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.
I'll share my tylenol.
But, I love this cloak and dagger drama.
This is gonna make a great book if they keep their FACTS straight.
Wasn't Wilson included on the Clinton junket to Africa during Bill's administration?
Anyone got that report?
Wilson had a great deal of private business going on in that country.
Wilson had a great deal of private business going on in that country.
^^^^
You wrote: We already knew that Wilson wasn't directly sent by Cheney, but by CIA intermediaries.
^^^^^
Could it be that once again observant Freepers are light years ahead of folks at National Review?
"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." Totally false. What could be more intriguing than a story about Libya running Saddam's nuclear research? Had this occurred under a Democrat there would have been weeks of stories lauding his wisdom in going to war. Pulitzers would have been awarded to the investigative reporters who whould have DEEPLY and EXTENSIVELY researched the connections and program.
The media is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the Party of Treason. It has shown that REPEATEDLY over the years by ignoring truly relevant stories while OVERINFLATING irrelevant ones when it is not concocting FRAUDULENT stories out of forged documents, Bush's NG story is just ONE example that we stopped dead. There are hundreds which were NOT stopped.
Hardly the only example. Another was the idea that Wilson said he had told the administration that he found no evidence of Niger selling yellowcake to Iraq, even though he reported hearing that an Iraqi official had been seeking a deal to purchase Yellowcake - which is exactly what the administration claimed.
That was in fact one of the media questions at the time, in addition to being a Cheney question.
Well, actually, they had said so before. Niger is where Iraq got their previous batch in the 1980s. One of the reasons some CIA analysts thought it didn't make sense that Iraq was shopping for yellowcake was that they already had over a hundred tons of the stuff from their previous purchase. According to Wilson, the officials he talked to were concerned about their poor conrol of some of the mines and that there might be unofficial sales.
One of the interesting things that came out in the Libby trial is that FOUR DAYS prior to the SOTU address, the CIA was force-feeding the Niger-Uranium connection to the President. This was a concentrated effort, absolutely. Positively treasonous.
A British Telegraph journalist in Niger
recently reported that the former U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Herman Cohen, had told Niger’s president to stay quiet on the uranium issue.
Diatta is quick to address the potentially damaging media report, pointing out that Cohen is also a lobbyist for the Nigerien government and frequently travels to Niger to brief the government on his work in Washington. The former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson, is another key player who helped [* should be 'failed to'] debunk the claim that Niger sold uranium to Iraq. In 2002, he was sent by the U.S. government to check out the uranium allegations, and he reported back that it was highly unlikely that any such transaction had taken place—a fact apparently not absorbed by the White House until after the president’s State of the Union address. “I know [Wilson] very well also,” said Diatta. “And you know, something very strange—when he went to Niger in February 2002, I was myself in Niger and we had a meeting in my house and we spoke about this matter. So, it was not a secret mission. Everyone spoke about this secret CIA mission. I don’t understand why there is so much noise about this visit to Niger.
“Ambassador Wilson was requested by the CIA to go to Niger, yes, but he accomplished this for his government without any problem. He told everyone that he was sent by the U.S. government on the uranium issue, without any secrecy,” Diatta said.
117 posted on 10/31/2005 6:47:14 AM PST by kcvl | To 115
Rockyeller's still going to try to feed us the "no connections" nonsense about Iraq and alQaeda? Rockefeller's trying to plug groundhog holes in a levee during a 500 year flood... with nothing but a few loose tampons.
They're pulling out all the old stuff they have in their drawers; they've been waiting for this for a LONG time, ya know?
That's the batch!
Wilson is up to his EYEBALLS with uranium and dealing with ARABS....his office was in the SAME office as some ARAB terrorist backer....Mahoudi (SP)???
Where ELSE have you seen this reported, BillY? Byron York is a fine reporter but this is a very sketchy story to begin with.
What if LIBBY sent him and the prosecution to Libby is Cheney's PAYBACK??? HAHAHAHHAAHH
Wilson has his OWN uranium interests in Niger.....Nothing to do with our govts. interests.
I think the last thing the Wilson fan club of moles wanted was a war- they tried to stave it off by trying to make Iraq look bulletproof because of its WMD, something Iraq cultivated too in the believe we wouldn't dare throw our troops at poison gas or some bioattack. Hence the anthrax and all the scare efforts... it was like the dreaded "Afghan winter we're all going to die" thing the mediots were floating.
That anthrax was a warning not to go into Iraq.
Saddam Hussein's regime was too much of a cash cow to butcher, in their view.
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