Lash wrote:"knowingly", ehBeth. That makes the difference.
from a libertarian blog
Quote:Until we know whether Karl Rove knew that Valerie Plame was a covert agent, protected by federal law, we don't know if mentioning her name to a reporter was a crime. However, Rove did apparently tell theh FBI that he was not the leaker.
That would be a federal crime.
Not to mention the fact that the Bush administration specifically denied that Karl Rove was the source, meaning that?-as James Joyner indicates?-either "Rove lied to the president", or "Rove told the president the truth and the president has kept him on, despite the implications".
So, assuming it was Rove, it looks like some heads will be (deservedly) rolling whether the leaker knew of Plame's status or not.
UPDATE (Dale): Well, I can't say that I have any particularly high regard for Mr. O'Donnell's credibility. I'll withold judgment until I see some more reliable evidence than a statement from a partisan hack. Still, if he's right, then I guess we'll be seeing Karl Rove doing the perp walk in an orange jumpsuit on a perjury charge.
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=2155
QANDO - free markets, free people
ehBeth--
That supports what I said. Knowingly is the key to the legal implications. That's what we were talking about.
If you want to take it further and say someone will be fired or impeached, that's a different issue. If Rove talked to a reporter, but didn't say certain things, he and Bush are likely thumbing their noses at everyone on this.
He may have told Bush "I talked to Novak, but I didn't tell him she was an agent." The Bush administration IS allowed to talk to reporters.
There is another guy Novak talked to at the CIA, who told him not to use her name.
We don't know who said what right now.
From a Josh Marshal column <January 7th, 2004>
...But a more telling development has come in subsequent days as key defenders of the White House have begun to change their line of defense.
Their tactic lately is no longer to deny that some key White House officials tipped columnist Robert Novak off to the fact that Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a covert employee of the CIA. These days, they just say that it wasn't a crime.
It's the rhetorical equivalent of pleading no contest: Yes, we did it. But so what?
As prominent Republican defense lawyer and former congressional staffer Victoria Toensing told The Washington Post last week, it probably wasn't a crime because the perpetrators didn't know Plame was undercover, as opposed to some garden variety agency 9-to-5 worker. And, for the leak to be a crime, the law in question says that the leakers had to know.
Toensing's comments were followed in the same Post article by concessions, from GOP legal sources in touch with the White House, that the earlier denials by White House spokesman Scott McClellan were actually non-denial denials.
So where does this leave us?
Let's start by remembering why Toensing's surmise is almost certainly false and then consider why it would hardly be better if it were true.
First, did they know?
Let's start with the most direct evidence we have.
When Novak penned his column, he called Plame an "agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
In the intelligence world, the term "operative" has a more specific meaning than it does in everyday English. It almost always refers to a clandestine agent rather than an analyst.
And as I noted in this column Oct. 15, a review of Novak's past columns shows that he always uses the word in that way ?- to refer to an undercover agent. Every time.
After the Plame story first caught fire at the end of September, Novak tried to pass his use of the word "operative" off as a careless mistake. But for such a seasoned reporter, that excuse hardly passes the laugh test.
There's no credible way of getting around the conclusion that Novak knew Plame was covert. And if Novak knew, that means his sources knew. And if his sources knew, well
that's game, set, match.
But, again, let's consider the quite unlikely possibility that the perps in the Plame case didn't know what Plame did at the CIA.
At trial, that might let them slip free. But in substantive terms it would if anything make it worse.
Here's why.
We know that White House leakers knew that Plame was involved in weapons-of-mass-destruction work. Novak said so.
And, more important, the whole reason for leaking her identity in the first place was their claim that she had somehow arranged for her husband, Joe Wilson, to be sent to Niger to investigate the uranium claims.
We now know, or seem to know, that Plame was not then involved in an operation in which her life would be put into immediate danger if her identity were revealed or an operation that, if compromised, would have immediate and grave repercussions for American national security.
But the defense now being floated out of the White House is that the perps didn't really have any clear idea what she did ?- only that she worked at the CIA and was involved in controlling the spread of weapons of mass destruction. In other words, they disclosed her identity without making any attempt to ascertain whether the disclosure might put her in harm's way or scuttle a major anti-proliferation operation.
For all they knew, Plame was then involved in a clandestine effort to take down a band of terrorists who were smuggling uranium from Pakistan into Germany for later use against the United States. Yet the leakers made no effort to find out.
If true, that would amount to a stunningly reckless indifference to protecting American lives and U.S. national security. But this appears to be exactly what the White House and its defenders are trying to say happened.
No matter how you slice it, top White House officials acted in a way that should disqualify them from future service on the president's staff.
Unfortunately, the president doesn't seem to mind...
Wrong on "operative".
I've heard the word used to describe Democrat and Republican rainmakers and such.
He's a Republican operative.... and if people saw her around town and it was an open secret that she worked for the CIA, who would equate that with spy? Don't most people assume spies work in foreign countries?
hi girl! thanks...great piece.
You need to take another look at some of the libertarian blogs, Lash. They're not in agreement with your angle on whether it mattered whether Rove "knew".
But what the heck, you're having fun with this.
Enjoy your weekend.
rove was ...
i did not watch the "mclaughlin group" last night. too bad !
o'donnell seems to be pretty sure of what is going on. if he is incorrect he would certainly have a lot of egg on his face ... at least.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
07.02.2005 Lawrence O'Donnell
Rove Blew CIA Agent's Cover
I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.
McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.
Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.
...THE HUFFINTONTON POST...
Well.
We'll see how it goes.
Have a nice weekend!
Wilson wrote a New York Times op-ed piece after the State of the Union address calling out Bush for lying about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger. Wilson was in a position to know, because he had been sent to look into the claim.
After Wilson's op-ed, Robert Novak wrote a column trying to discredit Wilson by implying that he didn't know what he was talking about because he wasn't qualifed to look into the claim. Novak implied Wilson was sent because his wife the CIA agent got him the job.
That was 1) a way to try to discredit Wilson; 2) a way to punish Wilson; 3) a way to try to intimidate others from being critical and 4) (some have speculated) a way to shut down Valerie Plame's investigation of WMDs in Iraq.
Novak claimed two senior sources exposed Plame as an agency operative suggested sending him to Niger. Novak went ahead with his column despite the fact that the CIA had urged him not to disclose her identity.
The White House wanted to undercut his Niger/yellowcake piece in the Times by implying that he really had no expertise. They wanted to make it look like the CIA only hired him because his wife had pull to get him the job.
In Novak's original column, he said Plame was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction."
It doesn't matter if she rans spies or was a spy herself. If she had what they call "official cover" then she was covert.
Officially, she was an analyst for an energy company. But the CIA clearly wouldn't be investigating if she really didn't work for them. Ergo she's covert.
The key are the words; covert agent. The words covert operation are further defined in the US Code Title 50 Chapter 15 Section 413b as
Quote:(e) ''Covert action'' defined :
As used in this subchapter, the term ''covert action'' means an activity or activities of the United States Government to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly, but does not include
(1) activities the primary purpose of which is to acquire intelligence, traditional counterintelligence activities, traditional activities to improve or maintain the operational security of United States Government programs, or administrative activities;
(2) traditional diplomatic or military activities or routine support to such activities
The key words are where it is intended that the role of the United States Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly. To give some examples from history will be helpful to clear up media and other distortions of differences in programs. Under the Eisenhower Administration, a covert activity took place inside the USSR where certain military activities needed to be verified. The Agency utilized non United States, non English speaking persons to man a non-USA marked prototype plane to land inside the USSR for on the ground verification of the needed information. If caught, the men used were non USA citizens, with no known ties to the United States, hired by a non governmental organization to fly a new prototype aircraft. They had been isolated from other activities and had no knowledge of their true employer. The military activities plus future nuclear weapons benefits from inside the USSR were veified. That is covert.
You cannot be a covert agent unless you are on a covert operation.
Mrs. Wilson's employment was verified by the CIA to Novak. That is a matter of record. It has a legal and operational definition, not the political definition that has been applied to it for partisan purposes by right wing propgandistas.
Her career as a clandestine officer is over. That alone was an act of vengeance towards the Wilson family.
That is but a single point in the illegal disclosure made to Novak and others by White House sources.
The laws that make it a felony to disclose such information is listed below.
It is illegal under the following articles of the US Code of Justice:
Quote:National Security Act of 1947
TITLE VI?-PROTECTION OF CERTAIN NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION
PROTECTION OF IDENTITIES OF CERTAIN UNITED STATES UNDERCOVER INTELLIGENCE OFFICERS, AGENTS, INFORMANTS, AND SOURCES
"50 U.S.C. sec. 421(a) states the following:
Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
Sec. 421(b) says:
Whoever, as a result of having authorized access to classified information, learns the identify of a covert agent and intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.
sec. 421(c) says:
Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States, discloses any information that identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such individual's classified intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
DEFINITIONS
SEC. 606. <50 U.S.C. 426> For the purposes of this title:
(1) The term "classified information" means information or material designated and clearly marked or clearly represented, pursuant to the provisions of a statute or Executive order (or a regulation or order issued pursuant to a statute or Executive order), as requiring a specific degree of protection against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national security.
(2) The term "authorized", when used with respect to access to classified information, means having authority, right, or permission pursuant to the provisions of a statute, Executive order, directive of the head of any department or agency engaged in foreign intelligence or counterintelligence activities, order of any United States court, or provisions of any Rule of the House of Representatives or resolution of the Senate which assigns responsibility within the respective House of Congress for the oversight of intelligence activities.
(3) The term "disclose" means to communicate, provide, impart, transmit, transfer, convey, publish, or otherwise make available.
(4) The term "covert agent" means?-
(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency?-
(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member is classified information, and
(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within the last five years served outside the United States; or
(B) a United States citizen whose intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information, and?-
(i) who resides and acts outside the United States as an agent of, or informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency, or
(ii) who is at the time of the disclosure acting as an agent of, or informant to, the foreign counterintelligence or foreign counterterrorism components of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; or
(C) an individual, other than a United States citizen, whose past or present intelligence relationship to the United States is classified information and who is a present or former agent of, or a present or former informant or source of operational assistance to, an intelligence agency.
(5) The term "intelligence agency" means the Central Intelligence Agency, a foreign intelligence component of the Department of Defense, or the foreign counterintelligence or foreign counterterrorism components of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
http://www.washingtonwatchdog.org/documents/usc/ttl50/c...
Source
(July 26, 1947, ch. 343, title VI, Sec. 601, as added Pub. L.
97-200, Sec. 2(a), June 23, 1982, 96 Stat. 122.)
SHORT TITLE
For short title of this subchapter as the ''Intelligence
Identities Protection Act of 1982'', see section 1 of Pub. L.
97-200, set out as a Short Title of 1982 Amendment note under
section 401 of this title.
SECTION REFERRED TO IN OTHER SECTIONS
This section is referred to in sections 422, 424 of this title;
title 5 section 8312; title 8 section 1101; title 18 section 3239;
title 22 section 2778.[/quote]
http://www.washingtonwatchdog.org/documents/usc/ttl50/c...
http://www.washingtonwatchdog.org/documents/usc/index.h...
The critical remark about Wilson's credentials appears to be one of contention, viz. that Wilson was of lying about whether or not his wife made the recommendation for his trip to Niger. Charges that he lied were made by Sens. Roberts, Bond and Hatch's additional comments to the Senate Select Intelligence Committee's Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Assessment on Iraq.
Wilson's reply to their politically motivated attacks is linked below.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56501-2004Jul16.html
Quote:Debunking Distortions About My Trip to Niger
Saturday, July 17, 2004; Page A17
For the second time in a year, your paper has published an article [news story, July 10] falsely suggesting that my wife, Valerie Plame, was responsible for the trip I took to Niger on behalf of the U.S. government to look into allegations that Iraq had sought to purchase several hundred tons of yellowcake uranium from that West African country. Last July 14, Robert Novak, claiming two senior sources, exposed Valerie as an "agency operative [who] suggested sending him to Niger." Novak went ahead with his column despite the fact that the CIA had urged him not to disclose her identity. That leak to Novak may well have been a federal crime and is under investigation.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2004/07/16/wilson_letter/index_np.html
Quote:July 16, 2004 |
The Hon. Pat Roberts, Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
The Hon. Jay Rockefeller, Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Dear Sen. Roberts and Sen. Rockefeller,
I read with great surprise and consternation the Niger portion of Sens. Roberts, Bond and Hatch's 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.
I find the apologists for the treasonous behavior of White House "operatives" quite disappointing. Such apologists have repeatedly referred to the public outing of a functioning covert agent as a minor thing. Yet these same people accuse with Old Testament righteousness Joe Wilson as a liar and one who actually outed his wife before Novak did. I would like to see objective substantiation for those claims.
Hi ya Blath! Yur welcome.
Lash wrote:Wrong on "operative".
I've heard the word used to describe Democrat and Republican rainmakers and such.
He's a Republican operative.... and if people saw her around town and it was an open secret that she worked for the CIA, who would equate that with spy? Don't most people assume spies work in foreign countries?
Lash, I believe its been established that Plume was CIA covert.
OK, but first see this:
Criminal or Just Plain Stupid?
?'Leakgate' may be little more than a bumbling effort to slam a critic. Newsweek
Oct. 8, 2003 - No matter how voluminous the evidence to the contrary, the Bush White House likes to convey the impression of unflagging infallibility. But the prospect that a "senior administration official" goofed big time is gaining fast currency among those familiar with the events in the current Washington leak controversy, sources close to the case tell NEWSWEEK.
The error, moreover, was no small thing: by confusing the timing of phone calls made by White House officials attempting to discredit former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, the anonymous official stoked the scandal, mistakenly portraying what was a crass case of political hardball into one of potential criminality.
The "senior administration official" is not the original leaker who first told columnist Robert Novak that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA "operative" specializing in weapons of mass destruction. That as-yet-unidentified official remains the target of Justice Department investigators who today are awaiting stacks of White House records?-including phone logs, e-mails and other material relating to the possible dissemination of information about Wilson and his undercover spouse.
Instead, it is another "senior administration official"?-the one quoted in a Sept. 28 Washington Post article as saying that "before Novak's column ran" two top White House officials "called at least six Washington journalists" and disclosed the identify and occupation of Wilson's wife. "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," that senior administration official told the Post's Mike Allen and Dana Priest.
The Post story may have been the most eye-popping development in the leak story: it suggested for the first time that there was a big-league dissenter within the upper ranks of the Bush administration, someone who was genuinely appalled at crude White House attempts to discredit a critic. (Novak's small point was that Wilson was dispatched by the CIA to check out claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy uranium from Niger only because his agency wife recommended him.) It also was the strongest evidence that the disclosure of Plame's identify was done with malicious intent and not, as Novak has since insisted, a passing reference in the course of a lengthy conversation about a wide range of matters.
But more than 10 days after the story exploded, an alternative theory is emerging among those who are directly involved in the leak case: that the "senior administration official" quoted in the Washington Post piece simply got it wrong. There were indeed White House phone calls to reporters about Wilson's wife. But most, if not all, of these phone calls, were made after the Novak column appeared, some government officials now believe. They were placed as part of a blundering effort to persuade journalists to concentrate on Wilson's presumed lack of credentials as a critic of pre-Iraq war intelligence rather than the substance of his critique.
New evidence for this view emerged today from a surprising source: Wilson himself. The former ambassador, who originally called for Bush's top political director Karl Rove to be "frog-marched" out of the White House, acknowledged to NEWSWEEK that he got no calls from any reporters asking about his wife until he heard from Novak. If he had, he said, he would have vividly remembered it. One reporter, he said, did call him and say "watch out, they're coming after you"?-but that journalist is uncertain whether any reference was made to Wilson's wife's employment at the CIA.
But after the Novak column ran, Wilson says, he got plenty of calls. As NEWSWEEK reported in this week's issue, Andrea Mitchell called him on Sunday, July 20, and told him that she "heard in the White House that people were touting the Novak column and that was the real story." The next day, July 21, Wilson got a call from MSNBC's "Hardball" host Chris Matthews, who told him that "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game." (A source familiar with Rove's conversation acknowledged the call but insisted that Rove put it differently: that it was "reasonable to discuss who sent Wilson to Niger.") The efforts by Rove and perhaps others to fan the flames after the Novak column has been seized on by critics as evidence enough that the White House was directly involved in a trash-and-burn attempt to slime a critic. Rep. John Conyers, senior Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, yesterday wrote Rove a letter asking for his resignation, saying that Rove's comments as reported by NEWSWEEK were "morally indefensible" and an indication that he was part of "an orchestrated campaign to smear and intimidate truth-telling critics." (White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan has repeatedly refused to answer direct questions about Rove's conversation with Matthews.) But even Conyers acknowledges that pointing reporters to an already published newspaper column is hardly a federal crime. And if all the White House attempts to promote stories about Wilson's wife took place after July 14, most of the records being turned over to Justice Department investigators may lead to nothing but a prosecutorial dry hole.
That still leaves open the question of Novak's original source?-and at this point, White House statements are more carefully hedged than most of the public probably realizes. The administration has steadfastly refused to answer direct questions about whether certain high-level officials ever talked to Novak about Wilson's wife. ("I don't know the answer," said Catherine Martin, communications director for Vice President Dick Cheney, when asked today whether Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis [Scooter] Libby, ever had such a discussion with Novak.) Instead, White House spokesman McClellan has denied only that three senior officials?-Libby, Rove or National Security Council official Elliot Abrams?-leaked any "classified" information to Novak. One possible translation: whatever they may or may not have said to Novak, nobody passed along anything they knew to be classified at the time.
And that may make all the difference in the world. As former CIA director James Woolsey points out, the 1982 law that makes it a federal crime to disclose the identify of an undercover CIA agent was carefully written to target witting perpetrators. Congress had in mind actors such as ex-CIA agent turned left-wing critic Philip Agee who, for political reasons, wrote a book "outing" many of his former colleagues, leading to considerable and justifiable concern about their safety. The law "was quite narrowly drafted," notes Woolsey, and much will depend on "whether there was criminal intent" by the leaker. If the leaker did not know that Wilson's wife was undercover at the time of the conversation with Novak, that alone may get him or her off the hook. (It is worth noting in this regard that Wilson's wife was not identified as an "undercover" agent for the CIA until a July 22 Newsday story that called attention to the harm that might have been done by Novak's column identifying Plame. The story quoted "intelligence officials" as confirming Plame's undercover status.)
All of that may mean that no White House official actually committed a crime, but that doesn't mean they're in the clear. Woolsey said what White House officials did do was worse than a crime, "it was stupid."
----------
Nothin'. They got nothin'.
Story released on a Friday night before the 4th of July weekend.
Oh MAN its hard not to be a conspiracy theorist sometimes.
Liar Joe Wilson. What a friggin' liar.
Our Man in Niger
Exposed and discredited, Joe Wilson might consider going back.
Joe Wilson's cover has been blown. For the past year, he has claimed to be a truth-teller, a whistleblower, the victim of a vast right-wing conspiracy ?- and most of the media have lapped it up and cheered him on.
After a whirl of TV and radio appearances during which he received high-fives and hearty hugs from producers and hosts (I was in some green rooms with him so this is eyewitness reporting), and a wet-kiss profile in Vanity Fair, he gave birth to a quickie book sporting his dapper self on the cover, and verbosely entitled The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir.
The book jacket talks of his "fearless insight" (whatever that's supposed to mean) and "disarming candor" (which does not extend to telling readers for whom he has been working since retiring early from the Foreign Service).
The biographical blurb describes him as a "political centrist" who received a prize for "Truth-Telling," though a careful reader might notice that the award came in part from a group associated with The Nation magazine ?- which only Michael Moore would consider a centrist publication.
But now Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV ?- he of the Hermes ties and Jaguar convertibles ?- has been thoroughly discredited. Last week's bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report concluded that it is he who has been telling lies.
For starters, he has insisted that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, was not the one who came up with the brilliant idea that the agency send him to Niger to investigate whether Saddam Hussein had been attempting to acquire uranium. "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson says in his book. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." In fact, the Senate panel found, she was the one who got him that assignment. The panel even found a memo by her. (She should have thought to use disappearing ink.)
Wilson spent a total of eight days in Niger "drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people," as he put it. On the basis of this "investigation" he confidently concluded that there was no way Saddam sought uranium from Africa. Oddly, Wilson didn't bother to write a report saying this. Instead he gave an oral briefing to a CIA official.
Oddly, too, as an investigator on assignment for the CIA he was not required to keep his mission and its conclusions confidential. And for the New York Times, he was happy to put pen to paper, to write an op-ed charging the Bush administration with "twisting," "manipulating" and "exaggerating" intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs "to justify an invasion."
In particular he said that President Bush was lying when, in his 2003 State of the Union address, he pronounced these words: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
We now know for certain that Wilson was wrong and that Bush's statement was entirely accurate.
The British have consistently stood by that conclusion. In September 2003, an independent British parliamentary committee looked into the matter and determined that the claim made by British intelligence was "reasonable" (the media forgot to cover that one too). Indeed, Britain's spies stand by their claim to this day. Interestingly, French intelligence also reported an Iraqi attempt to procure uranium from Niger.
Yes, there were fake documents relating to Niger-Iraq sales. But no, those forgeries were not the evidence that convinced British intelligence that Saddam may have been shopping for "yellowcake" uranium. On the contrary, according to some intelligence sources, the forgery was planted in order to be discovered ?- as a ruse to discredit the story of a Niger-Iraq link, to persuade people there were no grounds for the charge. If that was the plan, it worked like a charm.
But that's not all. The Butler report, yet another British government inquiry, also is expected to conclude this week that British intelligence was correct to say that Saddam sought uranium from Niger.
And in recent days, the Financial Times has reported that illicit sales of uranium from Niger were indeed being negotiated with Iraq, as well as with four other states.
According to the FT: "European intelligence officers have now revealed that three years before the fake documents became public, human and electronic intelligence sources from a number of countries picked up repeated discussion of an illicit trade in uranium from Niger. One of the customers discussed by the traders was Iraq."
There's still more: As Susan Schmidt reported ?- back on page A9 of Saturday's Washington Post: "Contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence."
The Senate report says fairly bluntly that Wilson lied to the media. Schmidt notes that the panel found that, "Wilson provided misleading information to the Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on a document that had clearly been forged because 'the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.'"
The problem is Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel discovered. Schmidt notes: "The documents ?- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq ?- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger."
Ironically, Senate investigators found that at least some of what Wilson told his CIA briefer not only failed to persuade the agency that there was nothing to reports of Niger-Iraq link ?- his information actually created additional suspicion.
A former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, told Wilson that in June 1999, a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations." Mayaki, knowing how few commodities for export are produced by impoverished Niger, interpreted that to mean that Saddam was seeking uranium.
Another former government official told Wilson that Iran had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998. That's the same year that Saddam forced the weapons inspectors to leave Iraq. Could the former official have meant Iraq rather than Iran? If someone were to try to connect those dots, what picture might emerge?
Schmidt adds that the Senate panel was alarmed to find that the CIA never "fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin."
I was the first to suggest, here on National Review Online a year ago ("Scandal!" and "No Yellowcake Walk"), that Wilson should not have been given this assignment, that he had no training or demonstrated competence as an investigator, that his inquiry had been obviously superficial and that, far from being a "centrist," he was a partisan with an ax to grind. [/i]
But my complaint was really less with Wilson than it was with the CIA for sending him, rather than an experienced spy or investigator, to check out such an important and sensitive matter as whether one of the world's most vicious killers had been trying to buy the stuff that nuclear weapons are made of.
For this, I received a couple of dishonorable mentions in Wilson's memoir. He has a chapter called "What I Didn't Find in Africa," which might be used as a case study for CIA trainees and others who need to understand the fundamental principle of logic that "the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." In other words, Wilson fails to grasp that because he didn't find proof that Saddam was seeking African uranium does not mean that proof was not there to be found.
In reaction to his "fearless candor" and "disarming insight" about the "sixteen-word lie," Wilson writes that "right-wing hatchet men were being wheeled out to attack me. More ominously, plots were being hatched in the White House that would betray America's national security.
He writes: "Clifford May was first off the mark, spewing uninformed vitriol in a piece in National Review Online blindly operating on the principle that facts, those pesky facts, just do not matter."
Well, facts, those pesky facts do matter and a bipartisan Senate investigative committee has now established that Wilson has had very few in his possession. And, for the record, I was never advised anything about Wilson by anyone serving in the White House, the administration, or the Republican party. I never even had a discussion about him with such folks.
There is much more that could be said about the Wilson affair, and certainly many questions that ought to be both asked and answered. But in the interest of time and space, let me leave you with just one: Now that we know that Mrs. Wilson did recommend Mr. Wilson for the Niger assignment, can we not infer that she was working at CIA headquarters in Langley rather than as an undercover operative in some front business or organization somewhere?
As I suggested in another NRO piece (Spy Games), if that is the case ?- if she was not working undercover and if the CIA was not taking measures to protect her cover ?- no law was broken by columnist Bob Novak in naming her, or by whoever told Novak that she worked for the CIA.
It is against the law to knowingly name an undercover agent. It is not against the law to name a CIA employee who is not an undercover agent. For example, I know the identity of "Anonymous," the CIA employee who has now written a book trashing the Bush administration for its policies. But since he is not ?- to the best of my knowledge ?- a covert operative, I would be committing no crime were I to name him in this piece. Nor, I should add, did he attempt to hide his employment when we sat across a dinner table some months ago.
I don't think Joe Wilson is an evil man. I do think he is an angry partisan and an opportunist. According to my sources, during most of his diplomatic career he specialized in general services and administration, which means he was not the political or economic adviser to the ambassador, rather he was the guy who makes sure the embassy plumbing is working and that the commissary is stocked with Oreos and other products the ambassador prefers.
Just prior to the Gulf War, he did serve in Iraq, a hot spot to be sure, but that was under Ambassador April Glaspie, who failed to make it clear to Saddam that invading Kuwait would elicit a robust response from Washington. I doubt that Wilson advised her to do otherwise. I rather doubt she asked. As he says in his book, she was giving him an "on-the-spot education in Middle Eastern diplomacy. It was a part of the world in which I had no experience."
In 1991, Wilson's book jacket boasts, President George H.W. Bush praised Wilson as "a true American hero," and he was made an ambassador. But for some reason, he was assigned not to Cairo, Paris, or Moscow, places where you put the best and the brightest, nor was he sent to Bermuda or Luxembourg, places you send people you want to reward. Instead, he was sent to Gabon, a diplomatic backwater of the first rank.
After that, he says in his memoir, "I had risen about as high as I could in the Foreign Service and decided it was time to retire." Well, that's not exactly accurate either. He could have been given a more important posting, such as Kenya or South Africa, or he could have been promoted higher in the senior Foreign Service (he made only the first of four grades). Instead, he was evidently (according to my sources) forced into involuntary retirement at 48. (The minimum age for voluntary retirement in the Foreign Service is 50.) After that, he seems to have made quite a bit of money ?- doing what for whom is unclear and I wish the Senate committee had attempted to find out.
But based on one op-ed declaring 16 words spoken by the president a lie, he transformed himself into an instant celebrity and, for a while, it seemed, a contender for power within the chien-mange-le-chien world of foreign policy. That dream has now probably evaporated. It is hard to see how a President John Kerry would now want Wilson in his inner circle. But if he desired to return to Gabon or Niger I, for one, would not be among those opposing him.
?- Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is the president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies a policy institute focusing on terrorism.
Here's a blueprint for the loons on the Left LOL.
<Rove was right to call the libs losers>
Stradee--
Yes. You're correct. My emphasis is on the probability that Rove or the leaker at the WH (if there is indeed a leaker) did not know she was undercover. They thought she was some average administrative employee working wiht WMD investigation.
They can't be guilty unless they knew she was covert.
"All of that may mean that no White House official actually committed a crime, but that doesn't mean they're in the clear. Woolsey said what White House officials did do was worse than a crime, "it was stupid"...
Lash, I agree.
WH officials have committed a rather huge "explainable" mistake. One of the reasons why Ashcroft recused himself from investigating the charges.
"All of that may mean that no White House official actually committed a crime, but that doesn't mean they're in the clear. Woolsey said what White House officials did do was worse than a crime, "it was stupid"...
Lash, I agree.
WH officials have committed a rather huge "explainable" mistake. One of the reasons why Ashcroft recused himself from investigating the charges.
JW--
That's hilarious!!! LOL!!!!
Stradee--
Guess time will tell if we've got it right. Will be interesting to watch the procession, eh?
Rove is innocent, the leak came from Cheney. Rove is the fall guy.
I keep seeing Bionic Cheney on Saturday Night Live when he talks like that...LOL!!!!
Instead of being in an undisclosed location, he's in a cave getting a Steve Austin operation.
"They can build him better than he was before..."
