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.
Two notes that might help in searching for this:
1. I'm finding references to Wilson meeting Kristof at a meeting of the Senate Democratic Policy Committee. From the big Vanity Fair article:
In early May, Wilson and Plame attended a conference sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee, at which Wilson spoke about Iraq; one of the other panelists was the New York Times journalist Nicholas Kristof. Over breakfast the next morning with Kristof and his wife, Wilson told about his trip to Niger and said Kristof could write about it, but not name him.
2. However, the meeting where the Democrats plotted how to undermine confidence in Bush may have been a meeting of the Democratic National Committee:
Dems plan to undermine America to beat Bush
Capitol Hill Blue obtained a copy of the talking points when the Democratic National Committee sent them to a news outlet recently acquired by CHB’s parent company.
Being the suspicious type, I might suspect that :-)
That's exactly what I found interesting about it.
The Iraqi WMD shell game. Now Hussein has them. Now he doesn't. For the better part of 20 years we were told he had them. We know he did in the '80's, because he used them. Then, he up and decides to invade Kuwait. Golden opportunity to use WMD against the Kuwaitis, the Israelis, and the vastly superior coalition forces. But he doesn't. Why? Might it be that contrary to conventional wisdom, he wasn't afraid of retaliation, but that he didn't have much of a stockpile left?
Enter the UN weapons inspectors after the Gulf War. Again, throughout the '90's, we're told that Hussein is a menace. He has WMD. He's not cooperating. Gotta keep those inspectors rummaging around in Iraq. Yada, yada, yada. Our Congress even passes the 1998 Iraq Liberation Act, making the ouster of Hussein national policy. Bill Clinton signed it and most of the Dems now caterwauling about how "Bush lied" issued hair-raising warnings about Iraq on the Senate floor and voted for it.
In the meantime, a little gravy train called the Oil-for-Food program was enriching a whole bunch of people. None of the players (including Hussein) in the weapons inspection scam wanted to go home and declare Iraq free of WMD, because that would mean the gravy train would come to a screeching halt. So Hussein continued to play the intransigent dictator, Kofi Annan's minions kept rummaging around Iraq, and all the players kept getting rich.
Enter George W. Bush, the "accidental" president who, from the Left's point of view, was dumber than a box of Texas rocks. The unthinkable happens -- a massive terrorist attack on American soil that catapults GWB into the ranks of our most significant presidents ever. GWB takes us into a real shooting war.
Worse, he begins lecturing the UN about its responsibilities, and begins making plans to invade Iraq. Oh, no! That would slam the door on the gravy train for sure. And it would also threaten the exposure of a lot of Euro and UN Leftists who made millions off the suffering of the Iraqi people. Can't have that, now, can we?
So it wouldn't surprise me at all that various schemes were cooked up here and in Europe to (1) provide cover for the crooks, and (2) set GWB up to take the fall for years of corruption about Iraq, its here-today, gone-tomorrow WMD, and the Oil for Food Program.
Now what Patrick Fitzgerald is up to, who knows. I doubt seriously that he's doing anything significant. Like most special prosecutors, once they get started, it's almost impossible to get them to wrap up and come to a conclusion. The history of such SP's is that their investigations take on a life of their own and run for years, often with little or no results to show for the effort and cost.
But the whole Wilson-Plame saga has provided excellent cover for the vastly more serious crimes that were committed re Oil-for-Food and its rationale, the continued UN search for Iraqi WMD.
Your post REALLY needs ( desperately ) to be posted to Pukin Dog's thread. You know that I am HTML deprived, so would you please post a link or the whole thing, if I ping you to it? PLLLLLLLLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE? :-)
Obviously, I conflated the two. However, this May meeting apparently afforded the Democrats an opportunity to further the program they agreed to undertake in January.
Consequently, we have a nexus for the plot. Wilson, Kristof, a bunch of Democrat pols (is Schumer on this committee, I wonder). And, within days, things begin to happen...
...Kristof "leaks" Wilson's report (anonymously)
...Somebody identified as "a CIA agent" leaks to the BBC.
...Pincus and the WaPo gets on the scent.
...Wilson gets an op-ed in the NYT.
...and they're off and running at Pimlico...
I think I found the title and date and a summary, at least:
On July 8th, Capitol Hill Blue published a story titled "White House Admits Bush Lied About Iraqi Nukes". The bold headline was backed by an equally assertive lead-in, which stated "After weeks of denial, the White House Monday finally admitted President Bush lied in his January State of the Union Address when he claimed Iraq had sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa." This assertion went far beyond what other news organizations were reporting, which was that the Bush administration had admitted that the claim made in the State of the Union Address was based on information the President later found to be unreliable. There were other eye-raising details in the story, however.
The article quoted a "CIA advisor" named Terrance J. Wilkinson, claiming he had been present at two White House briefings attended by the President. "The report had already been discredited," the story quoted Wilkinson as stating. "This point was clearly made when the president was in the room during at least two of the briefings" said Wilkinson, who claimed Bush responded in anger. "He 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," the Capitol Hill Blue story continued Wilkinson's quote. "He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured the country." Wilkinson claimed to have written "numerous memos" questioning the use of "intelligence information that we knew to be from dubious sources." While American troops continue to search Iraq for a smoking gun regarding weapons of mass destruction, these allegations, if true, would be the smoking gun the left wing of American politics has been searching for in their quest to discredit the Bush administration.
On Free Republic, a website where conservatives dissect and debate the news, some people (including this author) started to question the story. The White House admitted Bush lied? Where could such an admission be found? And who is Terrance J. Wilkinson? Searches using various Internet tools such as Google were coming up empty. Doug Thompson joined in the discussion to defend his work and his publication. "The use of the word 'lied' has also sparked some controversy on the Capitol Hill Blue forum as well. It was my decision to use the word. Wilkinson did not accuse the President of lying. I did, based on information from other sources (who would not go on the record) that Bush was told outright that the information had been discredited before the State of the Union address but that he chose to use it anyway. To me that was a lie and I chose to use it in the headline and the lead of the story." Thompson admitted that he chose such a strong accusation because "I'm mad. Bush didn't have to use a discredited claim to justify the war with Iraq." However, Thompson admitted, "The headline is technically incorrect because the White House made no such admission. I have edited the headline and the lead of the story to reflect that." Thompson republished the article with the word 'lied' changed to 'wrong' in the headline, and the lead-in changed similarly. But what about Terrance J. Wilkinson? Thompson stood by his man. "I've known Terry Wilkinson for 20+ years and his decision to go public was a painful one that I'm sure will bring recriminations."
The same article is apparently referenced with a different, less inflammatory title here:
Over a month ago I wrote an entry here called "The Bush psyche." Well, today Steve Gilliard at the Daily KOS wrote "Time to admit the obvious: there are no WMD," in which he quotes a story from Capitol Hill Blue, "White House admits Bush wrong about Iraqi nukes."
"The [Niger] report had already been discredited," said Terrance J. Wilkinson, a CIA advisor present at two White House briefings. "This point was clearly made when the President was in the room during at least two of the briefings."
Bush's response was anger, Wilkinson said.
"He 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. "He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured the country."
This link given seems to redirect to a sanitized archive version of the article where references to Wilkinson have been removed, along with Thompson's name:
"White House admits Bush wrong about Iraqi nukes", July 8, 2003
After weeks of denial, the White House Monday finally admitted President Bush was wrong in his January State of the Union Address when he claimed Iraq had sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa.
The acknowledgment came as a British parliamentary commission questioned the reliability of British intelligence about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the war in Iraq.
Bush said in his State of the Union address that the British government had learned that Saddam recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa.
The president's statement was incorrect because it was based on forged documents from the African nation of Niger, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer acknowledged.
A British parliamentary committee has also concluded that Prime Minister Tony Blair's government mishandled intelligence material on Iraqi weapons.
John Stanley, a Conservative member of the committee, said so far no evidence has been found in Iraq to substantiate four key claims, including that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa as part of an effort to restart a nuclear weapons program.
The International Atomic Energy Agency told the United Nations in March that the information about uranium was based on forged documents.
I also tried searching Google for the link that redirects to the archived version, and they've pulled the original out of their cache as well:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_2518.shtml
I'd go with a version of your larger affair scenario. My main difference in detail would be that I think Saddam's Oil-for-Food coconspirators were helping arm him with WMD as well as profiting from Oil-for-Food corruption. But apart from that I agree with your gist, and your bottom line that Oil-for-Food-related crimes (and profits) were most likely the heart of the motive.
I wonder. Does Terrance J. Wilkinson sound like Joseph C. Wilson to you? The claims and the manner of speaking? The tone is different than the one that Wilson adopted in his writing, but when he's worked himself into high dudgeon on the air, it sure sounds a lot like Terrance J. Wilkinson.
Joe Wilson? Or a close co-conspirator? It sounds like a test run for the op-ed, doesn't it? How much can I get away with, how far can I go?
Funny, too, how this ended up down the memory hole. It got swamped by the op-ed, sure. But nobody ever seemed to pick up on the association.
Has to be the heart of it. And I have no confidence Fitzgerald's investigation is going to do anything postive to shine light on the truth.
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.
This sounds like Wilkinson was active in New Mexico in 1982 and thereabouts. Wilson would've been in Africa at that time. I haven't heard anything about him being familiar with nuclear labs, either, so I tend to think it's someone else.
However this does suggest to me that "Wilkinson" might be someone tied to a spy ring at Los Alamos in the early 80s, which might be a clue.
This whole thing stinks. It's as if the CIA is using the Democrats to undermine the President of the United State in the same way they do in third world countries. I don’t understand how a CIA agent (Plame) can get away with caring out a "mission" without any approvals, and then have her husband use the mission to try and undermine the United States which was planning the next war front on terror.
She should be in jail for treason - along with her husband. Instead the CIA allows her to become some twisted sort of American hating hero to the left, and we have to sit on our hands while the network news (gossip) re-packages it as the sandal of a lifetime. I hope that the “moms” and “pops” are smart enough to see the whole story.
Holtz
JeffersonRepublic.com
Yes; and I think that this nexus was coordinating with a group of Clintonistas from CIA and State who had worked on Clinton's Iraq policy; and that this domestic nexus linked to foreign counterparts in Britain and France and elsewhere. The forged Niger documents initially came to British and US intelligence through Italy.
bump
Of course, this was based on the assumption that Thompson had made up the whole story and, having been caught, covered his tracks.
In hindsight, we now know that somebody was trying to peddle this story, though. So, Thompson would've had no apparent need to make it all up.
The possibility remains, though, that he might've been covering for somebody whose real identity he couldn't reveal for some reason. William McKinley, as I recall, tripped him up by convincingly establishing the fact that there was no such person as "Terrance J. Wilkinson".
If we take Thompson at his word, though, Terrance is "a CIA advisor". If he's not Wilson, that's still plausible -- Plame probably wasn't the only CIA-associated person in on this stunt.
Wonder whatever happened to Thompson. Wonder if he'd talk about this now...
I fear he has to find a way past Miller's stonewall to get much farther with his investigation. Part of the problem, too, is that some of the witnesses probably aren't under US jurisdiction. The British apparently know more than they can tell without violating intelligence-sharing agreements with France.
bump
FORMER DIPLOMAT TO GIVE VIEWS ON POSSIBLE WAR WITH IRAQ AT UCSB, January 14, 2003
"Our message to Saddam can be simple," he said. "You are going to lose your weapons-of-mass-destruction capability either through inspections or through a sustained cruise-missile assault. If you rebuild them, we will attack again. And if you use weapons of mass destruction or attack another country, we will destroy you and your regime. The decision to live or die then becomes his to make."
"The ultimate lesson of the gulf war may be that when offered the choice, Saddam will sacrifice almost everything before sacrificing his own life or grip on power," Wilson said.
It's quite possible Thompson made up a legend. In that case I'm at a loss for any leads, though, LOL. At this point my best suggestion is to check if there's any other information on counterintelligence agents who were approaching journalists and politicians in New Mexico around 1982. If that doesn't turn up anything I'm not sure where to look.
That's really interesting :-)
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