Wilson
Posted on 10/30/2005 9:25:14 PM PST by smoothsailing
Joe Wilson in a Bind
By Clinton W. Taylor
Published 10/31/2005 12:07:45 AM
Last week I had the privilege of being lied to personally by Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, who spoke here at Stanford last Monday.
The fact that Joe Wilson is economical with the truth probably won't surprise many Spectator readers.
Nonetheless I assure you the horse I am beating, although it may be lying in the op-ed pages of the Los Angeles Times, is far from dead.
But this week there's new evidence of his lies to flog him with. When the indictment of Scooter Libby was unsealed on Friday, it finally placed one of Wilson's oft-repeated fabrications beyond the most hopeful partisan's credibility.
First the lie: In the Q&A after his talk last Monday, Wilson answered a question of mine with essentially the same statement about the origin of his mission to Niger that he relates in his L.A. Times op-ed:
Valerie was an innocent in this whole affair. Although there were suggestions that she was behind the decision to send me to Niger, the CIA told Newsday just a week after the Novak article appeared that "she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment." The CIA repeated the same statement to every reporter thereafter.
The Newsday article he refers to notes:
A senior intelligence official confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They [the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be."
This has been Wilson's story ever since the issue came up: he maintains his wife had nothing to do the CIA's decision to send him. It's important to his narrative that "outing" his wife was a bolt from the blue designed to intimidate and punish him.
The more plausible explanation is that the information came out because it cast Wilson's mission and his credibility in a new light. Evidence supports this interpretation. While the CIA may back Wilson's account to reporters, it has now twice contradicted him when the chips were down and the threat of perjury loomed.
The first contradiction, of course, occurred back in July 2004, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence devoted a few pages of its report on WMD intelligence failures to point out that Valerie Plame came up with the idea of sending her husband to Niger. Both a memorandum Plame wrote and the testimony of a CIA officer show that Wilson's trip was her idea. (The report can be downloaded here, and the relevant sections are on page 39, 40, and 72.)
That should have put an end to Joe Wilson's credibility, but it wasn't good enough for the diehard Wilson fans, like most of the audience at Stanford last week, or the editorial staff of the L.A. Times. But now the indictment of Scooter Libby has proved yet again that Wilson is full of it.
In order to claim that Libby had perjured himself and obstructed justice, the grand jury goes to great lengths to show how and when he had actually learned about the origin of Wilson's trip. To do so, they refer on page 4 of the indictment to a conversation between Libby and a "senior officer of the CIA" on June 11, 2003:
[Libby] was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.
And again on page 12 of the indictment:
[Libby] was informed by a senior CIA officer that Wilson's wife was employed by the CIA and that the idea of sending him to Niger originated with her.
This puts Wilson's fan club in a bind: either Wilson is lying, or the indictment is. Which is it? If it's the latter, then perhaps Scooter Libby didn't know what the indictment said he knew, and the indictment ought to be thrown out or at least amended.
Alas, most of the world sees it's the former. Wilson's lie, of course, wouldn't excuse any crime Libby might have committed, but it ought to be enough to prevent Wilson from ever being taken seriously again.
Clinton W. Taylor (clinton_w_taylor@hotmail.com) is a lawyer and a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science at Stanford.
I just read that Mandy Grunwald's father, Henry Grunwald was Ambassador to Austria from 1987-1990. He died in February 2005. When did Deepthroat come out?
Here is a question for you ....
Some on the left argue that if you read this portion of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee Report :
444 of the SSIC report,
"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."
It can be argued that Cheney's request generated Wilson's trip. Hence, technically speaking, Wilson's statement that Cheney sent him on the Niger trip was no lie.
COMMENTS ??
Also, the DU are arguing that in the Senate Committee's report the Democrats in the committee said thusly :
"The details of the Committee's findings and conclusions on this issue [Niger uranium] can be found in the Niger section of the report. What cannot befound, however are two conclusions upon which the Committee's Democrats would not agree. While there was no disupte with the underlying facts, my Democrat colleagues refused to allow the following conclusions to appear in the report:
1) The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee
2) 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.
ANY COMMENTS ?
"It can be argued that Cheney's request generated Wilson's trip. Hence, technically speaking, Wilson's statement that Cheney sent him on the Niger trip was no lie. "
The media reports that Cheney called the CIA and said "Send an idiot to Niger. I need a good laugh." So Valerie suggested her husband was a complete idiot and it was settled. Ambassador Wilson returned with a T-shirt he gave to Valerie which said "My idiot husband went to Niger and All I Got was this stupid T-Shirt."
"go after the easiest case". I agree. Which makes it harder for me to trust Fitzgerald's motives. Why didn't he have Wilson and Plame under investigation? There is a mountain of lies and deceit behind the activities of those two and unnamed CIA anti-Bush operatives. For a good analysis of this farce and other news about the CIA's role in the Iraq war, read the column today in Frontpagemag.com by Steven Hayes. CIA reports before the war strongly asserted that Iraq was a severe threat to our security. Now it seems they are trying to cover their collective posteriors.
If you are of a suspicious and partially paranoid mind like me, you might think that the whole thing was a scam to set up the Bush admin. They could always claim that no one could investigate Wilson's wife for national security purposes. The Bush admin would be between a rock and a hard place. With liberal Big Media cheering them on, the special prosecutor would go after the evil, war-mongering Republicans with claws bared. The CIA anti-Bushies and the Wilsons could sit back smug and satisfied, laughing at all the harm they could do. And actually their plan is working quite well. Wilson is the perfect actor and media whore for this operation. You're right, under normal sane circumstances he should never have been considered for anything except drinking mint tea at diplomatic receptions. But if you're overly suspicious like me, his appointment makes sense.
That makes two of us.
I think.. When Hillary mentioned the election 'October Surprise' in Mar '04, she was referring to this. This would have been news last October if Miller hadn't gotten herself thrown in jail.
As to the second, I'm not sure what there is to comment on.The Democrats wanted two statements left out of the final report that were factually accurate.
Happy Scalitoween!
WOO-HOO !!!
bttt
That's what I've read as well.
Wilson's trip had nothing to do with the forged documents.
Martino first attempted to peddle the forgeries to the CIA station chief in Rome in early 2001. He dismissed them out of hand.
SISMI then made it's first report to directly to the CIA in Oct, 200l (I believe). A second, with more detail, was made in Feb, 2002. This is the report that caused the CIA to send out Wilson.
In late 2002 or early 2003 Tenet decided that the evidence that Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake from Niger was not good enough to justify public assertion by the President. A few days later either Martino or SISMI again provided the CIA with the forged documents.
Both the forgeries and the SISMI reports concern Nigerian yellowcake...and La Republica is close to proving that SISMI was responsible for the forgeries.
The timeline is complicated, the facts are complicated, everyone is spinning and dissembling. I think I've got it right...but I wouldn't bet on it. :)
This is hardball, played by true professionals.
According to Bob Woodward, George Friedman, and the Downing Street memos...the Administration was profoundly shocked by 911. The destruction was bad enough but they were horrified to discover that no defense was possible and they thought that WMD attack might be imminant ( :) ).
They decided that their only possible course was an agressive attack on the Muslim culture which was spawning terrorists, an attack that had to be mounted ASAP.
They did what the had to to pull it off. I don't consider their actions to be any different from those of Polk, McKinley, TR, Wilson, FDR, Truman, or Johnson. I agree with their analysis...
...in my view Joe Wilson has been right about everything except the most important thing - what it takes to defend this country.
True only with hindsight.
much less allowed him to speak to the press about it in a highly politicized manner
They didn't have the legal authority to stop him.
My understanding is that covert officers work in the Directorate of Operations, analysists work in the Directorate of Intelligence. That Plame worked in the former strongly suggests that Wilson's description of her is accurate.
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