Wilson is a scumbag, there's no other way to put it.

“Marshall makes a valid point when he says:

There's no 'challenging the bona fides of a political opponent' exception to the law in question. While Plame's alleged role may have some political traction, it's legally irrelevant. Government officials are not allowed to disclose the identity of covert intelligence agents, whether they feel like they have a good reason or not.”

“This does not excuse whoever leaked Plame's identity to Novak.”

Oh my God, when will this misunderstanding of the pertaining legal statutes cease? Does anyone pay attention to Judge Andrew P. Napolitano of Fox News? He clearly explains that they were written specifically to deal with slime balls like Phillip Agee. One must deliberately wish to “out” a CIA covert official. It was common knowledge throughout the Washington insiders that Valerie Plame was employed by the CIA. At most, some Bush official may be compared to someone ticketed by a traffic cop for allegedly going 55 1/2 miles in a 55 miles per hour zone. This is truly a case of petty legalism. The spirit of the law is violated merely to trash the Bush administration. I’m convinced that this story would have never been given front page treatment if a Democrat resided in the White House.

Am I being overly cynical to point out that Susan Schmidt’s piece was published “Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09?” Why not on the front page---and why on Saturday---a day when few people read the newspaper?

Intelligent commentary on the Report would follow actual reading of the report rather than some reporter's synopsis of the report.

The full 521 pp pdf file is available from the SSCI website (link: http://intelligence.senate.gov/ ) and FindLaw has broken the 23 MB full pdf into smaller segments, indexed them and made themn available for individual download. (Link: http://news.findlaw.com/legalnews/lit/iraq/documents.html#sicrpt )

It is always amusing to watch otherwise sensible persons engage in a he said x said , she said x said type discussion when what is important is what x said and x is readily available.

The Washington Post's and Knight-Ridder's second hand commentary is no more authoritative than any other secondary source.

Perhaps I am missing the point. To me what is important is what the report said, not what someone else said the report said. That's why I've read the report. It is heavily redacted, so even after reading it one is left with the inevitable conclusion that definitive answers to the yellowcake/Niger and several other issues, including Wilson's veracity vel non have been precluded for political reasons by the editing process.

Any number of possible conclusions can be drawn from the non-redacted report; however, in the absence of a non-redacted copy of the report, definitive or highly probable conclusions cannot be drawn.

Therefore, what we are witnessing is a kind of mirror where persons reading second-hand interpretaions of what the full report may have said about Wilson see reflected back to them their own image of Wilson's credibility. Not to put too fine a point on it, if you were inclined to believe Wilson is the sole of truth, you won't see any significant problems. On the other hand, if you were tilted toward believing Wilson is an inveterate liar, you can find some possible interpretations of what is available now to support that view.

Reporters reporting on the report just short-circuit the process, drawing their own conclusions, biased and spun depending on their audience, which readers then discuss as if there was anything meaningful about it.

May I just say here that our mainstream media sucks, big time?

Thank you.

Correction:

Any number of possible conclusions can be drawn from the redacted report; however, in the absence of a non-redacted copy of the report, definitive or highly probable conclusions cannot be drawn.

I’ll give you something else to think about. If one is supposedly a covert CIA agent---does this mean that you can get away with a lot of nonsense---and there’s little anyone can do about it? Does one always have the upper hand because anyone objecting could be accused of outing you? Are your victims inherently unable to defend themselves due to your official status?

Of course those not blindly following Wilson's every word as unassailable fact (such as, say, the mainstream press) were saying that it probably wasn't "intimidation" for a long while now.

I must say that it's pretty amazing that Dan's willing to throw Wilson's credibility into the garbage can pretty fast here. Considering that he still thinks this Administration's credibility, one might ask what his metrics are?

Apparently, the key discriminator seems to be whether the parties in question are pro democratic or pro administration.

I’ll give you something else to think about. If one is supposedly a covert CIA agent---does this mean that you can get away with a lot of nonsense---and there’s little anyone can do about it? Does one always have the upper hand because anyone objecting could be accused of outing you? Are your victims inherently unable to defend themselves due to your official status?

Exactly Philip Agee's point.

This thread is getting what I expected from people who see one side of the world like David Thomson, but I am disappointed in Dan.

How does Wilson's credibility (or lack thereof) excuse those in the Administration who make us less safe by outing covert agents. Covert Agents working on WMDs no less.

And the blame runs to the top because if Bush was serious about finding out who did this he would have hung that person out to dry already. This is so symbolic of how the Bush Adminstration cannot engage in a real debate on policy and makes it all about smearing people and destroying reputations.

I am not going to sit here and defend Joe Wilson. But Joe Wilson is not the one running for President, George Bush is, and I don't know if our nation can stand four more years of this kind of crap.

Oh my God, when will this misunderstanding of the pertaining legal statutes cease? Does anyone pay attention to Judge Andrew P. Napolitano of Fox News? He clearly explains that they were written specifically to deal with slime balls like Phillip Agee. One must deliberately wish to “out” a CIA covert official.

Are you and the good judge SERIOUSLY going to argue that it should be legally OK, according to this law, to out a CIA official KNOWINGLY, so long as the more basic intent was to engage in a political hatchet job on her husband? Is THAT what you and the Republicans are going to claim before the American people? I mean, seriously?

Here's a basic question.

Why is the Senate obsessed with the activities and report of Wilson given that, apparently, not one single thing can be found to be incorrect or misleading in his actual report, on in the conclusions he drew in that report, namely that, very probably, Iraq did NOT acquire uranium from Nigeria in the period of interest?

Apart from the obvious intent of the report to continue Rove's hatchet job on Wilson, why does the report go on and on about inconsistencies on Wilson's part, and the exact intelligence quality of his report, and his wife's role in getting him the job?

It's as if this whole discussion is taking place in an alternate world in which Iraq did indeed have an active nuclear program and did indeed acquire uranium from Nigeria. In the real world, where NONE of this happened, and Wilson would appear to be 100% correct, why is the Senate choosing to drag his name through the mud?

I didn't hear the account of Judge Andrew P. Napolitano of Fox News on the law in question, but surely he must understand that there are a vast number of laws on the books triggered by a particular case such as Phillip Agee, but whose language is cast in such a way as to capture the more general problem which the case seems to represent.

I should think that knowingly outing a CIA employee, even if the fundamental intent was to do something else (ESPECIALLY something as base as a political hatchet job!) would most certainly be covered under the law.

To expand, so my comment doesn't appear as snarky as it was meant to be. .

Daniel seems to be willing to throw Wilson's credibility in the toilet due to a highly redacted report that may, or may not be interpreted to be damaging to his case.

In contrary, the same report which is highly damaging to the administration's credibility, in addition to the highly damaging 9/11 report, doesn't seem to move him off the fence.

The standard does not appear to be evenly applied. Surely if one applies the metrics Dan is using for Wilson, this Administration should be laughed out of town - even if they made claim the sky is blue.

Judge Napolitano, a little question.

Would a bank robber be excused from murder if he could demonstrate that he killed the guard, as he had planned, only because he needed to do so to steal the money?

I mean, it wouldn't be intentional in that case, would it?

“Are you and the good judge SERIOUSLY going to argue that it should be legally OK, according to this law, to out a CIA official KNOWINGLY, so long as the more basic intent was to engage in a political hatchet job on her husband? Is THAT what you and the Republicans are going to claim before the American people? I mean, seriously?”

Yup, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Republicans should indeed encourage the American people to use their common sense. We must be able to make a valid distinction between the despicable behavior of a Phillip Agee and someone blurting out the truth concerning a CIA agent who apparently is out to destroy them. These laws were never meant to protect CIA employees who are out to filth on their political enemies. Also, how dare you claim that the Bush administration is engaging in some sort of “political hatchet job?” The evidence, instead, suggests that this is what Joe Wilson was trying to do. Once again, at the very worst, someone in the White House may be analogously guilty of driving 55 1/2 miles in a 55 mile per hour zone.

Please note that the liberal posters are deliberately ignoring Joe Wilson’s disingenuousness. They want the issue to remain focussed on the Bush administration. Deconstructionism underpins their approach to reality. White is black and black is white. It truly “depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is’.”

We must be able to make a valid distinction between the despicable behavior of a Phillip Agee and someone blurting out the truth concerning a CIA agent who apparently is out to destroy them. These laws were never meant to protect CIA employees who are out to filth on their political enemies.

So where does your "vendetta exception" stop? Does it matter that all manner of other, unquestionably innocent agents and activities may simultaneously be exposed, and that it may endanger national security?

Truly, you have no moral center if you believe this. I would LOVE to see Republicans get in front of the American people and argue this. I guarantee you they won't, because they, unlike you, understand the revulsion most Americans would feel upon hearing this argument.

Frankly0, I think I am beginning to understand. The key is to fasten on a subsidiary detail and misunderstand what others write, the better to make a good smackdown argument.

It's amazing how the press and the left (A redundancy, granted) have been treating this matter. But it's good enough for me that I called it origonally.

I must take issue with adaplant on interpreting what the report contains. For example, on Wilson’s credibility, we can look at one paragraph on page 40:

On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO’s Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst’s notes indicated that the meeting was “apparently convened by the [former ambassador’s] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue.” The former ambassador’s wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

I particularly like these two paragraphs that start on page 44:

When the former ambassador spoke to Committee staff, his description of his findings differed from the DO intelligence report and his account of information provided to him by the CIA differed from the CIA officials’ accounts in some respects. First, the former ambassador described his findings to Committee staff as more directly related to Iraq and, specifically, as refuting both the possibility that Niger could have sold uranium to Iraq and that Iraq approached Niger to purchase uranium. The intelligence report described how the structure of Niger’s uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to rouge nations, and noted that Nigerien officials denied knowledge of any deals to ell uranium to any rouge states, but did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium. Second, the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium transaction. In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal. The only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former Prime Minister Mayaki. Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the information was the XXXX intelligence service. The DO reports officer told Committee staff that he did not provide the former ambassador with any information about the source or details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and, noted that there were no “documents” circulating in the IC at the time of the former ambassador’s trip, only intelligence reports from XXX intelligence regarding an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Meeting notes and other correspondence show that detail of the reporting were discussed at the February 19, 2002 meeting, but none of the meeting participants recall telling the former ambassador the source of the report XXXXX.

The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article (“CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data: Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid,” June 12, 2003) which said, “among the Envoy’s conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because ‘the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.’” Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the “dates were wrong and the names were wrong” when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have “misspoken” to the reporter when he said he concluded that the documents were “forged.” He also said he may have become confused 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 and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials which should have been on the documents.

Are there redactions? Yes. Do they obscure the main points? If the main points are that Wilson misspoke about his wife’s role, about the names and dates on the documents, and some other minor points, I don’t think so.

The report goes on to say that the operations folks graded Wilson’s report as “good,” which is a 3 on their 1-5 scale. DIA and CIA analysts were not surprised to find Nigerien denial of a uranium deal, but did “find it interesting that the former Nigerien Prime Minister said an Iraqi delegation had visited Niger for what he believed was to discuss uranium sales.” (page 46) And on page 47 the reports says there were not real inconsistencies with names or dates in the foreign government report as Wilson told the WaPo.

Here’s the hoot, and it shows how cynical Wilson is: Wilson must have known that nobody at the CIA could talk about any of this to the press, that the reporters he spoke to would protect his identity as the source, and that Novak would not disclose the identities of his sources. In fact the only one who was free to speak was Wilson; we know this because the committee report discloses that the CIA did not require Wilson to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

You may not consider this relevant or not, but Marshall is one of a few "independent" bloggers regularly featured by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committeee blogwire via the "Stakeholder" blog.

Kevin Drum and Atrios are two others.

Lastly, compare Marshall's posts to press releases of Nancy Pelosi's Minority Leader office in the House. I usually check the Dem Minority leader site before I read Marshall.

OK, regarding Wilson's supposed disingenuousness, it seems to be comprised of two points.

1. Did he say he misrepresent his wife's involvement in getting the "job" in Nigeria?

2. Did he misrepresent how he came to the conclusion that the Iraq-Nigeria uranium connection was most likely non existent?

As far as 1 goes, it may be that SOME of his statements did not take into account the fact that his wife did indeed suggest his name, because he was mentioned in a memo by her. Of course, the Senate report ONLY quotes a particular sentence in the memo, and gives no account of the larger context of the memo -- did Plame mention other names? How many OTHER people also were recommended by others? Did others ALSO recommend Wilson independently? Given that the Senate report is so obvious a hatchet job written by Republicans, I hardly expect that any of this would be mentioned. And the basic points remain: Plame clearly was NOT the one in the decision making role in any case. (Moreover, NOTHING in the report itself was found out to be wrong or misleading -- so where, exactly, would be the legitimate source of an accusation of bias, or a vendetta against Bush here?) If Wilson asserted that his wife had NO role whatsoever, then either he or his wife misremembered, or perhaps he somewhat exaggerated because he knew that she was NOT a decision maker, and so the whole issue was a red herring. Was he being disingenuous? That's only one of a range of possibilities.

Mostly the same points apply to the issue of whether Wilson misstated what he knew about the forged Nigerian documents at the time of the report. Did he fail, in his interview with the W Post, to remember correctly the exact grounds he used to come to his conclusion in the report, or was he deliberately lying about it at the time? How can anyone know? And why is it critical that Wilson did not know at the time that the documents were forged, when, in fact, they WERE forged, so that even the things he only thought he knew at the time were nonetheless quite true?

What is striking to me is that the report stands on its own, and, I repeat, is, even by the Senate report's account, 100% correct in both evidence and conclusions so far as anyone knows.

So I ask again: why the obsession about Wilson's POSSIBLE disingenuousness when every piece of evidence he reported, and every conclusion he came to in his dealings with the Iraq-uranium issue were only corroborated?

Answer: because this whole discussion, and the relevant portions of the Senate report, is about continuing the hatchet job on Wilson at all costs.

It's worthwhile to bear in mind that Wilson would probably not, himself, have access to his own report regarding his trip at the time he was recounting what he had told the CIA. Perhaps his wife would (perhaps not), but, unless he reviewed the contents of that report with her (which she would NOT be allowed to bring home) he would be subject to the limitations of his own memory regarding what he knew when about the Nigerian forgeries.

Whoa, there, David! Do you really think it was *helpful* for someone in the Bush Administration to risk committing a felony in order to win an argument against Joe Wilson? Separate from the issue of whether you hew to a strict code of "We're the good guys. We don't break the law," wasn't the Wilson's case given a tremendous boost. by the outing of his wife. Put simply, if you're debating a jerk who's clearly wrong, then no matter how much you want to punch him in the nose for your rebuttal, you really should restrain yourself. Punching him in the nose can only convince a large chunk of the audience that you're not only wrong, but that you're the true jerk.

And it's hardly as if the Bush Administration could come up with a reasonable rebuttal (which isn't to say I'd agree with it). For example:

*****************
1) What Joe Wilson was able to prove was that the monitoring regime run by the international consortium running Niger's uranium mines *seems* to be well-designed and currently working. Thus, as Wilson said, we believe it's very dubious that Iraq received any yellowcake from Niger in response to this overture or could receive yellowcake from Niger if it made another overture in the near future.

2) But that's not the point! The point is Saddam tried, and moreover, he tried despite the fact that any rational observer would have realized this approach was really unlikely to succeed at procuring uranium ore and instead rather likely to succeed in attracting unwanted attention. It's almost as if someone were to walk into a gun store he knew to be frequented by the local police department and say "Hello, I'm a convicted mass-murderer who just escaped from prison. While I don't have any need a handgun immediately, I foresee that in the next few weeks I'll be looking for one. Do you think you could help me if I came back in a few weeks?"

3) And this just proves our point: Saddam Hussein is not only one of the most despicable human beings to have walked the face of the Earth, but also (and this is the critical point) he acts in irrational, reckless ways. Therefore, we're forced to conclude that he cannot be deterred. And this is why he tops the list of despicable SOBs that need to be removed.
******************

(Like I said parenthetically above, I think this rebuttal is *reasonable*, which isn't to say I agree with it. I think this yellowcake episode serves as corroboration for the thesis that, in terms of his nuclear aspirations, Saddam was contained... reduced to pretty pathetic, desperate, ineffectual attempts to scrape a nuclear weapons program together. Thus, while it's pretty darn disturbing that he contined these pathetic, desperate attempts, it was not justifiable to invade Iraq in early 2003 when Afghanistan wasn't secured, a huge chunk of senior Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders remained at large, absurd amounts of nuclear materials remain unsecured around the world, Pakistani nuclear scientists are pretty blatently hawking their wares around the world, and Kim Jong-il engaging in brinksmanship.)

It's worthwhile to bear in mind that Wilson would probably not, himself, have access to his own report regarding his trip at the time he was recounting what he had told the CIA.

Then perhaps writing it up for the NYT and going on the talk-show circuit wasn't such a hot idea.

Then perhaps writing it up for the NYT and going on the talk-show circuit wasn't such a hot idea.

You're not supposed to publicize important truths because you may get some of the details wrong?

"What is striking to me is that the report stands on its own, and, I repeat, is, even by the Senate report's account, 100% correct in both evidence and conclusions so far as anyone knows.

So I ask again: why the obsession about Wilson's POSSIBLE disingenuousness when every piece of evidence he reported, and every conclusion he came to in his dealings with the Iraq-uranium issue were only corroborated?"

Because he made his results public, and they made the Bush Administration look bad.

If he had kept everything he had done completely secret, there would have been no problem.

This was a partisan political act. He made it appear that the Bush administration was engaging in either treason or else exceptionally inexcusably poor judgement.

Whether he was right or not is irrelevant. He became a political enemy of the Bush administration by publicly announcing what he did. It would have been predictable for his wife to be fired from the CIA. In that case no one who didn't already know would have found out she was a former CIA agent unless somebody else announced it.

For it to go this way, Bush must agree that the CIA is composed mostly of his enemies, and if he gets another term he will arrange to fire a whole lot of them and replace them with agents who will be more supportive.

“Whoa, there, David! Do you really think it was *helpful* for someone in the Bush Administration to risk committing a felony in order to win an argument against Joe Wilson?”

Everybody who was anybody already knew about her CIA employment. I also don’t think the alleged person in the Bush administration had the foggiest notion that they might be breaking the law. By the way, being employed by the CIA doesn’t automatically turn you into a secret agent. One must know for sure that a CIA employee has worked in covert intelligence for the last few years. It is highly unlikely that the White House official would have had that information.

What is it that you don’t get? We are talking about a mere legal technicality. It is akin to a traffic cop ticketing you for going a mere 1/2 mile over the speed limit. Strictly speaking you might be guilty---but the ticket is still a nit-picky affair.

franklyo trots out the tired, old "bad memory" ("misremembered") defense for Joe Wilson about his wife's role. Nuh-uhh.

Here's Wilson in Time:
"In an interview with TIME, Wilson, who served as an ambassador to Gabon and as a senior American diplomat in Baghdad under the current president's father, angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa. "That is bulls__t. That is absolutely not the case," Wilson told TIME. "I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the Feb 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job." http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,465270,00.html

He was just as confident when he claimed a Bush adminstration "forgery". Only later (when confronted with the evidence), does he say he may have "misspoken" to reporters. Right.

"Everybody who was anybody already knew about her CIA employment. "

So if they all knew it, they didn't have to follow the law? This is a striking statement from one who regularly asserts that conservatives hold to moral standards (whereas liberals are relativists).

The behavior in outing the agent, asserting that 'it was already known' only speaks to a standard different from that of the law. This 'flexibility' has been one of the glaring moral problems of this administration.

-Josh Marshall used a quote that appeared in a Kerry press release in a fluff post he wrote, therefore it is not true that Susan Schmidt has low credibility and is a notorious mouthpiece for the Bush administration. Rockin.

-Joe Wilson misunderstood or downplayed the role his wife had in getting him sent to Niger, therefore Iraq had a nuclear program... or something.

Hey everybody. Leave David Thomson alone. He heard it on Fox News!!

In an interview with TIME, Wilson, who served as an ambassador to Gabon and as a senior American diplomat in Baghdad under the current president's father, angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa. "That is bulls__t. That is absolutely not the case," Wilson told TIME. "I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the Feb 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job."

ALL the Senate reports points out is that there is a single sentence in a single memo by Plame that mentions the appropriateness of her husband's background.

How is ANY of the Time quote inconsistent with that?

Do you have anything with something resembling a real contradiction?

Just what "important truths" was Wilson supposeded publicizing? The CIA reports officer who evaluated his report as "good", according to the SSCI report, "said he judged that the most important fact in the report was that the Nigerien officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerien Primed Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting." (p. 46) Yet this went unmentioned in Wilson's NYT piece. What he did publicize, what gained him his notoriety, was the clearly fallacious claim that the famous 16 Words )about how Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa) were somehow refuted by his own findings (that Iraq had not succeeded in buying uranium in Niger).

All that aside, since when are talking to the press and being careful about facts mutually exclusive? Hasn't Wilson ever heard of taking notes?

Hypothetical:

I know that Valerie Plame works in the CIA's WMD non-proliferation office that sent Wilson to Niger.

I know that Valerie Plame recommended Wilson for the trip, either orally or in a written memo, or both.

I know that Valerie Plame is married to Wilson, as Wilson's own bio on the Internet stated.

I do not know that Valeria Plame has a cover, but only know her as a publicly recognized analyst and expert at the CIA.

When asked why Wilson was sent by the CIA to Niger, I explain what I know.

This is not illegal.

Wilson accuses numerous administration officials of immoral behavior and committing a crime. In addition, he makes reckless, partisan and increasingly vitriolic statements about the administration.

He lies about his wife being at the meeting at the CIA (if only for 3 minutes). He lies about his wife recommending him. He mischaracterizes his report.

A criminal investigation is started to examine if a crime has been committed.

Under this hypothetical, there is not a crime in naming a CIA analyst unknowing she has a cover.

However, there is a possibility now that the Hatch act has been violated if Foley, Plame and Wilson engaged in prohibited political/partisan activities in this charade.

Just a thought.

Can we just cut to the chase and admit Bush didnt make up Husseins uranium hunt out of whole cloth as the nutbags have been alleging?

Uh, no one's alleged that. The allegation was that the claim was based on documents that were known to be forged and that it shouldn't have been made. The allegation stands.

Here's a question: The CIA specifically did not request a nondisclosure agreement from Wilson. Why not?

Could he have been intended to reveal what he knew? The CIA couldn't do it, but they could send him in specifically to find no evidence and then to say that there was no evidence.

Everyone believes that the french have complete control of uranium exports from Niger. But both iraq and iran were reported to approach the local government to arrrange uranium sales. Clearly the ones to approach for it were the french. Did the iranians and the iraqis not know that?

The foreign government report with the hidden source said iraq actually had a contract for 500 tons a year with the GON. Mai Manga said that an iranian delegation had tried to buy 400 tons in 1998 but no contract was signed.

The french could mine extra ore, convert it into extra yellowcake, and sell it, if they wanted to. Or they could refine it further and sell the better stuff. Why sell yellowcake which is hard to deal with when something better would be worth more? The GOM could perhaps dig a third mine somewhere they found ore, and set up the processing to convert it to yellowcake, and arrange to ship it out. They would want to ship yellowcake becuse it would be hard to refine it further. Either approach might yield a scandal if it could be asserted confidently enough. But it hasn't been revealed, all we have is the claim that iraq tried to get yellowcake and presumably failed. Mayaki is not quoted as saying iraqis tried to buy yellowcake, he says that he assumed ahead of time that's what they wanted. Perhaps he made an agreement with them that he wouldn't reveal what they discussed? Perhaps he had reason to imply it without saying it, when it was wrong? No, Mayaki said he managed to keep them from discussing it with him at all. So he never verified his assumption that they wanted to buy yellowcake. Pretty thin stuff.

Since the meeting with iraqis was semi-clandestine and was arranged by a "businessman", is there a possibility that it wasn't actually iraqis at all? If the GON did not contact the iraqi embassy about it, how would they know if it was fake meeting? Someone who wanted to frame iraq for building nukes could arrange the meeting and then show up for it, and likely get away with it.

Maybe more later, I need a nap.

Tim,

One crucial assumption in your hypothetical is that none of the participants in the exposure of Plame's job at the CIA is that none of them knew, or should have known, that she was a covert operative. My guess is that that universal ignorance would be extremely unlikely, given that the knowledge of her role would be known through national security channels. Those who have such clearances in the WH would have been carefully instructed NOT to reveal anything they learn through such channels without first checking out whether it is something that can be publicized, including who works for the CIA. It can hardly be a legal excuse for any of these people that they just didn't check it out -- that is something they are obliged to do, as they are with any confidential information that comes through these channels.

Just what "important truths" was Wilson supposeded publicizing?

While the Senate report, in its hatchet job, refuses to acknowledge this obvious point, Wilson's report DID serve a very important function in that it CONFIRMED that nothing had changed in Niger re what was thought to be known about the likelihood of a uranium purchase by Iraq. Namely, for various structural and other reasons regarding for example how uranium mines were organized and authorized, it remained VERY unlikely that Iraq might have had any possibility of smuggling out uranium.

Wilson's report was graded as "good" instead of "excellent" because it provided relatively little NEW information. But the previous consensus was that Niger was a poor prospect for Iraq to acquire uranium, and that Iraq had not bought uranium in Niger. Wilson's report basically confirmed this status quo.

Again, the Senate Republicans, in their typical disingenuousness, carefully avoid acknowledging this crucial point, and instead do everything they can to muddy the issue.

The larger point here is that Wilson was in a position to claim that he knew, in virtue of his activities and report, that there was NO good evidence that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger, despite what the Bush administration was claiming.

I should think that that counts as a pretty important truth.

All that aside, since when are talking to the press and being careful about facts mutually exclusive? Hasn't Wilson ever heard of taking notes?

Are you not aware that Wilson almost certainly would have had to have turned over his notes, given that they were used to create highly confidential information?

franklyo said Given that the Senate report is so obvious a hatchet job written by Republicans...

How many times do I have to turn left to rationalize this statement? The report is "written by Republicans", it's reported by "Republican Staffers" in the Washington Post and it makes Joe Wilson look like a fugitive of honesty.

There are no facts to support your statement. There isn't even a remote chance of implication to support your statement. I suppose the lesson we learn is that if the report, from a non-partisan committee, doesn't agree with what I believe and contradicts what I have been saying for the last 9 months then it "obviously" made a stop in the Karl Rove Surgery Clinic.

Brennan,

Are you seriously going to argue that no part of this report was mainly generated by the Republicans, and to promote their ends? It's been pretty obvious that the Senate Democrats had some very serious misgivings about releasing the report in its current form, but made the choice that it would be better to vote to release it than not.

Looking at the quality of the report on Wilson, it's obvious enough how tendentious the treatment of Wilson is, and how it is designed purely as a hatchet job. It doesn't take a lot of thinking to realize that this is one of the things the Democrats just swallowed to get the report out.

I repeat my earlier argument: in fact, virtually ALL of Wilson's claims in his own report seemed to be only CONFIRMED by what we have come to know in Iraq, namely that there was no nuclear program. Not a single piece of concrete evidence in Iraq suggests that, in fact, any smuggling of uranium, or even any "seeking" took place.

Why then the absurd obsession in the Senate report with Wilson, treating him as if it was HE who produced false or misleading information? Isn't the charge of the committee to find out how intelligence agencies got things WRONG about Iraq's WMDs? Why go to such effort to trash the reputation of man who seems ONLY to have been RIGHT on every matter of substance? And why spend ANY time whatever on what role his wife played in getting him the job, when, again, the product of his efforts was, as best as can be established, without a single inaccuracy in evidence or conclusion?

The point is, the section on Wilson makes NO sense as a fulfillment of the committees purported obligations. It ONLY makes sense as a political hatchet job.

frankly0: So a report says "nothing has changed" and the CIA then instructs to put additional analysts on the issue?

The report gets a grade of "good" instead of "excellent" because it provided "relatively little NEW information" yet the CIA instructs to place additional analysist on the issue?

Then you said It's as if this whole discussion is taking place in an alternate world in which Iraq did indeed have an active nuclear program and did indeed acquire uranium from Nigeria. In the real world, where NONE of this happened, and Wilson would appear to be 100% correct, why is the Senate choosing to drag his name through the mud?

There is an alternative world present. May I invite you to depart from it and come join the real world. In the real world the question of an Iraqi Nuclear program is relevant on two points.
1) Did they have one?
2) Were they trying to reconstitute one?
On the latter point a visit by an official Iraqi dignitary to Niger to discuss "economic and trade" ties leaves as much question as to further pursuit of WMD by the Iraqi government as it does to exiting Rwanda as thousands of hatchet wielding men wait for the last plane of foreigners to be airborne does to genocide.

frankly0, methinks thou dost protest too much.

One crucial assumption in your hypothetical is that none of the participants in the exposure of Plame's job at the CIA is that none of them knew, or should have known, that she was a covert operative.

I'm fascinated with this self-delusion that CIA operatives are well-known, both that they have covers as well as having public lives. Kind of defeats the whole covert concept when I know you're a NOC and a wife and mother of two.

Do you think a list of names of our CIA covert operatives is passed around to each new administration and Congress with instructions not to mention them?

One other thing, it is not the responsibility under the law to check so that you do not inadvertantly expose a CIA NOC. I don't think it even matters if you know and something you say is used to determine that they are a CIA NOC.

The law says you have to intentionally expose them as a CIA NOC.

But hey, don't let the facts confuse you when you have an already carefully constructed conspiracy theory about Bush perfidy to defend.

frankly0: Don't be naive. You're not a stupid person as evidenced by your posts. However, to think that addressing the appointment of Wilson in the matter of investigating a crucial piece of intelligence is a "red herring" is ludicrous. Why did the CIA pick Wilson?

Of course these details are relevant and should be a part of the report. How serious was the CIA in checking the information on Niger? Was an 8 day trip an adequate period for serious findings? Is this how our intelligence bureaus operate? 8 days to check intelligence reports from foreign governments that were conducted over three year periods?

Stop drinking the fool-aid. Wilson chose to put himself in the public eye with his NY Times Op/Ed. Had he never written that what reason would an investigation have to cite him in their report? There would be no reason. But the fact stands that Wilson outed himself as a key component to the business of the CIA and the SSCI thus has a constitutional duty to investigate all the matters that the committee agrees upon.

If the Democrats swallowed the report even though you think it was essentially written by Karl Rove, what does that say about the Democrats? Republicans are the bad men and the Democrats are the repugnant, weak kneed, sorry, forlorn, servile squires to the bad men?

My invitation still stands. Escape the alternate world.

The key point here should be: Had the Iraqi regime "reconstituted nuclear weapons" as Cheney said. The answer seems to be clearly no. There was no nuclear weapons program in Iraq as well. The most that we get is that the Niger officials thought that Iraq might have wanted to get yellowcake from them, although that topic was not mentioned by Iraqi officials.

Re: Joseph Wilson, it seems clear that he used some statements that were at best misleading, at worst lies. [ His wife may not have made a decision to send him, but she did recommend him]. Similarly, his statement about the forged documents were inaccurate. I can't attribute this all to confusion on his part -- clearly he should have rememebered if he'd seen the documents.

So I agree that Wilson's credibility is hurt. But the whole report hurts the administration's credibility far more. Wilson is not on the ballot this November, but Bush is, and we can express our disapproval of his follies.

frankly0,

... Wilson's report DID serve a very important function in that it CONFIRMED that nothing had changed in Niger re what was thought to be known about the likelihood of a uranium purchase by Iraq. Namely, for various structural and other reasons regarding for example how uranium mines were organized and authorized, it remained VERY unlikely that Iraq might have had any possibility of smuggling out uranium.

The larger point here is that Wilson was in a position to claim that he knew, in virtue of his activities and report, that there was NO good evidence that Iraq had sought uranium in Niger, despite what the Bush administration was claiming.

Dissonance?

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Bush didn't lie. Wilson did.

frankly0 wrote:

Given that the Senate report is so obvious a hatchet job written by Republicans,

Right, which is why Senate Democrats signed off on a bipartisan report.

'"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Bush didn't lie. Wilson did.'

Well, Bush didn't say 'The British Government has said that', or even 'claims that'. He said "learned that", which implies that Bush was assigning some of his own credibility to it. So Bush's credibility is shot, as is Wilson's, but as pointed out before, only one of those is actually running for re-election.

Jon Juzlak: Is that what Cheney said? He said Iraq had reconstituted nuclear weapons? I understand his statements were that Iraq had reconstituted its plans for a nuclear weapons program, statements that I, Mahdi Obeidi and Josh Marshall agree with.

>How does Wilson's credibility (or lack thereof) excuse those in the Administration who make us less safe by outing covert agents. Covert Agents working on WMDs no less.

If Plame did in fact conspire with her husband to damage the US effort against Saddam for the sake of embarrassing the President, and putting us at greater risk in the process, she not only deserved outing. She deserves an arrest warrant. They are both traitors to arrange this little plot.

Something I'd like to see addressed: Just how did Wilson know what dates and names were on the forgery before it was in American hands? Did he and Plame have something to do with its creation, as a means of deflecting the entire investigation of Saddam's efforts in Niger?

Wilson certainly still had contacts in Iraq from his tenure there. Was he getting something from Saddam, like the UN, Chirac and Galloway certainly were, to betray his country?

Did his wife, and others who worked in the WMD effort at the CIA, have something to do with weapons not being found?

erg said So Bush's credibility is shot, as is Wilson's, but as pointed out before, only one of those is actually running for re-election.

True, albeit feeble. Bush is not the only candidate running for election that made statements off the same intelligence. One John Kerry and Edward Kennedy both made statements based on the same intelligence. I suppose they face equally inclined uphill battles based on them in November.

'True, albeit feeble. Bush is not the only candidate running for election that made statements off the same intelligence. One John Kerry and Edward Kennedy both made statements based on the same intelligence. I suppose they face equally inclined uphill battles based on them in November.'

If Kerry or Kennedy (who I think is a cowardly murdering sleazebag) had spent nearly $200 Billion, 900 american lives, thousands of wounded on a war that has found no or almost no WMDs, no Al Qaeda connections, seems to have increased terrorist recruiting, then you can bet that they would face retribution come Novemember as well.

'Something I'd like to see addressed: Just how did Wilson know what dates and names were on the forgery before it was in American hands? Did he and Plame have something to do with its creation, as a means of deflecting the entire investigation of Saddam's efforts in Niger?

Wilson certainly still had contacts in Iraq from his tenure there. Was he getting something from Saddam, like the UN, Chirac and Galloway certainly were, to betray his country?

Did his wife, and others who worked in the WMD effort at the CIA, have something to do with weapons not being found?'

YOu forgot other crucial questions
-- Since Valerie Plame was probably alive at that time, could she have been on the grassy knoll in Dallas ?
-- Why do Saddam Hussein's mosques look like they were designed by the FreeMasons ? Was Hammurabi the original FreeMason ?
-- How many black helicopters did Saddam Hussein possess ? How come none of them were found ? Did Hans Blix sneak some out in his waistcoat ?
-- Since Joe Wilson lives in Washington, could he have killed Dexter Hubbell ?

He said "learned that", which implies that Bush was assigning some of his own credibility to it.

That's a rhetorical reach that doesn't support your conclusion.

Bush's credibility is hurt because other statements made, especially by Cheney and Rumsfeld and others, pre-war do not match reality post-war. There is a justifiable debate about why and whether there was mendacity involved.

There is no question that Wilson lied, partisan mandacity or that the "16 words" are true.

Here's what Cheney said on Meet the Press in early 2003.

'"He's (Saddam) had years to get good at it and we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons'

As far as Saddam's reconstituted nuclear program, it seems to be a strange program indeed, without any uranium (The Tuwatha stuff was still under seal), any centrifuges (some tiny parts were buried 10 years back in Obedi's garden, but still buried), or without much of the other R& D work, production steps and the like that are required to build a nuclear weapon.

The most we know (andt thats what Kays original report said) is that some Iraq carried out some small and relatively unsophisticated research initiatives that could be applied to nuclear weapons, but he also said that they did not constitute a resumption of the nuclear weapons program.

Incidentally, Cheney's statement came when El Baradei and his inspectors were scanning the country, so you can't even give the excuse that this was at a time that the US had no visibility into Iraq's program.

Jon Juzlak,

Nice try.

But, if declarative statements about Saddam possessing WMD are needed, I can certainly provide a litany of current and former Democratic officials doing so.

>Does anyone pay attention to Judge Andrew P. Napolitano of Fox News?

in a word...no.

I am no more inclined to believe that British Intelligence is infallible and didn't bow to subtle pressure from their masters than to believe the CIA is infallible and never bowed to pressure from Doug Feith's masters, minions and dupes.

To say: because it is reported that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" settles the issue of whether that statement is true or not is ridiculous, tautological and gives too much credence to yet another Coalition of the Willing Major Partner's intelligence apparatus desparate to resusitate any of the rationales used by leaders and sold to the public as justification for a preemptive war against Iraq.

Settled the issue? Not by a long shot.

Another thing: notice how convenient this process is: blind acceptance of a conclusion in a report, the evidence for which report and conclusion cannot be independently verified, of an investigation of classified intelligence conducted by politians more or less beholden to the party leadership which relied on the intelligence and initiated the investigation.

It is just too neat a setup, a closed loop with the public on the outside and defenders of the administration on the inside, to deserve our unquestioning acceptance of anything such a process produces, especially conclusions which exculpate the persons in control of the apparatus and the process.

Call me a cynic or a skeptic and I will thank you for the compliment.

>Well, Bush didn't say 'The British Government has said that', or even 'claims that'. He said "learned that", which implies that Bush was assigning some of his own credibility to it.

Wow. You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Yes, they "learned" it. And it was true.

And Bush didn't lie. Wilson and Plame did. And the UN did. And Saddam did. And Chirac did. And Moore did. And the "anti-war" socialists did.

And Bush didn't.

So there.

Call me a cynic or a skeptic and I will thank you for the compliment.

OK, but will you hear me through all the aluminum foil?

We're not talking about 'declarative statements'. We're talking about the 2nd most senior official (some would say the effective most senior official) in the government saying that Saddam has reconstituted nuclear weapons and making extremely serious statements about Saddamn's program.

None of those seem to have been true. The aluminium tubes were not for centrifuges.

>YOu forgot other crucial questions
-- Since Valerie Plame was probably alive at that time, could she have been on the grassy knoll in Dallas ?

Oooh. Struck a nerve, I guess.

So then, just why did Wilson cook up this conspiracy theory. Why did he present this lie to the Post, exposing his secret mission to Niger, and lying about what he found there?

Why did Plame arrange to hire Wilson to investigate the Niger connection when he was not qualified?

Why did Wilson and Plame both deny that it was her connection that got Wilson hired for such a mission?

I have to say, if anybody has 'splainin' to do, it's the Wilsons. But the sudden silence of the media makes it only that much more fishy.

"Uh, no one's alleged that. The allegation was that the claim was based on documents that were known to be forged and that it shouldn't have been made. The allegation stands."

Well that is a silly allegation since the quote in question specifically sources British intelligence, mentions Africa and not Niger, and would have in fact been correct if it had been made about Niger.

We're not talking about 'declarative statements'. We're talking about the 2nd most senior official (some would say the effective most senior official) in the government saying that Saddam has reconstituted nuclear weapons and making extremely serious statements about Saddamn's program.

Uh, isn't that a declarative statement?

What we're talking about is a partisan trying to switch the topic to stale Democratic talking points that mischaracterize what the Vice President actually said.

Now, that's fine and all, just don't pretend that's not what you're doing.

'Wow. You're really scraping the bottom of the barrel.'

This coming from someone who claims that Plaime may have somehow been responsible for not finding WMD sin iraq.

'Yes, they "learned" it. And it was true.'

It was true ? Now that we have almost all the relevant Iraqi officials packed away and most document on this, how come we haven't found this, Oracle ?

'And Bush didn't lie. Wilson and Plame did. And the UN did. And Saddam did. And Chirac did. And Moore did. And the "anti-war" socialists did.

And Bush didn't.

So there.'

Do you have any idea how strange you sound ?
"Everybody lies. EVerybody does. But Bush. "

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/apps/custom/cap/findorg.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=45294

The bottom line: The war was sold on the basis of WMD stockpiles, Al Qeda links, nuclear weapons etc. by the Bush administration. Now the Senate and the 9/11 commission have debunked those. Amazing as it seems, both Blix and El Baradei were correct. And Bush was wrong. Thats the most generous interpreation by far.

Keep saying that, all the way.

EH,

The allegation was that the claim was based on documents that were known to be forged and that it shouldn't have been made. The allegation stands.

1. Bush administration admitted that the claim should not have been included, but not because it was based on the forged documents ("The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.") but because the only intel we had domestically were the forged documents and had not verified/could not verify the reports from friendly foreign intel and diplomatic agencies.

2. Wilson lied about his wife's involvement in his selection. Her presence/introduction at the intel meeting where he said he didn't know anyone, plus oral and written recommendation leaves little doubt about that.

3. Wilson mischaracterized his report and actually confirmed that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

4. This also undercuts the vindictive outing theory since, well, she did recommend him. Now whether the innuendo of nepotism is fair or not, it's true as opposed to implying something that was not true. There is still no evidence that the "leaker" knew she had a cover, but we now know Plame and Wilson have played the press and have been very partisan.

5. The British did not claim that Iraq bought uranium, but sought to buy uranium. The Senate report supports that conclusion and the Butler report is also expected to support that.

6. There is a possibility now that the Hatch act has been violated if Foley, Plame and Wilson engaged in prohibited political/partisan activities in this charade.

'Oooh. Struck a nerve, I guess.'

I actually had a good laugh at your suggestion that Plaime was responsible for WMDs not being found in Iraq. Keep saying that, it makes you seem even more of a nutcase.

I don't deny that Wilson clearly lied on at least 2 matters. It makes him seem like a mendacious hack, but thats still a far cry from being the Svengali that you claim he is.

'What we're talking about is a partisan trying to switch the topic to stale Democratic talking points that mischaracterize what the Vice President actually said'

I said in my very first post that I thought Wilson was clearly lying. As for Cheney, it seems that at the very least, he was exaggerating and mis-stating.

In any case, I believe the key point of the report is not Wilson but the general intelligence we had with respect to the Iraqi nuclear program, and how it seemed to have been all wrong. Iraq had no nuclear program to speak of, and practicaly all the claims made about it were inaccurate.

If you believe that the most important part of the report for the country is that Wilson was shooting his mouth off, then thats your choice. But don't claim thats the only topic worthy of discussion.

Jon Juzlak,

If you believe that the most important part of the report for the country is that Wilson was shooting his mouth off, then thats your choice. But don't claim thats the only topic worthy of discussion.

I don't, it's just that that is the topic of the post, Wilson's credibility and all.

But I do agree with you that once we've dispensed of Wilson as a partisan mendacious hack, there are much more important problems concerning our intel community and dealing with a closed murderous non-European regimes like Iraq and modern international terrorism.

The first step, IMO, is to admit this is a bipartisan problem that has existed since the end of the Cold War.

Not sure that's possible until after November, and maybe still not then while the country is so heatedly divided politically and culturally.

'Wilson mischaracterized his report and actually confirmed that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.'

Where is this described ? I've been looking at the report and I don't see that anywhere. The most that is said that is that the Nigerien Foreign Minister thought they might have wanted uranium although they didn't ask for it.

'4. This also undercuts the vindictive outing theory since, well, she did recommend him. Now whether the innuendo of nepotism is fair or not, it's true as opposed to implying something that was not true. There is still no evidence that the "leaker" knew she had a cover, but we now know Plame and Wilson have played the press and have been very partisan.'

The charge of nepotism seems reasonably fair although Wilson didn't get any money AFAIK. What also seems clear is that Wilson had an inflated sense of his own importance in his belief that his report (which was not based on any real ground-level digging) would somehow close the issue.

Jon J:

What's really troubling is that a CIA analyst uses her clout to give an assignment to her husband to confirm or deny a "crazy story". It sounds like somebody was looking to have their preconceptions confirmed. I'll be honest -- that behavior -- which seems to have been rife at the CIA if the report is to believed -- bothers me aheck of a lot more than a borderline malicious leak in a town full of malicious leaks.

>I actually had a good laugh at your suggestion that Plaime was responsible for WMDs not being found in Iraq. Keep saying that, it makes you seem even more of a nutcase.

I'm glad it's a matter of amusement to you that CIA agents are working counter to the interests of this country, and are in fact working to protect people like Saddam Hussein.

If Plame who is part of the WMD search, was willing to betray her country for the sake of sabotaging the war, who's to say she, and her compatriots, would not also go so far as to sabotage the WMD hunt?

She wouldn't be the first such traitor. The CIA and FBI have both had their share.

Where is this described ?

I'm going from here, starting at the "bottom of page 44". Now, we can debate the export trade from Niger that Iraq wanted and what Wilson thought he was telling the CIA and what the CIA report says he told them. But, really, I'd rather not ... cause I wasn't there and all.

The charge of nepotism seems reasonably fair although Wilson didn't get any money AFAIK.

It was expenses paid, but no salary/remuneration in addition.

What also seems clear is that Wilson had an inflated sense of his own importance in his belief that his report (which was not based on any real ground-level digging) would somehow close the issue.

LOL, ya think?

i want to make up this story to fit either extreme point of view, and see what I have to fudge to do it. So....

Let's figure that the Bush administration is right and Wilson is wrong. Can we make a story compatible with that?

Here's the CIA WMD team, and they have not nearly enough people and also they are clueless. A foreign intelligence service claims that niger is selling uranium to rogue nations including iraq. They have no evidence at all, and no way to get evidence, and they don't even have any clues what the secret report says. (Right here we have to fudge, they saw the report and it was more impressive than previous forgeries, they thought it might be real. They asked to question the source with polygraph, the response was blacked out.) They look for some way to investigate and come up with nothing. Finally Plame says that her husband knows his way around the niger government and he could at least go there and ask questions. Nobody can come up with any better idea or any alternative person to send. So they talk it over with him, what sort of questions to ask etc. They neglect to require a NDA from sheer negligence. He goes to niger and asks around and of course comes up with nothing except a few mild rumors. The CIA bundles his report in with everything else since they have basicly nothing.

Some time later he hears about the forged report and assumes that it was what he was supposed to investigate. He jumps to lots of conclusions and goes to the media with them.

Somebody in the White House staff is charged with answering him. But they've never heard of him before and they don't understand what he's talking about and they have no idea what he'll say next. They go to their contacts in the CIA and ask about him. "Oh, he doesn't know anything. He got sent out a couple of times to find things out and he didn't really find anything, they only sent him because of his wife." So they try that approach. He's clueless and he only got an in because his CIA wife spoke up for him. At this point the nicest conjecture is they messed up and didn't think to ask whether it was OK to repeat that. The WH agent sent his story to at least 11 news guys and most of them caught onto the problem and didn't publish it, but one went ahead. Wilson ran with that, his wife was getting persecuted and that proved he was right about everything.

The two of them had become politically important because of the scandal surrounding them, and so the Senate subcommittee report had to pay attention to him -- if it didn't, it would look like they weren't addressing his claims. So they covered his report which didn't actually show much of anything, and made a big deal about his wife suggesting he get the assignment because it had come up before. They tried to make him look like he didn't know anything because he had made charges against the administration they wanted to debunk, and because he actually didn't know anything. And that's all he head to do with it.

Have I left out anything important? No big conspiracy against him, just they needed to respond to his charges. They made the blunder of outing Plame which made it look like he was important.

Next, try it from the other side.

Marshall's latest reply ( http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_07_11.php#003150 ):

"Really, why argue? If there's no legal case and no political problem, why don't the senior administration officials who leaked her identity just come forward? If their rationale is a good one and they face no legal jeopardy, what's the problem? It seems like a great opportunity to clear the air, settle the story, ascertain the facts and let the chips fall where they may.

"Doing so will save much of the money being spent on the investigation Mr. Fitzgerald is running. They can save themselves a lot of attorneys' fees. And they can have a free opportunity to explain the rationale behind their decision and why they believed it was the right thing to do in the context.

"I can only assume by their silence that they're rather less confident about the quality of their explanation and the degree of their legal jeopardy than their many voluble defenders in the conservative press."

Who can disagree with that? Bring it ALL out. Let them explain why they thought it was morally justifiable to out Plame. Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free (unless it gets you 1 to 5).

"I can only assume by their silence that they're rather less confident about the quality of their explanation and the degree of their legal jeopardy than their many voluble defenders in the conservative press."

Well, we can start with "ass-u-me" and that silence during a criminal investigation implies guilt.

Since the CIA forwarded a complaint to Justice, there is an investigation. Everyone gets to tell their side of the story and Fitzgerald gets to decide if there has been a crime. Remember, that's the first step in his investigation.

The important aspect of these investigations to remember is that Fitzgerald may decide that a crime has been committed, one other than what he had originally been asked to investigate.

That's why everyone "lawyers up" AND cooperates once a US prosecutor starts his investigation.

Marshall's being an idiot.

Let me address just one particularly crazy point people on the right -- including Drezner -- seem to be making about Wilson. That is the claim that the Senate report somehow makes a case that Plame and Wilson may have been in some kind of conspiracy to go after the Bush administration, which is why Plame "recommended" Wilson, and why Wilson took up the job to go to Niger.

This is just crackpot, because, at the time at which Wilson went over to Niger, he had NO reason to believe that Bush would be talking about the Iraqi-Niger uranium connection. Remember the sequence here -- FIRST Wilson went to Niger, and THEN Bush and his handlers included mentions of African uranium in his Cincinatti speech, and then in his SOTU.

What is the claim here, that Wilson had psychic abilities, and knew that he would later be able to embarrass Bush with what he determined on his mission? How was this supposed to work?

All this discussion is all the more absurd because, I find myself having to repeat, NOT A SINGLE FACT OR CONCLUSION in Wilson's report to the CIA has EVER been established as false. If Wilson was incompetent or biased, should one be able to point SOME fact or conclusion that was wrong, distorted, or deceptive? Isn't THAT why people worry about bias?

Even the thing people point to as a sign of Wilson's disingenuousness, namely his claim to a reporter that he knew at the time of his CIA report that the Niger documents were forged, is based on an incorrect assertion about when he became aware of something that was, in fact, true, namely that the names and dates on the documents could not possibly be right.

Finally, was Wilson right to come forward publicly with the basic conclusions of his report? The argument seems to be that he had no right to do so, because the quality of his intelligence was not high enough to merit this. Now it may be that Wilson overestimated the importance of his report in the thinking of the CIA. Perhaps the people he spoke with about it congratulated him on a good job, and told him it was quite useful. Who knows?

Yet the fact is, on every particular, Wilson can claim that he has, to date, only been vindicated. Wilson concluded that the likelihood of smuggling, and even, apparently, of any attempt to do so, was very small, given what he had determined.

The fact that Wilson could not uncover important NEW evidence, which was what kept his report from getting a higher rating, is EXACTLY what one would expect if there was no smuggling, or attempt at such. How, after all, do you prove a negative like this? What could POSSIBLY count as incontrovertible evidence when no such thing occurred? Wilson came back with what was probably as good an account as possible, given those circumstances: evidence regarding the structural characteristics of the uranium operation in Niger and its control that rendered it extremely unlikely that such a thing occurred.

If the CIA sent further people to investigate the situation, then that is simply the precaution one should take, given that you are trying to eliminate a negative as best as you can. So far as I know, none of the further people uncovered anything more pertinent to the issue than did Wilson -- not surprisingly, given that there was nothing positive to uncover.

Suppose Wilson was right. How would we have to twist the record to make it come out that way?

We start with the CIA WMD team, which is understaffed but competent. They have no credible evidence that Saddam has started up his nuclear program, and some evidence that he hasn't. But they're under pressure by their higher-ups to prove that he has. A foreign group claims to have evidence. Officially they haven't seen the documentation yet. Really they have copies, but they can't admit it for one of those spy reasons. (They stole copies from a friendly nation. Or they compromised codes and got it that way. Or the foreign intelligence service was ordered by their government not to show it to anyone, and they did (since it was useless otherwise) and the CIA promised not to reveal it. Etc.)

They don't know what to do next, and Plame points out her husband knows about this stuff. They show him the reports and he promptly finds things wrong. It's forged. It looks like it was copied from an older document and poorly updated. They send him to niger to confirm that. He talks to old friends. "Say, remember old Ngumbe, whatever happened to him? Which year did he quit, anyway? And how about Mbebwe, I heard he was going to get back in harness, did he ever try to get his old job back?" It's definite, forgeries.

He goes back and they cut out the important parts of his report because they can't admit they had the documents.

Later he sees Bush talking like those documents are real and he reports it. He'd already proved they weren't. But then Plame explains to him, he can't say he saw the documents back then. Oops. All the details that can he released aren't enough to make it look like he knows anything. Ouch.

He had no idea Plame recommended him for the job. He was pretty much the only candidate and he knew it. How many americans have a background in Niger for that time? He was there and he knew who else was there -- nobody. Even if she had mentioned his name, there were no other candidates. And the choice wasn't made at her level anyway.

It isn't important for this story why the Bush people outed Plame. They could have thought the whole CIA was against them, they could have not noticed, Wilson's story is the same.

Have I left out something important? The central things to explain are his saying that Plame didn't choose him and that he had identified the forgeries learly but he couldn't say so later.

OK, I'll try a third time. What explanation is the most likely, given the stories we hear? Of course, given the large number of possibilities I can't expect to get it right, but how close can we come?

The CIA was desperately trying to get Bush the best results they could, but they were getting pressured to give him only what he wanted to hear. They didn't like it. Even worse Rumsfeld had set up his own independent intelligence unit that did nothing but uncritically look for evidence that supported the claim. Some retired agents decided it would be a good thing if those "independent" agents got taught a lesson. They contacted israeli agents who owed them a favor and suggested they forge documents that would be easy to disprove, about iraqis getting niger yellowcake. The israelis were only too happy to oblige. They chose an intermediary to sell the documents to the italians for whatever they could get. They sent copies to the CIA to show what they were doing.

Meanwhile the pressure and threats got worse. The italians were supposed to send copies to Rumsfeld's guys, who would announce them as real, Rumsfeld would send copies to the CIA who would show it wasn't, and they'd teach everybody a lesson.

But the White House guys never sent them a copy to debunk, they just ran with it. The CIA couldn't admit they already had a copy, it would look like they were trying to set up Bush to look bad. Even worse, the british MI6 was firmly under Blair's control and was swearing that the documents were correct. With that spinning out of control, MI6 would likely have to forge their own superior versions so they could have something else to reveal.

And the pressure on the CIA kept getting worse. When they heard that Bush was planning mass CIA firings to replace them with people who'd tell him whatever he wanted to hear, they finally started to counterattack. They got Wilson to tell part of the truth. This was a warning, they could do worse. They were inviting Cheney and Rumsfeld to negotiate. But the response they got was an attack, publicly revealing Plame's job.

Theoretically the CIA ought to simply let Bush purge them, let many careers be wrecked, watch the CIA's ability to do its job be destroyed. Bush is their employer, whatever he says goes. But self-preservation was aligned with the good of the nation. Wilson went on a speaking tour, and the CIA got ready to release more damaging things.

But the white house guys told leading republican senators that the CIA had gone rogue, it was ready to forge documents to influence the election. Which was true by that time. The senators staged their own investigation selectively using the data the CIA gave them. One immediate goal was to smear Wilson and show that Bush and Cheney were blameless. The long-term goal was to establish that the CIA needed to be purged. They left enough areas that could be held against them for the Democrats to sign. Remember that the Democrats had no particular secret contacts with the CIA. There was no CIA/Democrat conspiracy that could be uncovered. So the story doesn't have to explain why the Democrats signed the report which is intended to destroy the CIA.

It's a slow-motion battle. Disgruntled Army guys are supposed to resign and then tell the truth to the media. Mostly they're sitting it out. They'd rather keep their careers. But disgruntled CIA guys attack from cover, you never find out who was behind it.

Would the CIA secretly provide evidence that Bush lied? Hardly. Everybody who cares about that sort of thing is already voting against him. More likely it will be attacks on his character, things that would make him look bad to religious people. Maybe dramatic proof about his continuing alcoholism. A strategy session gets "accidentally" taped that reveals Bush's utter cynicism about his core voter blocks. Something central, that appears to have nothing to do with the CIA at all. Outing a CIA agent might get the whole CIA mad at him, or maybe not -- I haven't checked with any conservative CIA agents to see. But they aren't a major voting block, and it isn't an issue with swing voters. The people who care that much about the CIA have made up their minds already. An effective attack would be about morals, and to me the most obvious believable angles would be his drunkenness and his atempts to look sincere when he is actually an effective politician.

And what will the Mossad do? Are they better off with Bush in office, 200% behind them but erratic and likely to get them implicated in neocon scandals? or are they better off with Kerry and a clean slate, 150% behind them and no neocon taint? For Kerry, they could get their intermediary to talk about how he peddled his lies and the White House bought it all. For Bush, they could plant weapons-grade material in iraq for the americans to find, or do things to discredit the CIA, etc. What best serves their interests?

more than three months to the elections. A lot can happen in three months.

I really want to thank some of you for the laughs - really, watching you twist yourself in knots trying to defend such a completely transparent partisan hack as Wilson has been fun.

One big question in all this was "Why was Wilson sent?" The more we learn about him, the more apparent it becomes that he wasn't qualified to investigate the question of whether Iraq was seeking nuclear materials from Niger.

So of course it was necessary to swat away any suggestion that his wife got him the gig - because if she did, as opposed to him being selected "on the merits", then it would be more apparent that CIA wasn't taking either the report or the investigation of the report very seriously.

And as it turns out - he lied. He was quite categorical that his wife had nothing to do with it, when, in fact, she most definitely did.

The "This is a partisan Republican document" charge is also good for a giggle - I suppose the Republicans forced the Democrats on the Committee to sign off on it, as they all did, right?

I guess the Democrats lied when they signed off on the Report they didn't agree with, right?

Are you sure some of you aren't Jay Rockefeller?

And it's amazing to see long-discredited talking points, like "Cheney lied when he said Iraq had reconstituted nuclear weapons" trotted out yet again. I guess the Goebbels / Moore approach to propaganda - Just keep repeating it no matter how many times it gets slapped down - governs, eh?

As for the "Iraq attempting to purchase yellowcake story": [a] the Brits have always stood by their analysis; [b] their analysis was never dependent upon the forged documents; and [c] indeed, the forged documents are now believed to have been disinformation, i.e., forgeries which would be obvious to professionals which, when discovered, would bolster the arguments of those who sought to discredit the evidence of Iraq's effort to obtain nuclear material.

These were some of the questions I had last year:

Why did the CIA send a non-employee to investigate something that should have been a high priority?
Why were CIA assets already in Africa deemed inadequate?
Who in the CIA approved sending Wilson?
Who authorized Wilson's reimbursement for expenses?
To whom did Wilson provide his oral report on his return?
What secrecy or non-disclosure agreements were executed concerning Wilson's trip?
What role did Alan Foley or Valerie Plame play in subsequent CIA leaks about classified intelligence (NIE) on Iraqi WMD and WMD proliferation?

Some have been answered, some are perhaps moot, some still should be answered. I'll let the reader decide which is which.

There is also a good historical summary here.

From Frankly0, 7/11, 9:58PM:

ALL the Senate reports points out is that there is a single sentence in a single memo by Plame that mentions the appropriateness of her husband's background.

How is ANY of the Time quote inconsistent with that?

Do you have anything with something resembling a real contradiction?

Hmm, the Time quote, from the same post:

[Wilson] angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa. "That is bulls__t. That is absolutely not the case," Wilson told TIME. "I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the Feb 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job."

And from the Senate report, also excerpted in this thread at 7/11, 2:21 PM:

On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO’s Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of the former ambassador traveling to Niger. An INR analyst’s notes indicated that the meeting was “apparently convened by the [former ambassador’s] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue.” The former ambassador’s wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes.

Does that represent a contradiction?

Truth and Consequences

If Josh and his ilk are going to poke fun at the Judith Millers--shouldn't they come clean on similar issues related to swallowing a load of bull?

Call it defining gotcha-journalism down.

Ouch.

Here are the key points to note:

-- The Brits apparently thought and think that there was some intelligence that Saddam was seeking uranium in Niger.
-- The US disagrees that was credible intelligence
-- Irregardless of all that, it does not seem that Saddam was seeking uranium. We have all his staff, most of his papers, and it seems that his nuclear program was dead, and that he was not seeking uranium (indeed, he already had plenty of regular uranium in Iraq).
-- Wilson exaggerated his own importance and seems to have lied (or at the least misstated) some of his comments, especially about seeing his documents. However, its probably correct that his wife didn't make the decision to send him, and such details as a meeting which his wife might have attended for a few minutes are dispuated. She definitely recommended him, though.

Comments suggesting that he's some kind of traitor are ridiculous -- this man risked his life to save 800 Americans during GWI. He may be a blowhard, but not a traitor. Also, suggestions that he or his wife might have violated the Hatch act are bizarre. He was not an employee, so the Hatch act doesn't apply to him, his wife has not said anything openly.

So the whole story was probably overblown, but the bigger picture -- exaggerations and scaremongering in the search for WMDs remains accurate.