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Plame, V

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/exposed-cia-operative-valerie-plames-new-campaign-ad-has-everybody-talking-mr-president-ive-got-a-few-scores-to-settle/

919 house run badass muscle car ad 3 pinochios

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In "Anatomy of Deceit" blogger Marcy Wheeler condemns the Bush administration, saying the Vice President's office deliberately "outed" CIA agent Valerie Plame, wife of former ambassador Joe Wilson. Further, she criticizes the mainstream media for their complicity in promoting the administration's rationale for war in Iraq -- that Iraq was on the verge of acquiring weapons of mass destruction. "The Anatomy of Deceit" is the first book published by Vaster Books, a joint venture of DailyKos and FireDog Lake. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3f6Kky8KTk&list=PL8A7185B5EF75752D&index=12&feature=plpp_video Jane Hansen editor natl born killers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3f6Kky8KTk&list=PL8A7185B5EF75752D&index=12

wiki

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At the midpoint of his career as a diplomat, Wilson served for a year (1985–1986) as a Congressional Fellow in the offices of Senator Al Gore and Representative Tom Foley; he would later attribute his working for the Democratic Party to "happenstance."[6] That experience helped him gain his position as Special Assistant to President Bill Clinton and Senior Director for African Affairs, National Security Council, in 1997-1998.

Over the years, Wilson has made contributions to the campaigns of Democratic candidates, such as Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts and Congressman Charles B. Rangel of New York, and to Republican Congressman Ed Royce of California.[15] In 2000, he donated funds both to Gore's and Bush's presidential campaigns.(The Politics of Truth 278-80, 282).[16]

In 2003, Wilson endorsed John Kerry for president and donated to his campaign; in 2003 and 2004, he served as an advisor to and speechwriter for the campaign (410–12).[16][17] Wilson endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2008 US presidential election.[18] He made speeches on her behalf and attendedfundraisers for the campaign. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Wilson supported activist groups like Win Without War, a nonpartisan coalition of groups united in opposition to the Iraq War [19] Since the invasion and the publication of his memoir, The Politics of Truth, he has spoken frequently in the public media and at colleges and universities.

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In late February 2002, Wilson traveled to Niger at the CIA's request to investigate the possibility that Saddam Hussein had purchased enriched yellowcakeuranium. Wilson met with the current US Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick (1999 – ) at the embassy and then interviewed dozens of officials who had been in the Niger government at the time of the supposed deal. He ultimately concluded: "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place."[20][notes 1]

Wilson learned that the Iraqis had in fact requested a meeting to discuss "expanding commercial relations" but that Niger's Prime Minister Mayaki had declined, due to concern about U.N. sanctions against Iraq.[notes 2][21][22][23]

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President Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address included these 16 words : "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."[24][25] In response, in the July 6, 2003, issue of The New York Times, Wilson contributed an "op-ed" entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa", in which he states that on the basis of his "experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war", he has "little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."[20]

Wilson describes the basis for his mission to Niger as follows: "The vice president's office asked a serious question about the truth of allegations that Iraq was seeking to purchase [uranium yellowcake from Niger]. I was asked to help formulate the answer".[20]

In the last two paragraphs of his op-ed, Wilson relates his perspective to the Bush administration's rationale for the Iraq War:

I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program — all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed. But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history", as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.[20]

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At a press conference on Monday, July 7, 2003, the day after the publication of the op ed, Colin Powell said: "There was sufficient evidence floating around at that time that such a statement was not totally outrageous or not to be believed or not to be appropriately used. It's that once we used the statement, and after further analysis, and looking at other estimates we had, and other information that was coming in, it turned out that the basis upon which that statement was made didn't hold up, and we said so, and we've acknowledged it, and we've moved on.". He also said: "the case I put down on the 5th of February [2003], for an hour and 20 minutes, roughly, on terrorism, on weapons of mass destruction, and on the human rights case...we stand behind"[26]

In a July 11, 2003 statement, CIA director George Tenet, stated that the President, Vice President and other senior administration officials were not briefed on Wilson's report (otherwise widely distributed in the intelligence community) because it "did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad".[27] In his 2007 memoir, Tenet writes that Wilson's report "produced no solid answers" and "was never delivered to Cheney. In fact, I have no recollection myself of hearing about Wilson's trip at the time."[28]

In the July 11 statement, Tenet also notes that, according to Wilson's report, a former Niger official interpreted an Iraqi approach as an "overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales."[27] Asked about this the following October, Wilson said that the official in question had declined the meeting, due to U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iraq, but speculated "maybe they might have wanted to talk about uranium".[notes 3]

There has been substantial disagreement about whether Wilson implies in the Op Ed that he was sent to Niger at the request of the vice president, or his office.[29] The implication that Cheney or his office sent Wilson to Niger, whether made by Wilson or the media, was apparently a cause of consternation to vice presidential aide I. Lewis Libby, who called NBC's Tim Russert to complain.[30] On July 6, 2003, in a Meet the Press interview with Andrea Mitchell, Wilson stated: "The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there." [31]

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Main article: Valerie Plame

The week after the publication of Wilson's New York Times op ed, Robert Novak, in his syndicated Washington Post column, disclosed that Wilson's wife,Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA as an agency operative. Subsequently, former Ambassador Wilson and others alleged that the disclosure was part of the Bush administration's attempts to discredit his report about his investigations in Africa and the op-ed describing his findings because they did not support the government's rationale for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Wilson's allegations led to a federal investigation of the leak by the United States Department of Justice, to the appointment of a Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, to the CIA leak grand jury investigation, and to a major American political scandalvariously dubbed by the press "Plamegate", the "Plame affair", the "CIA leak scandal", and other terms relating to the public disclosure or "leak" of Mrs. Wilson's then-classified covert CIA identity as "Valerie Plame".

In 2005, retired US Army Major General Paul E. Vallely claimed that former Ambassador Wilson "mentioned Plame's status as a CIA employee" in 2002 [one year before she was allegedly "outed"] in the Fox News Channel's "green room" in Washington, D.C., as they waited to appear on air as analysts.[32] In a later report on the conservative news site World Net Daily, Wilson demanded through his lawyer that Vallely retract these allegations, calling them "patently false."[33]

Although no one was "indicted for actually leaking Plame's identity,"[34] the investigation resulted in the federal criminal trial United States v. Libby in whichLewis Libby, the former Chief of Staff to Vice President of the United States, Dick Cheney, was tried on five federal felony counts. He was convicted on four of the counts, involving false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice, none of which related directly to the Plame revelation but rather to his failure to cooperate with the subsequent investigation into the revelation. Libby was sentenced to 30 months in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Libby's prison sentence was commuted by President Bush, who let the conviction and fine stand.[35]

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In 2004, Wilson published a political and personal memoir entitled The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity: A Diplomat's Memoir. The book describes his diplomatic career, his personal life and family, and his experiences during the Valerie Plame affair. Wilson's autobiographical account of over two decades of his life in foreign service includes detailed descriptions of his extensive diplomatic-career experiences, his first marriage and family, briefer references to his second marriage, his meeting of Valerie Plame, their courtship and marriage, and a detailed narrative of the events leading to his decision to go public with his criticisms of the George W. Bush administration and its aftermath.

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An editorial in the Wall Street Journal published in mid-July 2004, finds some justification for his perspective presented in "What I Didn't Find in Africa", but highlights some evidence of Iraq's attempts at acquiring uranium yellowcake from African nations such as Niger, on which Iraq did not follow through.[36]

But another editorial published in the July 13, 2005 Wall Street Journal asserts that Wilson had lied in his "What I Didn't Find in Africa" about "what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission."[37]

An editorial headlined "A Good Leak" published in the April 9, 2006 Washington Post claims that "Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth and that, in fact, his report [to the CIA] supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium."[38]

Some commentators and newspaper readers believed that this Washington Post editorial contradicted a news article in the paper's same issue, which reported that the administration had misrepresented its actual confidence level in the intelligence reports that Hussein was seeking uranium.[39][notes 4]

Complaints to the Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell about the apparent contradiction between the article and editorial, resulted in her acknowledging "the high wall between editorial and news" and also that "it would have been helpful if the editorial had put statements about Wilson in more context".[notes 5]

Richard Armitage...

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2003/07/27/follow-the-yellowcake-road.html

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Bush's Niger Uranium to Iraq claim

The claim that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Africa was repeated in George W. Bush's State of the Union Address in January 2003. The controversial 16 words used by US President George W Bush on January 28, 2003 were:

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."[6]

In March that year the International Atomic Energy Agency, when it finally obtained the documents referred to by Colin Powell to the United Nations Security Council alleging transactions between Niger and Iraq, concluded that they were obvious fakes.[7] (For a comprehensive account of this see the Wikipedia articleSeptember Dossier).

In the July 6, 2003 issue of the New York Times, Wilson contributed an "op-ed" entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa," in which he states that on the basis of his "experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war," he has "little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."[8]

In this account, often referred to later as his "New York Times 'op-ed,'" Wilson describes the basis for his mission to Niger as follows: "The vice president's officeasked a serious question [about the truth of allegations that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium yellowcake from Niger]. I was asked to help formulate the answer" (italics added).[8]

In the last two paragraphs of his op-ed, Wilson relates his perspective to the Bush administration's rationale for the Iraq War:

I was convinced before the war that the threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Saddam Hussein required a vigorous and sustained international response to disarm him. Iraq possessed and had used chemical weapons; it had an active biological weapons program and quite possibly a nuclear research program — all of which were in violation of United Nations resolutions. Having encountered Mr. Hussein and his thugs in the run-up to the Persian Gulf war of 1991, I was only too aware of the dangers he posed. But were these dangers the same ones the administration told us about? We have to find out. America's foreign policy depends on the sanctity of its information. For this reason, questioning the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq is neither idle sniping nor "revisionist history," as Mr. Bush has suggested.The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security. More than 200 American soldiers have lost their lives in Iraq already. We have a duty to ensure that their sacrifice came for the right reasons.[8]

(For detailed discussion of Wilson's comments and the counter-attack from the Bush administration, see the Wikipedia article Joseph C. Wilson).

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http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Yellowcake_forgery

In the push for the 2003 war with Iraq, Bush administration officials, including President George W. Bush himself in his State of the Union 2003 speech, cited evidence that Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy 500 tons ofyellowcake uranium from the African nation of Niger.

However, Mohamed ElBaradei of the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) looked at the evidence and stated that it was obviously forged and a year earlier the CIA found the evidence to be unreliable. [1][2]

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Events

Seymour M. Hersh wrote in the March 24, 2003, The New Yorker Magazine:

"Then the story fell apart. On March 7th, Mohamed ElBaradei, the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna, told the U.N. Security Council that the documents involving the Niger-Iraq uranium sale were fakes. 'The I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents . . . are in fact not authentic,' ElBaradei said.""One senior I.A.E.A. official went further. He told [Hersh], 'These documents are so bad that I cannot imagine that they came from a serious intelligence agency. It depresses me, given the low quality of the documents, that it was not stopped. At the level it reached, I would have expected more checking.'"

"Congressmen Henry A. Waxman, who approved Bush's war initiative, expessed concern that such a mishap could have occurred. 'It is hard to imagine how this situation could have developed,' he stated in a letter to the President. 'The two most obvious explanations — knowing deception or unfathomable incompetence — both have immediate and serious implications.' Waxman added, 'These facts raise troubling questions. It appears that at the same time you, SecretaryRumsfeld, and State Department officials were citing Iraq's efforts to obtain uranium from Africa as a crucial part of the case against Iraq, U.S. intelligence officials regarded this very same evidence as unreliable. If true, this is deeply disturbing: it would mean that your Administration asked the U.N. Security Council, the Congress, and the American people to rely on information that your own experts knew was not credible.'" [3]

The Bush administration has failed to provide adequate explanation for this situation, and the national media has failed to pursue the matter.

On March 14, 2003, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV asked the FBI to investigate the origin of the documents. Rockefeller expressed concern that the forgeries "may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq."

"If ... you want one piece to bring you fully up to date on the Niger forgery flap, check out Neil Mackay's "Niger and Iraq: the war's biggest lie?" in the *Glasgow Sunday Herald* ("One senior western diplomat told the Sunday Herald: 'There were more than 20 anomalies in the Niger documents -- it is staggering any intelligence service could have believed they were genuine for a moment.'"). --TomDispatch.com, July 2003.

La Repubblica Expose

In late October 2005, left of center Italian Newspaper La Repubblica published a three-part series which alleged that the Italian Intelligence Service SISMI played a large role in obtaining the the forged Niger Documents and distributing them to Western Governments. Rocco Martino, formerly a dishonest policeman as well as a former SISMI double agent, is identified as the documents source, and he pitched them to SISMI, who in turn handed them over to the CIA station head in Rome. The documents were reportedly identified by the Italian embassy's intelligence personnel as probable forgeries and were refused. The La Repubblicaexpose then claims that SISMI Director Nicolò Pollari, at the behest of Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, did an end run around the CIA and delivered the documents by hand in Washington D.C. to White House National Security Council (NSC) staff.

If this expose is true, it has stark implications for many people in the Bush Administration as they vocally blamed the CIA for the false claims of Iraq's acquisition of Niger Uranium, and George J. Tenet accepted the blame. Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Pat Roberts would also be cast in a dark hue, as either an accomplice or unknowing dupe, since he vehemently attacked the Agency at the same time.

A good translation of the La Repubblica series was done by a blogger, "Nur al-Cubicle", and has been mirrored at Shadow-Media dot org:

  1. Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo, "Berlusconi Behind Fake Yellowcake Dossier", La Repubblica, October 23, 2005.
  2. Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo, Yellowcake Dossier Not the Work of the CIA", La Repubblica, October 25, 2005.
  3. Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo, "Nigergate: The Great Nuclear Centrifuge Scam", La Repubblica, October 26, 2005.

SourceWatch Resources

External links

Related Articles

Timelines

Documents

Articles & Commentary

Web Series

Part 1: "Who bamboozled the United States?", March 14, 2003.Part 2: "Who forged the documents that bamboozled the U.S.?", March 17, 2003.Part 3: "CIA analysts do a CYA, telling the press, Don't blame the phony nuke docs on us!", March 23, 2003.Part 4: "Who forged the uranium documents that bamboozled the U.S.? A chronology," July 14, 2003.

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wiki

The Niger uranium forgeries are forged documents initially revealed by SISMI (Italian military intelligence). These documents seem to depict an attempt made by Saddam Hussein in Iraq to purchase yellowcake uranium powder from Niger during the Iraq disarmament crisis.

On the basis of these documents and other indicators, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom asserted that Iraq violated United Nations Iraq sanctions by attempting to procure nuclear material for the purpose of creating weapons of mass destruction.

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The first report of these documents was in a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Senior Executive Intelligence brief dated October 18, 2001, entitled: "Iraq: Nuclear Related Procurement Efforts." This information was not considered to be certain and not much was done to promote this claim right away.

These documents were sent to the CIA office in Rome by SISMI.

On May 10, 2002, the CIA’s Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis (NESA) in the Directorate of Intelligence (DI) prepared a Principals Committee briefing book updating the status of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. The document noted that a "foreign government service says Iraq was trying to acquire 500 tons of uranium from Niger."

On July 22, 2002, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) published an intelligence product (Daily Intelligence Highlight, Nuclear Reconstitution Efforts Underway?)[citation needed] which highlighted the intelligence on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal as one of three indications that Iraq might be reconstituting its nuclear program.

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There was a second and third dissemination of these forged documents to the USA by SISMI in early September, 2002. One source being a suspicious "ex-agent," of SISMI who occasionally worked on and off for them, who was selling the documents.

Far more officially, Nicolò Pollari, chief of SISMI, brought the Niger yellowcake story directly to the White House, meeting secretly in Washington on September 9, 2002, with then–Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley. In that month, the claims of Saddam trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger became much stronger. In September 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) published an intelligence assessment (Defense Intelligence Assessment, Iraq’s Reemerging Nuclear Program) which outlined Iraq’s recent efforts to rebuild its nuclear program including uranium acquisition. On this issue, the assessment said "Iraq has been vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake."

September 11, 2002, National Security Council (NSC) staff contacted the CIA to clear language for possible use by the President Bush. The language cleared by the CIA said, "Iraq has made several attempts to buy high strength aluminum tubes used in centrifuges to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. And we also know this: within the past few years, Iraq has resumed efforts to obtain large quantities of a type of uranium oxide known as yellowcake, which is an essential ingredient of this process."

In October, 2002 the Intelligence Community (IC) produced a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's WMD programmes which cited reports that Iraq began "vigorously trying to procure" more uranium from Niger and two other African countries.

The specific mention of yellowcake and Niger was not in this speech. There are many reports of a struggle about this, saying the Niger uranium claims were initially in this Cincinnati speech but taken out by the insistence of the CIA Director George Tenet.

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In late 2002, the Bush administration began soliciting support for war in Iraq using the political slogan "coalition of the willing" to refer to what later became the Multinational Force - Iraq. To back up its claim that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, that administration referred to intelligence from Italy, Britain, and France detailing interactions between Saddam Hussein and the governments of Niger, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Specifically, CIA director George Tenet and United States Secretary of State Colin Powell both cited attempts by Hussein to obtain uranium from Niger in their September testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. At that time, using information derived from the same source, the UK government also publicly reported an attempted purchase from an (unnamed) "African country". In December, the United States Department of State issued a fact sheet listing the alleged Niger yellowcake affair in a report entitled "Illustrative Examples of Omissions From the Iraqi Declaration to the United Nations Security Council."[1]

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The classified documents detailing an Iraqi approach to purchase yellowcake uranium from Niger were considered dubious by some analysts in U.S. intelligence, according to news accounts. By early 2002, separate investigations by both the CIA and the US State Department had found the documents to be inaccurate. Days before the Iraq invasion, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) voiced serious doubt on the authenticity of the documents to the UN Security Council, judging them counterfeit.

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In his January 2003 State of the Union speech, U.S. President George W. Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."[2] This single sentence is now known as "the Sixteen Words."[3] The administration later conceded that evidence in support of the claim was inconclusive and stated, "These sixteen words should never have been included." The administration attributed the error to the CIA.[4] In mid-2003, the U.S. government declassified the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which contained a dissenting opinion published by the U.S. Department of State stating that the intelligence connecting Niger to Saddam Hussein was "highly suspect," primarily because State Department's intelligence agency analysts did not believe that Niger would be likely to engage in such a transaction due to a French consortium which maintained close control over the Nigerien uranium industry.[5]

According to The Washington Post, when occupying troops found no evidence of a current nuclear program, the statement and how it came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war. The Post reported, "Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable." [6] With the release of the 2002 NIE report, the Bush administration was criticized for including the statement in the State of the Union despite CIA and State Department reports questioning its veracity.

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The front page of the June 28, 2004 Financial Times carried a report from their national security correspondent, Mark Huband, describing that between 1999 and 2001, three unnamed European intelligence services were aware that Niger was possibly engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China.[7] "The same information was passed to the US" but American officials decided not to include it in their assessment, Huband added in a follow up report.[8]

French intelligence informed the United States a year before President Bush's State of the Union address that the allegation could not be supported with hard evidence.[9]

The Sunday Times dated August 1, 2004 contains an interview with an Italian source describing his role in the forgeries. The source said he was sorry to have played a role in passing along false intelligence.[10]

Although the claims made in the British intelligence report regarding Iraq's interest in yellowcake ore from Niger were never withdrawn, the CIA and Department of State could not verify them and are said to have thought the claims were "highly dubious".[11]

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Previously, in February 2002, three different American officials had made efforts to verify the reports. The deputy commander of U.S. Armed Forces Europe, Marine General Carlton W. Fulford, Jr., went to Niger and met with the country's president, Tandja Mamadou. He concluded that, given the controls on Niger's uranium supply, there was little chance any of it could have been diverted to Iraq. His report was sent to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard Myers. The U.S. Ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, was also present at the meeting and sent similar conclusions to the State Department.[12] CNN reported on 14 March 2003 (before invasion) that the International Atomic Energy Agency found the documents to be forged.[13]

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In late February 2002, the CIA sent Ambassador Joseph Wilson to investigate the claims himself. Wilson had been posted to Niger 14 years earlier, and throughout a diplomatic career in Africa he had built up a large network of contacts in Niger. Wilson interviewed former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, who reported that he knew of no attempted sales to Iraq. Mayaki did however recall that in June 1999 an Iraqi delegation had expressed interest in "expanding commercial relations", which he had interpreted to mean yellowcake sales.[14] Ultimately, Wilson concluded that there was no way that production at the uranium mines could be ramped up or that the excess uranium could have been exported without it being immediately obvious to many people both in the private sector and in the government of Niger. He returned home and told the CIA that the reports were "unequivocally wrong".[15] The CIA retained this information in its Counter Proliferation Department and it was not passed up to the CIA Director, according to the unanimous findings of the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee's July 2004 report.

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Former Ambassador Wilson had claimed that he found no evidence of Saddam Hussein ever attempting or buying yellowcake uranium from Niger on his trip to Niger.[16]

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence suggested that the evidence Wilson found could be interpreted differently:

“

[Wilson's] intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999, (REDACTED) businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted 'expanding commercial relations' to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq".[12]

”

Wilson has responded to criticism by observing that uranium was not actually discussed at the 1999 meeting. On Meet the Press, for example, Wilson stated:

“

At that meeting, uranium was not discussed. It would be a tragedy to think that we went to war over a conversation in which uranium was not discussed because the Niger official was sufficiently sophisticated to think that perhaps he might have wanted to discuss uranium at some later date.[17]

”

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In early October 2002, George Tenet called Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley to ask him to remove reference to the Niger uranium from a speech Bush was to give in Cincinnati on October 7. This was followed up by a memo asking Hadley to remove another, similar line. Another memo was sent to the White House expressing the CIA's view that the Niger claims were false; this memo was given to both Hadley and National Security AdviserCondoleezza Rice.[18] [19] [20]

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Main article: Plame affair

Retired ambassador Joseph C. Wilson wrote a critical op-ed in The New York Times in which he explained the nature of the documents and the government's prior knowledge of their unreliability for use in a case for war. Shortly after Wilson's op-ed, in a column by Robert Novak, in pondering why a State Dept employee was dispatched rather than a trained CIA agent, the identity of Wilson's wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame, was revealed. The Senate Intelligence Committee report and other sources confirm that Plame "offered his name up" to her superiors.

The actual words President Bush spoke: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" suggests that his source was British intelligence and not the forged documents.[21]

However, George Tenet has admitted that making the claim was a mistake, stating, "The president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president."[4]

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Further, in March 2003, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) released results of his analysis of the documents. Reportedly, it took IAEA officials only a matter of hours to determine that these documents were fake. Using little more than a Google search, IAEA experts discovered indications of a crude forgery, such as the use of incorrect names of Nigerien officials. As a result, the IAEA reported to the U.N. Security Council that the documents were "in fact not authentic". The UN spokesman wrote:

“

The I.A.E.A. was able to review correspondence coming from various bodies of the government of Niger and to compare the form, format, contents and signature of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement-related documentation. Based on thorough analysis, the I.A.E.A. has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that these documents, which formed the basis for the reports of recent uranium transaction between Iraq and Niger, are in fact not authentic. We have therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.[22]

”

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The first British investigation into this matter was conducted by the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee (FAC).[23] The committee comprises fourteen Members of Parliament from government and opposition parties, and has permanent cross-party support.[24] They examined and tested several key claims in the September Dossier, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Assessment of the British Government, including the topic of uranium acquisition.

In June and July, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw testified that the claim in the dossier rested on separate evidence to the fraudulent documents, and that this specific intelligence, obtained from a foreign government, was still under review and had not been shared with the CIA.[25] In written evidence to the same committee, Straw further disclosed that the separate intelligence information upon which the British Government had based its conclusion, was also briefed to the IAEA by a foreign intelligence service that owned the reporting, shortly before IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei's statement to the UN Security Council on March 7, 2003.[26][27] This was further confirmed in a Parliamentary answer to Lynne Jones MP.[28] Lynne Jones subsequently contacted the IAEA to question whether a third party had discussed or shared separate intelligence with them and, if so, what assessment they made of it. IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky responded to Jones in May 2004:

I can confirm to you that we have received information from a number of member states regarding the allegation that Iraq sought to acquire uranium from Niger. However, we have learned nothing which would cause us to change the conclusion we reported to the United Nations Security Council on March 7, 2003 with regards to the documents assessed to be forgeries and have not received any information that would appear to be based on anything other than those documents.[29]

After talking with numerous witnesses and considering much evidence, the committee judged the evidence that Iraq was trying to procure uranium was not sufficiently strong enough to justify absolute terms.

We conclude that it is very odd indeed that the Government asserts that it was not relying on the evidence which has since been shown to have been forged, but that eight months later it is still reviewing the other evidence. The assertion "… that Iraq sought the supply of significant amounts of uranium from Africa …" should have been qualified to reflect the uncertainty.[30]

Butler Committee......

==

The name of Valerie Plame Wilson (nee Valerie Elise Plame), wife of retired U.S. Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was exposed on July 14, 2003, as a CIA covert operative by columnist Robert Novak, who wrote:

"Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate" the allegation.[1]

According to the September 27, 2003 edition of *JustOneMinute* (JOM), on July 16, 2003, David Corn "started this scandal" when he published the piece "A White House Smear" in The Nation, wherein he wrote:

"This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent." [2]

Corn "had predicted that the investigation would die in the CIA—George J. Tenet would stay loyal to George W. Bush and quash this." JOM adds: "Evidently not. One guess—Mr. Tenet, pondering Bush's declining poll numbers and faced with in-house annoyance, decided to do the right thing. One presumes that, with Congress back in town, Mr. Tenet checked with his supporters on both sides of the aisle before proceeding."

Both Mark Kleiman and Josh Marshall had made recent comments on the matter, according to JOM.

On July 1, 2005, MSNBC Senior Political Analyst, Lawrence O'Donnell claimed that the leak came from Karl Rove. [3]

Contents [hide]

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Hearing

On March 16, 2007, Valerie Plame Wilson testified before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Below are links to her opening remarks, including video links, as well as live blogging of the proceedings by both Firedoglake, David Swanson at After Downing Street, and SusanUnPC at No Quarter, followed by media articles and commentary.

Witnesses

According to the Committee's website, the following appeared as witnesses on March 16, 2007:

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Website

See the Committee's website for Documents and Links.

Video Links

Plame's Opening Remarks

Live blogging

Firedoglake
After Downing Street
No Quarter

Articles & Commentary

Plame v Cheney-Rove-Libby-Armitage

Valerie Plame and husband Joseph Wilson filed a complaint July 13, 2006, in U.S. District Court, accusing Vice President Dick Cheney, President George W. Bush's former top aide Karl Rove, and Cheney's former aide I. Lewis Scooter Libby of "participating in a 'whispering campaign' to reveal Plame's CIA identity and punish Wilson for criticizing the Bush administration's motives in Iraq," the Associated Press's Toni Locy reported.

"The lawsuit accuses Cheney, Libby, Rove and 10 unnamed administration officials or political operatives of putting the Wilsons and their children's lives at risk by exposing Plame.

"'This lawsuit concerns the intentional and malicious exposure by senior officials of the federal government of ... (Plame), whose job it was to gather intelligence to make the nation safer and who risked her life for her country,' the Wilsons' lawyers said in the lawsuit.

"Specifically, the lawsuit accuses the White House officials of violating the Wilsons' constitutional rights to equal protection and freedom of speech. It also accuses the officials of violating the couple's privacy rights," Locy wrote.

The Wilsons have set up the website WILSONSUPPORT.org for their legal defense fund, which includes a donation page.

White House Requests Dismissal

On November 14, 2006, U.S. Department of Justice lawyers, working on behalf of the Bush administration, asked a federal judge to throw out the lawsuit brought by Plame and her husband "against Vice President Dick Cheney and others for alleged involvement in disclosing her employment as a clandestine CIA operative," Reuters reported.

The lawyers claimed that "Cheney and the other high-level defendants in the lawsuit have valid claims of immunity because of their official positions" and that Plame and her husband "failed to allege that any of the defendants had violated a constitutional right." [4]

"Cheney's attorneys criticized the lawsuit in court papers, saying it invented constitutional rights, intruded on national security discussions and came two years after the statute of limitations had expired," the Associated Press reported.

Related Links

Plame Investigation

For articles regarding the Valerie Plame investigation, see:

Iran Intel

On the May 1, 2006, Monday evening Chris Matthews' Hardball, "MSNBC correspondent David Shuster confirmed what RAW STORY first reported in February: that outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson was working on Iran at the time she was outed" in July 2003 as a CIA covert operative by Robert Novak (see below).[5] See MSNBC video links posted by *Crooks and Liars* and *Brad Blog*.

"Intelligence sources say Valerie Wilson was part of an operation three years ago tracking the proliferation of nuclear weapons material into Iran. And the sources allege that when Mrs. Wilson's cover was blown, the Administration's ability to track Iran's nuclear ambitions was damaged as well." [6]

Steven C. Clemons wrote April 25, 2006, in The Washington Note:

"According to some inside the intel arena, Valerie Wilson's work had a lot to do with monitoring Iran's nuclear weapons appetite and capabilities and possibly helped feed Iran nuclear technology junk that could distract and complicate Iran's weapons program efforts. If true, this is quite consistent with the Iran Chapter" in James Risen's new book, State of War: The Secret History of the C.I.A. and the Bush Administration, Free Press (January 3, 2006) ISBN 0743270665."But if this account of Plame-Wilson's activities is true, those who exposed Valerie Plame Wilson helped undermine American national security in much more major ways that haven't yet been disclosed."

Related Links

Reverse Timeline

Comment from Message Board Entry: "Of course, the only way Shrub could know that Rove was not involved is if he already knows who was involved -- which would make him (at a minimum) an accessory after the fact."

Fleischer: Saddam Hussein "had previously obtained yellow cake from Africa. In fact, in one of the least known parts of this story, which is now, for the first time, public -- and you find this in Director Tenet's statement last night -- the official that -- lower-level official sent from the CIA to Niger to look into whether or not Saddam Hussein had sought yellow cake from Niger, Wilson, he -- and Director Tenet's statement last night states the same former official, Wilson, also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official, Wilson, meet an Iraqi delegation to discuss expanding commercial relations between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales. ... This is in Wilson's report back to the CIA. Wilson's own report, the very man who was on television saying Niger denies it, who never said anything about forged documents, reports himself that officials in Niger said that Iraq was seeking to contact officials in Niger about sales."

Reaction/Response to Plame "Leak"

"I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing."And again I repeat, you know, Washington is a town where there's all kinds of allegations. You've heard much of the allegations. And if people have got solid information, please come forward with it. And that would be people inside the information who are the so-called anonymous sources, or people outside the information -- outside the administration. And we can clarify this thing very quickly if people who have got solid evidence would come forward and speak out. And I would hope they would."And then we'll get to the bottom of this and move on. But I want to tell you something -- leaks of classified information are a bad thing. And we've had them -- there's too much leaking in Washington. That's just the way it is. And we've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them and I want to know who the leakers are."

"The first rule of scandal is that the cover-up is worse than the crime. With that in mind, we ought to be looking to see if any effort was made to prevent the CIA from requesting a Justice Department investigation. And we ought to find out who warned the White House Counsel that something was up, so that Alberto Gonzalez could warn the White House staff in his now famous e-mail."

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