So many places to start, but in this case the beginning might as well be this, viz., the Report of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, because that is the document being used to attack Joe Wilson's veracity and thus undermine his New York Times article of June 6, 2003, which itself was an attack on the truthfulness of the Bush Administration in the run-up to the Iraq War.
Wilson's article provoked a retaliatory response from the Bush administration that "his [Wilson's] wife is fair game," according to Chris Mathews relating a phone call from Karl Rove. A subsequent leak to the press (at least six press members were contacted) provided information as to the CIA position of Wilson's wife. Her job and her employment with the CIA were considered covert.
Because her covert status was revealed in the press it was considered by the CIA to be a matter to be investigated by the Dept of Justice. The Grand Jury investigation is centering upon White House employees having leaked the confidential information to the press.
First, the actual words in the Report that are the reference point for the attacks on Wilson's honesty instead of didactions found here.
From an appendix to the actual Report, entitled "Additional View" There are nine "Additional Views" sign by from one to six Senators. This one is signed by three Senators.
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/13jul20041400/www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/pdf/s108-301/roberts.pdf
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/iraq.html
Quote:Despite our hard and successhl work to deliver a unanimous report, however, there were two issues on which the Republicans and Democrats could not agree: 1) whether the Committee should conclude that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's public statements were not based on knowledge he actually possessed, and 2) whether the Committee should conclude that it was the former ambassador'swife who recommended him for his trip to Niger.
Niger
The Committee began its review of prewar intelligence on Iraq by examining the Intelligence Community's sharing of intelligence information with the UNMOVIC inspection teams. (The Committee's findings on that topic can be found in the section of the report titled, "The Intelligence Community's Sharing of Intelligence on Iraqi Suspect WMD Sites with UN Inspectors.") Shortly thereafter, we expanded the review when former Ambassador Joseph Wilson began speaking publicly about his role in exploring the possibility that Iraq was seeking or may have acquired uranium yellowcake from Africa. Ambassador Wilson's emergence was precipitated by a passage in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address which is now referred to as "the sixteen words." President Bush stated, ". . .the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The details of the Committee's findings and conclusions on this issue can be found in the Niger section of the report. What cannot be found, however, are two conclusions upon which the Committee's Democrats would not agree. While there was no dispute with the underlying facts, my Democrat colleagues rehsed to allow the following conclusions to appear in the report:
Conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee. The former ambassador's wife suggested her husband for the trip to Niger in February 2002. The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on behalf of the CIA, also at the suggestion of his wife, to look into another matter not related to Iraq. On February 12, 2002, the former ambassador'swife sent a memorandum to a Deputy Chief of a division in the CIA'SDirectorate of Operations which said, "[mJyhusband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.'' This was just one day before the same Directorate of Operations division sent a cable to one of its overseas stations requesting concurrence with the division's idea to send the former ambassador to Niger.
Conclusion: Rather than speaking publicly about his actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community would have or should have handled the information he provided.
At the time the former ambassador traveled to Niger, the Intelligence Community did not have in its possession any actual documents on the alleged Niger-Iraq uranium deal, only second hand reporting of the deal. The former ambassador's comments to reporters that the Niger-Iraq uranium documents "may have been forged because ?'the dates were wrong and the names were ~ o n g , " ' could not have been based on the forrner ambassador's actual experiences because the Intelligence Community did not have the documents at the time of the ambassador's trip. In addition, nothing in the report from the former ambassador'strip said anything about documents having been forged or the names or dates in the reports having been incorrect. The former ambassador told
Committee staff that he, in fact, did not have access to any of the names
and dates in the CIA's reports and said he may have become confbsed
about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct. Of note, the names and dates in the documents that the IAEA found to be incorrect were not names or dates included in the CIA reports.
Following the Vice President's review of an intelligence report regarding a possible uranium deal, he asked his briefer for the CIA's analysis of the issue. It was this request which generated Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger. The former ambassador's public comments suggesting that the Vice President had been briefed on the information gathered during his trip is not correct, however. While the CIA responded to the Vice President's request for the Agency's analysis, they never provided the information gathered by the former Ambassador. The former ambassador, in an NBC Meet the Press interview on July 6,2003, said, "The office of the Vice President, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there." The former ambassador was speaking on the basis of what he believed should have happened based on his former government experience, but he had no knowledge that this did happen.
These and other public comments from the former ambassador, such as comments that his report "debunked" the Niger-Iraq uranium story, were incorrect and have led to a distortion in the press and in the public's understanding of the facts surrounding the Niger-Iraq uranium story. The Committee found that, for most analysts, the former ambassador's report lent more credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal. During Mr. Wilson's media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone who would listen that the President had lied to the American people, that the Vice President had lied, and that he had "debunked" the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. As discussed in the Niger section of the report, not only did he NOT "debunk" the claim, he actually gave some intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it may be true. I believed very strongly that it was important for the Committee to conclude publicly that many of the statements made by Ambassador Wilson were not only incorrect, but had no basis in fact.
In an interview with Committee staff, Mr. Wilson was asked how he knew some of the things he was stating publicly with such confidence. On at least two occasions he admitted that he had no direct knowledge to support some of his claims and that he was drawing on either unrelated past experiences or no information at all. For example, when asked how he "knew" that the Intelligence Community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book, he told Committee staff that his assertion may have involved "a little literary flair."
The former Ambassador, either by design or though ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter, the world a version of events that was inaccurate, unsubstantiated, and misleading. Surely, the Senate Intelligence Committee, which has unique access to all of the facts, should have been able to agree on a conclusion that would correct the public record. Unfortunately, we were unable to do so.
Yes indeed, harsh words for Mr. Wilson from three of the US Senators on that committee.
However, it should be noted that there were eighteen members of the US Senate on that committee, and all nine Democratic members along with six Republican US Senators refused to sign on to the aforementioned interpretation of the "facts."
Again, lay side by side this minority viewpoint with Wilson's rebuttal at Salon.com and his subsequent reply to the article in the Post and you can see why 15 US Senators did not sign on to what the minority view was stating.
Why were five out of six Senantors wrong?
Then oh geeze, "Steno" Sue Schmitt?
The Post's article was a redaction of several details of the above minority appendix to the Report of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
Wilson replied to the specific details of these interpretations of facts linked at salon.com on July 15, 2004.
Anyway, Wilson replied to her article within days.
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.
In the year since the betrayal of Valerie's covert status, it has been widely understood that she is irrelevant to the unpaid mission I undertook or the conclusions I reached. But your paper's recent article acted as a funnel for this scurrilous and extraneous charge, uncritically citing the Republican-written Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report.
The decision to send me to Niger was not made, and could not be made, by Valerie. At the conclusion of a meeting that she did not attend, I was asked by CIA officials whether I would be willing to travel to Niger. While a CIA reports officer and a State Department analyst, both cited in the report, speculate about what happened, neither of them was in the chain of command that made the decision to send me. Reams of documents were given over to the Senate committee, but the only quotation attributed to my wife on this subject was the anodyne "my husband has good relations with both the PM (Prime Minister) and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." In fact, with 2-year-old twins at home, Valerie did not relish my absence for a two-week period. But she acquiesced because, in the zeal to be responsive to the legitimate concerns raised by the vice president, officials of her agency turned to a known functionary who had previously checked out uranium-related questions for them.
But that is not the only inaccurate assertion or conclusion in the Senate report uncritically parroted in the article. Other inaccuracies and distortions include the suggestion that my findings "bolstered" the case that Niger was engaged in illegal sales of uranium to Iraq. In fact, the Senate report is clear that the intelligence community attempted to keep the claim out of presidential documents because of the weakness of the evidence.
The facts surrounding my trip remain the same. I traveled to Niger and found it unlikely that Iraq had attempted to purchase several hundred tons of yellowcake uranium. In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush referred to Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium "from Africa." Between March 2003 and July 2003, the administration refused to acknowledge that it had known for more than a year that the claim on uranium sales from Niger had been discredited, until the day after my article in the New York Times. The next day the White House issued a statement that "the sixteen words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address." Those facts are amply supported in the Senate report.
-- Joseph C. Wilson IV
Timberlandko sets a high bar, demanding that if a minority viewpoint signed by 3 of 18 Senators is not retracted, then what it says is true. 3 out of 18? Why, that's less than 20% of the Senators who examined the data. A higher percentage of Americans believe Elvis is alive, and you can't tell ?'em otherwise either.
What I find disturbing from many of the right wingers is that they appear to be attacking Wilson as a defense for the Bush administration's outing of Wilson's wife as a covert CIA agent. This, in relief to the Right's admirable and traditional support for national security shows signs that at least in this case, their patriotism is shaded for political convenience.
