Leader

The White House, the CIA, and the Wilsons
The chain of events that gave rise to a grand jury investigation.
by Stephen F. Hayes
10/24/2005, Volume 011, Issue 06


FOR TWO YEARS, THE political class in Washington has followed with intense interest the story of Joseph Wilson and the events that led to the compromising of his wife's identity and undercover status as a CIA operative. The rest of the country seems to have responded with a collective yawn. That will soon change if special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald issues indictments of senior White House aides in his investigation of the alleged leaking of Mrs. Wilson's name.

The narrative constructed to date by the mainstream media is uncomplicated: The White House exaggerated claims of Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Niger despite objections from the CIA and the broader U.S. intelligence community. In the late spring of 2003, Joseph Wilson laid bare this White House deception with firsthand accounts of his involvement in the intelligence-gathering. Bush administration officials quickly became obsessed with Wilson, and their anger drove them to retaliate, exposing Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, by leaking her identity to reporters.

Think this is oversimplified? Here is a Washington Post summary of the events leading up to the investigation, from July 27, 2005:

Simple. Clean. And very misleading. The real story is considerably more complicated.

ON OCTOBER 15, 2001, the CIA received a report from a foreign government service that the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein had struck a deal with the government of Niger to purchase several tons of partially processed uranium, known as "yellowcake." The first report was met with some skepticism. The CIA found the substance of the report plausible but expressed concern about its sourcing. The State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was more dubious. INR thought it unlikely that the government of Niger would take the substantial risks involved in doing illicit business with a rogue regime. INR analysts also expressed doubt that the transaction could have taken place because the uranium mines in Niger are controlled by a French consortium, which would be reluctant to work with Saddam Hussein--an objection that seems naive with the benefit of hindsight.

On October 18, 2001, the CIA published a Senior Executive Intelligence Bulletin that discussed the finding. "According to a foreign government service, Niger as of early this year planned to send several tons of uranium to Iraq under an agreement concluded late last year." The report noted the sourcing: "There is no corroboration from other sources that such an agreement was reached or that uranium was transferred."

Several months later came a second report, dated February 5, 2002, also from a "foreign government service." It contained more details of the alleged transaction. An official from the CIA's directorate of operations said that the new information came from "a very credible source," and some of the reporting seemed to corroborate earlier accounts of meetings between Nigerien officials and Iraqis. The State Department's INR remained skeptical, judging that the Iraqis were unlikely to engage in such illicit trade because they were "bound to be caught."

Analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency wrote a report using the new information entitled "Niamey signed an agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Baghdad." It was published internally on February 12, 2002, and included in the daily intelligence briefing prepared for Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney asked his CIA briefer for more information, including the CIA's analysis of the report. The CIA filed a perfunctory response to the vice president's request, noting some concerns about the report and promising to follow up. It is unclear whether Cheney saw this response.

The promised CIA follow-up came quickly. That same day officials at the agency's Counterproliferation Division discussed how they might investigate further. An employee of the division, Valerie Wilson, suggested the agency send her husband, Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Gabon with experience in Niger, to Africa to make inquiries. In a memo to the deputy director of the Counterproliferation Division, she wrote: "My husband has good relations with the PM [prime minister of Niger] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." Mrs. Wilson would later say she asked her husband, on behalf of the CIA, if he would investigate "this crazy report" on a uranium deal between Iraq and Niger. Wilson agreed to go.

On February 18, 2002, the U.S. embassy in Niger sent a cable describing a new account of the alleged deal. The account, it said, "provides sufficient detail to warrant another hard look at Niger's uranium sales." The cable further warned against dismissing the allegations prematurely. The following day, back at Langley, representatives of several U.S. intelligence agencies met with Ambassador Wilson to discuss the trip. Contemporaneous notes from an analyst at the State Department's INR suggest that Mrs. Wilson "apparently convened" the meeting. She introduced her husband to the group and left a short time later. Several of the attendees would later recall questioning the value of the proposed trip, noting that the Nigeriens were unlikely to admit dealing with the Iraqis. Still, the CIA approved the trip.

Here is how Wilson would later recall his investigation in his now-famous New York Times op-ed.

Wilson met with U.S. Ambassador to Niger Barbara Owens-Kirkpatrick, who, like the State Department's intelligence bureau, thought the alleged sale unlikely. Wilson continued:

Wilson was debriefed by two CIA officials at his home on March 5, 2002. He never filed a written report. The resulting CIA report was published and disseminated in the regular intelligence stream three days later. The report included the unsurprising declaration of former Nigerien prime minister Ibrahim Mayaki that Niger had signed no contracts with rogue states while he served first as foreign minister and then prime minister, from 1996 to 1999. But Mayaki added one tantalizing detail, also included in the CIA report that resulted from Wilson's trip. An Iraqi delegation had visited Niger in 1999 to explore "expanding commercial relations" between Iraq and Niger. Mayaki had met with the Iraqis and later concluded that their request for enhanced trade meant they wanted to discuss purchasing uranium. Mayaki said he had not pursued the matter because such deals were prohibited under U.N. sanctions.

Reactions to the report differed. The INR analyst believed Wilson's report supported his assessment that deals between Iraq and Niger were unlikely. Analysts at the CIA thought the Wilson report added little to the overall knowledge of the Iraq-Niger allegations but noted with particular interest the visit of the Iraqi delegation in 1999. That report may have seemed noteworthy because of the timing of the Iraqi visit. The CIA had several previous reports of Iraq seeking uranium in Africa in 1999, specifically from Congo and Somalia.

On balance, then, Wilson's trip seemed to several analysts to make the original claims of an Iraq-Niger deal more plausible.

Throughout the spring and summer, finished intelligence products from several U.S. intelligence agencies cited the reporting on Iraq and Niger as evidence that the Iraqis were continuing their pursuit of nuclear weapons. Some of these noted the doubts of the skeptics, while others were more aggressive in their analysis. A September 2002 DIA paper, for instance, was titled Iraq's Reemerging Nuclear Program. It declared: "Iraq has been vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake."

THE WHITE HOUSE began to take its case against Iraq to the American public beginning in the late summer of 2002. Vice President Cheney warned of the threat from Iraq in a stern speech in Nashville on August 26. Behind the scenes at the White House, communications officials developed talking points and fact sheets for administration officials and their surrogates. Most of these included the Iraq-Niger intelligence, and all of them were cleared by the CIA.

The CIA also cleared several references to the Iraq-Niger intelligence--some more direct than others--for use in speeches written for President Bush. This language was cleared by the CIA on September 11, 2002:

Although Bush spoke the following day at the United Nations, he did not use the CIA-approved language.

The first public mention of the intelligence reporting on Iraq and Niger came on September 24, 2002, in a white paper produced by the British government. "There is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The CIA had reservations about the British dossier, but not because of its substance. Despite the fact that the British paper did not link the intelligence to Niger, officials at the CIA were concerned that the reference could compromise the source that had provided the intelligence.

That same day, September 24, staffers at the National Security Council (NSC) asked the CIA to clear additional language on Iraq and Niger. "We also have intelligence that Iraq has sought large amounts of uranium and uranium oxide, known as yellowcake, from Africa. Yellowcake is an essential ingredient in the process to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons." The CIA once again approved the language, but once again the president did not use it.

The Senate Select Intelligence Committee met on October 2, 2002, and questioned senior U.S. intelligence officials in closed session about the threat from Iraq. Here, for the first time, a senior CIA official raised doubts about the reporting on Iraq and Niger. Responding to a question from Senator Jon Kyl, who asked if there was anything in the British white paper that the CIA disputed, deputy CIA director John McLaughlin said this:

It was a strange claim, and it provides a first glimpse of the internal confusion at the CIA on the issue of Iraq and Niger. One day earlier, on October 1, 2002, the CIA had published the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi WMD, Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction. This classified document--the U.S. government's official position on Iraqi WMD programs--lifted almost verbatim the aggressive language used in the aforementioned DIA study, Iraq's Reemerging Nuclear Program, published just two weeks earlier: "Iraq [has been] vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake; acquiring either would shorten the time Baghdad needs to produce nuclear weapons."

The National Intelligence Estimate continued: "A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of 'pure uranium' (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Iraq and Niger reportedly were still working out arrangements for this deal, which would be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake. We do not know the status of this arrangement." The NIE included a bullet point about other intelligence on Iraq's pursuit of uranium. "Reports indicate Iraq has also sought uranium ore from Somalia and possibly the Democratic Republic of the Congo." The INR objections to the Iraq-Niger intelligence were included but, because of an editing glitch, were placed some 60 pages away from the consensus view.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration continued its public relations campaign to demonstrate that Saddam Hussein was a threat. The White House was finalizing the text of a speech the president was scheduled to deliver in Cincinnati on October 7, 2002, on the eve of the congressional vote to authorize the use of force against Iraq. The speechwriters continued their regular back and forth with the CIA for clearance of potentially sensitive language. On draft six of the speech, the CIA objected to this sentence: "The [Iraqi] regime has been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from Africa--an essential ingredient in the enrichment process."

Had something changed? The National Intelligence Estimate published just three days earlier included language as aggressive as the language proposed for the Cincinnati speech. Was it a matter of classification? The NIE was classified, while the language in the speech was meant for public consumption. And the CIA had been nervous about the British white paper. Still, twice in September the CIA had cleared similar language for a presidential address.

The White House sent the next iteration of the speech to the CIA for clearance, and the language on Iraq and Africa had not been taken out. This oversight prompted a phone call from CIA Director George Tenet to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. Tenet later recalled telling Hadley that "the reporting was weak," and that the line shouldn't be used in the Cincinnati speech. Hadley removed the disputed language, and the CIA later faxed over its reasoning for insisting on the change.

Then there occurred a communications breakdown that would prove costly. For reasons still unexplained, it appears that these objections were not communicated down the chain. The two officials responsible for coordinating the translation of intelligence into public rhetoric--Alan Foley, a top CIA nonproliferation expert, and Robert Joseph, a special assistant to the president for nonproliferation and a senior director at the NSC--were kept in the dark. In the months to come, Foley and Joseph would proceed unaware that any substantive objections had been raised to the Niger intelligence.

In an ironic twist that underscores the chronic miscommunication, on the very day President Bush delivered the Cincinnati speech--making no mention of Iraq's seeking uranium in Africa--the CIA once again approved language for a White House paper claiming Iraq had "sought uranium from Africa."

Two days later, on October 9, 2002, the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, spoke of the Iraqi threat in explaining his vote to authorize the use of force. "There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons and will likely have nuclear weapons within the next five years. And that may happen sooner if he can obtain access to enriched uranium from foreign sources--something that is not that difficult in the current world." (Rockefeller would be one of 77 senators voting to authorize the use of force against Iraq. The vote in the House would be 296-133.)

THEN THE STORY TOOK A BIZARRE TURN. That same day, October 9, an Italian journalist walked into the U.S. embassy in Rome and delivered a set of documents purportedly showing that Iraq had indeed purchased uranium from Niger. The embassy provided the documents to the State Department and the CIA. At State, an INR analyst almost instantly suspected the documents might be forgeries. Although several different CIA divisions received copies of the documents, the agency provided no immediate evaluation of them and did not identify them as likely fabrications.

Two events in the fall of 2002 seemed to enhance the credibility of the initial reporting on an Iraq-Niger deal. First, a French diplomat told the State Department that his government had received additional, credible reporting on the transaction and had concluded that the earlier reports were true. A second report, this one from the U.S. Navy, suggested that uranium being transferred from Niger to Iraq had been discovered in a warehouse in Cotonou, Benin. Although that report indicated that the broker for the deal was willing to talk about it, he was never contacted by the CIA or military intelligence.

On December 7, 2002, Iraq submitted to the United Nations an 11,000-page document on its weapons programs, as required by U.N. Resolution 1441. The CIA prepared the U.S. response to the Iraqi declaration. Among the scores of objections was the fact that Iraq had failed to account for its attempts to acquire uranium from Africa.

In the days leading up to the president's State of the Union speech, the Iraq-uranium-Africa claim was used repeatedly by senior U.S. officials. A January 23 speech by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz noted Iraq's failure to admit its effort to procure uranium from abroad; U.N. ambassador John Negroponte referenced it in a speech at the Security Council; the State Department included it in a fact sheet published on the department website; Secretary of State Colin Powell even used a generalized version of it in a January 26, 2003, speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: "Why is Iraq still trying to procure uranium and the special equipment to transform it into material for nuclear weapons?"

Even as some CIA officials expressed doubts about the original Iraq-Niger reporting and the INR analyst quietly voiced his concerns about a potential hoax after careful examination of the Iraq-Niger documents passed to the U.S. embassy in Rome, the CIA approved Iraq-Niger language for the White House. Although George Tenet had been given an early draft of the State of the Union address, he never read it. As Alan Foley from the CIA and Bob Joseph from the NSC vetted the language for Bush's speech, Foley raised a concern about the Iraq-Niger wording. The agency was concerned--as it had been in the past--about potentially compromising sources and methods by disclosing the Iraq-Africa intelligence. To ease the CIA's anxiety about sources and methods, Joseph passed on a suggestion from the White House communications office: Source the reporting to the British because their government had already made the argument publicly in the white paper it had issued some five months earlier. Importantly, the CIA never objected to including the Iraq-Africa language in the State of the Union on the grounds that the information was not reliable.

That's worth repeating: The CIA never objected to including the Iraq-Africa language in the State of the Union on the grounds that the information was unreliable.

At the same time the White House speechwriting staff was preparing the State of the Union for delivery January 28, 2003, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were gathering materials for the upcoming U.S. presentation on Iraq to the U.N. Security Council. The CIA would provide material for three six-inch briefing books on WMD, Iraq and Terrorism, and Iraqi Human Rights Abuses. Among the WMD materials, in a memo dated January 24, 2003, was the language from the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's "vigorous" attempts to procure uranium from Africa.

On January 28, President Bush delivered his State of the Union. Among his many claims that night was this one: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

In the meantime, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. body responsible for monitoring nuclear proliferation, began to ask the United States and Britain for more information on the claims about Iraq's seeking uranium from Africa. In early February, the U.S. government made available to the IAEA the contents of its original reporting on the issue as well as the documents delivered by the Italian journalist to the U.S. embassy in Rome.

Colin Powell's U.N. presentation did not make reference to the Iraq-Africa intelligence because, according to recollections of a State Department staffer, there had been no new developments. But the claim did not end with the State of the Union. In an op-ed that ran in the Chicago Tribune on February 16, 2003, Hadley reiterated it: "Iraq has an active procurement program. According to British intelligence, the regime has tried to acquire natural uranium from abroad."

On March 3, 2003, the IAEA shared with the U.S. government its assessment that the October 2002 documents on an Iraq-Niger deal for uranium were forgeries. The following day, the French government announced that the assessment it had previously given the United States--that an Iraq-Niger deal had taken place--was based on the same forged documents. (Some current and former Bush administration officials remain convinced that the French role in this matter was no accident. They speculate that French intelligence, seeking to embarrass the U.S. government, may have been the original source of the bad documents. An FBI investigation into the matter continues.)

As the IAEA findings made their way into the U.S. media, the White House began to understand that the forgeries would be a problem. When the war started later that month, all the focus shifted to the fighting in Iraq. It would be a temporary reprieve.

ON MAY 6, 2003, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof examined prewar U.S. claims of WMD in Iraq. His article included this curious passage:

It was the first of many times Joseph Wilson would tell his story to a reporter and the first of many times he would overstate his role and invent his supposed findings. The White House didn't pay much attention to the Kristof column. Few people knew about Wilson and his CIA-sponsored trip, and those who did know dismissed Wilson's claims as wildly inaccurate. Wilson, after all, had gone to Niger and returned some eight months before the U.S. government ever came into possession of the forged documents.

But if the White House shrugged off the story, Walter Pincus of the Washington Post did not. On June 12, 2003, Pincus published a story that "kicked everything off," according to a former White House official. Pincus wrote:

Two days after the Washington Post story, on June 14, Wilson spoke at a forum sponsored by the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC). Although Wilson never told the gathering he was the source for the stories about "the ambassador's" trip to Africa, his comments revealed intimate knowledge of the mission.

The website for EPIC includes a biography of Wilson under the June 14, 2003, event that concludes with this sentence: "He is married to the former Valerie Plame and has four children."

Wilson also peddled his story to John Judis and Spencer Ackerman at the New Republic. And as in the whispered "telephone" game that kids play around the campfire, the story became more distorted the more it was told. In the New Republic's version, Vice President Cheney received the forged documents directly from the British a year before Bush spoke the "16 words" in the January 2003 State of the Union. Cheney then

It should be clear by now that the only one telling flat-out lies was Joseph Wilson. Again, Wilson's trip to Niger took place in February 2002, some eight months before the U.S. government received the phony Iraq-Niger documents in October 2002. So it is not possible, as he told the Washington Post, that he advised the CIA that "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." And it is not possible, as Wilson claimed to the New York Times, that he debunked the documents as forgeries.

That was hardly Wilson's only fabrication. He would also tell reporters that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Niger and, as noted in the New Republic article, that Vice President Cheney's office had seen the report of his findings. Both claims were false.

It seems that very few people paid attention to the CIA's report on Wilson's trip to Niger. And those who did found that his account--particularly his revelation of the meeting between Mayaki and the Iraqis in 1999--supported the original reporting that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.

If the White House launched a campaign to counter the claims Wilson was making to columnists like Kristof, it doesn't appear to have been very comprehensive. Officials who worked on other aspects of the Iraq WMD story say they do not recall any coordinated effort to correct Wilson's misrepresentations. And, in any case, the results were hardly what you'd expect from a White House offensive. Several reporters known to have spoken with Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, the senior White House officials apparently at the center of the current investigation, have testified that they did not learn of Plame's identity or status from either person.

WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICIALS had good reason to be distracted. Behind the headlines and intensifying public scrutiny of the case for war in Iraq, a leak war had erupted. David Sanger, a veteran reporter for the New York Times, had been calling the White House as the Times prepared a comprehensive report on the administration's prewar claims about Iraqi WMD. Sasnger wanted to know why Colin Powell hadn't made the same claim about uranium from Africa in his U.N. presentation that Bush had made one week before. Sanger also inquired about whether the CIA had warned Bush against using the uranium reference.

The White House scrambled to come up with a chronology for Sanger. Although the language in the State of the Union had its roots in intelligence on Iraq and uranium from October 2001, a full year before the U.S. government had even received the forged documents, Sanger's questions ignited a debate within the administration about whether to back off the suddenly controversial "16 words."

Then, on July 6, the New York Times published Wilson's now-famous op-ed. That account differs in important ways from the story Wilson had anonymously provided the Times, the Washington Post and the New Republic. Wilson acknowledged for the first time that he had not seen any forged document. "As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors--they were signed, for example, by officials who were no longer in government--and were probably forged." Wilson acknowledged the same thing in an appearance that morning on Meet the Press, saying, "I had not, of course, seen the documents."

Oops.

It may well have been the case that Wilson was skeptical of the original intelligence on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal, though it's worth remembering that this is not how CIA analysts recall his debriefing. But Wilson's charge--and one of the reasons it survives today--was not merely that his analysis differed from that of other analysts or even of Bush administration policymakers. His charge was more specific and not coincidentally more damning: The reason he was courted to write an op-ed for the New York Times and to appear on Meet the Press was not that his analysis of the Niger intelligence differed from that of the CIA or of Bush administration policymakers. No, Wilson was given those platforms because he was the man with the proof. Joseph Wilson alone, in his telling, could demonstrate that the Bush administration intentionally deceived the country to go to war.

Wilson's new version of his story caused a stir, but White House reporters at the press gaggle the following day seemed more concerned with unrest in Liberia and the president's imminent departure for Africa. It wasn't until the middle of the briefing that White House spokesman Ari Fleischer got his first question about Wilson.

Fleischer fielded several additional questions before calling on David Sanger, the New York Times reporter who had been seeking clarification from the White House on the broader "16 words" allegation.

This was a mistake. The White House had not, in fact, stated that all of the Niger reporting was wrong, only that the documents delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Rome in October 2002 had been forgeries. But Fleischer failed to make that distinction, and his answers implied that the "16 words" had been based on the forged documents and that the White House no longer stood by those 16 words. Fleischer ended the briefing after promising to provide Sanger a definitive answer.

Fleischer's briefing meant that the White House and CIA officials who had been working to hammer out official language on the "16 words" had to move quickly. The guidance distributed to the press that day said:

For much of the week, leaks and counterleaks appeared on the front pages of the nation's newspapers. The CIA told reporters that the agency had long been suspicious of the underlying intelligence on the Iraq-Niger deal. The administration told reporters that the CIA continued to provide intelligence reporting on the deal up to and through the State of the Union speech. A New York Times article called it "an unusual exercise in finger-pointing" within the Bush administration.

On July 11, 2003, Tenet released a statement in which he declared, "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency." That same day, President Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters traveling with the president in Africa that the CIA had approved the language in the State of the Union. "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services," said Bush. Rice added: "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety."

Three days later, Robert Novak wrote a column in which he named Joseph Wilson's wife, "CIA operative" Valerie Plame. Novak sourced this information to "two senior administration officials." The CIA concluded that the reference had compromised Plame's undercover status and asked the Justice Department to investigate. On December 30, 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself in the matter, and Deputy Attorney General James Comey named U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald special prosecutor. Scores of administration officials and some journalists have testified before the grand jury. It was for initially declining to testify that New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail. The conclusion of the investigation appears imminent.

Whatever Fitzgerald determines about the veracity of individuals in the administration or the press, in their statements to each other or to the grand jury, it is not possible to understand the current investigation without appreciating the history recounted here.

ON JULY 22, 2005, the New York Times published a lengthy, front-page article detailing the work of two senior Bush administration officials, Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, on the Niger-uranium story. A seemingly exhaustive timeline ran alongside the piece. In 19 bullet points, the Times provided its readers in considerable detail with what it regarded as the highlights of the story. The timeline traces events from the initial request for more information on the alleged Iraqi inquiries in Africa to Joseph Wilson's trip to Niger; from the now-famous "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union to the details of White House telephone logs; from Bush administration claims that Karl Rove was not involved in the leak to the naming of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and on from there to the dates that White House officials testified before the grand jury.

As I say, seemingly exhaustive. But there is one curious omission: July 7, 2004. On that date, the bipartisan Senate Select Intelligence Committee released a 511-page report on the intelligence that served as the foundation for the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq. The Senate report includes a 48-page section on Wilson that demonstrates, in painstaking detail, that virtually everything Joseph Wilson said publicly about his trip, from its origins to his conclusions, was false.

This is not a minor detail. The Senate report, which served as the source for much of the chronology in this article, is the definitive study of the events leading up to the compromising of Valerie Plame. The committee staff, both Democrats and Republicans, read all of the intelligence. They saw all of the documents. They interviewed all of the characters. And every member of the committee from both parties signed the report.

It is certainly the case that the media narrative is much more sensational than the Senate report. A story about malfeasance is perhaps more interesting than a story about incompetence. A story about deliberate White House deception is perhaps more interesting than a story about bureaucratic miscommunication. A story about retaliation is perhaps more interesting than a story about clarification.

But sometimes the boring stories have an additional virtue. They're true.

Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Pu...wnmrb.asp?pg=2

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smilingassassin

That sums it up nicely, the media ran wild with yet another false story because it would give them beter ratings......

Leader

I think it has more to do with ideology then ratings. If they wanted ratings, they should lean conservative because conservatives are the single biggest ideological block in the country by a significant margin. IMO, most media people are elitists that look down their noses at people who watch their shows and think that they can pull anything over them. Just look at the Today show stunt with the reporter paddling a boat in ankle deep water.

dalem

I think a valuable lesson I've learned in Life is: Never assign Malice when Ignorance will fit the bill.

-dale

Broken

Speaking of ignorance, Stephen Hayes omits many of the critical facts of the Niger uranium story. Here are a few pertinant details Hayes is ignoring either wilfully or otherwise:

1) Iraq had 500 tons of uranium already. Enough to make 10 weapons. Iraq acquired this uranium prior to Desert Storm in 91. If Iraq had the enrichment equipment to make bombs, they had no need of uranium from Niger since they had plenty right there in Iraq.

When Iraq expelled the IAEA inspectors in 1998, seals were placed on the storage units containing this uranium. There were no inspections of this uranium from 1998 to 2002. In November 2002, Iraq let the IAEA back into the country. The uranium storage units were intact and the seals were unbroken.

This one fact, by itself, makes the whole Niger uranium story highly implausible. The CIA knew this. The State Dept INR knew this. They had every justification for being skeptical of the Niger claims.

2) All the "Niger uranium deal" claims came from Italian intelligence agency, SISSMI. There was no other source. SISSMI and some former SISSMI agents peddled the story to the US, British, and French in the fall of 2001. There were no multiple sources: just this one source supplied all the "intelligence", including the forged documents.

3) Wilson first visited Niger in 1999. He went there because an Iraqi embassy mission had just passed through. Wilson found no evidence of Iraq-Niger uranium deals. When Wilson went again in 2002, the US ambassador to Niger and General Fulford, Deputy Commander, US European Command, had already concluded that any Niger-Iraq connection was highly unlikely. Wilson came to the same conclusion and reported the same to the CIA.

4) Wilson's conclusion agreed with both State's INR and the CIA's CPD group. CIA WINPAC and DIA were still suspicious. However in Oct 2002, the CIA tell Congress and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the Niger claims are dubious, agreeing with Wilson. In November, the IAEA finds the seals on Iraq's uranium intact.

mtnbiker

actually, your argument shows exactly why Saddam would try and buy Uranium secretly......

smilingassassin

It also doesn't change the fact that 8 months after Wilson stated that saddam didn't try to aquire yellowcake, the French continued to deseminate the intel to the CIA.

Broken

Tell me why Saddam would "secretly" try to acquire uranium from Niger, a high risk gamble, when he had 500 tons of un-monitored yellowcake in his own country?

dalem

For when he allowed the inspectors back in - they get to see the stuff he wants them to see, he gets to work on stuff they don't know about.

-dale

Broken

French (and British) intelligence were told about the "Niger-Iraq" connection by the Italian intelligence agency SISMI.

In November 2002, French Nuclear Proliferation intelligence told the US that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger, but was unsuccessful .

Also in November, an INR analyst concludes that the SISMI Niger documents are fake (Senate Intelligence Report).

The Senate Intelligence Committee Report further states that the US learned that the French iintelligence on Iraq attempts to purchase uranium from Niger were derived from the Forged Documents.

According to the report, this was learned March 4, 2003.

On March 7, the IAEA reported that the documents were forgeries.

On March 16, three days before Bush orders the invasion, Cheney appeared on Meet the Press and disagreed with the IAEA declaration that the Forged Documents were fake. No mention is made of INR's agreement with the IAEA.

Broken

Saddam kicked the IAEA inspectors out in 1998. Why would he anticipate letting the IAEA back in? He only let them in 2002 as a last-gasp effort to forestall invasion. Invasion was a very remote threat in 1998. Prior to 2001, Saddam ran far less risk using his own uranium than trying to sneak 100s of tons out of Niger. The Niger mines were under IAEA and French inspection, and the US kept a careful eye on them.

dalem

He could have been planning to let the inspectors back one last time as part of working with France, Germany and Russia to get the whole inspections regime lifted.

I'm not saying any of this is true, but it's possible. And It's not the French, the UN, or the IAEA who I trust in this matter.

-dale

mtnbiker

Because if he broke the seals on the current stash, everyone would know that what was missing, and that he was starting/continuing his nuclear program. He also knew that eventually he would have to allow the inspectors back in. When he did he could say, "look, everything is still there". So how does he continue his nuclear program, without tipping anyone off? He secretly purchases uranium for continued work, while maintaining plausible deniability.