According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.Give Joe Wilson a necktie party too ! :^D
Registered Pic: Saddam's Day in Court
Posted on 07/10/2004 1:49:22 AM PDT by thoughtomator
Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.
-------- snip! ----------
Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.
...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.Give Joe Wilson a necktie party too ! :^D
Registered Pic: Saddam's Day in Court
Washington Post, July 24, 2003
...Another potential problem for the White House is the sharp disagreement between testimony given the committee last Thursday by CIA senior analyst Alan Foley about his conversation with Robert Joseph, a National Security Council staff member, about what was to go into the State of the Union address and how Bartlett described it to reporters Tuesday.
For all the purported discipline and unity within the Bush administration, disputes among members of the national security team have been common, particularly in the run-up to the war with Iraq. Those disputes, however, generally pitted the State and Defense departments against one another, but once Bush made a decision, the combatants generally accepted that and moved on.
What is unusual about this episode is that the combatants are officials at the White House and the CIA -- and that the White House has tried without success to resolve the controversy. The biggest lesson learned so far, said one administration official, is that "you don't pick a bureaucratic fight with the CIA." To which a White House official replied, "That wasn't our intention, but that certainly has been the perception."
White House allies outside the government have expressed surprise at the administration's repeated missteps over the past two weeks, using phrases such as "stumbled," "caught flat-footed" and "can't get their story straight." Said one senior administration official, "These stories get legs when they're mishandled and this story has been badly mishandled."
Joe Lockhart, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton, said he has been equally surprised by the way this White House has dealt with the controversy. "Their every move has resulted in people being more interested in the story rather than less interested," he said.
Mary Matalin, a former Bush White House adviser, said, "It's impossible to have a consistent message when the facts keep changing. We forsook consistency for honesty, in an effort to be as forthcoming as possible in putting out new facts as they became available."
*****
Q22 Mr Chidgey: I just want to move on to the section of our inquiry dealing with contacts with Andrew Gilligan and journalists, but before we talk about Andrew Gilligan can I just confirm that you have also met Susan Watts?
Dr Kelly: I have met her on one occasion.
Q23 Mr Chidgey: Thank you. I would just like to read out to you a statement in the notes that were made: "In the run-up to the dossier the Government was obsessed with finding intelligence to justify an immediate Iraqi threat. While we were agreed on the potential Iraqi threat in the future there was less agreement about the threat the Iraqis posed at the moment. That was the real concern, not so much what they had now but what they would have in the future, but that unfortunately was not expressed strongly in the dossier because that takes the case away for war to a certain extent". Finally, "The 45 minutes was a statement that was made and it got out of all proportion. They were desperate for information. They were pushing hard for information that could be released. That was one that popped up and it was seized on and it is unfortunate that it was. That is why there is an argument between the intelligence services and Number 10, because they had picked up on it and once they had picked up on it you cannot pull back from it, so many people will say 'Well, we are not sure about that' because the word smithing is actually quite important." I understand from Miss Watts that is the record of a meeting that you had with her. Do you still agree with those comments?
Dr Kelly: First of all, I do not recognise those comments, I have to say. The meeting I had with her was on November 5 last year and I remember that precisely because I gave a presentation in the Foreign Office on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. I cannot believe that on that occasion I made that statement.
Q24 Mr Chidgey: That is very helpful. Can I just be clear on this: I understand that these notes refer to meetings that took place shortly before the Newsnight broadcasts that would have been on 2 and 4 June.
Dr Kelly: I have only met Susan Watts on one occasion, which was not on a one-to-one basis, it was at the end of a public presentation.
~snip~
****
What kind of clintonian parsing did that turn out to be? See for yourself:
****
Q43 Ms Stuart: I may not have heard something you said in response to Mr Chidgey's question. You did confirm that you had a meeting and talked with Susan Watts?
Dr Kelly: I have met with her personally once at the end of a seminar I provided in the Foreign Office on November 5.
Q44 Ms Stuart: You have neither met nor talked to her since?
Dr Kelly: I have spoken to her on the telephone but I have not met her face-to face.
Q45 Ms Stuart: When have you talked to her on the telephone?
Dr Kelly: I would have spoken to her about four or five times.
Q46 Ms Stuart: During May at all?
Dr Kelly: During May? I cannot precisely remember. I was abroad for a fair part of the time in May, but it is possible, yes.
~snip~
Deceptive---at the very least, IMO.
Add me to the agreement list. I haven't found Wilson clever enough to have pulled the publicity and star treatement off on his own.
&&&&
Add me, too.
Also I'm sure that Dick Clarke was given an offer he could not refuse. His book and his testimony had a lot of inconsistencies.
I would bet that somebody was 'coaching' him.
Important isn't the word. I fell off the chair when foxnews reported it and has since repeated the story three times. Any idea if the major networks also covered it? In the event Russert missed it, I think I'll send him a link and demand a second appearance by Wilson, sooner rather than later.
It's fun now to read the Russert/Wilson interview:
May 2, 2004
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4880116/
Gosh, in early April Saddam's statue was still up, and we still had Baghdad Bob on TV.
Many in the State Dept are really subversive. Where is a Joe McCarthy for our times?
"Ex-ambassador didn't 'debunk' Iraq-Niger deal
-ambassador didn't 'debunk' Iraq-Niger deal Information boosted CIA findings on Iraqi plans to buy uranium, Senate report finds.
. By James Kuhnhenn
Knight Ridder Newspapers
July 10, 2004
"WASHINGTON -- The Senate's report into intelligence failures about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq disputes a key war critic's assertion that he had "debunked" suspicions that Iraq attempted to buy uranium from the African country of Niger.
The report contends that former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who traveled to Niger in early 2002 at the CIA's request to inquire about the uranium allegation, "did not change any analysts' assessment of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal."
The committee concluded that the CIA's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate overstated what was known about Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium. But it also said Wilson's information, instead of steering the CIA away, "lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency reports."
The committee also reported that the British and the French told U.S. officials that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger.
By challenging Wilson, the Senate Intelligence Committee's report opened the door for renewed Republican attacks on Wilson's credibility in one of the most contentious side issues of the Iraq war controversy.
A federal grand jury is conducting a criminal investigation into who leaked the name of Wilson's wife, a CIA officer, to newspaper columnist Robert Novak after Wilson publicly criticized the Iraq war. Wilson accused the Bush administration of leaking the name.
The probe has reached into the White House, with investigators questioning President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
"Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the president had lied to the American people, that the vice president had lied and that he had 'debunked' the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa," committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said in a statement of "additional views" signed by two other Republican senators.
Bush alluded to the Iraq-Niger link in his 2003 State of the Union address, but the White House later backtracked, saying the allegation shouldn't have been included because it was questionable.
In an opinion piece in The New York Times last July, Wilson reported that during his visit to Niger, "it did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction (with Iraq) had ever taken place."
Wilson told intelligence analysts that the ownership structure of uranium mines in Niger would have made it nearly impossible for Niger to sell the ore to Iraq because the mines are run by consortiums that include French, Spanish, German and Japanese interests.
The intelligence committee's report said CIA analysts didn't believe Wilson's information was significant or that it clarified the Iraq-Niger connection."
What good is it,if they get their just desserts,but nobody ever hears about it but us?
Love the graphics!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :-)
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm....
Oooooooooo...you found his baby picture. LOL
I think Peter King lost a lot of constituents in the WTC bombings, and the plane crash on Long Island about two weeks later. He seems Very supportive of GWB.
bttt
Looks great now devolve!! I like your way of getting into the webpage.
We always worry (with good cause), that stories like this won't get their deserved airtime. Roberts and Rockefeller are going to be on several of the Sunday shows, so maybe Wilson will get LOTS of attention.
Oh what fun. I will certainly read it after I contact ABC, CNN and CBS. I sent a link to Russert & Matthews and not able to find Brokaw's e-mail, I sent it to both the News Dept. and Editor @ MSNBC.com as their front page needs to replace the huggy feely bandits with real news.
This IS important news,though whether it'll get much deserved airing,is up for grabs.GOPers "sneeze" and the MSM make it out to be triple pnuemonia.Dems commit treason and sedition and nobody says "boo".
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