The Wilson War Continues [CIA/FBI investigate White House]

The DOJ opens a preliminary probe into whether the White House illegally unmasked a CIA operative

The Justice Department has opened a preliminary inquiry into whether a Bush Administration official illegally revealed the identity of a CIA employee whose husband criticized the Administration's handling of intelligence on Iraq, TIME has learned. The probe will determine whether to order a full-fledged FBI investigation.

The CIA triggered the Justice inquiry with a memo saying that there may have been an unauthorized disclosure about the wife of Joe Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador. Columnist Robert Novak wrote in July that Wilson's wife was a CIA "operative" who suggested that he be sent to Niger to investigate intelligence that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy a large volume of Niger's yellowcake uranium to build a nuclear weapon.

Wilson found no evidence that Saddam was seeking yellowcake — the International Atomic Energy Agency later determined this was probably untrue — but the CIA and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice failed to fully vet the intelligence and President Bush used it in his State of the Union Address this year. After Wilson wrote an op-ed over the summer criticizing the Administration's handling of the intelligence about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction progam, Novak wrote that "two administration officials" told him Wilson's wife had suggested sending him to Niger to investigate.

The CIA is required to notify Justice if it believes there may have been an unauthorized disclosure. The notification was first reported Friday by MSNBC. The White House has denied being a source of any story about Wilson's wife.

CIA and Justice spokespersons declined comment, but an Administration official told TIME that the Justice is conducting a preliminary inquiry to "determine whether or not there should be an investigation" by the FBI.

Wilson would not discuss his wife and said he knew nothing about any investigation. But, he said, "It was clear to me from the beginning that this was really done as a signal to others who might step forward,” to criticize the Administration's handling of intelligence on Iraq.

Then, too, the whole thing smacks of the technique used with the so-called "Florida Couple" who taped a Republican leadership cell phone conversation.

The Dems initially started screaming that the Republicans were violating the law. Only later, and at great effort, were the Republicans able to focus the news on the fact that the Dems were violating wiretap laws!

We see that same technique at work here with the Dems screaming that the Republicans are breaking the law revealing the fact that Mrs. Wilson was a Covert CIA agent at some time (although not currently, but they don't tell you that).

Eventually, after some serious effort, the Republicans will turn the focus of the press toward the espionage being conducted by the Wilsons against the NSC.

Hillary Clinton seems to have been the progenitor of this method. Wouldn't surprise me a bit to see her hands in this particular case. We may yet see that woman ride a gurney at Terre Haute.

The Cliff May article was posted here at FR back when this story was being endlessly discussed. Here's the original from the NRO site:

Scandal! Bush’s enemies aren't telling the truth about what he said.

Excerpt:

A big part of the reason this has grown into such a brouhaha is that Joseph C. Wilson IV wrote an op-ed about it in last Sunday's New York Times in which he said: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

Actually, Wilson has plenty of choices — but no basis for his slanderous allegation. A little background: Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify a U.S. intelligence report about the sale of yellowcake — because Vice President Dick Cheney requested it, because Cheney had doubts about the validity of the intelligence report.

Wilson says he spent eight days in Niger "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" — hardly what a competent spy, detective, or even reporter would call an in-depth investigation. Nevertheless, let's give Wilson the benefit of the doubt and stipulate that he was correct when he reported back to the CIA that he believed it was "highly doubtful that any such transaction ever took place. "

But, again, because it was "doubtful" that Saddam actually acquired yellowcake from Niger, it does not follow that he never sought it there or elsewhere in Africa, which is all the president suggested based on what the British said — and still say.

And how does Wilson leap from there to the conclusion that Vice President Cheney and his boss "twisted" intelligence to "exaggerate the Iraqi threat"? Wilson hasn't the foggiest idea what other intelligence the president and vice president had access to.

It also would have been useful for the New York Times and others seeking Wilson's words of wisdom to have provided a little background on him. For example:

He was an outspoken opponent of U.S. military intervention in Iraq.

He's an "adjunct scholar" at the Middle East Institute — which advocates for Saudi interests. The March 1, 2002 issue of the Saudi government-weekly Ain-Al Yaqeen lists the MEI as an "Islamic research institutes supported by the Kingdom."

He's a vehement opponent of the Bush administration which, he wrote in the March 3, 2003 edition of the left-wing Nation magazine, has "imperial ambitions." Under President Bush, he added, the world worries that "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness."

He also wrote that "neoconservatives" have "a stranglehold on the foreign policy of the Republican Party." He said that "the new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our world view are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking, smacking of hubris in the extreme."

He was recently the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions — and even the no-fly zones that protected hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.

And consider this: Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Wilson did believe that Saddam had biological weapons of mass destruction. But he raised that possibility only to argue against toppling Saddam, warning ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat." He added that Saddam also might attempt to take revenge by unleashing "some sort of a biological assault on an American city, not unlike the anthrax, attacks that we had last year."

In other words, Wilson is no disinterested career diplomat — he's a pro-Saudi, leftist partisan with an ax to grind. And too many in the media are helping him and allies grind it

AntiGuv, are you talking about the same CIA the rest of us have been observing lately? Are you suggesting that they are a lawless bunch who hold themselves above the Commander-in-Chief?

Well, I've got to tell you that the competence of the CIA I've been observing, even as recently as over the past year, is highly questionable. And, given that this President has provided them with greater power, new capabilities, increased access to FBI info, and a new mission, if they really are interested in "taking a shot across the bow" or worse, then their loyalty both to him and this nation is in doubt.

First, as to competence: They were coordinating the interaction between locals and our military in Afghanistan. If anyone is to blame for that idiotic temporary cease fire at Tora Bora that allowed Osama bin Laden to slip away, it was the CIA. The same trick had been pulled to get Mullah Omar out ahead of U.S. troops, but they fell for it again at Tora Bora. The CIA couldn't find bin Laden, Omar, and the top guys before Tora Bora and they haven't been able to find most of them since.

Fast forward to Iraq. Why did the President give the order to go in Iraq before Tommy Franks was ready? Because George Tenent rushed over to the White House to say the CIA had a bead on Saddam Hussein and his sons. So we bombed the place where Tenent said he was certain Hussein was, and then what did we hear from the CIA? Why, they saw Hussein being carried out on a stretcher badly wounded or dead, that's what. Only it wasn't true.

So Tenent's CIA tried again awhile later — ordered a bomb strike where they were sure Hussein was. Only he wasn't there, either.

Also, who the heck has been feeding the President all the intel on WMD if it wasn't the CIA? Hmmm? So where is the stuff? Why didn't the CIA have a handle on this question both before, during, and after our invasion?

In spite of all this, President Bush took Tenent's advice in how to use CIA agents in a new way, as advance agents working with the locals, and as eyes on the ground to direct airstrikes in Afghanistan and Iraq. In that, the CIA agents on the ground have done a great job. In addition to the trust this President placed in the CIA by giving them that vital new mission, he's upped their budget, begun reversing the years of damage done by and started with the Church Commission, and otherwise improved CIA's future.

Yet despite the demonstrable incompetence for which Tenet should have been fired long ago, despite this President's loyalty to him and faith in the CIA, you're telling us that Tenet and his CIA "community" are threatening to bring this President down? If that's true, then we need to disband the CIA posthaste because they are a grave danger to us all.

However, I don't believe it to be true. Rather, I believe the far simpler and more logical answer is that Wilson, a Dem operative, has cooked up his "outrage" — and perhaps even the leak, itself (if there really was one) — in order to create a "scandal" in time to help the Dems in 2004.

his is what Rush referred to which caused me to yell YES. My dem wife hates when I listen to Rush.

September 29, 2003, 10:22 a.m.
Spy Games
Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA?
It's the top story in the Washington Post this morning as well as in many other media outlets. Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?
What also might be worth asking: "Who didn't know?"
I believe I was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson, a retired diplomat sent to Niger to look into reports that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium for his nuclear-weapons program.
On July 6, Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he said: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
On July 11, I wrote a piece for NRO arguing that Mr. Wilson had no basis for that conclusion — and that his political leanings and associations (not disclosed by the Times and others journalists interviewing him) cast serious doubt on his objectivity.
On July 14, Robert Novak wrote a column in the Post and other newspapers naming Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative.
That wasn't news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhanded manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.
I chose not to include it (I wrote a second NRO piece on this issue on July 18) because it didn't seem particularly relevant to the question of whether or not Mr. Wilson should be regarded as a disinterested professional who had done a thorough investigation into Saddam's alleged attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.
What did appear relevant could easily be found in what the CIA would call "open sources." For example, Mr. Wilson had long been a bitter critic of the current administration, writing in such left-wing publications as The Nation that under President Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness" and had "imperial ambitions."
What's more, he was affiliated with the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute and he had recently been the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-Left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions and the no-fly zones that protected Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.
Mr. Wilson is now saying (on C-SPAN this morning, for example) that he opposed military action in Iraq because he didn't believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and he foresaw the possibility of a difficult occupation. In fact, prior to the U.S. invasion, Mr. Wilson told ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat."
Equally, important and also overlooked: Mr. Wilson had no apparent background or skill as an investigator. As Mr. Wilson himself acknowledged, his so-called investigation was nothing more than "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" at the U.S. embassy in Niger. Based on those conversations, he concluded that "it was highly doubtful that any [sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq] had ever taken place."
That's hardly the same as disproving what British intelligence believed — and continues to believe: that Saddam Hussein was actively attempting to purchase uranium from somewhere in Africa. (Whether Saddam succeeded or not isn't the point; were Saddam attempting to make such purchases it would suggest that his nuclear-weapons-development program was active and ongoing.)
For some reason, this background and these questions have been consistently omitted in the Establishment media's reporting on Mr. Wilson and his charges.
There also remains this intriguing question: Was it primarily due to the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA that he received the Niger assignment?
Mr. Wilson has said that his mission came about following a request from Vice President Cheney. But it appears that if Mr. Cheney made the request at all, he made it of the CIA and did not know Mr. Wilson and certainly did not specify that he wanted Mr. Wilson put on the case.
It has to be seen as puzzling that the agency would deal with an inquiry from the White House on a sensitive national-security matter by sending a retired, Bush-bashing diplomat with no investigative experience. Or didn't the CIA bother to look into Mr. Wilson's background?
If that's what passes for tradecraft in Langley, we're in more trouble than any of us have realized.
— Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200309291022.asp

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