Because of bullshit like this appearing in national media, I think the left blogosphere should be trying to make Joseph Wilson's side of the story more prominent. This crap is being repeated over and over and over, and there doesn't seem to be any response on the left other than "only a dumbshit would believe this crap". Here's Joe Wilson's own response to this and hopefully everyone will spread this around so that maybe - just maybe - it will start to enter into the meme space.
This comes from Larry Johnson's blog. If you're not reading No Quarter, you should.
________________________________________________
Joseph C. Wilson, IV
July 15, 2004
The Honorable Pat Roberts
Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
The Honorable Jay Rockefeller
Vice Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Dear Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller,
I read with great surprise and consternation the Niger portion of
Senators Roberts, Bond and Hatch “additional comments to the Senate
Select Intelligence Committee’s Report on the U.S. Intelligence
Community’s Prewar Assessment on Iraq. I am taking this opportunity to
clarify some of the issues raised in these comments.
First conclusion: “The plan to send the former ambassador to
Niger was suggested by the former ambassador’s wife, a CIA employee.”
That is not true. The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne
quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife sent to her superiors that
says “my husband has good relations with the PM (prime minister) and
the former Minister of Mines, (not to mention lots of French contacts)
both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” There
is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that I be sent on
the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and
bona fides. The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the
report that a CPD reports officer stated the “the former ambassador’s
wife ‘offered up his name’” (page 39) and a State Department
Intelligence and Research officer 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.”
In fact, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my
trip was raised. Neither was the CPD Reports officer. After having
escorted me into the room, she departed the meeting to avoid even the
appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the
question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first
time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants
did and did not know about the subject. My bona fides justifying the
invitation to the meeting were the trip I had previously taken to Niger
to look at other uranium related questions as well as 20 years living
and working in Africa, and personal contacts throughout the Niger
government. Neither the CPD reports officer nor the State analyst were
in the chain of command to know who, or how, the decision was made. The
interpretations attributed to them are not the full story. In fact, it
is my understanding that the Reports Officer has a different conclusion
about Valerie’s role than the one offered in the “additional comments”.
I urge the committee to reinterview the officer and publicly publish
his statement.
It is unfortunate that the report failed to include the CIA’s
position on this matter. If the staff had done so it would undoubtedly
have been given the same evidence as provided to Newsday reporters Tim
Phelps and Knut Royce in July, 2003. They reported on July 22 that:
“A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a
Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked ‘alongside’ the
operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.
“But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger
assignment. ‘They (the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium
story) were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,’
he said. ‘There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to
make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some
reason,’ he said. ‘I can’t figure out what it could be.’
“We paid his (Wilson’s) airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a
benefit. Most people you’d have to pay big bucks to go there,’ the
senior intelligence official said. Wilson said. he was reimbursed only
for expenses.” (Newsday article Columnist blows CIA Agent’s cover,
dated July 22, 2003).
In fact, on July 13 of this year, David Ensor, the CNN
correspondent, did call the CIA for a statement of its position and
reported that a senior CIA official confirmed my account that Valerie
did not propose me for the trip:
“’She did not propose me’, he [Wilson] said--others
at the CIA did so. A senior CIA official said that is his understanding
too.’”
Second conclusion: “Rather that speaking publicly about his
actual experiences during his inquiry of the Niger issue, the former
ambassador seems to have included information he learned from press
accounts and from his beliefs about how the Intelligence Community
would have or should have handled the information he provided.”
This conclusion states that I told the committee staff that I “may
have become confused about my own recollection after the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that the names and dates on the
documents were not correct.” At the time that I was asked that
question, I was not afforded the opportunity to review the articles to
which the staff was referring. I have now done so.
On March 7, 2003 the Director General of the IAEA reported to the
United Nations Security Council that the documents that had been given
to him were “not authentic”. His deputy, Jacques Baute, was even more
direct, pointing out that the forgeries were so obvious that a quick
Google search would have exposed their flaws. A State Department
spokesman was quoted the next day as saying about the forgeries “We
fell for it.” From that time on the details surrounding the documents
became public knowledge and were widely reported. I was not the source
of information regarding the forensic analysis of the documents in
question; the IAEA was.
The first time I spoke publicly about the Niger issue was in
response to the State Department’s disclaimer. On CNN a few days later,
in response to a question, I replied that I believed the US government
knew more about the issue than the State Department spokesman had let
on and that he had misspoken. I did not speak of my trip.
My first public statement was in my article of July 6 published in
the New York Times, written only after it became apparent that the
administration was not going to deal with the Niger question unless it
was forced to. I wrote the article because I believed then, and I
believe now, that it was important to correct the record on the
statement in the President’s State of the Union address which lent
credence to the charge that Iraq was actively reconstituting its
nuclear weapons program. I believed that the record should reflect the
facts as the US government had known them for over a year. The contents
of my article do not appear in the body of the report and is not quoted
in the “additional comments.” In that article, I state clearly that “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. (And then there’s the fact that Niger formally denied
the charges.)”
The first time I actually saw what were represented as the documents
was when Andrea Mitchell, the NBC correspondent handed them to me in an
interview on July 21. I was not wearing my glasses and could not read
them. I have to this day not read them. I would have absolutely no
reason to claim to have done so. My mission was to look into whether
such a transaction took place or could take place. It had not and could
not. By definition that makes the documents bogus.
The text of the “additional comments” also asserts that “during Mr.
Wilson’s media blitz, he appeared on more than thirty television shows
including entertainment venues. Time and again, Joe Wilson told anyone
who would listen that the President had lied to the American people,
that the Vice President had lied, and that he had “debunked” the claim
that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.”
My article in the New York Times makes clear that I attributed to
myself “a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa’s
suspected link to Iraq’s nonconventional weapons programs.” After it
became public that there were then Ambassador to Niger, Barbro
Owens-Kirkpatrick’s report and the report from a four star Marine Corps
General, Carleton Fulford in the files of the U. S. government, I went
to great lengths to point out that mine was but one of three reports on
the subject. I never claimed to have “debunked” the allegation that
Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. I claimed only that the
transaction described in the documents that turned out to be forgeries
could not have and did not occur. I did not speak out on the subject
until several months after it became evident that what underpinned the
assertion in the State of the Union address were those documents,
reports of which had sparked Vice President Cheney’s original question
that led to my trip. The White House must have agreed. The day after my
article appeared in the Times a spokesman for the President told the
Washington Post that “the sixteen words did not rise to the level of
inclusion in the State of the Union.”
I have been very careful to say that while I believe that the use of
the sixteen words in the State of the Union address was a deliberate
attempt to deceive the Congress of the United States, I do not know
what role the President may have had other than he has accepted
responsibility for the words he spoke. I have also said on many
occasions that I believe the President has proven to be far more
protective of his senior staff than they have been to him.
The “additional comments” also assert: “The Committee found that,
for most analysts the former ambassador’s report lent more credibility,
not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium deal.” In fact, the body
of the Senate report suggests the exact opposite:
• In August, 2002, a CIA NESA report on Iraq’s weapons of
Mass Destruction capabilities did not include the alleged Iraq-Niger
uranium information. (pg. 48)
• In September, 2002, during coordination of a speech with an NSC
staff member, the CIA analyst suggested the reference to Iraqi attempts
to acquire uranium from Africa be removed. The CIA analyst said the NSC
staff member said that would leave the British “flapping in the wind.”
(pg. 50)
• The uranium text was included in the body of the NIE but not in
the key judgments. When someone suggested that the uranium information
be included as another sign of reconstitution, the INR Iraq nuclear
analyst spoke up and said the he did not agree with the uranium
reporting and that INR would be including text indicating their
disagreement in their footnote on nuclear reconstitution. The NIO said
he did not recall anyone really supporting including the uranium issue
as part of the judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear
program, so he suggested that the uranium information did not need to
be part of the key judgments. He told Committee staff he suggested that
“We’ll leave it in the paper for completeness. Nobody can say we didn’t
connect the dots. But we don’t have to put that dot in the key
judgments.” (pg. 53)
• On October 2, 2002, the Deputy DCI testified before the SSCI.
Senator Jon Kyl asked the Deputy DCI whether he had read the British
White Paper and whether he disagreed with anything in the report. The
Deputy DCI testified that “the one thing where I think they stretched a
little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about where
Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations. (pg.54)
• On October 4, 2002 the NIO for Strategic and Nuclear Programs
testified that “there is some information on attempts ….there’s a
question about those attempts because of the control of the material in
those countries…For us it’s more the concern that they (Iraq) uranium
in country now. (pg. 54)
• On October 5, 2002, the ADDI said an Iraq nuclear analyst – he
could not remember who – raised concerns about the sourcing and some of
the facts of the Niger reporting, specifically that the control of the
mines in Niger would have made it very difficult to get yellowcake to
Iraq. (pg. 55)
• Based on the analyst’s comments, the ADDI faxed a memo to the
Deputy National Security Advisor that said, “remove the sentence
because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be
acquired from this source. We told Congress that the Brits have
exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric
tons of uranium oxide in their inventory. (pg. 56)
• On October 6, 2002, the DCI called the Deputy National Security
Advisor directly to outline the CIA’s concerns. The DCI testified to
the SSCI on July 16, 2003, that he told the Deputy National Security
Advisor that the “President should not be a fact witness on this
issue,” because his analysts had told him the “reporting was weak.”
(pg. 56)
• On October 6, 2002, the CIA sent a second fax to the White House
which said, “more on why we recommend removing the sentence about
procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points 1) the evidence is
weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the
uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under
the control of the French authorities. 2) the procurement is not
particularly significant to Iraq’s nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis
already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And 3)
we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the
Africa story is overblown and telling them this in one of the two
issues where we differed with the British.” (Pg 56)
• On March 8, 2003, the intelligence report on my trip was
disseminated within the U.S. Government according the Senate report
(pg. 43). Further, the Senate report states that “in early March, the
Vice President asked his morning briefer for an update on the Niger
uranium issue.” That update from the CIA “also noted that the CIA would
be debriefing a source who may have information related to the alleged
sale on March 5.” The report then states the “DO officials also said
they alerted WINPAC analysts when the report was being disseminated
because they knew the high priority of the issue.” The report notes
that the CIA briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report.
(Pg. 46)
It is clear from the body of the Senate report that the Intelligence
Community, including the DCI himself, made several attempts to ensure
that the President not become a “fact witness” on an allegation that
was so weak. A thorough reading of the report substantiates the claim
made in my opinion piece in the New York Times and in subsequent
interviews I have given on the subject. The sixteen words should never
have been in the State of the Union address as the White House now
acknowledges.
I undertook this mission at the request of my government in response
to a legitimate concern that Saddam Hussein was attempting to
reconstitute his nuclear weapons program. This was a national security
issue that has concerned me since I was the Deputy Chief of Mission in
the U.S. Embassy in Iraq before and during the first Gulf War.
At the time of my trip I was in private business and had not offered
my views publicly on the policy we should adopt towards Iraq. Indeed,
throughout the debate in the runup to the war, I took the position that
the U.S. be firm with Saddam Hussein on the question of weapons of mass
destruction programs including backing tough diplomacy with the
credible threat of force. In that debate I never mentioned my trip to
Niger. I did not share the details of my trip until May, 2003, after
the war was over, and then only when it became clear that the
administration was not going to address the issue of the State of the
Union statement.
It is essential that the errors and distortions in the additional
comments be corrected for the public record. Nothing could be more
important for the American people than to have an accurate picture of
the events that led to the decision to bring the United States into war
in Iraq. The Senate Intelligence Committee has an obligation to present
to the American people the factual basis of that process. I hope that
this letter is helpful in that effort. I look forward to your further
“additional comments.”
Sincerely,
Joseph C. Wilson, IV
Washington, D.C
Well, the little one is doing fine. She put on two ounces during her first week instead of losing weight while growing an inch and put on an additional two ounces yesterday. She's still learning the whole suck, swallow, breath thing, which is incredibly tiring for a little one, but she's quickly getting the hang of things. The nurses are threating to send her home in a week or so, but we'll see.
Well, she showed up early, but Hell Girltm - AKA Jocelyn Quinn - was officially born last night around 2:00 am PST. Being early, she'll have to spend a week or so in the ICU until everyone is sure she's eating on her own, is able to regulate her temperature - basically until we're all clear that she's the master of her domain as befits her majesty.
