<p>Strick11:" So why did the French say that Iraq had made an attempt to buy uranium?"</p>
<p>Proove it? I say they never did, but if you can show indisputable proof that hasn’t been debunked by IAEA etc. I’ll read it. And don’t go flashing the Butler report or Power Line here, its whitewash and isn’t worth reading.</p>
<p>Well, according to the brief prepared by the 36 most important news organizations in the US, they didn’t. The boilerplate form they filled out, one they fill out routinely many times a year, only demostrates that classifed information has been disclosed. It does not meet any standard to show that there was evidence a crime had been committed. </p>
<p>The brief cites a plethora of things that the CIA did to contribute to the leak and says there should be “abundant concern that the CIA may have initiated this investigation out of embarrassment over revelations of its own shortcomings”. See page 35 of the pdf.</p>
<p>CGM, you really should take a deep breath and read the amicus brief. Seriously, it won’t hurt. As Strick said, start at about page 27. </p>
<p>As for the question of “why did the CIA want this investigated,” well, that gets right to the heart of the question of why they sent a flunky like Wilson on this “mission” to begin with. There is a lot of political bureaucratic infighting in DC, and the CIA and State are two places to find it in a big way. Remember the outrage over Porter Goss and Condi Rice taking charge in the second term? The housecleaning was long overdue.</p>
<p>“I say they never did, but if you can show indisputable proof that hasn’t been debunked by IAEA etc.”</p>
<p>Debunked before the 2003 State of the Union Address, sweetkidsmom? Because whatever debunking happened after that was irrelevant to Wilson’s claim. Perhaps you should look at the date on that report again. The question is not whether the Administration was wrong to believe, as the author of the Downings Street memo and Joe Wilson did, that Saddam had WMDs, the question is whether or not they cherry picked intelligence. If the CIA analysts who took Wilson’s report spiked it for not containing anything new, which means, as the State Department and the CIA both say, the Administration never saw it, the Administration can hardly be accused of cherry picking. That’s the claim, not that they were merely wrong.</p>
<p>(And I seem to remember reading the IAEA report last year. It wasn’t as cut and dried as you make out. I believe there are some relevant parts that didn’t get quoted in that article you keep quoting. Have you read it for yourself?)</p>
<p>
I was kind of waiting for you to do this, and you didn’t disappoint. It was you, SKM, that cited the DailyKos as an “award-winning blog,” and thus worthy of our attention. PowerLine has that status as well…I think it was Newsweek that called it the most important blog in the country. But why let facts get in the way of the fantasy?</p>
<p>sweetkidsmom, the IAEA report I find is dated May, 2003, a bit after the Januray 2003 report. It says, </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The source for this lack of evidence is the former head of Iraqi nuclear program. A lack of evidence from a source who has something to gain from the denial constitutes debunking? Saddam’s only interest in contacting Niger was his concern about Niger’s economic problems? Saddam? That Saddam? And the former Prime Minister completely misread their intentions? Interesting.</p>
<p>I also note that the Sunday Herald article you’re so fond of contains this:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s the point. Since nothing Wilson assumed about the circulation of his report was true, ipso facto, his conclusion is also not true. Certainly not proven as you seem to believe.</p>
<p>“Did Iraq, in fact, try to buy uranium in Niger? The Senate Intelligence Committee report accepted the CIA’s ultimate assessment not reached until after the war that there was little if any credible evidence available to U.S. intelligence to support the charge that Iraq sought, let alone bought, uranium from Niger.”
Posted 7/21/2004 2:13 AM Updated 7/21/2004 7:40 AM USA Today</p>
<p>Freepers know who they are. And this is not for your benefit Driver or Strict11, it is a side you aren’t interested in so pass on by. </p>
<p>July 15, 2004</p>
<p>The Honorable Pat Roberts
Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence</p>
<p>The Honorable Jay Rockefeller
Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence</p>
<p>Dear Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller,</p>
<p>I read with great surprise and consternation the Niger portion of Senators Roberts, Bond and Hatch additional comments to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee’s Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Assessment on Iraq. I am taking this opportunity to clarify some of the issues raised in these comments.</p>
<p>First conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador’s wife, a CIA employee. </p>
<p>That is not true. The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife sent to her superiors that says my husband has good relations with the PM (prime minister) and the former Minister of Mines, (not to mention lots of French contacts) both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity. There is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides. The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD reports officer stated the the former ambassador’s wife 'offered up his name’ (page 39) and a State Department Intelligence and Research officer that the meeting was 'apparently convened by [the former ambassador’s] wife who had the idea to dispatch him to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue. </p>
<p>In fact, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. Neither was the CPD Reports officer. After having escorted me into the room, she departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the invitation to the meeting were the trip I had previously taken to Niger to look at other uranium related questions as well as 20 years living and working in Africa, and personal contacts throughout the Niger government. Neither the CPD reports officer nor the State analyst were in the chain of command to know who, or how, the decision was made. The interpretations attributed to them are not the full story. In fact, it is my understanding that the Reports Officer has a different conclusion about Valerie’s role than the one offered in the additional comments. I urge the committee to reinterview the officer and publicly publish his statement. </p>
<p>It is unfortunate that the report failed to include the CIA’s position on this matter. If the staff had done so it would undoubtedly have been given the same evidence as provided to Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce in July, 2003. They reported on July 22 that:</p>
<p>A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked ‘alongside’ the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. ‘They (the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story) were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,’ he said. ‘There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,’ he said. ‘I can’t figure out what it could be.’
We paid his (Wilson’s) airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you’d have to pay big bucks to go there,’ the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said. he was reimbursed only for expenses. (Newsday article Columnist blows CIA Agent’s cover, dated July 22, 2003).</p>
<p>In fact, on July 13 of this year, David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, did call the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed my account that Valerie did not propose me for the trip:</p>
<p>’She did not propose me’, he [Wilson] said–others at the CIA did so. A senior CIA official said that is his understanding too.'</p>
<p>Second conclusion: Rather that speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.</p>
<p>This conclusion states that I told the committee staff that I may have become confused about my own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that the names and dates on the documents were not correct. At the time that I was asked that question, I was not afforded the opportunity to review the articles to which the staff was referring. I have now done so. </p>
<p>part one</p>
<p>On March 7, 2003 the Director General of the IAEA reported to the United Nations Security Council that the documents that had been given to him were not authentic. His deputy, Jacques Baute, was even more direct, pointing out that the forgeries were so obvious that a quick Google search would have exposed their flaws. A State Department spokesman was quoted the next day as saying about the forgeries We fell for it. From that time on the details surrounding the documents became public knowledge and were widely reported. I was not the source of information regarding the forensic analysis of the documents in question; the IAEA was. </p>
<p>The first time I spoke publicly about the Niger issue was in response to the State Department’s disclaimer. On CNN a few days later, in response to a question, I replied that I believed the US government knew more about the issue than the State Department spokesman had let on and that he had misspoken. I did not speak of my trip.</p>
<p>My first public statement was in my article of July 6 published in the New York Times, written only after it became apparent that the administration was not going to deal with the Niger question unless it was forced to. I wrote the article because I believed then, and I believe now, that it was important to correct the record on the statement in the President’s State of the Union address which lent credence to the charge that Iraq was actively reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. I believed that the record should reflect the facts as the US government had known them for over a year. The contents of my article do not appear in the body of the report and is not quoted in the additional comments. In that article, I state clearly that As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors - they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government - and were probably forged. (And then there’s the fact that Niger formally denied the charges.)</p>
<p>The first time I actually saw what were represented as the documents was when Andrea Mitchell, the NBC correspondent handed them to me in an interview on July 21. I was not wearing my glasses and could not read them. I have to this day not read them. I would have absolutely no reason to claim to have done so. My mission was to look into whether such a transaction took place or could take place. It had not and could not. By definition that makes the documents bogus. </p>
<p>The text of the additional comments also asserts that during Mr. Wilson’s media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. 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. </p>
<p>My article in the New York Times makes clear that I attributed to myself a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa’s suspected link to Iraq’s nonconventional weapons programs. After it became public that there were then Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick’s report and the report from a four star Marine Corps General, Carleton Fulford in the files of the U. S. government, I went to great lengths to point out that mine was but one of three reports on the subject. I never claimed to have debunked the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. I claimed only that the transaction described in the documents that turned out to be forgeries could not have and did not occur. I did not speak out on the subject until several months after it became evident that what underpinned the assertion in the State of the Union address were those documents, reports of which had sparked Vice President Cheney’s original question that led to my trip. The White House must have agreed. The day after my article appeared in the Times a spokesman for the President told the Washington Post that the sixteen words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union.</p>
<p>I have been very careful to say that while I believe that the use of the sixteen words in the State of the Union address was a deliberate attempt to deceive the Congress of the United States, I do not know what role the President may have had other than he has accepted responsibility for the words he spoke. I have also said on many occasions that I believe the President has proven to be far more protective of his senior staff than they have been to him. </p>
<p>The additional comments also assert: The Committee found that, for most analysts the former ambassador’s report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal. In fact, the body of the Senate report suggests the exact opposite:</p>
<p>o In August, 2002, a CIA NESA report on Iraq’s weapons of Mass Destruction capabilities did not include the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium information. (pg. 48)</p>
<p>o In September, 2002, during coordination of a speech with an NSC staff member, the CIA analyst suggested the reference to Iraqi attempts to acquire uranium from Africa be removed. The CIA analyst said the NSC staff member said that would leave the British flapping in the wind. (pg. 50)</p>
<p>o The uranium text was included in the body of the NIE but not in the key judgments. When someone suggested that the uranium information be included as another sign of reconstitution, the INR Iraq nuclear analyst spoke up and said the he did not agree with the uranium reporting and that INR would be including text indicating their disagreement in their footnote on nuclear reconstitution. The NIO said he did not recall anyone really supporting including the uranium issue as part of the judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, so he suggested that the uranium information did not need to be part of the key judgments. He told Committee staff he suggested that We’ll leave it in the paper for completeness. Nobody can say we didn’t connect the dots. But we don’t have to put that dot in the key judgments. (pg. 53)</p>
<p>o On October 2, 2002, the Deputy DCI testified before the SSCI. Senator Jon Kyl asked the Deputy DCI whether he had read the British White Paper and whether he disagreed with anything in the report. The Deputy DCI testified that the one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about where Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. (pg.54)</p>
<p>o On October 4, 2002 the NIO for Strategic and Nuclear Programs testified that there is some information on attempts .there’s a question about those attempts because of the control of the material in those countries For us it’s more the concern that they (Iraq) uranium in country now. (pg. 54)</p>
<p>part three</p>
<p>o On October 5, 2002, the ADDI said an Iraq nuclear analyst - he could not remember who - raised concerns about the sourcing and some of the facts of the Niger reporting, specifically that the control of the mines in Niger would have made it very difficult to get yellowcake to Iraq. (pg. 55)</p>
<p>o Based on the analyst’s comments, the ADDI faxed a memo to the Deputy National Security Advisor that said, remove the sentence because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from this source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory. (pg. 56)</p>
<p>o On October 6, 2002, the DCI called the Deputy National Security Advisor directly to outline the CIA’s concerns. The DCI testified to the SSCI on July 16, 2003, that he told the Deputy National Security Advisor that the President should not be a fact witness on this issue, because his analysts had told him the reporting was weak. (pg. 56)</p>
<p>o On October 6, 2002, the CIA sent a second fax to the White House which said, more on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points 1) the evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. 2) the procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq’s nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And 3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this in one of the two issues where we differed with the British. (Pg 56)</p>
<p>o On March 8, 2003, the intelligence report on my trip was disseminated within the U.S. Government according the Senate report (pg. 43). Further, the Senate report states that in early March, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for an update on the Niger uranium issue. That update from the CIA also noted that the CIA would be debriefing a source who may have information related to the alleged sale on March 5. The report then states the DO officials also said they alerted WINPAC analysts when the report was being disseminated because they knew the high priority of the issue. The report notes that the CIA briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report. (Pg. 46)</p>
<p>It is clear from the body of the Senate report that the Intelligence Community, including the DCI himself, made several attempts to ensure that the President not become a fact witness on an allegation that was so weak. A thorough reading of the report substantiates the claim made in my opinion piece in the New York Times and in subsequent interviews I have given on the subject. The sixteen words should never have been in the State of the Union address as the White House now acknowledges. </p>
<p>I undertook this mission at the request of my government in response to a legitimate concern that Saddam Hussein was attempting to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. This was a national security issue that has concerned me since I was the Deputy Chief of Mission in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq before and during the first Gulf War. </p>
<p>At the time of my trip I was in private business and had not offered my views publicly on the policy we should adopt towards Iraq. Indeed, throughout the debate in the runup to the war, I took the position that the U.S. be firm with Saddam Hussein on the question of weapons of mass destruction programs including backing tough diplomacy with the credible threat of force. In that debate I never mentioned my trip to Niger. I did not share the details of my trip until May, 2003, after the war was over, and then only when it became clear that the administration was not going to address the issue of the State of the Union statement. </p>
<p>It is essential that the errors and distortions in the additional comments be corrected for the public record. Nothing could be more important for the American people than to have an accurate picture of the events that led to the decision to bring the United States into war in Iraq. The Senate Intelligence Committee has an obligation to present to the American people the factual basis of that process. I hope that this letter is helpful in that effort. I look forward to your further additional comments.</p>
<p>Sincerely, </p>
<p>Joseph C. Wilson, IV</p>
<p>Thanks for the tin foil hat update, SKM. I personally tend to believe what Wilson said under oath before the Senate intelligence committee, when his rear end was on the line. You may feel free to continue preferring the self-serving hogwash he has dealt out in other venues, when he was not constrained by the consequences of false statements.</p>
<p>You tend to believe a President who has an extremely low cred rating even among rank and file republicans at this point in time. Look for another terror alert! Nearly half your party doesn’t believe him.</p>
<p>How do you believe this admin in the face of your own party increasingly doubting him?</p>
<p>Should Karl Rove Be Fired If He Leaked Classified Information?
Yes No
All 75% 15%
Republicans 71 17
Independents 74 17
Democrats 83 12</p>
<p>Skepticism about the administration’s cooperation has jumped. As the initial investigation began in September 2003, nearly half the public, 47 percent, believed the White House was fully cooperating. That fell to 39 percent a few weeks later, and it’s lower still, 25 percent, in this new ABC News poll.</p>
<p>This view is highly partisan; barely over a tenth of Democrats and just a quarter of independents think the White House is fully cooperating. That grows to 47 percent of Republicans – much higher, but still under half in the president’s own party. And doubt about the administration’s cooperation has grown as much among Republicans – by 22 points since September 2003 – as it has among others.</p>
<p>These results mean two things – first of all, the efforts by the GOP and their allies to muddy the waters and turn this into a partisan issue are failing.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>sweetkidsmom, I fdon’t know what Wilson is talking about. No one I know is relying on the additional comments at the end of the report. Everything you need to know is in the main body of the report that all the Senators agreed to. It starts on page 35 of the document. Please read it for yourself rather than relying on other people’s interpretation of it. It really helps.</p>
<p>Besides, the State Department memo Powell received on the events agrees that Plame recommended her husband, once verbally and again in writing. That Plame’s recitation of Wilson’s qualifications isn’t a recommendation is pretty hard to swallow, isn’t it? Ever sent someone your kid’s resume not hoping they’d give him the job?</p>
<p>March 7th? Humm. A bit after the State of the Union Address in January, right?</p>
<p>Or, SKM, you may prefer to continue paying attention to ABC News polls and lefty blogs, those same ones that predicted a John Kerry victory. 
Reliable sources?</p>
<p>“You tend to believe a President who has an extremely low cred rating even among rank and file republicans at this point in time.”</p>
<p>What’s that got to do with what we know about this case? I wasn’t aware Bush had provided any info that’s relevant.</p>
<p>“Should Karl Rove Be Fired If He Leaked Classified Information?”</p>
<p>Yes, I agree completely he should. He should even be indicted. Only you have no evidence he did. “Leaked Classified Information” means he had to have been the original leaker and that he learned what he did from classified sources, not just repeated gossip he heard from a reporter. That later’s the most anyone has ever said. The same goes for violating the law, particularly since there’s little or no evidence he or anyone else did.</p>
<p>If anyone thought that Rove was really guilty, any Democrat in the know, they’d back off and let the special prosecutor do their dirty work for them. Strongly suspecting that isn’t going to happen, they’re getting their partisan knocks in now.</p>
<p>So all that you posted proves nothing.</p>
<p>There are some problems with the senate report, people are disputing their version of how Wilson was hired. But I’m glad to see you back on topic, that is who outed a CIA agent? We have gone in circles concerning the laws that may have been broken. All this going back and forth is pointless because the real issue is that an investigation of wrong doing is being conducted uupon an administration that destroys peoples lives for disagreeing with them. Its a dangerous way to act and has come back to haunt them. Rove attacked people for 20 years and its being played back on him as Howard Fineman himself said recently. </p>
<p>CIA agaent Johnson:
"I say disingenuous for the following reasons. First, the normal procedure when a PDB briefer comes back to headquarters with a request for additional information from the President or Vice President is to inform the Office Chief who in turn informs the Division Chief who then informs the Branch Chief. The Office Chief, the Division Chief, and the Branch Chief are the only decision makers at the CIA outside of the DCI himself who can make a decision to send someone on a trip overseas. Valerie Plame was a member of a branch in the Counter Proliferation Division. She was not and is not the Branch Chief nor the Division Chief nor the Office Chief. She simply was an undercover operative in an operations job that required her to travel under non-official cover overseas.</p>
<p>The memo referenced dishonestly in the Senate Intelligence Committee report neglects to mention that it was written in response to a request from one of Valerie’s managers (i.e., the Division Chief or Branch Chief). But the most important aspect of this is that Valerie had no authority to make the decision to send her husband, Joe Wilson, to Niger.</p>
<p>What is really laughable and sad about the White House smear of Valerie Plame is that it is insinuating that the bad news Joe Wilson brought back regarding the absence of any evidence that Iraq was trying to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger was part of a devious plot hatched by Ms. Plame a full year before President Bush made the mistaken speech claiming that such evidence did exist. Val was a great case officer but not even she could pull off such a sly plan. Moreover, even if she had the authority to send her husband Joe to, she could not guarantee he would return with confirmation that such a plot existed.</p>
<p>This dead horse - it died before it ever got in the starting gate has been beaten like a rented mule. Thank God we now have a Supreme Court nominee so our leftwing friends will have a net set of talking points by this time tomorrow. Sometime during the titanic struggle that is about to begin this non-scandal will be carted off to the morgue, forgotten and buried.</p>
<p>“But I’m glad to see you back on topic, that is who outed a CIA agent?”</p>
<p>But you still aren’t back on topic, yet, right? Do you know who leaked Plame’s identity? Was it an “outing”? What legitimate evidence you have that that is so?</p>
<p>The thing is, I can’t honestly see how any of this is a smear on Plame, not what you’re talking about anyway. So what if Plame got Wilson the job? He’s a legitimate hero, he knows Africa and Iraq. What’s the beef? That she used connections to get information? That’s a smear? In Washington, DC? Get real.</p>
<p>The real point was that her involvement contradicted the version of the story put out by a reporter Wilson leaked to. It was one thing that called into question his honesty, something he denied again is his book but has not since. That all that rippled down the chain of command and when the report came back, the CIA analysts taking it from Wilson didn’t find any real value in it so it never went back up the chain, is the real issue. If it didn’t get to the Administration as Wilson claimed, his op ed piece is nonsense.</p>
<p>That is the strategy of the Bushies. Announce now and get the leak damage off the front page. Thank you for bringing that up and spelling out so succintly.</p>
<p>The smear was on Wilson, and you know it. Going after a spouse was the method to put fear in the CIA for nort cowtoeing to the Bush/AIPAC/WHIG New American Century propaganda. And you know that too. Do you attack your coworkers wife when you disagree with him? Its totally scoundrel behavior. Did you see the WSJ article out today that referred to the the work up memo. The WH ordered a ‘workup’ on Plame and got it, one week later her identiy is out in public domain for other countries and groups to run her name through their intell and find her contacts and other operatives. No talk of a SC nom is going to bump the story off the mainstream press. Bush and ARi’s replacement Sotty lied to the press and burned their bridges.
But being that your so informed you realize the lives and damage to them this does? someone leaked it, Fitzgeralds report awaits.</p>
<p>I love this stuff. I do so hope Rove doesn’t resign. This could kick around for 3 or 4 or 5 months, until the results of Fitzgerald’s investigation are out. (By then, we’ll have 3,000 posts!) Trust in the White House, both here and abroad will decline. Reporters will defend their “honor”. Bush will continue barefoot and ignorant. There will be a long, slow process of leaks - Scooter Libby, and did he tell HIS boss? And did his boss tell the Big Boss when on September 30th, 2003, he said he wanted to know? More and more questions will swirl. They don’t even have to have leaked classified information; only to have confirmed the identity of an covert operative. Intention doesn’t even count in the Executive Order. We can parse and cavil about who is and who is not covert - this is wonderful!</p>
<p>What did he know, and when did he know it?</p>