Annie
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- Nov 22, 2003
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http://www.usmessageboard.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25963
Why it's important via MSM and prosecution:
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/217wnmrb.asp
Why it's important via MSM and prosecution:
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/006/217wnmrb.asp
The White House, the CIA, and the Wilsons
The chain of events that gave rise to a grand jury investigation.
by Stephen F. Hayes
10/24/2005, Volume 011, Issue 06
FOR TWO YEARS, THE political class in Washington has followed with intense interest the story of Joseph Wilson and the events that led to the compromising of his wife's identity and undercover status as a CIA operative. The rest of the country seems to have responded with a collective yawn. That will soon change if special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald issues indictments of senior White House aides in his investigation of the alleged leaking of Mrs. Wilson's name.
The narrative constructed to date by the mainstream media is uncomplicated: The White House exaggerated claims of Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Niger despite objections from the CIA and the broader U.S. intelligence community. In the late spring of 2003, Joseph Wilson laid bare this White House deception with firsthand accounts of his involvement in the intelligence-gathering. Bush administration officials quickly became obsessed with Wilson, and their anger drove them to retaliate, exposing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, by leaking her identity to reporters.
Think this is oversimplified? Here is a Washington Post summary of the events leading up to the investigation, from July 27, 2005:
[Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald] began his probe in December 2003 to determine whether any government official knowingly leaked Plame's identity as a CIA employee to the media. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, has said his wife's career was ruined in retaliation for his public criticism of Bush. In a 2002 trip to Niger at the request of the CIA, Wilson found no evidence to support allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from that African country and reported back to the agency in February 2002. But nearly a year later, Bush asserted in his State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, attributing it to British, not U.S., intelligence.
Simple. Clean. And very misleading. The real story is considerably more complicated.
ON OCTOBER 15, 2001, the CIA received a report from a foreign government service that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had struck a deal with the government of Niger to purchase several tons of partially processed uranium, known as "yellowcake." The first report was met with some skepticism. The CIA found the substance of the report plausible but expressed concern about its sourcing. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was more dubious. INR thought it unlikely that the government of Niger would take the substantial risks involved in doing illicit business with a rogue regime. INR analysts also expressed doubt that the transaction could have taken place because the uranium mines in Niger are controlled by a French consortium, which would be reluctant to work with Saddam Hussein--an objection that seems naive with the benefit of hindsight.
On October 18, 2001, the CIA published a Senior Executive Intelligence Bulletin that discussed the finding. "According to a foreign government service, Niger as of early this year planned to send several tons of uranium to Iraq under an agreement concluded late last year." The report noted the sourcing: "There is no corroboration from other sources that such an agreement was reached or that uranium was transferred."
Several months later came a second report, dated February 5, 2002, also from a "foreign government service." It contained more details of the alleged transaction. An official from the CIA's directorate of operations said that the new information came from "a very credible source," and some of the reporting seemed to corroborate earlier accounts of meetings between Nigerien officials and Iraqis. The State Department's INR remained skeptical, judging that the Iraqis were unlikely to engage in such illicit trade because they were "bound to be caught."
Analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency wrote a report using the new information entitled "Niamey signed an agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Baghdad." It was published internally on February 12, 2002, and included in the daily intelligence briefing prepared for Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney asked his CIA briefer for more information, including the CIA's analysis of the report. The CIA filed a perfunctory response to the vice president's request, noting some concerns about the report and promising to follow up. It is unclear whether Cheney saw this response.
The promised CIA follow-up came quickly. That same day officials at the agency's Counterproliferation Division discussed how they might investigate further. An employee of the division, Valerie Wilson, suggested the agency send her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Gabon with experience in Niger, to Africa to make inquiries. In a memo to the deputy director of the Counterproliferation Division, she wrote: "My husband has good relations with the PM [prime minister of Niger] 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." Mrs. Wilson would later say she asked her husband, on behalf of the CIA, if he would investigate "this crazy report" on a uranium deal between Iraq and Niger. Wilson agreed to go.
On February 18, 2002, the U.S. embassy in Niger sent a cable describing a new account of the alleged deal. The account, it said, "provides sufficient detail to warrant another hard look at Niger's uranium sales." The cable further warned against dismissing the allegations prematurely. The following day, back at Langley, representatives of several U.S. intelligence agencies met with Ambassador Wilson to discuss the trip. Contemporaneous notes from an analyst at the State Department's INR suggest that Mrs. Wilson "apparently convened" the meeting. She introduced her husband to the group and left a short time later. Several of the attendees would later recall questioning the value of the proposed trip, noting that the Nigeriens were unlikely to admit dealing with the Iraqis. Still, the CIA approved the trip.
Here is how Wilson would later recall his investigation in his now-famous New York Times op-ed.
In late February 2002, I arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, where I had been a diplomat in the mid-70s and visited as a National Security Council official in the late 90s. The city was much as I remembered it. Seasonal winds had clogged the air with dust and sand. Through the haze, I could see camel caravans crossing the Niger River (over the John F. Kennedy bridge), the setting sun behind them. Most people had wrapped scarves around their faces to protect against the grit, leaving only their eyes visible.
Wilson met with U.S. Ambassador to Niger Barbara Owens-Kirkpatrick, who, like the State Department's intelligence bureau, thought the alleged sale unlikely. Wilson continued:
I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.
Wilson was debriefed by two CIA officials at his home on March 5, 2002. He never filed a written report. The resulting CIA report was published and disseminated in the regular intelligence stream three days later. The report included the unsurprising declaration of former Nigerien prime minister Ibrahim Mayaki that Niger had signed no contracts with rogue states while he served first as foreign minister and then prime minister, from 1996 to 1999. But Mayaki added one tantalizing detail, also included in the CIA report that resulted from Wilson's trip. An Iraqi delegation had visited Niger in 1999 to explore "expanding commercial relations" between Iraq and Niger. Mayaki had met with the Iraqis and later concluded that their request for enhanced trade meant they wanted to discuss purchasing uranium. Mayaki said he had not pursued the matter because such deals were prohibited under U.N. sanctions.
Reactions to the report differed. The INR analyst believed Wilson's report supported his assessment that deals between Iraq and Niger were unlikely. Analysts at the CIA thought the Wilson report added little to the overall knowledge of the Iraq-Niger allegations but noted with particular interest the visit of the Iraqi delegation in 1999. That report may have seemed noteworthy because of the timing of the Iraqi visit. The CIA had several previous reports of Iraq seeking uranium in Africa in 1999, specifically from Congo and Somalia.
On balance, then, Wilson's trip seemed to several analysts to make the original claims of an Iraq-Niger deal more plausible.
Throughout the spring and summer, finished intelligence products from several U.S. intelligence agencies cited the reporting on Iraq and Niger as evidence that the Iraqis were continuing their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Some of these noted the doubts of the skeptics, while others were more aggressive in their analysis. A September 2002 DIA paper, for instance, was titled Iraq's Reemerging Nuclear Program. It declared: "Iraq has been vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake."
THE WHITE HOUSE began to take its case against Iraq to the American public beginning in the late summer of 2002. Vice President Cheney warned of the threat from Iraq in a stern speech in Nashville on August 26. Behind the scenes at the White House, communications officials developed talking points and fact sheets for administration officials and their surrogates. Most of these included the Iraq-Niger intelligence, and all of them were cleared by the CIA.
The CIA also cleared several references to the Iraq-Niger intelligence--some more direct than others--for use in speeches written for President Bush. This language was cleared by the CIA on September 11, 2002:
We also know this: within the past few years, Iraq has resumed efforts to purchase large quantities of a type of uranium oxide known as yellowcake, which is an essential ingredient in this [enrichment] process. The regime was caught trying to purchase 500 metric tons of this material. It takes about 10 tons to produce enough enriched uranium for a single nuclear weapon.
Although Bush spoke the following day at the United Nations, he did not use the CIA-approved language.
The first public mention of the intelligence reporting on Iraq and Niger came on September 24, 2002, in a white paper produced by the British government. "There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The CIA had reservations about the British dossier, but not because of its substance. Despite the fact that the British paper did not link the intelligence to Niger, officials at the CIA were concerned that the reference could compromise the source that had provided the intelligence.
That same day, September 24, staffers at the National Security Council (NSC) asked the CIA to clear additional language on Iraq and Niger. "We also have intelligence that Iraq has sought large amounts of uranium and uranium oxide, known as yellowcake, from Africa. Yellowcake is an essential ingredient in the process to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." The CIA once again approved the language, but once again the president did not use it.
The Senate Select Intelligence Committee met on October 2, 2002, and questioned senior U.S. intelligence officials in closed session about the threat from Iraq. Here, for the first time, a senior CIA official raised doubts about the reporting on Iraq and Niger. Responding to a question from Senator Jon Kyl, who asked if there was anything in the British white paper that the CIA disputed, deputy CIA director John McLaughlin said this:
The one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. We've looked at those reports and we don't think they are very credible. It doesn't diminish our conviction that he's going for nuclear weapons, but I think they reached a little bit on that one point.
It was a strange claim, and it provides a first glimpse of the internal confusion at the CIA on the issue of Iraq and Niger. One day earlier, on October 1, 2002, the CIA had published the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi WMD, Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction. This classified document--the U.S. government's official position on Iraqi WMD programs--lifted almost verbatim the aggressive language used in the aforementioned DIA study, Iraq's Reemerging Nuclear Program, published just two weeks earlier: "Iraq [has been] vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake; acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons."
The National Intelligence Estimate continued: "A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of 'pure uranium' (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Iraq and Niger reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which would be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement." The NIE included a bullet point about other intelligence on Iraq's pursuit of uranium. "Reports indicate Iraq has also sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo." The INR objections to the Iraq-Niger intelligence were included but, because of an editing glitch, were placed some 60 pages away from the consensus view.
Meanwhile, the Bush administration continued its public relations campaign to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein was a threat. The White House was finalizing the text of a speech the president was scheduled to deliver in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002, on the eve of the congressional vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq. The speechwriters continued their regular back and forth with the CIA for clearance of potentially sensitive language. On draft six of the speech, the CIA objected to this sentence: "The [Iraqi] regime has been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from Africa--an essential ingredient in the enrichment process."
Had something changed? The National Intelligence Estimate published just three days earlier included language as aggressive as the language proposed for the Cincinnati speech. Was it a matter of classification? The NIE was classified, while the language in the speech was meant for public consumption. And the CIA had been nervous about the British white paper. Still, twice in September the CIA had cleared similar language for a presidential address.
The White House sent the next iteration of the speech to the CIA for clearance, and the language on Iraq and Africa had not been taken out. This oversight prompted a phone call from CIA Director George Tenet to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Tenet later recalled telling Hadley that "the reporting was weak," and that the line shouldn't be used in the Cincinnati speech. Hadley removed the disputed language, and the CIA later faxed over its reasoning for insisting on the change.
Then there occurred a communications breakdown that would prove costly. For reasons still unexplained, it appears that these objections were not communicated down the chain. The two officials responsible for coordinating the translation of intelligence into public rhetoric--Alan Foley, a top CIA nonproliferation expert, and Robert Joseph, a special assistant to the president for nonproliferation and a senior director at the NSC--were kept in the dark. In the months to come, Foley and Joseph would proceed unaware that any substantive objections had been raised to the Niger intelligence.
In an ironic twist that underscores the chronic miscommunication, on the very day President Bush delivered the Cincinnati speech--making no mention of Iraq's seeking uranium in Africa--the CIA once again approved language for a White House paper claiming Iraq had "sought uranium from Africa."