Joseph Wilson EPIC Lecture 6/14/2003 Outline/Transcript

The following outline and transcript, created by the poster, are based on an audio recording of Joseph Wilson's evening keynote lecture to the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) on June 14, 2003, delivered several weeks prior to Wilson's New York Times op-ed of 7/6/2003 which preceded the controversial Robert Novak article mentioning Valerie Plame's CIA background. Wilson's speech was immediately preceded by that of the other keynote speaker, Ray McGovern of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. After their individual speeches Wilson and McGovern held a joint question-and-answer session. Other participants in the forum and their respective topics of discussion included (biographical summaries are my abbreviations of original; see original link for additional details):

Introduction: Erik Gustafson, Gulf War veteran and EPIC founder; Zaid Albanna, Iraqi native and EPIC board member.

The Future of the Kurds in Post-War Iraq: Nijyar Shemdin, United States representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government and member of Iraqi National Congress of the Kurdistan Democratic Party; Mohammed Sabir Ismail, Iraqi-born physicist and PUK representative; Tanya Gilly, member of the Board of Directors of the Kurdish foundation and Women for a Free Iraq and participant in US State Department Future of Iraq project.

A Short History of Western Imperialism in Iraq: Judith Yaphe, Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.

Religious Politics & Emerging Political Movements in Iraq: Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan; Phebe Marr, senior fellow in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University.

Human Rights and Humanitarian Concerns: Sermid D. Al-Sarraf, Esq., Iraqi-American attorney from Los Angeles who works with the Iraqi Jurist's Association; George Devendorf, Director of Emergency Operations for Mercy Corps; Bill Frelick, director of Amnesty International USA's Refugee Program; Marc Garlasco, Senior Military Analyst for Human Rights Watch.

Consequences of War & Occupation: Stephen Zunes, Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project, political analyst for National Public Radio, Pacifica Radio, the BBC, and MSNBC; Alistair Millar, Director of the Washington, DC office of the Fourth Freedom Forum; Glen Rangwala, lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, UK, coordinator of the Campaign against Sanctions on Iraq, originator of allegation that a major British intelligence dossier on Iraq issued by the Blair government had been plagiarized from a PhD student's thesis; Nathaniel Hurd, independent consultant on Iraq policy.

Iraqi Views on the Aftermath & Post-Conflict Resolution: Sam Kubba, Iraqi immigrant to US, Democratic Party member, FCDC Steering Committee Chair, Chairman and CEO of American Iraqi Chamber of Commerce, founding member of Iraqi American Alliance; Anas Shallal, co-founder of The Peace Cafe, a venue promoting dialogue among Jews and Arabs; Rahman Al-Jebouri, Iraqi native, coordinator of the Iraq Foundation; Jawad Al-Amiri, Iraqi immigrant to US active on Iraqi American Council; Tanya Gilly (see above on Gilly).

Outline and transcript notes: Due to the length of the lecture, only some select quotations are transcribed in full, with the outline indicating the general structure of Wilson's lecture and where the quoted comments fall in that structure. Digital numbers indicate minutes and seconds into audio where quoted statements occur. Passages in quotation marks are transcriptions of Wilson's original. The audio was transcribed in August 2004 and the transcript does not reflect any changes to the EPIC website which may have been made since that time. For the original audio see EPIC's website.

[1:25: "Let me just start out by saying, as a preface to what I really want to talk about, to those of you who are going out and lobbying tomorrow, I just want to assure you that that American ambassador who has been cited in reports in the New York Times and in the Washington Post, and now in the Guardian over in London, who actually went over to Niger on behalf of the government--not of the CIA but of the government--and came back in February of 2002 and told the government that there was nothing to this story, later called the government after the British white paper was published and said you all need to do some fact-checking and make sure the Brits aren't using bad information in the publication of the white paper, and who called both the CIA and the State Department after the President's State of the Union and said to them you need to worry about the political manipulation of intelligence if, in fact, the President is talking about Niger when he mentions Africa. That person was told by the State Department that, well, you know, there's four countries that export uranium. That person had served in three of those countries, so he knew a little bit about what he was talking about when he said you really need to worry about this. But I can assure you that that retired American ambassador to Africa, as Nick Kristof called him in his article, is also pissed off, and has every intention of ensuring that this story has legs. And I think it does have legs. It may not have legs over the next two or three months, but when you see American casualties moving from one to five or to ten per day, and you see Tony Blair's government fall because in the U.K. it is a big story, there will be some ramifications, I think, here in the United States, so I hope that you will do everything you can to keep the pressure on. Because it is absolutely bogus for us to have gone to war the way we did."]

[Includes statements: 5:13: "Now here in the United States on September 11, 2001, we suffered the lost of two buildings in New York and severe damage to one building in Washington and we suffered the loss of roughly 3,000 lives. In Iraq during the Shock and Awe bombing campaign, we now know that over 3,000 Iraqis were killed. . .and Lord knows how many buildings in downtown Baghdad and elsewhere were destroyed. . .how can we possibly assume that the anger that we felt when 3,000 of our fellow citizens were killed is not going to be felt in spades--not just in Iraq where 3,000 deaths represents to the relative population 10 times the number of deaths we suffered in our terrorist attack; or throughout the rest of the world. . .Of course we didn't find any terrorists when we got to Iraq, just as we haven't yet found any weapons of mass destruction, though on that score I remain of the view that we will find chemical and biological weapons, and we may well find something that indicates that Saddam's regime maintained an interest in nuclear weapons--not surprising if you live in a part of the world where you do have a nuclear-armed country, an enemy of yours, which is just a country away from you.". . .]

[Includes statements: 14:05: "But I do know. . .that in order to have a liberation strategy, you have to have people who are willing to fight for their own liberation. Otherwise you will never get that liberation bounce that Ken Adelman promised us--that Richard Perle promised us, when he said that Iraqis would be cheering us from the rooftops at our marching in there." 15:52: "Evidence of that can be found in the Habbaniya gold market today. The price of gold jewelry in Habbaniya is cheaper than it is anywhere else in the world. And that is because the middle class has had to liquidate all their assets. In Iraq, like in many other parts of the world, people keep their assets, their wealth, in gold. . ."

[Includes statements: 19:00: "And even our military--and I speak to a lot of them; I used to be the political advisor to the commander in chief of US Armed Forces, Europe and I still have contacts in the command--even some of our military officers were absolutely dismayed at the slaughter they were inflicting upon poorly-trained, poorly-equipped Iraqi conscripts on the way up there."]

[Includes statements: 19:46: "The real agenda in all this, of course, was to redraw the political map of the Middle East. Now that is code, whether you like it or not, but it is code for putting into place the strategy memorandum which was done by Richard Perle and his study group in the mid-90s, which was called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Realm'. And what it is, cut to the quick, is if you take out some of these countries, or some of these governments, that are antagonistic to Israel, then you provide the Israeli government with greater wherewithal to impose its terms and conditions on the Palestinian people. . .But that is the real agenda. You can put weapons of mass destruction out there, you can put terrorism out there, you can put liberation out there. Weapons of mass destruction got hard-headed realists on board, through a bunch of lies. . ."

B. Three questions taken for McGovern and Wilson: Regular cash payments to Iraqis? Importance of Iraqi middle class to creating democracy? How would Wilson suggest supporters go about implementing his proposals for Iraqi reconstruction?

C. Four questions taken for McGovern and Wilson: Risks to whistleblowers? Geopolitical agenda behind Iraq war to fill power vacuum left by fall of Soviet Union? Recommended talking points for talking to representatives? What do whistleblowers need to do to wake the public up?

8:05: In response to the question about risks to whistleblowers, Wilson refers to self as "the retired American ambassador to Africa who has been talking to the New York Times and the Washington Post".

11:08: In response to the question about what whistleblowers need to do to wake the public up, wherein the questioner mentions that, "You know, the documents are out there, thanks to Mr. [Glen] Rangwala and others, it was out there that this was all a lie, even before the war", McGovern replies that of all the administration's "lies", "the forgery of course is the most flagrant", and then Wilson adds, "on the last one [i.e. on the last question about what whistelblowers need to do], the administration was very careful about only talking, on the forgery, only talking at the Presidential level about uranium sales from Africa, until such time as it came out that they were talking about Niger, and then that was subsequently denied by the State Department, it was difficult to sort of make the case, although I think some of the people inside could have probably talked about it a little bit more openly ahead of time. The real problem with this is how this intelligence was used once it got in the hands of the policymakers, and clearly this was emphasized--the rumor part of it, the RUMINT was emphasized, and the debunking of it was just set aside. I think it probably has legs, too, because of the course the press operates on profits, and if they can make a scandal out of this they'll do it, you know, that'll be great. And you already hear people talking about the 'i' word."

13:33: In response to the question about the geopolitical agenda behind the Iraq war, Wilson replies, "On the other ones, the geopolitical situation, I think there are a number of issues at play; there's a number of competing agendas. One is the remaking of the map of the Middle East for Israeli security, and my fear is that when it becomes increasingly apparent that this was all done to make Sharon's life easier and that American soldiers are dying in order to enable Sharon to impose his terms upon the Palestinians that people will wonder why it is American boys and girls are dying for Israel and that will undercut a strategic relationship and a moral obligation that we've had towards Israel for 55 years. I think it's a terribly flawed strategy."

That's my view and I'm sticking with it.

My Grandma and my Mom would always say, "That's my story and I'm sticking to it." :-)

I agree the war's opponents had a plan like that to stop the war. One piece of evidence would be that intercepted Democratic National Committee memo that was circulating in January 2003 which laid out a public relations strategy which included “[c]laiming the Bush administration has ‘manufactured’ evidence against Saddam Hussein and used that evidence to encourage Britain and other allies to join the American fight against Iraq." I was only suggesting that the implementers of this plan may have used pre-existing forgeries originally designed for another purpose, since as far as we know Martino was only the middleman who transmitted the forgeries to the French: he reportedly did not write them himself, he bought them on behalf of French intelligence from someone else at the Nigerian embassy in Rome sometime in fall 2000 (before or after Gore lost the election would be a relevant question), before there was any concrete threat of US action against Iraq and while there was good reason to believe the Oil-for-Food scam would continue indefinitely.

But as far as the operation against Bush--whenever that started--something interesting is that October 2002 is both the month when Martino attempts to sell the forged documents to Burba and the time Wilson (who has up to now confined his comments on Iraq to lectures and TV appearances) publishes his first written contribution on the Iraq controversy in the San Jose Mercury. Two ends of the same operation? I think that's a good bet. If I recall correctly, that's also about the time the Senate and the UN were voting on whether to authorize military action, and it was the month after the British white paper came out.

I have always wondered about the timing of the WH retracting (7/6/03) and then Tenet taking responsibility (7/11/03) for the uranium claim in the SOTU. (I don't know that they ever provided a cogent explanation on how it got in there in the first place.)

I've been wondering about that, also. If they ever explained it, I missed the explanation. But it is interesting that this development was about the same time Novak attempted to expose the CIA angle to Wilson's trip (the real story in his article that got forgotten in the Plame leak controversy), which might fit with the idea that someone was asking questions about what was going on at CIA.

I'm going to need to dig a bit on the identity of Britain's independent source. I did find these stories from June-July 2004, but I need to find the follow-up details--know I've seen them somewhere (piasa, anything on that handy?):

Intelligence backs claim Iraq tried to buy uranium

Illicit sales of uranium from Niger were being negotiated with five states including Iraq at least three years before the US-led invasion, senior European intelligence officials have told the Financial Times.

Intelligence officers learned between 1999 and 2001 that uranium smugglers planned to sell illicitly mined Nigerien uranium ore, or refined ore called yellow cake, to Iran, Libya, China, North Korea and Iraq.

These claims support the assertion made in the British government dossier on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programme in September 2002 that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from an African country, confirmed later as Niger. George W. Bush, US president, referred to the issue in his State of the Union address in January 2003.

Niger Negotiated With Iraq?

President Bush has been called a — "liar" for saying last year that, according to British intelligence officers, Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium from Africa. But an investigation by the British government has now found that British intelligence officers were right to make the claim.

A report on the investigation, expected to be released next week, concludes that the claim was both reasonable and consistent with British intelligence, which indicates that the African country of Niger negotiated with Iraq to sell it refined uranium.

However, according to the Financial Times, the investigation did find British Prime Minister Tony Blair's claim that Saddam could deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes was inadequately supported by intelligence.

That is how I read it.

Everything I have read about Fitzpatrick indicates he is a straight arrow and his investigations are thorough and usually very tight lipped. I have read he will follow an investigation regardless of where it leads or how high it goes. He is an equal opportunity prosecutor, IOW he follows no political agenda.

If the above is true, it follows he would not name a target until he had all of his ducks in a row.

This line caught my eye:

"....Notification would not be appropriate in routine clear cases or when such action might jeopardize the investigation or prosecution because of the likelihood of flight, destruction or fabrication of evidence, endangerment of other witnesses, undue delay or otherwise would be inconsistent with the ends of justice...."

I go back to Fitzpatrick's statement that all he needed to wrap this up was Miller's testimony. It was after Miller's testimony that the SP called Wilson, this after Wilson bragged about not even receiving so much as a phone call from the SP.

I am reading tea leaves just like everyone else. We have no way of knowing why SP called Wilson, but if SP has solid grounds for indictment of anyone and Wilson had needed information, it would seem the information would be given under oath.

It could go any way. Given what I have read about the SP, no target would be named until he explored all areas.

But then again, I am not a lawyer and do not play one on TV or in front of the keyboard.

Honor the Legacy was initiated by U.S. war veterans and the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC). The coalition also includes: Amnesty International USA, Oxfam America, the National Council of Churches of Christ, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Veterans for Common Sense.

Speaking of Physicians for Social Responsibilty... you know who is a member of this little group?

A gal by the name of "Dr. Meryl Nass." Dr. Meryl Nass is the woman whose 1992 article or "paper" on a Rhodesian anthrax outbreak in 1978-1980 was used by her friend, FAS's Dr. Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, to try to accuse Dr. Steven Hatfill of being the anthrax mailer. The Rhodesian angle was also peddled by Kristof and other journalists. Nass is a fruitcake who has her articles published in such upstanding *cough* places as Red Flags Weekly. She spent some time in Cuba as, in her words, a 'consultant for the Cuban Ministry of Health' before coming back to the US to end up as an internist in an office in Maine. In the US she has campaigned actively against anthrax vaccinations.

Rosenberg is of course the gal who vociferously claimed the anthrax mailer must be an American.

As a sidenote, the none-too-sweet Robert Mugabe came to power in Rhodesia aka Zimbabwe- in 1980.

As a sidenote, the none-too-sweet Robert Mugabe came to power in Rhodesia aka Zimbabwe- in 1980.

I observe tht would be back when Wilson was with the State Department's Bureau of African Affairs, and shortly to be transferred to South Africa in 1981.

Thanks for the info on the Nass-Rosenberg connection. I didn't know that, but when you mention it, that makes sense. PSR has been involved in WMD-related controversies since the Vietnam War era (Martin D. Turner, "Project Whitecoat", Spectrum, Summer, 1970: "Although the debate over CBW [Chemical and Biological Warfare] has become more audible within the past year, actually it has been going on for some time. A number of professional and scientific groups have studied the matter, among them the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, The Union of Concerned Scientists, and the Pugwash Study Group. These groups have also sponsored numerous conferences and symposiums, one of which met in London in February 1968, sponsored by the J. D. Bernal Peace Library."). They came up in my VVAW research recently. Their roots are in the antinuclear network centered around SANE. More recently they've become part of the Win Without War coalition, which is aligned with United for Peace and Justice (UPJ), an outgrowth of the Vietnam-era People's Coalition for Peace and Justice (affiliated with the VVAW through Al Hubbard) via CP leader Gil Green's Committees on Correspondence (a post-Soviet CP offshoot started in the 1990s) and the People for the American Way; UPJ is affiliated with longstanding CP front groups like the American Friends Service Committee and the Insitute for Policy Studies and is led by Leslie Cagan, a veteran of the CP and the Venceremos Brigade, a pro-Castro group.

BTW Veterans for Common Sense, also mentioned in the snip you quote, works closely with VVAW and VVAW's parent, Veterans for Peace.

Later tonight I'm going to try to dig into this. I really need to refresh my memory on how the 16 words found their way into the SOTU address...all I can remember now are descriptions of a lot of back and forth with the speech that ultimately was said to have been signed of on by the CIA.

As an aside, I was looking through Mylroie's Bush vs. the Beltway last night. She describes, on page 76, Rumsfeld refusing to discuss any specifics about an Iraq-al Qaeda link. The reason was that he had previously requested a list from the CIA of what they had declassified about the relationship. After reading it he was attacked by Senators and various press for saying something that the agency didn't believe (even though he had received it from them). She concludes that Tenet and Bush could have said the same thing..."it had become apparent that at least some intelligence officers were providing informal briefings to members of Congress and the media that contradicted the officially cleared intelligence."

I will be very disillusioned if Fitzgerald's investigation started and stopped with Plame and the White House.

It would make sense if the NSC members and the press were getting different briefings from CIA.

Here's some background on the genesis of the 16 words (from 2003, so there may be updates on this--I'm in the process of reviewing my files and if I come across something I'll post it):

"Head of CIA Weapons Analysis Program Leaving", 9/10/2003

A top CIA expert on weapons of mass destruction, who became embroiled in controversy over whether the White House stretched evidence about Iraq's programs, said he planned to leave the agency in October.

Alan Foley, who heads the Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center, told colleagues in a note dated Aug. 29 that he had been "thinking about life after the agency for some time" and decided to leave after 26 years to enter the private sector.

He alluded to this summer's finger-pointing between the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House over who was responsible for an unsubstantiated claim in President Bush's State of the Union address in January that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.

Critics seized on the reference, later found to have been partly based on forged documents, as a sign the White House had exaggerated the threat from Iraq to build support for the war.

SNIP

U.S. officials have said White House National Security Council weapons expert Bob Joseph discussed the uranium line with Foley, but there were differing recollections about who said what.

In one version, Joseph asked CIA's Foley if it was OK to use the uranium line in the speech and cite the British as the source, and that the CIA approved that language.

In another version, Foley told the White House's Joseph the CIA had recommended the British not include the claim in their September 2002 dossier on Iraq but the British included it anyway, citing intelligence that the Americans did not have.

On Niger, here's another thread of interest:

Niger's low security for uranium, radioactive materials under scrutiny

October 2002 was a busy month-

The National Intelligence Estimate [NIE] was released then...

OCTOBER 2002 : (NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATE : IRAQ & ITS SEARCH FOR URANIUM) We're reliably told that that now famous NIE, which is meant to be the best summary judgment of the intelligence community, isn't nearly as full of doubt about that yellowcake story as the critics assert or as even CIA director George Tenet has suggested. The section on Iraq's hunt for uranium, for example, asserts bluntly that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" and that "acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons."
Regarding the supposedly discredited Niger story [of 2003], the NIE says that "A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001 Niger planned to send several tons of 'pure uranium' (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement."
That foreign government service is of course the British, who still [as of July 17, 2003] stand by their intelligence. In the next paragraph, the NIE goes on to say that "Reports indicate Iraq also has sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo." It then adds that "We cannot confirm whether Iraq has succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources."
Keep in mind that NIEs are consensus documents. They aren't the view of some Lone Ranger analyst or a policy cabal... - "CIA Intelligence Report Believed Niger Story was Accurate in Oct," The Wall Street Journal , July 17, 2003

...and there was the joint resolution authorizing war on Iraq...

...and to make things particularly interesting:

OCTOBER 15, 2002 : (REPORT : UK'S INTELLIGENCE SERVICE MI6 HAS UNCOVERED FRENCH, GERMAN AND SOUTH AFRICAN EQUIPPING OF IRAQ; SAY IRAQI INTELLIGENCE OFFICER NADHIM JABOURI MAKES CONTACT WITH SOUTH AFRICAN NUCLEAR ENGINEERS AND ARMSCOR OFFICIALS) An MI6 investigation has uncovered how France, Germany and South Africa have equipped Iraq with almost £1 billion of equipment capable of being used to boost Saddam's arsenal. The sales have been approved by the UN sanctions committee after "intense lobbying" from the countries involved - and supported by China and Russia. Both already have substantial trade deals with Iraq. UN Resolution 1409, adopted last May, allows exports to Iraq of a wide range of equipment with military applications. Agricultural sprayers which could be adapted to disperse biological weapons. Fibre-optics and telecommunications hardware have a dual capability of creating a powerful air-defence network. Much of this equipment has come from Europe's leading technology giants - Siemens in Germany and Alcatel in France. All were sold for civilian use only. But some of the equipment includes neutron generators which UN weapons inspectors discovered were key components in the crude gun-implosion nuclear device Iraq had created before the 1991 Gulf War. Last week, a top Iraqi intelligence officer, Nadhim Jabouri, arrived at the Iraqi embassy in Pretoria to pursue contacts with South African nuclear engineers and meet with senior officials at Armscor, the country's arms corporation. MI6 believe Jabouri's task is to obtain the vital aluminium tubes needed for the enrichment centrifuges to produce a nuclear bomb. The MI6 report says the willingness of the South African government to help Iraq lies behind the extraordinary outburst by the country's former president, Nelson Mandela, who recently branded President Bush as "a threat to world peace" - not Saddam Hussein. But it is Europe's role in helping Saddam that will cause fury in Washington and London. In Iraq the operation is controlled by Saddam's older son, Uday. Central to it is freeing large sums of money from Iraq's blocked account in the Banque Nationale de Paris. The money is deposited in the bank's New York branch. Once the UN sanctions committee approves an export licence to Iraq, the money is freed. "Uday relies on middlemen to sign the contracts for food and medicine. But in reality the contracts are for dual purpose equipment", an Iraqi defector has told MI6 investigators. -- "MI6 Report Reveals How France, Germany And South Africa Boost Saddam's Arsenal," by Gordon Thomas, Globe Intel, 10/15/02 , http://www.gordonthomas.ie/, page http://www.life-info.de/inh1./texte/GLOBE_INTEL2.html.

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.