dickhead/Libby: "destroy anybody who challeges our lies" tactics

[boutons_]

A 'Concerted Effort' to Discredit Bush Critic

Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story

By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, April 9, 2006; A01


As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign. Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year -- in which the envoy found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there -- as "a junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.

Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for denying under oath that he disclosed Plame's CIA employment to journalists. There is no public evidence to suggest Libby made any such disclosure with Cheney's knowledge. But according to Libby's grand jury testimony, described for the first time in legal papers filed this week, Cheney "specifically directed" Libby in late June or early July 2003 to pass information to reporters from two classified CIA documents: an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and a March 2002 summary of Wilson's visit to Niger.

One striking feature of that decision -- unremarked until now, in part because Fitzgerald did not mention it -- is that the evidence Cheney and Libby selected to share with reporters had been disproved months before.

United Nations inspectors had exposed the main evidence for the uranium charge as crude forgeries in March 2003, but the Bush administration and British Prime Minister Tony Blair maintained they had additional, secret evidence they could not disclose. In June, a British parliamentary inquiry concluded otherwise, delivering a scathing critique of Blair's role in promoting the story. With no ally left, the White House debated whether to abandon the uranium claim and became embroiled in bitter finger-pointing about whom to fault for the error. A legal brief filed for Libby last month said that "certain officials at the CIA, the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame for intelligence failures relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

It was at that moment that Libby, allegedly at Cheney's direction, sought out at least three reporters to bolster the discredited uranium allegation. Libby made careful selections of language from the 2002 estimate, quoting a passage that said Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium" in Africa.

The first of those conversations, according to the evidence made known thus far, came when Libby met with Bob Woodward, an assistant managing editor of The Washington Post, on June 27, 2003. In sworn testimony for Fitzgerald, according to a statement Woodward released on Nov. 14, 2005, Woodward said Libby told him of the intelligence estimate's description of Iraqi efforts to obtain "yellowcake," a processed form of natural uranium ore, in Africa. In an interview Friday, Woodward said his notes showed that Libby described those efforts as "vigorous."

Libby's next known meeting with a reporter, according to Fitzgerald's legal filing, was with Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003. He spoke again to Miller, and to Time magazine's Matt Cooper, on July 12.

At Cheney's instruction, Libby testified, he told Miller that the uranium story was a "key judgment" of the intelligence estimate, a term of art indicating there was consensus on a question of central importance.

In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key judgments, which were identified by a headline and bold type and set out in bullet form in the first five pages of the 96-page document.

Unknown to the reporters, the uranium claim lay deeper inside the estimate, where it said a fresh supply of uranium ore would "shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons." But it also said U.S. intelligence did not know the status of Iraq's procurement efforts, "cannot confirm" any success and had "inconclusive" evidence about Iraq's domestic uranium operations.

Iraq's alleged uranium shopping had been strongly disputed in the intelligence community from the start. In a closed Senate hearing in late September 2002, shortly before the October NIE was completed, then-director of central intelligence George J. Tenet and his top weapons analyst, Robert Walpole, expressed strong doubts about the uranium story, which had recently been unveiled publicly by the British government. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, likewise, called the claim "highly dubious." For those reasons, the uranium story was relegated to a brief inside passage in the October estimate.

But the White House Iraq Group, formed in August 2002 to foster "public education" about Iraq's "grave and gathering danger" to the United States, repeatedly pitched the uranium story. The alleged procurement was a minor issue for most U.S. analysts -- the hard part for Iraq would be enriching uranium, not obtaining the ore, and Niger's controlled market made it an unlikely seller -- but the Niger story proved irresistible to speechwriters. Most nuclear arguments were highly technical, but the public could easily grasp the link between uranium and a bomb.

Tenet interceded to keep the claim out of a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on Oct. 7, 2002, but by Dec. 19 it reappeared in a State Department "fact sheet." After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the U.S. intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a uranium sale, or not? If they had, the Pentagon would need to reconsider its ties with Niger.

The council's reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless and should be laid to rest. Four U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge said in interviews that the memo, which has not been reported before, arrived at the White House as Bush and his highest-ranking advisers made the uranium story a centerpiece of their case for the rapidly approaching war against Iraq.

Bush put his prestige behind the uranium story in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address. Less than two months later, the International Atomic Energy Agency exposed the principal U.S. evidence as bogus.

A Bush-appointed commission later concluded that the evidence, a set of contracts and correspondence sold by an Italian informant, was "transparently forged."

On the ground in Iraq, meanwhile, the hunt for weapons of mass destruction was producing no results, and as the bad news converged on the White House -- weeks after a banner behind Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln -- Wilson emerged as a key critic. He focused his ire on Cheney, who had made the administration's earliest and strongest claims about Iraq's alleged nuclear program.

Fitzgerald wrote that Cheney and his aides saw Wilson as a threat to "the credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq." They decided to respond by implying that Wilson got his CIA assignment by "nepotism."

They were not alone. Fitzgerald reported for the first time this week that "multiple officials in the White House"-- not only Libby and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who have previously been identified -- discussed Plame's CIA employment with reporters before and after publication of her name on July 14, 2003, in a column by Robert D. Novak. Fitzgerald said the grand jury has collected so much testimony and so many documents that "it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson."

At the same time, top officials such as then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley were pressing the CIA to declassify more documents in hopes of defending the president's use of the uranium claim in his State of the Union speech. It was a losing battle. A "senior Bush administration official," speaking on the condition of anonymity as the president departed for Africa on July 7, 2003, told The Post that "the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech." The comment appeared on the front page of the July 8 paper, the same morning that Libby met Miller at the St. Regis hotel.

Libby was still defending the uranium claim as the administration's internal battle burst into the open. White House officials tried to blame Tenet for the debacle, but Tenet made public his intervention to keep uranium out of Bush's speech four months earlier. Hadley then acknowledged that he had known of Tenet's objections but forgot them as the State of the Union approached.

Hoping to lay the controversy to rest, Hadley claimed responsibility for the Niger remarks.

In a speech two days later, at the American Enterprise Institute, Cheney defended the war by saying that no responsible leader could ignore the evidence in the NIE. Before a roomful of conservative policymakers, Cheney listed four of the "key judgments" on Iraq's alleged weapons capabilities but made no mention of Niger or uranium.

On July 30, 2003, two senior intelligence officials said in an interview that Niger was never an important part of the CIA's analysis, and that the language of Iraq's vigorous pursuit of uranium came verbatim from a Defense Intelligence Agency report that had caught the vice president's attention. The same day, the CIA referred the Plame leak to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution, the fateful step that would eventually lead to Libby's indictment.

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.


© 2006 The Washington Post Company


====================================

scumbags, every last one of them.

[RandomGuy]

Damn, you beat me to posting that...

[ChumpDumper]

"Motherfucker bought yellow cake from Africa."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure, bitch!"

[boutons_]

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ta/2006/ta060409.gif

[SA210]

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b381/livindeadboi/Natural%20Cures/impeach-bush-poster-tn.jpg

http://www.impeachbush.org

[exstatic]

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ta/2006/ta060409.gif
:lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol :lol

[Yonivore]

Bush Was Right To Leak And Joe Wilson Is A Liar (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800895.html)

Where do you think the claims above can be found? Are you sitting down? They can be found in an editorial at the Washington Post.


PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.

Rather than follow the usual declassification procedures and then invite reporters to a briefing – as the White House eventually did – Vice President Cheney initially chose to be secretive, ordering his chief of staff at the time, I. Lewis Libby, to leak the information to a favorite New York Times reporter. The full public disclosure followed 10 days later. There was nothing illegal or even particularly unusual about that; nor is this presidentially authorized leak necessarily comparable to other, unauthorized disclosures that the president believes, rightly or wrongly, compromise national security. Nevertheless, Mr. Cheney’s tactics make Mr. Bush look foolish for having subsequently denounced a different leak in the same controversy and vowing to “get to the bottom” of it.

The affair concerns, once again, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his absurdly over-examined visit to the African country of Niger in 2002. Each time the case surfaces, opponents of the war in Iraq use it to raise a different set of charges, so it’s worth recalling the previous iterations. Mr. Wilson originally claimed in a 2003 New York Times op-ed and in conversations with numerous reporters that he had debunked a report that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger and that Mr. Bush’s subsequent inclusion of that allegation in his State of the Union address showed that he had deliberately “twisted” intelligence “to exaggerate the Iraq threat.” The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him for his supposed whistle-blowing by deliberately blowing the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, who he said was an undercover CIA operative. This prompted the investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson’s charge. In last week’s court filings, he stated that Mr. Bush did not authorize the leak of Ms. Plame’s identity. Mr. Libby’s motive in allegedly disclosing her name to reporters, Mr. Fitzgerald said, was to disprove yet another false assertion, that Mr. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by Mr. Cheney. In fact Mr. Wilson was recommended for the trip by his wife. Mr. Libby is charged with perjury, for having lied about his discussions with two reporters. Yet neither the columnist who published Ms. Plame’s name, Robert D. Novak, nor Mr. Novak’s two sources have been charged with any wrongdoing.

Anyone remember when President Clinton bombed that "aspirin" factory in Sudan? What did he do to stop the criticism? He partially declassified an NIE that supported the action.

Here's an excellent timeline on the whole affair:

Media Appalled that George Bush Dare Defend Himself (http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2006/04/media-appalled-that-george-bush-dare.html)

[Nbadan]

The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

:rolleyes

We already know that Cheney's Iraq Group was 'filtering' intelligence on Iraq to meet its own agenda, as outlined by the PNAC plan before 911, and Cheney's own 2001 energy plan, everyone at the CIA knew this, including Wilson. So he added a caveat about the possible sale of Niger uranium to Saddam, although the letter that this investigation was based on had already been established as a forgery by many foreign intelligence agency and the U.S.. - so Wilson knew that if his report, in which he found no connection between Saddan/Niger was to make it passed the Neo-Con filtering machine at the CIA, he had to at least give them at least something.

Now the Neo-Cons are trying to play a shell game by inter-relating the release of classified information, which may or may not be legal depending on what your definition of legal 'is', with the illegal act of conspiring to suppress a federal investigation into the leak of an active CIA asset.

[Yonivore]

:rolleyes

We already know that Cheney's Iraq Group was 'filtering' intelligence on Iraq to meet its own agenda, as outlined by the PNAC plan before 911, and Cheney's own 2001 energy plan, everyone at the CIA knew this, including Wilson. So he added a caveat about the possible sale of Niger uranium to Saddam, although the letter that this investigation was based on had already been established as a forgery by many foreign intelligence agency and the U.S.. - so Wilson knew that if his report, in which he found no connection between Saddan/Niger was to make it passed the Neo-Con filtering machine at the CIA, he had to at least give them at least something.

Now the Neo-Cons are trying to play a shell game by inter-relating the release of classified information, which may or may not be legal depending on what your definition of legal 'is', with the illegal act of conspiring to suppress a federal investigation into the leak of an active CIA asset.
Damn Nbadan...your response didn't even respond to the quote you extracted.

Tell me. Is Joe Wilson a liar or not? Can you answer that without using the words Bush, Cheney, Neocon, Energy Plan, etc...?

[Nbadan]

Joe Wilson was a politician - for what that's worth. Joe Wilson has always said he sent two different copies of his Niger trip assessment, one to the CIA and one to the office of the VP who sent him and his wife to Niger in the first place. As I've said before, if any assessment did not pass the Neo-Con test for pro-active war, it was summarily dismissed by the Iraq group. This is why the President included the Niger sale in his SOTU address, even though everything connected with this sale had already been proven false by this time.


http://www.take24.co.uk/forums/uploads/post-3-1106677798.jpg

[Yonivore]

Joe Wilson was a politician - for what that's worth. Joe Wilson has always said he sent two different copies of his Niger trip assessment, one to the CIA and one to the office of the VP who sent him and his wife to Niger in the first place.
That's news! Can you source this for me? And, were they copies or versions?


As I've said before, if any assessment did not pass the Neo-Con test for pro-active war, it was summarily dismissed by the Iraq group. This is why the President included the Niger sale in his SOTU address, even though everything connected with this sale had already been proven false by this time.
Nothing connected with that statement has been proven false.

[xrayzebra]

Joe Wilson was a politician - for what that's worth. Joe Wilson has always said he sent two different copies of his Niger trip assessment, one to the CIA and one to the office of the VP who sent him and his wife to Niger in the first place. As I've said before, if any assessment did not pass the Neo-Con test for pro-active war, it was summarily dismissed by the Iraq group. This is why the President included the Niger sale in his SOTU address, even though everything connected with this sale had already been proven false by this time.


http://www.take24.co.uk/forums/uploads/post-3-1106677798.jpg


He submitted no written reports to anyone. That is one of the problems
in proving he lied.

[boutons_]

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[SA210]

"It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish Wilson.' "
-- Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald


==============================================


April 11th, 2006 10:06 am
With One Filing, Prosecutor Puts Bush in Spotlight


By David E. Sanger and David Johnston / New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/11/washington/11leak.html?ex=1302408000&en=e50492df0bb4b3c6&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss)


WASHINGTON, April 10 — From the early days of the C.I.A. leak investigation in 2003, the Bush White House has insisted there was no effort to discredit Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man who emerged as the most damaging critic of the administration's case that Saddam Hussein was seeking to build nuclear weapons.


But now White House officials, and specifically President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, have been pitched back into the center of the nearly three-year controversy, this time because of a prosecutor's court filing in the case that asserts there was "a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House," to undermine Mr. Wilson.

The new assertions by the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, have put administration officials on the spot in a way they have not been for months, as attention in the leak case seems to be shifting away from the White House to the pretrial procedural skirmishing in the perjury and obstruction charges against Mr. Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr.

Mr. Fitzgerald's filing talks not of an effort to level with Americans but of "a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson." It concludes, "It is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish Wilson."

With more filings expected from Mr. Fitzgerald, the prosecutor's work has the potential to keep the focus on Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney at a time when the president is struggling with his lowest approval ratings since he took office.

Even on Monday, Mr. Bush found himself in an uncomfortable spot during an appearance at a Johns Hopkins University campus in Washington, when a student asked him to address Mr. Fitzgerald's assertion that the White House was seeking to retaliate against Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Bush stumbled as he began his response before settling on an answer that sidestepped the question. He said he had ordered the formal declassification of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq in July 2003 because "it was important for people to get a better sense for why I was saying what I was saying in my speeches" about Iraq's efforts to reconstitute its weapons program.

Mr. Bush said nothing about the earlier, informal authorization that Mr. Fitzgerald's court filing revealed. The prosecutor described testimony from Mr. Libby, who said Mr. Bush had told Mr. Cheney that it was permissible to reveal some information from the intelligence estimate, which described Mr. Hussein's efforts to acquire uranium.

But on Monday, Mr. Bush was not talking about that. "You're just going to have to let Mr. Fitzgerald complete his case, and I hope you understand that," Mr. Bush said. "It's a serious legal matter that we've got to be careful in making public statements about it."

Every prosecutor strives not just to prove a case, but also to tell a compelling story. It is now clear that Mr. Fitzgerald's account of what was happening in the White House in the summer of 2003 is very different from the Bush administration's narrative, which suggested that Mr. Wilson was seen as a minor figure whose criticisms could be answered by disclosing the underlying intelligence upon which Mr. Bush relied.

It turned out that much of the information about Mr. Hussein's search for uranium was questionable at best, and that it became the subject of dispute almost as soon as it was included in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

The answer to the question of whose recounting of events is correct — Mr. Bush's or Mr. Fitzgerald's — may not be known for months or years, if ever. But it seems there will be more clues, including some about the conversations between Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney.

Mr. Fitzgerald said he was preparing to turn over to Mr. Libby 1,400 pages of handwritten notes — some presumably in Mr. Libby's own hand — that could shed light on two very different efforts at getting out the White House story.

One effort — the July 18 declassification of the major conclusions of the intelligence estimate — was taking place in public, while another, Mr. Fitzgerald argues, was happening in secret, with only Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby involved.

Last week's court filing has already led the White House to acknowledge, over the weekend, that Mr. Bush ordered the selective disclosure of parts of the intelligence estimate sometime in late June or early July. But administration officials insist that Mr. Bush played a somewhat passive role and did so without selecting Mr. Libby, or anyone else, to tell the story piecemeal to a small number of reporters.

But in one of those odd twists in the unpredictable world of news leaks, neither of the reporters Mr. Libby met, Bob Woodward of The Washington Post or Judith Miller, then of The New York Times, reported a word of it under their own bylines. In fact, other reporters working on the story were talking to senior officials who were warning that the uranium information in the intelligence estimate was dubious at best.

Mr. Fitzgerald did not identify who took part in the White House effort to argue otherwise, but the evidence he has cited so far shows that Mr. Cheney's office was the epicenter of concern about Mr. Wilson, the former ambassador sent to Niger by the C.I.A. to determine what deal, if any, Mr. Hussein had struck there.

Throughout the spring and early summer of 2003, Mr. Fitzgerald concluded, the former ambassador had become an irritant to the administration, raising doubts about the truthfulness of assertions — made publicly by Mr. Bush in his State of the Union address in January of that year — that Iraq might have sought uranium in Africa to further its nuclear ambitions.

Mr. Wilson's criticisms culminated in a July 6, 2003, Op-Ed article in The Times in which he voiced the same doubts for the first time on the record. He cited as his evidence his 2002 trip to Niger, instigated, he said, because of questions raised by Mr. Cheney's office.

Mr. Wilson's article, Mr. Fitzgerald said in the filing, "was viewed in the Office of the Vice President as a direct attack on the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq."

Mr. Fitzgerald suggested that the White House effort was a "plan" to undermine Mr. Wilson.

"Disclosing the belief that Mr. Wilson's wife sent him on the Niger trip was one way for defendant to contradict the assertion that the vice president had done so, while at the same time undercutting Mr. Wilson's credibility if Mr. Wilson were perceived to have received the assignment on account of nepotism," Mr. Fitzgerald's filing said.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

IMPEACH!!

[Nbadan]

"Disclosing the belief that Mr. Wilson's wife sent him on the Niger trip was one way for defendant to contradict the assertion that the vice president had done so, while at the same time undercutting Mr. Wilson's credibility if Mr. Wilson were perceived to have received the assignment on account of nepotism," Mr. Fitzgerald's filing said.

As I've contended all along. The VP's office sent Mr. Wilson to Niger, not nepotism because of his wife.

[Yonivore]

As I've contended all along. The VP's office sent Mr. Wilson to Niger, not nepotism because of his wife.
The way I understand it, the most charitable (to Wilson) explanation is that the Vice President's office called the CIA one day asked a question -- there was no emissary ordered to Niger -- they simply asked a question about whether or not the CIA had any knowledge related to Iraq trying to buy urananium from Niger.

The CIA decided to send someone over there to find out. Valerie Plame wrote a memo (now public) that touted her husband's "credentials" and proposed that he'd be perfect for such an assignment. (of course, that begs the question of why a "COVERT CIA OPERATIVE WHO SPECIALIZED IN WMD" didn't tout her own fucking credentials and go do a real investigation.)

Wilson traveled to Niger, drank a few mint julips with his Niger cronies and came back with a verbal report that Iraq had, indeed, tried to establish a business relationship with Niger that Niger officials characterized as a probable effort to secure uranium but that the government had not entered into such an agreement with Iraq.

Wilson didn't investigate whether Iraq may have then approached the French company that owns the mines, or whether they might have attempted to identify rogue Niger(ians) that may have entered into a black market agreement with Iraq.

No, he finished he mint julip, wiped his lips, and boarded a plane home. Some investigation.

Other curiosities about his mission were that he wasn't required to sign a confidentiality agreement as (according to the CIA) virtually all such emissaries are; and that he was allowed to publish an editorial about the mission without having to have it vetted by the CIA. Some have suggested the Wilson mission to Niger was a CIA-orchestrated setup designed to undermine the administration.

The Vice President didn't ask Wilson to go to Niger. The Vice President simply asked a question of the CIA.

[Oh, Gee!!]

Link?

[Yonivore]

Link?
Link to what?

[Yonivore]

Here, read this...

http://www.nationalreview.com/levin/levin200507181123.asp

That's the first thing google returned on a search of "Valerie Plame Memo"

[Yonivore]

A couple of excerpts for you...


Plame started this phony scandal. And so far, she’s gotten away with it. What do I mean? Plame has shown herself to be an extremely capable bureaucratic insider. In fact, we know she's accomplished — she accomplished getting her husband, Joe Wilson, an assignment he desperately wanted: a trip to Niger to investigate a "crazy" report that Saddam Hussein sought yellowcake uranium from Niger (her word, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, not mine). And she was dogged. She asked not once but twice (the second time in a memo) that her husband get the job. And there's more. The Senate Intelligence Committee investigation also found that a CIA "analyst's notes indicate that a 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 issues."

Now, Wilson didn't have an intelligence background. Indeed, the committee revealed that Wilson didn't have a "formal" security clearance, but the CIA gave him an "operational clearance." The fact is that there was little to recommend Wilson for the role, other than his wife’s persistence.

Indeed, the committee reported further that some at the CIA "believed that the embassy in Niger had good contacts and would be able to get to the truth of the uranium issue, suggesting a visit from the former ambassador would be redundant...."

Why Wilson?

This is the real scandal. Plame lobbied repeatedly for her husband, and she knew full well that he was hostile to the war in Iraq and the administration's foreign policy. She had to know his politics — and there can no longer be any pretense about him being a nonpartisan diplomat who was merely doing his job. By experience and temperament, Wilson was the wrong man to send to Niger. Plame affirmatively stepped into what she knew might become a very public political controversy, given her husband's predilections (and her own) about that "crazy" report of yellowcake uranium.

In fact, Wilson was so concerned that his wife's aggressive and clandestine efforts in securing his assignment would become known that he lied about who sent him to Niger to cover her (and his) tracks. So, in his July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed, he lied to the American people, writing: "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 Central Intelligence Agency 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 — a form of lightly processed ore — 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.”

And in his book, Wilson wrote: “Valerie had nothing to do with the matter. She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.” Lie upon lie intended to conceal his wife’s role and perpetuate the myth to the American people that he was a mere diplomat approached by the CIA because of his supposed expertise and professionalism. Wilson didn’t want his and his wife’s motivations to spoil the firestorm he was about to unleash against the president — with the help of the New York Times (which, to this day, has not run a correction and, therefore, stands by Wilson’s demonstrable lies).

[Oh, Gee!!]

Link to what?


I don't know. I just see you ask for a link when someone posts something you don't agree with.

[Yonivore]

I don't know. I just see you ask for a link when someone posts something you don't agree with.
Really? Link, please.

Well, I've provided you with a link...so, have at it.

[Nbadan]

Now Powell Tells Us
Robert Scheer


The President played the scoundrel--even the best of his minions went along with the lies--and when a former ambassador dared to tell the truth, the White House initiated what Special Prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald calls "a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against Mr. Wilson." That is the important story line.

If not for the whistleblower, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, President Bush's falsehoods about the Iraq nuclear threat likely would never have been exposed.

On Monday, former Secretary of State Colin Powell told me that he and his department's top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that the President followed the misleading advice of Vice President Dick Cheney and the CIA in making the claim. Now he tells us.

The harsh truth is that this President cherry-picked the intelligence data in making his case for invading Iraq and deliberately kept the public in the dark as to the countervailing analysis at the highest level of the intelligence community. While the President and his top Cabinet officials were fear-mongering with stark images of a "mushroom cloud" over American cities, the leading experts on nuclear weaponry at the Department of Energy (the agency in charge of the US nuclear-weapons program) and the State Department thought the claim of a near-term Iraqi nuclear threat was absurd.

"The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons," said a dissenting analysis from an assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research (INR) in the now infamous 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was cobbled together for the White House before the war. "Iraq may be doing so but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment."

The specter of the Iraqi nuclear threat was primarily based on an already discredited claim that Iraq had purchased aluminum tubes for the purpose of making nuclear weapons. In fact, at the time, the INR wrote in the National Intelligence Estimate that it "accepts the judgment of technical experts at the US Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose."

The other major evidence President Bush gave Americans for a revitalized Iraq nuclear program, of course, was his 2003 State of the Union claim--later found to be based on forged documents--that a deal had been made to obtain uranium from Niger. This deal was exposed within the Administration as bogus before the President's speech in January by Ambassador Wilson, who traveled to Niger for the CIA. Wilson only went public with his criticisms in an op-ed piece in the New York Times a half year later in response to what he charged were the Administration's continued distortion of the evidence. In excerpts later made available to the public, it is clear that the Niger claim doesn't even appear as a key finding in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, while the INR dissent in that document dismisses it curtly: "[T]he claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR's assessment highly dubious."

I queried Powell at a reception following a talk he gave in Los Angeles on Monday. Pointing out that the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate showed that his State Department had gotten it right on the nonexistent Iraq nuclear threat, I asked why did the President ignore that wisdom in his stated case for the invasion?

"The CIA was pushing the aluminum tube argument heavily and Cheney went with that instead of what our guys wrote," Powell said. And the Niger reference in Bush's State of the Union speech? "That was a big mistake," he said. "It should never have been in the speech. I didn't need Wilson to tell me that there wasn't a Niger connection. He didn't tell us anything we didn't already know. I never believed it."

When I pressed further as to why the President played up the Iraq nuclear threat, Powell said it wasn't the President: "That was all Cheney." A convenient response for a Bush family loyalist, perhaps, but it begs the question of how the President came to be a captive of his Vice President's fantasies.

More important: Why was this doubt, on the part of the secretary of state and others, about the salient facts justifying the invasion of Iraq kept from the public until we heard the truth from whistleblower Wilson, whose credibility the President then sought to destroy?

In matters of national security, when a President leaks, he lies. By selectively releasing classified information to suit his political purposes, as President Bush did in this case, he is denying that there was a valid basis for keeping the intelligence findings secret in the first place. "We ought to get to the bottom of it, so it can be evaluated by the American people," said Sen. Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I couldn't have put it any better.

The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060424/scheer0411)

[Nbadan]

Media repeated false GOP talking point on authorization for Wilson trip to Niger
News Release Editor Published Date: 7/15/2005


Numerous media figures have repeated, or failed to question, a Republican National Committee (RNC) talking point asserting that former ambassador Joseph C.Wilson IV claimed that Vice President Dick Cheney "sent him" on a 2002 CIA mission to Niger, as well as White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove’s reported assertion that "Wilson’s wife" authorized the trip. The RNC has accused Wilson of misrepresenting the Niger trip in its effort to explain and justify Rove’s alleged involvement in leaking the identity of Wilson’s wife, former clandestine CIA officer Valerie Plame. Specifically, according to the RNC talking point, Rove told Time magazine writer Matthew Cooper that "Wilson’s wife," who worked at the CIA, had authorized Wilson’s trip because Rove was trying to prevent Cooper from writing inaccurately that Cheney had sent Wilson on the mission. As the RNC alleged: "The bottom line is Karl Rove was discouraging a reporter from writing a false story based on a false premise and the Democrats are engaging in blatant partisan political attacks."

In fact, both of the claims underpinning the RNC’s defense of Rove are false: Wilson never claimed he was sent to Niger at Cheney’s request, and it was the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, Counterproliferation Division (CPD), that authorized the trip, not Plame.

The RNC talking point: Wilson said he was sent to Niger at Cheney’s behest

In order to defend Rove’s mention of "Wilson’s wife" to Cooper, the RNC sought to demonstrate that Rove had reason to believe that Cooper would falsely report that Cheney sent Wilson on the Niger trip, and that Rove needed to set the record straight by telling Cooper that Plame had actually authorized the trip, as Rove’s lawyer has claimed. In an attempt to suggest that public statements made by Wilson had led Cooper to believe that Cheney authorized the trip, the RNC misrepresented a July 6, 2003, op-ed by Wilson in The New York Times and distorted a remark from Wilson in an August 3, 2003, interview on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer -- made after Rove discussed Plame with Cooper and therefore could not have been a basis for Rove’s purported concern -- to assert that "Wilson falsely claimed that it was Vice President Cheney who sent him to Niger."

The RNC cited Wilson’s Times op-ed as evidence that he claimed Cheney sent him to Niger. But the op-ed actually noted that it was "agency officials" from the CIA who "asked if I would travel to Niger" to answer questions Cheney’s office had about a particular intelligence report:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency 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 -- a form of lightly processed ore -- 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.

The RNC then distorted Wilson’s appearance on CNN’s Late Edition by excluding a crucial portion of his remarks in which he noted that "it’s absolutely true" that Cheney was unaware that Wilson was traveling to Niger and reiterated that the "CIA, at the operational level, made a determination" to send Wilson to answer a "serious question" posed by Cheney’s office.

Additionally, Rove’s conversation with Cooper took place on July 11, 2003 -- more than three weeks before Wilson’s CNN appearance -- so it is chronologically impossible for Rove to have been refuting a statement that Wilson hadn’t made yet, as Salon.com has pointed out.

From the RNC talking points:

Joe Wilson: "What They Did, What The Office Of The Vice President Did, And, In Fact, I Believe Now From Mr. Libby’s Statement, It Was Probably The Vice President Himself ..." (CNN’s "Late Edition," 8/3/03)

From the August 3, 2003, edition of CNN’s Late Edition:

WILSON: Well, look, it’s absolutely true that neither the vice president nor Dr. [then-national security adviser Condoleezza] Rice nor even [then-CIA Director] George Tenet knew that I was traveling to Niger.

What they did, what the office of the vice president did, and, in fact, I believe now from Mr. Libby’s statement, it was probably the vice president himself --

BLITZER: [I. Lewis] "Scooter" Libby is the chief of staff for the vice president.

WILSON: Scooter Libby. They asked essentially that we follow up on this report -- that the agency follow up on the report. So it was a question that went to the CIA briefer from the Office of the Vice President. The CIA, at the operational level, made a determination that the best way to answer this serious question was to send somebody out there who knew something about both the uranium business and those Niger officials that were in office at the time these reported documents were executed.

The Senate Intelligence Commitee’s accountPDF file, presented in its 2004 review of prewar weapons intelligence on Iraq, matches Wilson’s. "Officials from the CIA’s DO Counterproliferation Division told committee staff that in response to questions from the Vice President’s Office and the Departments of State and Defense on the alleged Niger-uranium deal, CPD officials discussed ways to obtain additional information. ... CPD decided to contact a former ambassador to Gabon [Wilson] who had a posting early in his career in Niger," the report stated.

Rove’s false claim to Cooper: Plame authorized Wilson’s trip

An email Cooper sent to his bureau chief, which was obtained by Newsweek, indicates that Rove mentioned "Wilson’s wife" to a reporter prior to syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak’s outing of Plame. The email states:

...it was, KR [Rove] said, wilson’s wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip.

Based on the false premise that Wilson had publicly stated that Cheney authorized the Niger trip, Rove’s lawyer Robert Luskin claimed that Rove merely told Cooper that "Wilson’s wife ... authorized the trip" to prevent Cooper from "perpetuating some statements that had been made publicly and weren’t true" -- in other words, writing a story suggesting that Cheney had authorized the trip.

But the claim that Plame authorized -- or even suggested -- Wilson’s trip is unproven, if not demonstrably false. The Senate Intelligence Committee closely examined the issue but did not reach a conclusion about how the CIA made the decision to hire Wilson, noting only some "interviews and documents" indicating that Plame "suggested his name for the trip." But even if Plame did "suggest" her husband, she could not have "authorized" it; only the heads of CPD could do that. The Senate report describes "a memorandum to the deputy chief of CPD, from the former ambassador’s wife" [p. 39] touting her husband’s credentials. But if Plame herself had the power to "authorize" Wilson’s trip, as Rove told Cooper, such a memo would hardly have been necessary.

Further, several news reports have quoted unnamed intelligence officials who refuted the notion that Plame authorized, or even suggested, Wilson’s trip. A July 22, 2003, Newsday article quoted an unidentified senior intelligence official who said: "They [the officers asking Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she [Plame] was married to, which is not surprising. ... 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." The Los Angeles Times reported on July 15, 2004, that an unnamed CIA official confirmed that Plame was not responsible for the CIA’s decision to send Wilson to Niger, saying: "Her bosses say she did not initiate the idea of her husband going. ... They asked her if he’d be willing to go, and she said yes."

The Other News (http://www.theothernews.com/article.asp?dept=1&category=137&article=642)

[Vashner]

It's called COMMANDER & Chief dumbass....

You think the party is power is supposed to sit around getting there dicks sucked.. opps I mean besides clinton admin.

Bush is fighing a fucking war. And some ass fuck flew over to Africa.. got off the plane ANNOUNCED.. with no intel officers no specialist.. Asked the govt. Did you sell this yellowcake? they said NO. He got back on the plane.. ??

GIVE ME a fucking break if you think that's solid intel work.. it's fucking stupid democraptic bullshit setup by the guys wife and other assfucks that don't like Bush and have business being in the CIA cause they can't give loyalty to whoever is commander.

[ChumpDumper]

Hmm, I always thought it was Commander-in-Chief, but who am I to question a colonel.

[boutons_]

http://images.ucomics.com/comics/tt/2006/tt060412.gif

[Nbadan]

Event One - 13 February 2002.

During his CIA morning brief, Vice President Cheney asks the CIA to find out the truth about an item in the Defense Intelligence Agency's National Military Joint Intelligence Center Executive Highlight (Vol. 028-02) that analyzed a recent CIA intelligence report and concluded that "Iraq is probably searching abroad for natural uranium to assist in its nuclear weapons program." No judgment was offered about the credibility of the reporting. (Senate Intelligence Committee Report [SICR], page 38)

Event Two.

Senior officials in the CIA's Directorate of Operations' Counter Proliferation Division discussed how to respond to Vice President Cheney's request and decided to ask Ambassador Wilson to travel to Niger. (Senate Intelligence Committee Report, page 39). This part of the report falsely claims, however, that Ambassador Wilson's wife recommended him for the trip. The Republican staff did not accurately represent the CIA's position on what happened. Fortunately, two different sets of journalists got the story right:

Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce reported on July 22, 2003, that:

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).

One year later (July 13, 2004) David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, called the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed Ambassador Wilson's account that Valerie did not propose him for the trip.

Event Three.

In the first of March, 2002, Vice President Cheney asks his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger issue. Around this time, Ambassador Wilson returns from Niger and is debriefed by two CIA officers from the Directorate of Operations. The officers draft an intelligence report based on Wilson's findings. On 8 March 2002, this intelligence report is disseminated. The CIA rated the report as "good," because the information responded to at least some of the outstanding questions in the intelligence community (SICR pp. 43-46). The Senate Intelligence Committee goes to great length to try to impugn Ambassador Wilson, but these facts are clear: Joe Wilson, along with US Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick and four-star Marine Corps general Carleton Fulford, each separately, reported that there was no substance to the intelligence report claiming Iraq was trying to buy uranium yellowcake. Even the Senate Intelligence Committee reluctantly reaches the same conclusion.

Truthout (http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_041106B.shtml)

[Nbadan]

Cheney Authorized Leak Of CIA Report, Libby Says
Libby 'outed' Plame Same Day


Vice President Dick Cheney directed his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, on July 12, 2003 to leak to the media portions of a then-highly classified CIA report that Cheney hoped would undermine the credibility of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy, according to Libby's grand jury testimony in the CIA leak case and sources who have read the classified report.

...

The debriefing report made no mention of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, then a covert CIA officer, or any role she may have played in her husband's selection by the CIA to go to Niger, according to two people who have read the report.

The previously unreported grand jury testimony is significant because only hours after Cheney reportedly instructed Libby to disclose information from the CIA report, Libby divulged to then-New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Time magazine correspondent Matthew Cooper that Plame was a CIA officer, and that she been involved in selecting her husband for the Niger mission.

...

But the disclosure that Cheney instructed Libby to leak portions of a classified CIA report on Joseph Wilson adds to a growing body of information showing that at the time Plame was outed as a covert CIA officer the vice president was deeply involved in the White House effort to undermine her husband.

National Journal (http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0414nj3.htm)

[Juice]

http://www.webcomicsnation.com/memberimages/153041406facts.jpg

[Vashner]

As opposed to the wuss loose every conflict and bow to islam?

It's called office of the President you dumbass...

You think they supposed to sit around "let's loose"..

If you think that you are fucking stupid. No leader of a society is going to think that shit.

[ChumpDumper]

It's LOSE!

Damn, Colonel.

[George W Bush]

As opposed to the wuss loose every conflict and bow to islam?

It's called office of the President you dumbass...

You think they supposed to sit around "let's loose"..

If you think that you are fucking stupid. No leader of a society is going to think that shit.

Even I know this, and you know how stupid I am.

It's LOSE! (http://spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=38278)

[Aggie Hoopsfan]

It's just politics. It happens on both sides of the aisle, and it's pathetic that the resident liberal fascist fags like croutons and NBADunce act like their party would have done anything different.

I think the most obvious thing to come out of this thread is that some of you - NBADunce, croutons, SA210 in particular, need to get laid. Then you won't be so bitter.

[SA210]

It's just politics. It happens on both sides of the aisle, and it's pathetic that the resident liberal fascist fags like croutons and NBADunce act like their party would have done anything different.

I think the most obvious thing to come out of this thread is that some of you - NBADunce, croutons, SA210 in particular, need to get laid. Then you won't be so bitter.
Words from a true conservative "Christian".