[ snip ]
At Plame's suggestion, the CIA sent her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, to Niger in February 2002 to investigate a report by a foreign intelligence service that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium. In his report to the CIA (as documented by the Senate Intelligence Committee), Wilson said Iraqis had approached Nigerien officials. In 1999, an Iraqi delegation met with the prime minister in the interest of "expanding commercial relations" -- which the prime minister interpreted to mean uranium sales -- but no deal had been made.
In September 2002, the British government published a white paper in which it made public British intelligence's belief that Saddam had tried to buy uranium in Africa. A month later, the CIA received from an Italian source documents purporting to show that Niger and Iraq had done a deal. These turned out to be forgeries....
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Wilson's official role ended when he returned from Niger in March. The CIA didn't get the Italian forgeries until October. Wilson had no access to them. He either was making up what he told Kristof and Pincus, or he had received an unauthorized leak of classified information.
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What if someone in the CIA was leaking classified information to influence the 2004 election? Uncovering a crime like that would be worthy of (prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's) doggedness.
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Jack Kelly is national security writer for the Post-Gazette and The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (jkelly@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1476).
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE - July 9. 2004
CONTACT: Sarah Ross (202) 224-4774
Iraq Pre-War Intelligence Report: Additional Views of Chairman Pat Roberts joined by Senator Christopher S. Bond, Senator Orrin G. Hatch
I have no doubt that the debate over many aspects of the U.S. liberation of Iraq will continue for decades, but one fact is now clear, the U.S. Intelligence Community told the President, the Congress, and the American people before the war that Saddam had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and if left unchecked, would probably have a nuclear weapon during this decade. More than a year after Saddam’s fall, it also seems clear that no stockpiles are going to be found, the Iraqi nuclear program was dormant, and the President, the Congress and American people deserve an explanation. In short, the Intelligence Community’s prewar assessments were wrong. This report seeks to explain how that happened.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was formed in 1976 during a crisis of confidence in the country and in response to a need to rebuild the public’s trust in government institutions including its intelligence agencies. The Senate created this Committee to conduct, for the first time, on behalf of the American people, vigorous oversight of the intelligence activities of the United States. While the underlying premise of legislative oversight is the need for “public” accountability, the Intelligence Committee’s oversight usually occurs behind closed doors. This is a conundrum the Committee deals with on a daily basis. With the vast majority of our oversight being conducted out of sight, it is exceedingly difficult to assure the American people that we are doing our jobs. What may appear to be little to no Committee activity, often belies an intense and probing examination the result of which will never be made known to the public because the nation’s security interests are paramount. However, the shear gravity of certain unique issues can raise the public’s interest to a level that requires a public accounting. This is such an issue.
The scope of the Committee’s 12 month inquiry into the U.S. Intelligence Community's prewar assessments regarding Iraq is without precedent in the history of the Committee. The Committee has looked behind the Community’s assessments to evaluate not only the quantity and quality of intelligence upon which it based its judgments, but also the reasonableness of the judgments themselves. The result is a detailed and meticulous recitation of the intelligence reporting and the concomitant evolution of the analyses. From the details emerges a report that is very critical of the Intelligence Community’s performance. Some have expressed concern that such criticism is not only unnecessary, but will also engender excessive risk aversion. I believe that, although that is possible, we should not underestimate the character of the hard-working men and women of the Intelligence Community. While criticism is never easy to accept, professionals understand the need for self-examination and the men and women of the Intelligence Community are, first and foremost, true and dedicated professionals.
In order to begin the process of self-examination, however, one must recognize or admit that one has a problem. Unfortunately, many in the Intelligence Community are finding it difficult to recognize the full extent of this significant intelligence failure. It is my hope that this report will facilitate that process. The painstaking detail and harsh criticisms in this report are necessary not only because the democratic process demands it, but also to ensure that there is an honest accounting of the mistakes that were made so that they are not repeated. It is the constitutional responsibility of the Legislature to conduct such an accounting.
It was my hope from the outset of this inquiry that the Committee could handle this important matter in a responsible manner untainted by politics. Despite early setbacks and differences of opinion, I believe we achieved that goal. A clear measure of our success is the fact that this report was approved by a unanimous vote. However, this achievement did not come without very hard work and perseverance. The Committee’s Vice Chairman and I have worked in full consultation throughout this process. I long ago lost count of the many meetings I have had with the Vice Chairman and Democrat and Republican members to hear and discuss their concerns about the inquiry. In response to Minority concerns and suggestions, we made many adjustments along the way. We conducted additional interviews, and most important, we expanded the scope of the review and made more than 200 changes to this report at the request of Democrat members. I am confident that every member of this committee has had ample opportunity to involve themselves to whatever extent they wished throughout the process.
Despite our hard and successful work to deliver a unanimous report, however, there were two issues on which the Republicans and Democrats could not agree: 1) whether the Committee should conclude that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s public statements were not based on knowledge he actually possessed, and 2) whether the Committee should conclude that it was the former ambassador’s wife who recommended him for his trip to Niger.
Niger
The Committee began its review of prewar intelligence on Iraq by examining the Intelligence Community’s sharing of intelligence information with the UNMOVIC inspection teams. (The Committee’s findings on that topic can be found in the section of the report titled, “The Intelligence Community’s Sharing of Intelligence on Iraqi Suspect WMD Sites with UN Inspectors.”) Shortly thereafter, we expanded the review when former Ambassador Joseph Wilson began speaking publicly about his role in exploring the possibility that Iraq was seeking or may have acquired uranium yellowcake from Africa. Ambassador Wilson’s emergence was precipitated by a passage in President Bush’s January 2003 State of the Union address which is now referred to as “the sixteen words.” President Bush stated, “. . . the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The details of the Committee’s findings and conclusions on this issue can be found in the Niger section of the report. What cannot be found, however, are two conclusions upon which the Committee’s Democrats would not agree. While there was no dispute with the underlying facts, my Democrat colleagues refused to allow the following conclusions to appear in the report:
Conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador’s wife, a CIA employee.
The former ambassador’s wife suggested her husband for the trip to Niger in February 2002. The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on behalf of the CIA, also at the suggestion of his wife, to look into another matter not related to Iraq. On February 12, 2002, the former ambassador’s wife sent a memorandum to a Deputy Chief of a division in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations which said, “[m]y 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 the same Directorate of Operations division sent a cable to one of its overseas stations requesting concurrence with the division’s idea to send the former ambassador to Niger.
Conclusion: 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.
At the time the former ambassador traveled to Niger, the Intelligence Community did not have in its possession any actual documents on the alleged Niger-Iraq uranium deal, only second hand reporting of the deal. The former ambassador’s comments to reporters that the Niger-Iraq uranium documents “may have been forged because ‘the dates were wrong and the names were wrong,’” could not have been based on the former ambassador’s actual experiences because the Intelligence Community did not have the documents at the time of the ambassador’s trip. In addition, nothing in the report from the former ambassador’s trip said anything about documents having been forged or the names or dates in the reports having been incorrect. The former ambassador told Committee staff that he, in fact, did not have access to any of the names and dates in the CIA’s reports and said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct. Of note, the names and dates in the documents that the IAEA found to be incorrect were not names or dates included in the CIA reports.
Following the Vice President’s review of an intelligence report regarding a possible uranium deal, he asked his briefer for the CIA’s analysis of the issue. It was this request which generated Mr. Wilson’s trip to Niger. The former ambassador’s public comments suggesting that the Vice President had been briefed on the information gathered during his trip is not correct, however. While the CIA responded to the Vice President’s request for the Agency’s analysis, they never provided the information gathered by the former Ambassador. The former ambassador, in an NBC Meet the Press interview on July 6, 2003, said, “The office of the Vice President, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there.” The former ambassador was speaking on the basis of what he believed should have happened based on his former government experience, but he had no knowledge that this did happen.
These and other public comments from the former ambassador, such as comments that his report “debunked” the Niger-Iraq uranium story, were incorrect and have led to a distortion in the press and in the public’s understanding of the facts surrounding the Niger-Iraq uranium story. The Committee found that, for most analysts, the former ambassador’s report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal.
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. As discussed in the Niger section of the report, not only did he NOT “debunk” the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true. I believed very strongly that it was important for the Committee to conclude publicly that many of the statements made by Ambassador Wilson were not only incorrect, but had no basis in fact.
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.”
The former Ambassador, either by design or through ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading. Surely, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has unique access to all of the facts, should have been able to agree on a conclusion that would correct the public record. Unfortunately, we were unable to do so.
Could those documents have been forged, but accurate?
What's good for CBS is sauce for the gander...
Or, Knowing that the Bush administration was onto them, the Nigerien officials - along with the French-controlled mining consortium that oversees ALL uranium in Niger - and Wilson cooked up a plan to create forged documents and "leak" them to the CIA via an Italian journalist in the pay of the French.
Aside from the obvious fact that Joseph Wilson couldn't know signatures, times and dates were incorrect on forged documents he never saw, why would Nigerien officials be so stupid as to put an ILLEGAL uranium transaction on paper? That's like saying the CIA intended Joseph Wilson to prove Niger was selling uranium to Iraq merely by asking them.
I'm thinking we'll find that a small number of Clinton holdovers manipulated intelligence in order to embarrass the President and Valerie Plame will be among them.