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 shows (yet again) that Joe and Valerie Wilson, with the eager aid of a depraved MSM, concocted a fictitious story line about how Joe went to Niger "at the behest" of VP Cheney's office. Everything about this story has been a lie, starting with "a" pseudo-spy named Valerie Pflame and "the" fraud of the century, Joe Wilson.
The bottom line. The CIA is a rogue agency.
I'd say the Rockefeller memo was the command to go into action.
Rove was the target. There was even a Television show based on "frog marching" about the same time. I forgot which show...but it sure struck a chord!!
The Dems dropped this sleazy pair like a hot potato last fall. NOBODY believes their story. The Washington Post ripped them to shreds last year, in an editorial that rivalled anything I've seen in a conservative publication for nose-pinching disdain.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/31/AR2006083101460.html
And Proskauer Rose attorney (and Plame-Wilson next door neighbor) Christopher Wolf withdrew from working on their civil suit less than a month after filing it, apparently after beginning to dig into the facts a little.
Valerie PLAME was her birth name. She was not an unknown in D.C. She shacked up with Joe at the Watergate for a while and then married Joe in April of 1998....almost exactly 5 years before Joe stepped to the podium to announce that HE WAS THE SECRET AGENT WHO sent to Niger.
Of course the evidence, which really is NOT new, sheds a different light on the version of events given by Wilson himself in his book, and EVERYWHERE else!!! His wife outed herself, period.
Plus, I agree with every word you wrote, "melancholy". There is no end of the corruption associated with the Clintons; yet very little has been done to them. They both belong behind bars; not running for another shot at the White House!!
Nancee
You're right EVERYTHING about this story has been a lie, including Wilson's claim that his report disproved the claim that Saddam was seeking to buy yellow cake. Wilson had reported that Saddam had indeed tried to buy yellow cake and was lying to the press even about that. Bush's sixteen words were in fact true.
This may be the crux of the situation. The Whitehouse may have known that Wilson was lying, but since they never received a written copy of Wilson's assessment, they had no proof. Inquiring as to how Wilson came to be given this assignment was a natural question, and releasing that information to the press was not a crime.
I still think that Fitzgerald is going for a mistrial, so that he can inflict maximum damage without getting a conviction or an exoneration.
You mean the CIA with major resources devoted to counter proliferation intel did not have any permanent 'feet on the street' in a country that is one of the world's largest exporters of uranium?
If they had to rely on sending a washed up former diplomat to beg for information from retired Niger officials, heads should roll. For what we're spending we should have people in place inside the Ministry of whatever in Niger that conducts uranium sales who can tell us to the damn ounce what was sold to whom and who else tried to buy.
FYI...the statement the MSM has been making:
On July 18, 2003, the administration, facing criticism for the intelligence used to justify the war, declassified an eight-page part of the NIE dubbed "key judgments" and conducted a lengthy background briefing with reporters to discuss it.“Key judgments" is the operative word here. They were declassified by Tenet in October of 2002, six days after the NIE was complete per the following information:
On October 7, 2002 DCI Tenet sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee declassifying portions of its new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.
More articles:
A 25-page version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was released in October 2002. It made clear-cut statements about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities in two pages of "Key Judgments."The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." - Statement of Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL).
A copy of the Key Judgments document can be found here. Warning: .pdf file.
As usual, the MSM gets it wrong. The declassification was requested by the Dems and Tenet approved it, way before the MSM says it was done.
Well said. That's what I wanted to get at, but you spelled it out.
This reminds me of the scene in Absence of Malice when Paul Newman's plan comes together:
James A. Wells (Wilfred Brimley):
Mr Gallagher... I seem to want to ask if you set all this up. If I do, you ain't gonna tell me, are you?
Michael Colin Gallagher: No.
Wells:
I'll tell you something, you're a smart fella. Don't get too smart. I'm pretty smart myself.
Are the Wilsons smart enough and well placed enough to set something like this in motion? If not, who else was in on it?
But there was a piece of the NIE that was declassified by the President contemporaneous with the response to Wilson's op-ed and in partial rebuttal to it - this has been extensively discussed in the Libby trial. Are they different pieces of the NIE, or what?
"Tell me how this will make the media notice. If it won't it is not significant." You are joking I hope. Nothing beneficial to the Nation or President will be printed by these pressitutes.
Apparently the RAT media believes the existence of an entire nuclear weapons research program subcontracted by Iraq to Libya is not "significant" either. Wonder why?
Wonder why the reporting on abu grabass went on for MONTHS at a hysterical pitch while Libya's admission and surrender of the program was dropped so quickly the VAST majority of people don't even know that it existed.
It was the same NIE document, but a longer version as it included dissents from the intelligence community (State and Energy Depts.). Now...if the President was supposedly trying to justify the war by releasing the second version, as they claim, why would the dissents be included? Makes no sense.
Interesting line of thought. At this point I tend to think the CIA coup attempt against Bush/Cheney came from a couple notches below Tenet in the chain of command, but there are a few missing pieces of information I think would be needed to state that with confidence. I'll be posting something else shortly with some thoughts on where I think the anti-Cheney faction of the Agency was concentrated, will ping you when I do.
While true, Joe six pack won't understand it, especially the DemoRat Joes. Some of the Republican Joes will understand it a bit, but this is not going to sway the MSM one bit.
If it is strong enough to make it into Wall Street Journal, and if the corporate bosses read it and understand it and believe it is newsworthy for their media corporations to cover it, then it will be covered. You have to get past that and it has to be hot enough to sell more papers than the current tactic. That is the way to get a biased media to drop their bias, but it will be dropped only a short time.
Thanks.
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