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.
BTW, my speculation is incompatible with Occam's razor; take with appropriate doses of skepticism.
Alan Foley also suddenly "retired" right after this information came out.
Sorry, but all that is documented elsewhere. If not from other documents then from sworn testimony.
Care to elaborate?
I didn’t know that Valerie Plame or Joseph Wilson existed until after the Novak article. I have never met nor communicated with either of them. Nor did I have any responsibility or authority relating to them, the reported trip to Niger, or the subsequent leak investigation. As for Ray McGovern, I don’t believe that I have either seen or talked to him since before his retirement from the Agency. That was many years ago; probably sometime in the late 1990’s. Please do not contact me again.
And Feldman naturally wonders:
Why did Wilson indicate to Vanity Fair that Foley was his wife’s boss when he apparently wasn’t? Why did McGovern suggest that Foley was going to become a more forceful critic of the Administration and the war after his retirement when he barely knew him and had had no recent contact with him at the time he made that suggestion?
Curiouser and curiouser.
That's obvious.........
It has been known that when the story hit the papers Cheney didn't even know who Wilson was.
My head hurts.
We are in a house of mirrors it seems.
Ping
I don't know, either. Maybe Dad Bush did it! (In the billiard room, with the candlestick.)
Valerie wasn't the secret......Joe was. And the entire affair was a clever conspiracy....with no written report by Joe, non-dislosure document.
Oh, yeah...he did it pro-bono....no paycheck...just expenses. Bet he went first class!!!!
Chris Matthews let the F word slip when being interviewed on Imus this morning.
It hasn't stopped the MSM from suggesting Cheney leaked her name has it?
I think the documents reveal the Wilsons as liars once and for all.
Don't get me wrong, I've thought this story has been ridiculous from the start. Of course Novak asked why Wilson, a former ambassador, would be sent to investigate illegal sales. Did they think the Nigerian officials would fess up to an American official?
Poor Chis--He's been hoping for "Fitzmas" for soooooo long.
The entire premis of the Left is that Cheney "cooked the books" on the intelligence ...that he "pressured" the intelligence community into submitting false information...Thiss would show it didnt happen
Any news I hear or read today in Big Media still has "Joe Wilson DISCREDITING!!! the Bush admin on uranium in Niger". I barely kept myself from screaming at the radio at work a few weeks ago when the lib radio station news stooge broadcast the "Wilson discredits Bush" lie. And that's still what Americans still hear. They don't read or hear that Joe Wilson has been proven to be a stinking liar and the Bush admin was right about Hussein and Niger uranium. They still dutifully repeat the lie that is fed to them by the Donkey Party operatives.
The fact that the CIA sent Wilson on a "clandestine" mission without requiring him to sign a non-disclosure agreement supports your theory.
bttt
September 10, 2003 report of Alan Foley resignation:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/979978/posts
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