Why won't Tenet answer the question about Joe Wilsons report?

[sabra]

http://hardblogger.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/03/06/80439.aspx

CHRIS MATTHEWS REACTS TO LIBBY VERDICT

<snip>

In that case, Cheney would have known a year ahead of time that there was no deal by Saddam Hussein to buy uranium yellowcake in Niger. He should therefore have kept the president from making that assertion in his 2003 State of the Union that “British intelligence” reported a Saddam effort to buy uranium from Africa. That assertion of a nuclear threat from Iraq is what tilted this country toward war.

I asked George Tenet, the CIA director, to explain why the vice president never got a report on a CIA fact-finding trip that was triggered by his inquiry. Tennet’s reply was “Ask him!”

Here's Libby's GJ testimony... he states that they never got the report regarding Wilson's trip to Niger until after the SOTU. So the big question is if this is true, WHY?

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/exhibits/0306/gx1t.txt

Q=Fitz
A=Libby
<snip>

Q. You mentioned that there came a time when you talked
to the Vice President about Walter Pincus' article. And can
you tell us who was present when you talked to him and what
was said?
A. I talked to him on the phone. I don't think it was
anyone present when I spoke to him on the phone. He was
relaying to me some information that he had learned in the
first part of the conversation. And in the second part of the
conversation he gave me instructions as to what I should, what
I should say to reporters, and from the time frame I'm pretty
sure we were talking about -- specifically about the Pincus
article.
Q. And why don't you tell us, first, what information
the Vice President told you he had learned, and then what he
told you to do with it?
A. Okay. Well, I had some notes that I took down at
that point. But my best recollection sitting here is that he
had been speaking to someone who was either from the CIA or it
was someone who had spoken to someone from the CIA, and he was
relaying to me what the CIA had said about how this came
about. And it says something like -- my notes about it say
something like, he was sent at our request, our behest or
something, and then it says something about it being a
functional office. So he told me that, that they had said
that the person was debriefed in the region, if I was -- if I
recall correctly, and that had made maybe -- hadn't made a
written report, made an oral report, but there was a report,
something along those lines. There are notes of this which I
think you all have. Then he switched -- so he told me that.
And in the course of describing this he also said to me in
sort of an off-hand manner, as a curiosity, that his wife
worked at the CIA, the person who -- whoever this person was.
There were no names at that stage so I didn't know Ambassador
Wilson's name at that point, or the wife's name. And I made a
note of that also.
He then went on to say, here's what we'd like you to
say to the reporters, I think it was Pincus, as I said before,
and he gave me three points. The first point was that we did
not request a mission to Niger. The second point, as I
recall, was that we had not gotten a report back from the
mission to Niger until -- or we hadn't seen any such report
until after the State of the Union, when these newspaper
articles started. And there was a third point which is
that -- I think, was that he had seen the National
Intelligence Estimate and that that's what he took to be
authoritative. I think those were the points. I remember
this from my notes more than actual recollection but I looked
at the notes in connection with this inquiry. He then said to
make these several points and I asked him if he also wanted me
to make an earlier point which he had made in the first half
of the conversation, which I think I omitted to tell you,
which was that the Office of the Vice President, the State
Department and the -- some other bureaucracy, maybe Defense
Department, had asked questions about this -- about an earlier
report about Niger, that it wasn't just the Office of the Vice
President asking questions. And I asked the Vice President --
I went ahead and numbered, I sort of numbered these as he was
talking to me, and I remember numbering that one the fourth
point and saying, do you want me to -- excuse me, should we
say, when I talk to the press that we were not the only office
asking this question? And he quite rightly said, no, we
shouldn't say that, that should be said by the Agency because
we didn't know that. That was all we knew was what we had
asked, and it would be better to get the State (sic)
Department spokesperson, who at the time was I think Bill
Harlow, to be the one who would say that to the press. And
that's about what I recall from the conversation, according to
the notes.

[Atman]

1. Three words:

Medal Of Freedom.

He was freed from ever having to speak the truth when Bush hung that thing around his neck. Turn it around and it also doubles as a Bush-family noose.

.

[Proud2BAmurkin]

17. three other words: READ MY BOOK

nt

[acmavm]

2. What the hell is wrong with these friggin' people? Little kids

are told (at least mine were) that it is not okay to lie. What the f**k, on big things like this it is really not okay to lie. If you have to resort to lying, you know you did something wrong in the first place.

What a bunch of thugs.

[warpigs]

3. They know what the report said

They knew it said they weren't pursuing uranium so why would they want the report?

[leveymg]

4. The reason is that Wilson's report got scrubbed out of the 10/02 NIE

due to Cheney's pressure on CIA to falsify its findings about alleged Iraqi WMDs. Valerie Plame's findings that the aluminum tubes intercepted in Morocco were inappropriate for HEU centrifuges also got scrubbed out, for the same reason. Instead, disinformation generated by shady private CIA contractors -- e.g., MZM -- got inserted into Agency and State Dept. documents.

That's why. This whole angle is about to become very public -- 3 Congressional Committees investigating Gonzales' firing of the US Attorney in San Diego who prosecuted Wade and Cunningham now have a ton of DoJ documents about the privatized CIA Iraq disinformation scam.

Cheney's sabotage and destruction of CIA Counter-Proliferation Division -- where Plame worked, which sent Ambassador Wilson to Niger twice, in 1999 and 2002, to investigate reported uranium sales -- is about to become a major news item.

[sabra]

5. yep... how many times did Cheney visit CIA headquarters?

[groovedaddy]

6. I believe it was "Farenheit 9/11" that showed

The Bush Adm. press conference where they stated they no longer believed the "Yellow Cake" story to be valid. Then it shows Cheney, weeks later, speaking at an Ameican Legion convention or something, but still stating that the "yellow cake" story as though it were true. They're a bunch of lying bastards - operating under only one mantra:
"What would Machiavelli do?"

[mod mom]

7. Post your comments at Hardblogger. They need to get some of Plame's CIA

colleagues to speak of her covert position. The right is trying to frame this with their usual lies.

I also emailed Chris Mathews:

Dear Mr Mathews,

I watched your show Hardball yesterday, in which you had two individuals, a juror from the Libby trial and Kate O'Beirne on discussing the issue of pardoning I Lewis Libby. I applaud you standing your ground w Ms O'Beirne on the definition of pardons, however I think it is appropriate to inform your viewers that Ms Beirne's husband is part of the Bush's administrations team and therefore has a very biased opinion. I would like to suggest to you that you consider showing another side of the issue, that of the consequences of Libby's action, by hosting one of Ms Plame's colleagues, like Larry Johnson.

I am appalled by using the "nice guy" scenario as a reason for pardoning. Although I realize that the outing probably came from above (ie Cheney) an individual is still responsible for their actions. I had this discussion with a friend who is a physician. Suppose his employer suggested to him to offer expired medicine to low income patients as a way to cut costs. Suppose that medicine failed to work and resulted in the death of the patients administered the expired medicine. Wouldn't the physician be responsible for carrying out an order knowing it was wrong? Should he be relieved of responsibility because he was following orders? Unless we plan on donning brown shirts in the near future, I don't think so.

In an interview on NPR the other day former colleagues of Ms Plame talked about the chilling effects of outing individuals who are covert. These individuals put their lives in harm's way to protect the national security of this country. In outing a covert agent (listen to former classmate Larry Johnson's description of Ms Plame's position) they not only destroyed her career, BUT PUT IN JEOPARDY ALL THOSE WHO WORKED WITH HER AND THE CIA FRONT COMPANY BREWSTER JENNINGS. They spoke of how this incident will cause possible CIA candidates from choosing this line of work. Ms Plame worked on counter proliferation in Iran/Iraq. At a time when our country needs intelligence, this was a very DANGEROUS political move.

I hope you will take your responsibility as a member of the fourth estate very seriously. Please present the other side of the issue. I hope you will take my suggestion to host former members of the CIA, to present their side of the issue. A well informed public benefits our country greatly.

[mainer]

8. Maybe he's saving it for his book?

He does have a book deal, doesn't he? That's what I remember hearing. And it ain't going to be friendly to Bush.

[sabra]

9. I think it's due to come out soon... though I read it's not going to be too harsh on Bush

[DemReadingDU]

10. Cheney Was Briefed by CIA on Niger

2/3/07 Larry Johnson: Cheney Was Briefed by CIA on Niger

One of the peripheral benefits from the Scooter LIbby trial (apart from the pleasure of watching the Bush Administration lies exposed) is the release of documents that provide concrete evidence of the events that produced Nigergate (or, if you prefer, Plamegate). Scooter may be claiming a foggy memory but if you read and compare the new documents with previous material, such as the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Iraq released in the summer of 2004, the fog will lift and you'll glean some new insights.

We have known all along that Dick Cheney asked the CIA to follow up on a DIA report about Iraq's effort to get uranium from Niger. Thanks to the latest document dump we now know that Dick Cheney received a preliminary brief from the CIA and the the Senate Intelligence Committee, in its 2004 report, covered up this fact.

read more...
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/02/dick_cheney_was.html

[sabra]

11. but they claim they never got the report re: Wilson's trip...

so either they are lying or the CIA decided not to reveal the trip. Either case something is rotten.

[DemReadingDU]

13. I think Cheney did not find the report agreeable

so he chose to ignore it

[librechik]

12. I took that to mean "Cheney got the report. Ask him why he's lying about it."

[DemReadingDU]

14. That's my thinking too, n/t

[magellan]

15. According to Ambassador Wilson, there were THREE reports about Niger

AMBASSADOR WILSON: The title of my piece is, "What I Did Not Find in Africa." What it cataloged was a trip to Niger at the request of the CIA, acting in response to a question by the Vice President. It was to check out allegations that Iraq had attempted to purchase significant quantities of uranium from the country. It was a very important question because, after all, Iraq would have only one use for uranium, and that would be nuclear weapons programs. That would be the one piece of incontrovertible evidence that he was attempting to reconstitute nuclear weapons programs, which would have lent some credence to the notion that the smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud.

I came back and said there was nothing to this. Mine was one of three reports in the files of the US Government that said there was nothing to this, which should have been reassuring to those who sent us out, including the Vice President and the National Security Advisor. Instead, of course, the President makes the statement in the State of the Union Address and, as it turns out, he referred to British intelligence, which happened to be the same information. They referred to British intelligence because the CIA wouldn't clear his making that claim unless it was caveated by going through a third intelligence service. So, there was a real, active deception there. This is not just an accident. This was not a slip of the tongue. These were people who wanted to put something in there that was actively deceptive to the US Congress and to the American people.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/14/143211&mode=thread&tid=25

It's unlikely they would have mislaid one requested report on Niger (Wilson's); impossible they would have lost THREE. It's patently obvious that those three reports were placed in the circular file because they didn't support BushCo's push to invade Iraq.

[SoCalDem]

16. George would want the necklace back

& he already sold it on ebay:)