, cool, cool.’ ”
End quote.
Thanks for the link. As I said, I consider this to be a bit outlandish, but this is according to Hersch's CIA source. His source seems to be pretty proud of it. So we have three versions. French intel commissioned them, Italian intel produced them, Niger officials produced them or merely handed them along... and now this, disgrunted WMD people did it.
In any case, this does not change the fact that rumors surfaced of Iraqi intent to do business. Genuine documents to that effect were given to French intelligence. Then fake ones were produced and handed to the Americans. The genuine ones were left unmentioned during the firestorm that followed.
As far as I know it is true. Your supporting link is just Wilson's speech.
True. I gave you the link to his article because I thought it important. In his piece he states that the IAEA was monitoring the mines, and that the idea that France and Niger were doing contraband business was very unlikely. My IAEA link comes later.
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20031001-101113-2642r.htm
Here it is pretty plain that IAEA was not in the country. I have seen other articles that go into detail concerning efforts to get legislation in place that would allow it, and so forth, but this article tells the tale pretty well.
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