Posted on 07/27/2005 9:26:15 PM PDT by SolidSupplySide
In the same week in July 2003 in which Bush administration officials told a syndicated columnist and a Time magazine reporter that a C.I.A. officer had initiated her husband's mission to Niger, an administration official provided a Washington Post reporter with a similar account.
[ . . . ]
Mr. Pincus has not identified his source to the public. But a review of Mr. Pincus's own accounts and those of other people with detailed knowledge of the case strongly suggest that his source was neither Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, nor I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, and was in fact a third administration official whose identity has not yet been publicly disclosed.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
In all these numerous posts, it seems to me that was very recently posted, but my cobwebs are rigid .. can't dredge up anything specific.
See my post #100.
Here's an explosive thought for further research: could Joe Wilson or others like him have undermined US efforts to obtain Turkey's support for the war???? It would be more than a little bit significant if it turns out that rogue CIA and/or State officials (current or former) were giving their contacts in Turkey the signal that they should block US efforts to send the 4th ID through Turkey. To someone of Wilson's mindset, this might have seemed like a good way to "stop the war" because it was fairly widely assumed before March 2003 that the US would need a northern front with the 4th ID.
This occurs to me because I recall reading somewhere that Joe Wilson had strong Turkish diplomatic contacts, and in fact I believe he and Valerie met at some Turkish-American dinner where he received an award. He was obviously desperate to stop the war - would he (or others in his circle) have told Turkish contacts something to the effect of "block the US troop movement and you can delay or stop this war!"
Don't know that we can ever get any hard info on this possibility if conversations were held in secret, but by examining everything to do with Joe Wilson and Turkey (he IS a Turkey) we might find some good leads......
Interesting.
If you have a ping list, please add me.
Wilson has the ego that would make him think he could actually get away with something like this.
Wilson himself??
I doubt it .. IMO .. he was a pawn used by bigger fish
I don't know, Mol.
I think he may just be enough of an egomaniac to take it upon himself to do this.
Knew it was somewhere .. lol. Thanks.
I recall a Turkey connection as well.
Oh I agree that he is an egomaniac ... but he couldn't do that all on his own
The only way he could do that is if he has some big fish behind him and backing him
Sorry, haven't started a ping list yet but maybe I will!
Here's something from "Timeswatch" a year ago that mentions that the "Bureau of Intelligence and Research" at State predicted before the war that Turkey might not cooperate - but did any current or former State or CIA officials help to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy?? I think it's highly likely that people LIKE Joe Wilson, if not Wilson himself, were giving their Turkish contacts at least a wink and a nudge, if not more overt encouragement, to try to block the movement toward war. They would have assumed that if Turkey did not at least allow the 4th ID movement to northern Iraq that the war would be considerably delayed if not blocked.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/19/politics/19INTE.html?ex=1122696000&en=2fb97f02477607fe&ei=5070&pagewanted=all&position&oref=login
http://www.timeswatch.org/articles/2004/0719.asp
"The misinformed reporting continues Monday. Douglas Jehl spreads the old line about Niger and uranium in a story about the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. One of the successes Jehl credits the tiny agency for is its dismissal of the "British contention" that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger: "It also predicted correctly that Turkey might not permit American troops to cross its territory en route to Iraq...."
Sorry, haven't started a ping list yet but maybe I will!
Here's something from "Timeswatch" a year ago that mentions that the "Bureau of Intelligence and Research" at State predicted before the war that Turkey might not cooperate - but did any current or former State or CIA officials help to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy?? I think it's highly likely that people LIKE Joe Wilson, if not Wilson himself, were giving their Turkish contacts at least a wink and a nudge, if not more overt encouragement, to try to block the movement toward war. They would have assumed that if Turkey did not at least allow the 4th ID movement to northern Iraq that the war would be considerably delayed if not blocked.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/19/politics/19INTE.html?ex=1122696000&en=2fb97f02477607fe&ei=5070&pagewanted=all&position&oref=login
http://www.timeswatch.org/articles/2004/0719.asp
"The misinformed reporting continues Monday. Douglas Jehl spreads the old line about Niger and uranium in a story about the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. One of the successes Jehl credits the tiny agency for is its dismissal of the "British contention" that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Niger: "It also predicted correctly that Turkey might not permit American troops to cross its territory en route to Iraq...."
He was an ambassador. He's got connections.
He could have done this himself and then peddled it to whoever he thought could win against Bush.
I don't disagree with that ..
But we are talking about a war .. that is Serious stuff
He would not be able to pull something like that off unless he had some big fish behind him
True. But he could still be the ringleader.
Anything is possible
But we would need more info before we could go down that road
"But we would need more info before we could go down that road"
I agree 100% - I only said it was worthy of research, not that we have any evidence yet - it's just that it fits with the Wilson-Plame mindset of "saving the world from the evil Neo-Cons".... sure, Turkey might have reached their decision without such encouragement, but it certainly would fit the picture of rogue State/CIA people trying to undermine the Bush administration if there had been such an effort behind the scenes. Just speculation at this point, I know....
It seems, too that he is a “Strategic Advisor” to the CPS :
Corporate and Public Strategy Advisory Group (CPS) is a consultancy company providing strategic advice in public affairs and business and investment development, to the public and private sectors.
CPS actually seems to be a Turkish consulting firm as a glance at its personnel shows.
Why is Wilson linked to them? Maybe he’s knows a lot about Turkey too. Or maybe they’re eager to have a former U.S. Ambassador on their masthead, and he’s willing to sell his name cheap.
Those are our facts.
What can we make of them? Well, here are my speculations. WASPy liberal Joseph Wilson IV graduated from Santa Barbara in 1972 and didn’t want to dirty his fingers with a job in business, so he went into the Foreign Service. He didn’t do terribly well there, and was eased out at age 48, two years before the earliest voluntary retirement age.
What was he to do? He kicked around in various political appointments in the Clinton Administration for a few years, he put up his shingle as a consultant, and he did odd jobs for CPS and anyone else he could get work from. In America, even if you’re rich, you’re supposed to have a job if you’re under age 65. If you can’t find a job or don’t want to, the conventional way out is to call yourself a consultant and change the subject if people rudely ask you exactly what being a consultant means.
But you know that some consultants actually make money, and that if you are a consultant on political matters, one way to earn money is by seeming to have important contacts in government.
Your wife is one such contact, but she’s pretty far down the totem pole. Nonetheless, she can help. She can get you a gig visiting a foreign capital– it’s only Niger, but you’re desperate– as a representative of the CIA, on a mission of the highest importance.
Your air fare is paid, as is the bill at the one decent hotel in Niger (only about 100 bucks a night, at the Hotel Sofitel Niamey Gaweye (I’m guessing).
That doesn’t matter much, though, and neither does the fact that you can’t get paid anything because that would violate the federal anti-nepotism law, 5 USC Sec. 3110.
What matters is that you come back to America and, since somehow you didn’t sign any nondisclosure agreement, when people ask what you did last year, you can say, “Oh, lots of stuff. For example, when the CIA needed to send someone to Africa to check on possible uranium sales to Iraq, they naturally thought of me, and after some thought I agreed to take the time to go, since I do like to serve my country even now that I’ve joined the private sector.”
Is this part of his motivation? I don’t know. You’ve got the same facts as I do now. I still think the “Get Bush” motivation– which, note, has also been a huge source of publicity and income for him– is the main thing. But 8 days in Africa would be worth it for the boasting value alone, whether that value came back in actual consulting contracts or just in preserving one’s self-respect as a man ashamed of involuntary early retirement.
This hypothesis could easily be disproved if it was false. What we would need is a copy of Wilson’s tax returns or some other measure of how he is spending his time. If he is making lots of money from consulting and seems to have more business than he can handle, the hypothesis is false. If, on the other hand, he isn’t doing much business at all, and is spending a lot of time at the golf course, then the hypothesis becomes more plausible.
If the hypothesis is true, a new question arises. It would certainly be unethical for his wife to have gotten him a CIA consulting gig just for their own private purposes when she knew he wouldn’t do the best job of it, but would it be illegal? It would be if he were paid cash, but he was not.
Suppose, though, that she plainly admitted that he was given the job for the purpose of helping him get private consulting contracts. Would that be illegal? I don’t know.
See my post on another thread - found a loony speech given by Joe Wilson in which he PREDICTS a "wag the dog" scenario before the 2004 elections in which Pres. Bush will "Start another war" to distract from his supposed problems:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1451326/posts?q=1&&page=201#223
Joe Wilson is truly of the Moveon.org loony left mindset, and that FACT explains his public behavior and statements. It also suggests that there is a great deal more under this rock to be unearthed....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.