Posted on 02/07/2007 5:30:00 AM PST by slowhand520
Is Everything We Know About Joe Wilson’s Trip to Niger Wrong? New evidence from the Libby trial — evidence Senate investigators never saw — could change the storyline.
By Byron York
For the last two weeks, a number of Republicans in Washington — in the administration, on Capitol Hill, and in the intelligence community — have been watching closely as the perjury and obstruction of justice trial of Lewis Libby unfolds in federal court. In particular, those Republicans have been poring over dozens of documents released as evidence in the case. Much of what they’ve seen is old stuff, things they’ve known about for years. But two documents are new, to most eyes at least, and they may significantly change our understanding of how the entire Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame Wilson-Niger affair began.
The accepted version of events is that Vice President Dick Cheney got things started when he asked for information about possible Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium in Africa. After that request, CIA employee Valerie Plame Wilson suggested sending her husband to look into the question, and after that, the CIA flew Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate. But the new documents suggest that Mrs. Wilson suggested her husband for the trip before the vice president made his request. In other words, Joseph Wilson’s visit to Niger, which everyone believes was undertaken at the behest of the vice president, was actually in the works before Dick Cheney asked his now-famous question. And if that is true, our current understanding of the chronology of events is wrong.
The story is contained in two exhibits, known in court as DX 66.2 and DX 66.3, entered into evidence by Libby’s defense team. The first is a CIA document headlined, “Briefer’s Tasking for Richard Cheney on 02/13/2002.” It begins:
Briefer: David D. Terry Briefing Date: 02/13/2002 Principal: Richard Cheney
Tasking: The VP was shown an assessment (he thought from [the Defense Intelligence Agency]) that Iraq is purchasing uranium from Africa. He would like our assessment of that transaction and its implications for Iraq’s nuclear program. A memo for tomorrow’s brief would be great.
The document doesn’t seem particularly newsworthy until it is viewed alongside a memo first revealed by the Senate Intelligence Committee in its report on the African uranium matter, released in July 2004. That report cited an e-mail written by Valerie Plame Wilson to her boss, the deputy chief of the CIA’s Counterproliferation Division, in which she suggested her husband for the fact-finding mission to Niger. A CIA official told the committee that Mrs. Wilson “offered up [Joseph Wilson’s] name” for the job, and the Senate report quoted the e-mail written by Mrs. Wilson saying, “my 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.”
According to the Senate report, Valerie Plame Wilson sent her e-mail on February 12, 2002 — the day before the vice president was briefed on the African uranium matter. The discrepancy between the two dates seems glaring, but was not included in the Senate report. That is because, according to a source familiar with the committee’s investigation, the CIA did not include the document in the materials it turned over to the committee. Senate investigators apparently never knew the exact date of the vice president’s request, so they never knew it came after Plame’s e-mail.
What does the new information mean? On February 12, 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency released — inside the government, not publicly — a report covering the Africa uranium issue; its title said that Niger had “signed an agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Baghdad.” CIA officials told Senate investigators the report spurred requests for information from both the State Department and the Department of Defense. Knowledgeable sources speculate — and they stress, they are speculating — that those inquiries from State and Defense were made on the 12th, the day the Defense Intelligence Agency report was sent around, and that Valerie Plame Wilson, in suggesting her husband be sent to investigate, was reacting to those requests, and not to the vice president’s question, which came the next day. In this new version of events, Dick Cheney was the last guy to request more information, not the first; the notion that his request started the whole affair seems wrong.
The other new document entered into evidence in the trial is another CIA memo, this one headlined “Memorandum for the Vice President” and dated February 14, 2002. That memo appears to begin — it’s not possible to say for sure because it is blacked out — with a discussion of the uranium issue, followed by this statement:
We have tasked our clandestine source[s] with ties to the Nigerien Government and consortium officials to seek additional information on the contract. We also are working with the Embassy and the defense attaché’s office in Niamey [Niger] to verify their reports.
It is not clear from the poorly-defined copies released as evidence whether the memo refers to a “clandestine source” or “clandestine sources.” But from everything that we know about the case, Joseph Wilson was the person who was given the assignment to check out the Niger uranium story. Embassy officials were also told about it, as the memo indicates, but Wilson was the CIA’s man with ties to the Nigerien government.
If the timing spelled out in the new document is accurate — if Wilson had already been picked for the task by February 14 — the new evidence sheds a different light on the version of events given by Wilson himself in his book The Politics of Truth. In that, Wilson wrote about a meeting with CIA officials — a meeting that took place on February 19, 2002 — at which “I was asked if I would be willing to travel to Niger to check out the report in question.” Perhaps Wilson was indeed asked to go to Niger at that meeting, but the newly-released CIA document suggests the agency settled on Wilson several days earlier.
The source familiar with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation says the committee was never given the second document, either.
Perhaps it will turn out that there is some mistake in the memos, or in the interpretation of them, and that the generally-accepted version of the story remains accurate. But if the story told in the newly-public memos is correct, our entire understanding of how the CIA leak affair began will have to change.
It is very distressing when you believe your team to be superior, but unwilling to do what is needed to win, even when what is needed is moral and upright.
Okie, I like door number 2 - a malignant intent to undermine the President's position from the very outset.
One fact still remains - Joe Wilson has never been put under oath to testify to any of this. Why this special protection from the Justice Dept. and Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald??? Valerie recommended her husband because he was hot to do it. To think there are citizens who have gone to jail for perjury on far less serious matters. Perjury is perjury and it subverts our legal/justice system. Let's get ol' Joe under oath. Now!
I think you are right that something else is behind this but I dont think the trap was about impeachment ,it was meant to get the Bush administration voted out of office.
When that didnt happen I would think there would be payback, bigtime ...
My fantasy is that Bush at some point puts the cards on the table and ends wiping out the Democrats ...is this only a fantasy? If not when does it happen?
so is that why Bush was so nice to Tenet when he went packing?
I think York is making too much of this. We already knew that Wilson wasn't directly sent by Cheney, but by CIA intermediaries. If others at the CIA also had the idea - a day or two before Cheney - of checking out the Niger story, and were already thinking of sending Wilson, I don't that that is particularly significant.
In addition, if it can be proven unequivocally that Wilson's trip was not connected to Cheney or anyone at the White House at all, then the whole "White House conspiracy to out Plame to retaliate against Wilson" theory is shot to hell, along with any possible motive for Scooter Libby to lie to the grand jury.
I'm 60 and probably won't see it...but my children most certainly will.
I believe the Left is trying to silence us because they don't want to see their leaders' names on any 'enemies' list...which is certainly coming one of these days.
Your characterization of this as a silent-coup is essentially correct. It's just one facet of an internal "civil war" and slow-motion coup which has been ongoing for years among powerful competing interests in our governing classes (this includes elected officials, the bureaucracy, the Judiciary, the MSM, and of course the political parties). Basically this was another variation of the same "Iron Triangle" consisting of the intelligence community, the MSM and the DNC co-operating to bring down an administration that we saw in action in the fall of Richard Nixon.
Your explanation makes the term, "Plausible Deniability" come to mind... :-/
This article is very interesting...one of the aspects that I am really intersted in is the Senate Intelligence Committee...
We know that Rockefailure is the Chairman NOW..but even before, he was doing everything in his power to make Bush, Cheney ..and all parties seem as if there was a concerted PLAN to lie to get us into war.
I have always wondered if the Wilson trip wasn't a "set up" by someone...
Very interesting
Thanks for the ping.
Won't matter if it can be proven or not. Proof is not the issue. The issue is if it can sell enough papers and prime time ads for the MSM to shed their bias. Boring proof is not a factor.
Plame ping.
Nailed it!
Thanks. What you laid does sum up the smoking gun aspect of the data, but will be make any difference in this monkey trial? - I doubt it. Not disparaging the info, just reality checking that this thing is such a miscarriage of justice right now that no real answers are going to get traction.
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