Posted on 10/02/2003 7:47:17 AM PDT by Wolfstar
Note to Readers
This article uses excerpts from mainstream news sources to establish how former Amb. Joseph C. Wilson IV morphed over months from the anonymous source of a forgotten CIA-requested report, to theself-described outraged husband at the center of Washington's latest political firestorm. The sources these excerpts are drawn from are extensive and easily could make a fair-sized booklet. Therefore, the excerpts are necessarily tightly focused, and the reader is encouraged to:
Takeoff Point for Controversy
"The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush, 1/28/03
Background
Mar. 31, 2003: In a lengthy New Yorker article (Who lied to whom?) Seymour Hersh writes: "The Bush Administration's reliance on...Niger documents may...have stemmed from more than bureaucratic carelessness or political overreaching. Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997...President Bill Clinton...hinted of renewed bombing, but...the British and...Americans were losing the battle for international public opinion. A former Clinton Administration official told me that London had resorted to...spreading false information about Iraq. The British propaganda program...was known to a few senior officials in Washington. 'I knew that was going on,' the former Clinton Administration official said of the British efforts."
"The chance for American intelligence to challenge the documents came as the Administration debated whether to pass them on to ElBaradei...A former intelligence officer told me that some questions about the authenticity of the Niger documents were raised inside the government by analysts at the Department of Energy and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. However, these warnings were not heeded."
" 'Somebody deliberately let something false get in there,' the former high-level intelligence official added. 'It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up.' "
Bill Moyers interviews Joseph Wilson
Just one month to the day after the SOUA, on Feb. 28, Bill Moyers conducts a lengthy interview of Joseph Wilson for PBS. (Click for full transcript.) This is a golden opportunity (and contemporaneous to the SOUA), yet at no time does Wilson—who claims to have been immediately concerned about the Iraq-Africa reference in the SOUA—raise his concerns with Moyers. In fact, there is exactly one reference to the SOUA and then only in passing as Wilson and Moyers speculate as to what might be Hussein's reaction to the threats of war.
The first published reference to Wilson
Although it keeps bubbling in Leftist/Democrat circles, the story fades publicly until Walter Pincus of the Washington Post writes an article titled "CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data." Published June 12, Pincus writes:
"Armed with information purportedly showing that Iraqi officials had been seeking to buy uranium in Niger...the CIA in early February 2002 dispatched a retired U.S. ambassador to the country to investigate the claims, according to the senior U.S. officials and the former government official...The sources spoke on condition of anonymity and on condition that the name of the former ambassador not be disclosed."
"After returning to the United States, the envoy reported to the CIA that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said...However, the CIA did not include details of the former ambassador's report and his identity as the source, which would have added to the credibility of his findings, in its intelligence reports that were shared with other government agencies. Instead, the CIA only said that Niger government officials had denied the attempted deal had taken place, a senior administration said."
" 'This gent made a visit to the region and chatted up his friends,' a senior intelligence official said, describing the agency's view of the mission. 'He relayed back to us that they said it was not true and that he believed them.' "
"When the British government published an intelligence document on Iraq in September 2002 claiming that Baghdad had 'sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,' the former ambassador called the CIA officers who sent him to Niger and was told they were looking into new information about the claim, sources said. The former envoy later called the CIA and State Department after Bush's State of the Union speech and was told 'not to worry,' according to one U.S. official."
Who would know of, and want these phone calls made public except Wilson? It's clear that Wilson, himself, was the source who called Pincus' attention to his, by then, all-but-forgotten trip to Africa. So it's fair at this point to ask: Why did Wilson plant this nugget about himself in Pincus' story? Was he ticked because his report was not used? Significantly, this veiled reference to himself provided an excuse for Wilson's subsequent outing of himself as the "retired ambassador." Also significantly, without this Pincus story there would have been no curious reporters like Robert Novak to continue the hunt for additional story material—and no opportunity for Mrs. Plame-Wilson to later also be "outed."
Wilson "outs" himself
Note that Pincus reports "the sources" had asked him to keep the name of the "former ambassador" secret, and Pincus complied. Yet just three weeks later, Wilson "outs" himself in his July 6 New York Times article entitled What I Didn't Find in Africa. He begins with the following provocative claim:
"Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?...Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, 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."
His experience with the administration? Huh?! Some CIA mid-level officials asked him to look into the Iraq-Niger connection a year earlier. He made a report and they filed it. End of his "experience with the administration."
In this NYT article, Wilson goes on to say—with no small touch of conceit: "It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me...In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the [CIA] that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake...by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."
Note that Wilson does not say what prompted the CIA to select him for this mission beyond his "experience in Africa." Who called his experience to the CIA officials' attention in February 2002? This is a very legitimate question, so Robert Novak was quite right when he tried to find out how a long-time Democrat, former member of Bill Clinton's National Security staff, and contributor to the Al Gore and John Kerry presidential campaigns, was chosen to conduct this mission. And why did the CIA even need to turn to a retired ambassador in the first place? The then-current U.S. ambassador to Niger had also looked into the matter and had come to the same conclusions.
Before he left Niger, Wilson said he briefed the ambassador on his findings. After returning to Washington...he provided "a detailed briefing to the CIA [and]...the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip...Though I did not file a written report..."
Wilson then claims he "thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a 'white paper' asserting that...Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country."
If, in 2002, Wilson was so concerned, as he professes today, he could have written an article immediately after the British dossier was published. The subject was the hottest one on the media radar, and he would have had no trouble getting it published that September. Yet he waited about 10 months before writing this NYT piece. Why? In it he tacks on the fresh concern about the President's SOUA (remember, he hadn't said a word about it to Moyers in February). Why?
Wilson continued, "Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa...The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them."
Wilson concludes his NYT piece with the following paragraph. By the way, note how the tenor of his commentary is becoming more harsh. Also note his subtle pique about—from his point of view—the CIA's failure to give his report the weight he expected.
"The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses."
Wilson ratchets up his charges and rhetoric
In a July 6 Washington Post piece titled, "Ex-Envoy: Nuclear Report Ignored," Richard Leiby and Walter Pincus help Wilson get up a head of steam on this story.
(A couple of curiosities: What is the connection between Pincus and Wilson? How is it that Leiby and Pincus have this article all ready to go—complete with harsh quotes from Wilson—ON THE SAME DAY Wilson's article appears in the New York Times?)
The Leiby-Pincus article begins: "Joseph C. Wilson, the retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons, has said for the first time publicly that U.S. And British officials ignored his findings and exaggerated the public case for invading Iraq...'It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war,' Wilson said yesterday. 'It begs the question, what else are they lying about?' "
Again note the ratcheting up of tone—in his own NYT article on the same day, Wilson says IF his report was deemed inaccurate; IF it was ignored then a legitimate argument can be made. In contrast, here it's a declarative statement that the administration misrepresented the facts, and Wilson introduces the entirely unsupported notion that the administration is "lying."
Leiby and Pincus also put this nugget in their piece: "After Bush's speech, Wilson said he contacted the State Department, noted that the Niger story had been debunked and said, 'You might want to make sure the facts are straight.' " Note the similarity and—more importantly—the difference in what Wilson wrote in his own NYT piece:
"The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them."
In concluding their article, Leiby and Pincus write, "Last week, Wilson said of Hussein: 'I'm glad the tyrant is gone.' But he does not believe the war was ever about eliminating Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It was, he said, a political push to 'redraw the map of the Middle East.' While his family prepared for a Fourth of July dinner, he proudly showed a reporter photos of himself with Bush's parents."
So at least one reporter knew Mrs. Plame-Wilson personally—not only knew her, but shared Fourth of July dinner with her and the Wilson family BEFORE THE NOVAK PIECE. Who in their right mind would take bets at this point that the reporter in question was NOT Pincus?! In fact, the dual statements about the State Department phone call clearly demonstrate that Leiby and Pincus had an advance copy of Wilson's NYT article.
Robert Novak steps into it
Prompted by Wilson's NYT piece and curiosity as to why Wilson was selected for the Niger trip, Robert Novak writes, "Mission to Niger" on July 14. He begins: "The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet's knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided."
"Wilson's report that an Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger was highly unlikely was regarded by the CIA as less than definitive, and it is doubtful Tenet ever saw it. Certainly, President Bush did not, prior to his 2003 State of the Union address, when he attributed reports of attempted uranium purchases to the British government."
Novak briefly discusses background to the Wilson mission, then writes: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. 'I will not answer any question about my wife,' Wilson told me."
Novak also notes: "All this [the Niger trip and Wilson's report] was forgotten until reporter Walter Pincus revealed in the Washington Post...that an unnamed retired diplomat had given the CIA a negative report. Not until Wilson went public...however, did his finding ignite the firestorm...During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Wilson had taken a measured public position—viewing weapons of mass destruction as a danger but considering military action as a last resort. He has seemed much more critical of the administration since revealing his role in Niger," Novak observes.
In his conclusion, Novak quotes Wilson: "After the White House admitted error, Wilson declined all television and radio interviews. 'The story was never me,' he told me, 'it was always the statement in (Bush's) speech.' " (Note in the David Corn piece below how this morphs also.)
Oh, really. Never about him, but always about the SOUA statement. This is the same Joseph Wilson who, at the beginning of this saga, said he first became concerned when the British government released its dossier in September 2002. So which is it, Joe?
Hungry for a Bush scandal, the Left leaps
The first charge that the Bush administration "outed" Wilson's wife in order to "punish" him comes in a piece by David Corn in The Nation on July 16—a scant two days after Novak's piece appeared. Titled, "A White House Smear," the piece begins with a suitably inflammatory Leftist spin:
"Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security-and break the law-in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?...It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted."
Of course, Novak neither said nor implied any such thing, but pointing that out wouldn't suit Corn's purpose. Instead, without a shred of evidence, Corn claims, "Wilson caused problems for the White House, and his wife was outed as an undercover CIA officer." Corn then takes the Wilson statement about it "not being about me," and turns it into, "I will not answer questions about my wife. This is not about me and less so about my wife. It has always been about the facts underpinning the President's statement in the state of the union speech." In quotes, no less. So was this a new quote directly from Wilson to Corn, or did Corn deliberately rephrase the original quote in Novak's piece to make it stronger from Corn's point of view? In other words, is Wilson embellishing his tale, or is Corn lying?
In a presumed attempt to write sympathetically of Mrs. Plame-Wilson, Corn then goes on to add insult to a presumed injury by bringing the couple's children into the story: "So he will neither confirm nor deny that his wife—who is the mother of three-year-old twins—works for the CIA. But let's assume she does. That would seem to mean that the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it."
(How does Corn know they have three-year-old twins, by the way?)
Corn goes on to say, "The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be 'two senior administration officials.' If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person—and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her—her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, 'Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of...Aldrich Ames.' If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer."
Corn "assumes" that she did not tell friends and family about her real job, so how does Corn know that she worked under "nonofficial cover?" How does he know what mission she had been assigned? If even the mention of her name and employment with the CIA is so damaging, why did Corn go further than Novak and reveal her cover type and mission? And good heavens, but he now has Wilson saying this is the stuff of Aldrich Ames!
Corn goes on: "Novak tells me that he was indeed tipped off by government officials about Wilson's wife and had no reluctance about naming her. 'I figured if they gave it to me,' he says. 'They'd give it to others....I'm a reporter. Somebody gives me information and it's accurate. I generally use it.' And Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials."
So yet another curiosity pops up in this saga: In the 10/1/03 article discussing his role, Bob Novak's description of what happened contradicts what, in July, Corn said Novak told him. Was Corn lying then, or was Novak bragging to him then, or is Novak lying now?
In any case, Corn quotes Wilson again: " 'Stories like this,' Wilson says, 'are not intended to intimidate me, since I've already told my story. But it's pretty clear it is intended to intimidate others who might come forward. You need only look at the stories of intelligence analysts who say they have been pressured. They may have kids in college, they may be vulnerable to these types of smears.' "
Note how, between February and July, Wilson's story morphs from no mention during the Moyers interview, to a phone call to State to voice concern, then a statement indicating that he's OK with everything as long as the Administration admitted its SOUA mistake, to the above quote with its suggestion of danger to kids, to where we are today.
Corn ends with the theme we've heard from the Left ever since his article appeared: "The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security."
"A thuggish act?" Evidence? "Put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk to settle a score?" Quite list of assertions, based as they are on zero evidence of any such thing. In fact, when looked at in the sequence above, Wilson seems to have been the person who set up the whole story.
I'm also wondering if Doug Thompson's "former intelligence officer Terrance J. Wilkerson" might have been a reporter's myth for "former diplomat Joseph C. Wilson". (Hmmm. Having just typed them, one sees how one sitting at a keyboard could morph one name into the other). At any rate, I believe the "leak" to Thompson at Capitol Hill Blue -- which elevated Wilson's report to the highest level of gospel truth and geopolitical significance -- ought to be considered part of this same fabric of deception.
By DOUG THOMPSON
Jul 9, 2003, 18:05
Damn, I hate it when I've been had and I've been had big time.
In 1982, while I was working for Congressman Manuel Lujan of New Mexico, a man came up to a me during a gathering in Albuquerque and introduced himself as Terrance J. Wilkinson. He said he was a security consultant and gave me a business card with his name and just a Los Angeles phone number.
A few weeks later, he called my Washington office and asked to meet for lunch. He seemed to know a lot about the nuclear labs in New Mexico and said he had conducted "security profiles" for both Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs. Lujan served on the committee with oversight on both labs and he offered his services if we ever needed briefings.
We already had nuclear experts on the committee, on loan from the Department of Energy, and we never used Wilkinson for briefings but we kept in touch over the years. He said he had served in Vietnam with Army Special Force, worked for Air America, later for the FBI and as a consultant for the CIA. He said he had helped other Republican members of Congress I called some friends in other GOP offices and they said yes, they knew Terry Wilkinson.
"You can trust him, he's one of the good guys," one chief of staff told me. When I left politics and returned to journalism, Wilkinson became a willing, but always unnamed, source.
Over the last couple of years, Wilkinson served as either a primary or secondary source on a number of stories that have appeared in Capitol Hill Blue regarding intelligence activities. In early stories, I checked his information with at least one more source. His information usually proved accurate and, over time, I came to depend on him as a source without additional backup.
On Tuesday, we ran a story headlined "White House admits Bush wrong about Iraqi nukes." For the first time, Wilkinson said he was willing to go on the record and told a story about being present, as a CIA contract consultant, at two briefings with Bush. He said he was retired now and was fed up and wanted to go public.
"He (Bush) said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn't prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could," Wilkinson said in our story. "He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured the country."
After the story ran, we received a number of emails or phone calls that (1) either claimed Wilkinson was lying or (2) doubted his existence. I quickly dismissed the claims. After all, I had known this guy for 20+ years and had no doubt about his credibility. Some people wanted to talk to him, so I forwarded those requests on to him via email. He didn't answer my emails, which I found odd. I should have listened to a bell that should have been going off in my ear.
Today, a White House source I know and trust said visitor logs don't have any record of anyone named Terrance J. Wilkinson ever being present at a meeting with the President. Then a CIA source I trust said the agency had no record of a contract consultant with that name. "Nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever heard of this guy," my source said.
I tried calling Terry's phone number. I got a recorded message from a wireless phone provider saying the number was no longer in service. I tried a second phone number I had for him. Same result.
Both of his phone numbers have Los Angeles area codes but an identity check through Know-X today revealed no record of anyone named Terrance J. Wilkinson ever having lived in LA or surrounding communities.
His email address turns out to be a blind forward to a free email service where anyone can sign up and get an email account. Because it was not one of the usual "free" services like Hotmail, Yahoo or such, I did not recognize it as one (although you'd think that someone like me would have known better).
The bottom line is that someone has been running a con on me for 20 some years and I fell for it like a little old lady in a pigeon drop scheme. I've spent the last two hours going through the database of Capitol Hill Blue stories and removing any that were based on information from Wilkinson (or whoever he is). I've also removed his name, quotes and claims from Tuesday's story about the White House and the uranium claims.
Erasing the stories doesn't erase the fact that we ran articles containing information that, given the source, was probably inaccurate. And it doesn't erase the sad fact that my own arrogance allowed me to be conned.
It will be a long time (and perhaps never) before I trust someone else who comes forward and offers inside information. The next one who does had better be prepared to produce a birth certificate, a driver's license and his grandmother's maiden name.
Any news publication exists on the trust of its readers. Because I depended on a source that was not credible, I violated the trust that the readers of Capitol Hill Blue placed in me.
I was wrong. I'm sorry.
A potential for huge blowback damage to them here.
That's what I thought, too.
At the time, I surmised there were only two answers to the Terrence J. Wilkinson saga: Wilkinson was a fictitious identity for a real person, as Thompson described...or Wilkinson was a figment of Thompson's imagination from the get-go. In either event, William McKinley was responsible for fingering Wilkinson as vaporware.
Maybe Wilkinson was a plant. Or, since Thompson has had intermittent seizures of Bush-bashing, the figment theory couldn't be dismissed.
But, now, I recognize that there is a third possible explanation -- a mythical source created by the reporter to cover (and lend verisimilitude to) an actual living, breathing source.
In which case, when William McKinley caught Thompson up in his fabrications, Doug had no choice but to erase Wilkinson from the tableau altogether.
But note the timing: Thompson's retraction is dated July 9 and his piece sourcing Wilkinson was the day before (July 8). Pincus launched the first missile on June 12...the "CIA source" leaked to the Beeb on July 2...Wilson's column in the NYT followed on July 6. Then, almost immediately, came Thompson's "scoop" -- followed by his subsequent embarrassment. Finally, Novak's column was dated July 14.
Terrence J. Wilkinson, with his wild-eyed assertions about Bush's dismissal of the "authoritative intelligence report", could well have been Joseph C. Wilson. Indeed, the charges "Wilkinson" makes about Bush and his advisors is not unlike the sulphurous charges that Wilson is making now. What are the links between Thompson and Wilson, I wonder...
Doug, would you care to respond...???
Excellent work.
I would add this anti-war column written by one Joseph Wilson in The Nation:
Issue date of The Nation is March 3, but note, web posted on February 13, 2003.
This dovetails with your post-SOTU/pre-NY Times no mention of any concern regarding the representations made by President Bush in his speech in reference to uranium and Africa.
Also, I'm sure you see that Wilson writing in The Nation means it is no surprise that it is David Corn that starts the drumbeat about the "outing" of Plame.
Check my homepage here, I have a lot of WMD Niger timelines which have various FR threads sourced in them. You're welcome to them.
JUNE 14, 2003 : (WASHINGTON, DC : EPIC IRAQ FORUM EVENING KEYNOTE LECTURE "A STATE OF THE MOVEMENT ADDRESS" BY RAY MCGOVERN OF THE GROUP VETERAN INTELLIGENCE PROFESSIONS FOR SANITY & FORMER AMBASSADOR WILSON)- epic website
JULY 27, 2003 : (LONDON SUNDAY TIMES REPORTS THAT IRAQI ABASSADOR TO THE VATICAN ZAHAWIE aka ZAHAWI WROTE A LETTER TO FRIENDS EXPLAINING THAT HIS TRIP TO NIGER IN FEBRUARY 1999 WAS FOR EXTENDING OFFERS OF VISITS TO BAGHDAD TO FOUR HEADS OF STATE) On July 27, the London Sunday Times reported that Zahawie has written a letter to friends explaining his trip to Niger. "In February 1999, I was instructed to visit four west African countries to extend an invitation on behalf of the Iraqi president to their heads of state to visit Baghdad," the Times quotes the letter as saying. "I had no other instructions and certainly none concerning the purchase of uranium." The paper did not name who received the letter, or the place from which it was sent.- "Iraqi Nuke Hawk Went to Niger," by Terence P. Jeffrey, Human Events , 8/1/03
(* My note: Of course, it wasn't just his Feb 1999 trip that was interesting, it was the businessman who was in Niger in June of 1999 that was interesting, as Nigeriens said that it was their impression he was trying to arrange to buy Uranium.)
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