Could you post the entire article (if it's O.K. with the Admin.). I don't want to register with the LA times. Thanks,
LA Times articles must be excerpted, per the settlement with FR.
I'm not sure if we can post the entire article, but if you've been following the story you will know pretty much what has been reported elsewhere, except this part which kind of gets to the truth of the matter:
"But the most widely discussed theory focuses on the high-stakes bureaucratic battle that raged around Bush and his top aides in July over a single 16-word sentence in the president's State of the Union address.
"That battle pitted officials from Cheney's office and the White House's National Security Council, who argued that Iraq had been seeking nuclear weapons, against the CIA, which argued that some of the evidence was weak."
'pragraph mentioning the Bush 16 word' Snip
"The controversy led to an embarrassing round of behind-the-scenes finger-pointing between the CIA and the White House over who was responsible for putting the shaky claim about uranium into Bush's speech. Eventually, National Security Council staff took responsibility.
"But that acknowledgment came only after sharp disagreements."
Wilson went to Africa Snip
In addition to Wilson's report "a senior CIA official, Alan Foley, told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that he, too, was skeptical of the uranium claim, and said he had urged the NSC's chief weapons proliferation expert, Robert Joseph, to leave it out of the president's speech.
"Wilson's wife works with Foley in the CIA's Nonproliferation Center.
"On the other side of the dispute, the NSC's Joseph is said to be an ally of Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.
"'Foley fought with Joseph about keeping the Niger claim out of the State of the Union,' [former CIA agent] Cannistraro explained. 'Cheney and Libby made sure it got in. Then you get a report from the CIA casting doubt on the authenticity' Ambassador Wilson's report." The Los Angels Times, 10/1/03
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scandal1oct01,1,1890560.story?coll=la-home-leftrail In other words, it was a policy dispute and Plame ignored the fact that she was not elected to make policy. She lost an internal battle and worked (in private and w/ her husband in public) to try to get her point across.