...the Senate Select Intelligence Committee has issued a scathing report blasting former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV....
The B**ch Set Me Up!
Posted on 06/01/2007 10:40:44 AM PDT by kellynla
WASHINGTON -- In a rare rebuke of a public official by name, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee has issued a scathing report blasting former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV.
The report claims Wilson mislead the public and the intelligence committee about his trip to Niger in 2002 on behalf of the CIA to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium in Africa.
Best know as the husband of former CIA officer Valerie Plame, Ambassador Wilson was catapulted to the limelight after he published an Op-Ed in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, that accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence on Iraq to make the case for war.
In his New York Times article, Wilson said that in February 2002 he was asked by the Central Intelligence Agency to travel to Niger to investigate "a particular intelligence report" that documented the sale of uranium to Iraq by the Niger government.
The CIA wanted him to "check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office," after Vice President Dick Cheney had raised questions about the purported uranium deals, he wrote.
Once he arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, Wilson says he met with U.S. Ambassador Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, then "spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea" and meeting with former government officials and others involved in the uranium business. "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place."
And that is what he reported back to the CIA and to the State Department African Affairs Bureau, Wilson wrote. But according to the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, released last Friday, much of what Wilson wrote in the article, and has said since, about the trip "is not true."
Wilson wrote to the committee in July 2004 when they released an exhaustive investigation into the Niger uranium story that included the finding that he had been sent to Niger at the suggestion of his wife. Wilson claimed that was "not true."
At the time, the Committee did not release the full text of the e-mail sent by Valerie Plame on Wilson to her superior that recommended him for the job, "thinking it was unnecessary in light of the other evidence" they had made public.
But now, "considering the controversy surrounding this document," the Senate committee decided to make the full text available to the public. The Valerie Plame e-mail shows without any doubt that she recommended her husband for the mission in Niger.
After recounting an earlier fact-finding mission he had carried out in Niger for the Agency, as well as his good contacts "with both the [prime minister] and the former minister of mines," she concluded by saying that her husband "may be in a position to assist. Therefore, request your thoughts on what, if anything to pursue here."
In sworn testimony before the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform in March of this year, however, Plame denied categorically that she had suggested her husband's name. "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," she said.
It was Valerie Plame's recommendation for the mission that caught the eye of Vice President Dick Cheney when Wilson's Op-Ed first appeared and ultimately led to the Special Counsel investigation into how her name — supposed classified — was "leaked" to the press.
The committee found that internal intelligence community notes of meetings in which Valerie Plame participated "did not mark her name with a (C) as would be required to indicate that her association with the CIA was classified," as both Plame and her husband have said. These aren't the only instance where Wilson's account did not square with the facts, the senators found.
Wilson has said in his book and in numerous public appearances that reports he reviewed from the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, "indicated that there was nothing to the Niger-Iraq uranium story . . . This too is untrue," the committee found. On the contrary, Owens-Kirkpatrick wrote a cable to the State Department which said that the initial CIA reporting of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal "provides sufficient details to warrant another hard look at Niger's uranium sales."
Although Nigerien officials insisted in meetings with the Americans that no uranium would be sold to rogue nations, "we should not dismiss out of hand the possibility that some scheme could be, or has been, underway to supply Iraq with yellowcake from here," she wrote.
Perhaps the most damning conclusion of the Senate report has been known for nearly three years, but has remained classified until now. In the initial July 2004 report, the Senate committee reported that the intelligence community "used or cleared the Niger-Iraq uranium intelligence fifteen times before the President's State of the Union address and four times after, saying in several papers that Iraq was ‘vigorously pursuing uranium from Africa.'"
Despite that finding, Democrats led by Michigan Sen. Carl Levin blasted President Bush for the "16 words" in the January 2003 speech that described Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, calling them an effort to "cherry-pick" intelligence and to "mislead" the country and the world in a "rush to war."
In fact, the U.S. intelligence community continued to believe in the veracity of the Niger uranium story for many months after the speech, and didn't call back its original reporting until June 2003 — well after the liberation of Iraq.
For some reason the 500+ tons of highly radioactive materials that were removed from Iraqi sites to Oak Ridge for safe storage did not qualify as WMDs.
I don't think there is any such thing as a reputable source these days. When Old Walter Cronkite has been unmasked as a lying liberal scumbag, there is no one to trust.
So we’re to believe that Fitzgerald’s investigation was vast enough to snare and convict Scooter Libby over an irrelevant comment he may (or may not) have made to a reporter, but not vast enough to prosecute Wilson for something as serious and relevant as lying to Congress?
“If this did not happen today then you need to provide a date when the Senate Select Intelligence Committee actually issued this rebuke?”
Excuse me? I realize you’re new ‘round here so I’ll be nice...but I don’t “need” to do anything but post the link to the article. Now if you and/or anyone else has an issue with the validity of the piece then I suggest YOU google away. I quit taking orders 30 years ago!LMAO
careful, Badeye. Remember what Ann Coulter said. You say it and you have to go to rehab.
Damn straight & very true. Disgusting isn’t it?
...the Senate Select Intelligence Committee has issued a scathing report blasting former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV....
The B**ch Set Me Up!
http://intelligence.senate.gov/prewar.pdf
It’s not a text document, so you can’t search it. Go down to page 208 where you’ll find the heading “Minority Views of Vice Chairman Bond Joined by Senators Hatch and Burr”.
Wow! Touchy! And I don’t give a whatever how long you have been on this site. Be accurate in your post ... why not say in your comment that this on so and so date.
Why did we have to wait for the Democrats to control the Congress before the Senate released this?
Where has the GOP been for the last four years??
Me either, but yesterday was the day I FINALLY gave up on George Bush. I'll continue to pray for him as a human being, but he no longer has any credibility with me ..... he has crossed the line and joined the cesspool of self-serving politicians who pretend to 'represent' the people with his support of an amnesty bill that is clearly not in the best interests of America (and YES George, I READ the d@mn bill - I'm just not stupid enough to swallow the b.s.). He's just proved himself as vapid as the Hollywood Glitterati in jumping on the AIDS bandwagon (but with MY tax dollars - unforgiveable), and to add insult to injury, he's lost all semblance of common sense by embracing the Gore-bal Warming lie(s). I just can't take any more .........I'm outraged and enraged and I need duct tape......
You're obviously not a married male.: )
bump
“I want to see it from an actual reputable source before I get too excited about it?”
and just who would you consider a “reputable source?”
Wash Compost?
N.Y. TIMES?
L.A. TIMES?
S.F. Chronicle?
You be sure and let us know when the LSM has this news on the front pages of their newspapers.
I won’t be holding my breath!
Senators Rebuke Joe Wilson Claims
Kenneth R. Timmerman
Friday, June 1, 2007
“Where has the GOP been for the last four years??”
ya mean the Gelding Old Party?
why they’ve been looking for a spine! LOL
Senators Rebuke Joe Wilson Claims(About time!)
NewsMax.com ^ | June 1, 2007 | staff
You might consider reading what was posted before complaining about what the poster may or may not have done.
P.213 makes a good point:
“In fact, a conclusion on page 25 of the Phase I report noted that “the Committee does not fault the CIA for exploiting the access enjoyed by the spouse of a CIA employee traveling to Niger. The Committee believes, however, that it is unfortunate , considering the significant resources available to the CIA, that this was the only option available.”
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