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Edited on Thu Jul-15-04 02:30 PM by Hell Hath No Fury
about this. Here is my reply (her comments are in bold): <DID YOU KNOW...
<
<That Joseph Wilson lied to the Washington Post regarding his wife <landing him the Niger job? - Washington Post, U.S. Senate From the Sue Schmidt Post article: "The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM 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." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said. Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger."
It appears that Ms. Plame "offered up" Ambassador Wilson as a possibility for the investigation (and with good reason, considering his expertise in that area) and that it was up to an overseas officer to make the call. Wilson should have been more clear in his statements.
>That Joseph Wilson lied when he asserted that Iraq did not attempt >to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger? - Washington Post, U.S. Senate
You're characterization of the Senate Report, I assume based on the flawed Washington Post article, is entirely incorrect.
There is absolutely nothing in the Senate Report that states Ambassador Wilson lied about Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from Niger. If you don't believe me, you can find the report and read it for yourself here -- I have: http://intelligence.senate.gov/
The Senate Report contends that Wilson's claim that he successfully debunked the story was not accurate because he "did not change any analysts' assessment of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal." It comes down to a matter of opinion -- Wilson felt that he had sufficient information to say such a deal never happened, the Senate is saying the intel analysts (and would those have been the "intel" guys at the OSP?)didn't come to the same conclusion as Wilson.
From the Sue Schmidt Post article:
"The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."
((You'll notice, Sue Schmidt states that supposed "misleading" information was given to The Washington Post, not the Senate Intelligence Committee.))
"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger."
Here is something from the Senate Report Schmidt forgot to mention in her article:
"Wilson told intelligence analysts that the ownership structure of uranium mines in Niger would have made it nearly impossible for Niger to sell the ore to Iraq because the mines are run by consortiums that include French, Spanish, German and Japanese interests."
http://www.indystar.com/articles/2/161408-4092-010.html
And from a NYT article:
"Wilson later writes in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, that “it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had taken place” because Niger's uranium industry is closely regulated by its government and is controlled by a consortium of foreign companies monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Wilson briefs this conclusion to the CIA when he returns in March 2002"
And from the New Yorker:
"Wilson’s trip to Niger, which lasted eight days, produced nothing. He learned that any memorandum of understanding to sell yellowcake would have required the signatures of Niger’s Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, and Minister of Mines. “I saw everybody out there,” Wilson said, and no one had signed such a document. “If a document purporting to be about the sale contained those signatures, it would not be authentic.” Wilson also learned that there was no uranium available to sell: it had all been pre-sold to Niger’s Japanese and European consortium partners."
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact
When making his original report on Iraq, Ambassador Wilson relied on other information did not use the fake Niger documents to advocate against the theory Hussein attempted to buy uranium from Niger. He only did that much later.
As for those Niger documents -- from a Newsweek article:
"Incredibly, the Italian papers appeared to have higher standards than the CIA, Newsweek reports. Italian reporter, Elisabetta Burba, who worked for Panorama, a conservative Italian weekly magazine owned by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi went to Niger and checked out the documents, but declined to use them because she feared they were "bufala"-fraudulent-and she would lose her job.
It wasn't until February, several days after the State of the Union, that the CIA finally obtained the Italian documents (from the State Department, whose warnings that the intelligence on Niger was "highly dubious" seem to have gone unheeded by the White House and unread by Bush).
The State Department also turned over the Italian documents to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which had been pressing the United States to back up its claims about Iraq's nuclear program. "Within two hours they figured out they were forgeries," one IAEA official told Newsweek. How did they do it? "Google," said the official. The IAEA ran the name of the Niger foreign minister through the Internet search engine and discovered that he was not in office at the time the document was signed."
http://www.forrelease.com/D20030720/nysu011.P1.07202003114549.09855.html
So, Ambassador Wilson was indeed correct when he said the Niger documents were fakes that did nothing to prove Saddam Hussein attempted to buy uranium from Niger. Wilson was able to do this because the Niger documents had been floating around for some eight months and were known to be forgeries, and very bad ones at that. In the Senate Report, the Committee staff is simply saying he really should not have stated a conclusion on the Niger documents because he himself had never seen them and evaluated them personally. A fair criticism. But that is far from lying.
For a complete timeline on the Niger documents:
http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_09/Iraquraniumchronology.asp
>Thank you for your response. The question of criminality hinges on intent.
>Was the intent to expose Mr. Wilson and his report as partisan frauds? Or
>was the true intent to expose Ms. Plame as a covert CIA agent? The former
>does not qualify as a crime.
>
>Again, hope that helps
The manner in which this is being spun FOX/Rush/GOP, is very reminiscent of Clinton's painful parsing of the word "is".
From the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982:
United States Code
TITLE 50 - WAR AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
CHAPTER 15 - NATIONAL SECURITY
SUBCHAPTER IV - PROTECTION OF CERTAIN NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION
Section 421. Protection of identities of certain United States undercover intelligence officers, agents, informants, and sources
(a) Disclosure of information by persons having or having had access to classified information that identifies covert agent
Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/casecode/uscodes/50/chapters/15/subchapters/iv/sections/section_421.html
It is clear from reading the Act that if you have knowledge that a person is a covert operative and you give that information to someone who is unauthorized to receive that classified information -- for whatever reason -- you are in violation of Sec 42 of the Act.
I'll let GW's dad have the last word on this topic:
"We need more human intelligence. That means we need more protection for the methods we use to gather intelligence and more protection for our sources, particularly our human sources, people that are risking their lives for their country. Even though I'm a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors."
-- George Herbert Walker Bush
To find out more about the legal ramifications of the Plame leak:
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20031010.html
And finally, as for "partisan frauds", here's a what I know about Sue Schmidt, the author of the WP article you've relied on for your information.
"Steno Sue" Schmidt is widely known in DC journalistic circles as someone who will print anything whispered into her ear by the GOP. She has long carried serious water for both the GOP and the current Bush administration.
She was the choice of Ken Starr when he wanted information leaked from the Office of Special Counsel during the Whitewater investigation.
She was the choice of the Pentagon-under-Donald-Rumsfeld when they wanted to push the story of POW Jessica Lynch as Rambo-ette, guns a blazin' as she tried to take out all those dirty Iraqis before they captured her. Unfortunately it was soon found out there was no truth to that story, that it was propaganda created by the Pentagon. Sue, a journalist, never bothered to investigate the story herself, just repeated what she was given.
Google "Steno Sue" and you will see what I am talking about.
Now why would Sue be doing a hatchet job on Joseph Wilson around this time, you might ask. Call me crazy, but I would suspect it has something to do with the Grand Jury hearings that are underway of those who leaked his CIA wife's name to Robert Novak. Rumor in DC right now is there are indictments in the works and they will lead right into the White House. The White House and Karl Rove have been busily trying to put the smear on Wilson for months. "Steno Sue" seems to be doing her job, once again.
Indictments:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/002790.php
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