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Most recently, Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) took to the Senate floor and expressly referred to
a private FBI file on judicial nominee Judge Henry Saad. Reid noted a “problem” in the report even though
Senate rules require the Members to keep FBI information strictly confidential.
“[Time Reporter Matt] Cooper Wrote That Rove Offered Him A ‘Big Warning’
Not To ‘Get Too Far Out On Wilson.’ Rove Told Cooper That Wilson’s Trip Had Not Been Authorized By ‘DCIA’
- CIA Director George Tenet - Or Vice President Dick Cheney.” (Michael Isikoff, "Matt Cooper’s
Source," Newsweek, 7/18/05)
Wilson Says He Traveled To Niger At CIA Request To Help Provide Response To Vice
President’s Office. “In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency
that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report. … The agency officials
asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president’s office.”
(Joseph C. Wilson, Op-Ed, “What I Didn’t Find In Africa,” The New York Times, 7/6/03)
Tenet dispelling the belief that he had sent Wilson to Niger: CIA Director George Tenet: “In An Effort To Inquire About Certain Reports Involving
Niger, CIA’s Counter-Proliferation Experts, On Their Own Initiative, Asked An Individual With Ties To The Region To
Make A Visit To See What He Could Learn.” (Central Intelligence Agency, “Statement
By George J. Tenet, Director Of Central Intelligence,” Press Release, 7/11/03)
By John Gibson
Now my point is that the American people had a right to know who sent Joe Wilson.
Evidently, he thought so too because he maintained for the longest time that he was sent by Vice President Dick Cheney's
office — not admitting his wife had anything to do with it.
If the cover story for Wilson's trip is that Cheney sent him and Wilson's message of, "Don't go to war to overthrow Saddam,"
is ignored by Cheney and Bush and the American public is wondering why Cheney would send someone to check out Saddam's WMD
and then ignore the advice, don't you think it would be important to know Cheney didn't send Wilson — that Wilson's
wife sent him?
Wilson Denied His Wife Suggested He Travel To Niger, But Documentation Showed She
Proposed His Name:
Wilson Claims His Wife Did Not Suggest He Travel To Niger To Investigate Reports
Of Uranium Deal; Instead, Wilson Claims It Came Out Of Meeting With CIA To Discuss Report. CNN’S WOLF BLITZER:
“Among other things, you had always said, always maintained, still maintain your wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA officer,
had nothing to do with the decision to send to you Niger to inspect reports that uranium might be sold from Niger to Iraq.
… Did Valerie Plame, your wife, come up with the idea to send you to Niger?” JOE WILSON: “No. My wife served
as a conduit, as I put in my book. When her supervisors asked her to contact me for the purposes of coming into the CIA to
discuss all the issues surrounding this allegation of Niger selling uranium to Iraq.” (CNN’s
“Lade Edition,” 7/18/04)
But Senate Select Committee On Intelligence Received Not Only Testimony But Actual
Documentation Indicating Wilson’s Wife Proposed Him For Trip. “Some [CIA Counterproliferation Division,
or CPD,] officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents
provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer
told Committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife ‘offered up his name’ and a memorandum to the Deputy
Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador’s wife says, ‘my husband has good relations
with both 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.’” (Select Committee On Intelligence, “Report
On The U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments On Iraq,” U.S. Senate, 7/7/04)
Dispelling Media Elitist Bias Concerning Karl Rove
By: Lee P Butler
"A Little Literary Flair"
From the July 26, 2004 issue: Joe Wilson wasn't a truth-teller.
by
Matthew Continetti
07/26/2004, Volume 009, Issue 43
Wilson caught after claiming documents were forged upon returning from Niger: "That's
because the bogus documents in question were not turned over to CIA personnel until October 16, 2002, about eight months after
Wilson had returned from Niger. Also, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, at Wilson's initial February 19, 2002,
meeting in CIA headquarters, "none of the meeting participants recall telling the former ambassador the source of the report."
This is how Pat Roberts, the committee's chairman, put it in his "additional views" section of the report:
At the time the former ambassador traveled to Niger, the Intelligence Community did not have in its possession any actual
documents on the alleged Niger-Iraq uranium deal, only second hand reporting of the deal. The former ambassador's comments
to reporters . . . could not have been based on the former ambassador's actual experiences because the Intelligence Community
did not have the documents at the time of the ambassador's trip."
"On at least two occasions [Wilson] admitted that he had no direct knowledge to support some of his claims and that
he was drawing on either unrelated past experiences or no information at all. For example, when asked how he "knew" that the
Intelligence Community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, as he wrote in his book, he told Committee
staff that his assertion may have involved "a little literary flair."
"A little literary flair" is a good way to describe the following claim, also in the original Kristof column: "The envoy's
debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted--except that President Bush and the
State Department kept citing it [the forgery] anyway."
The Select Committee discovered otherwise:
DIA and CIA analysts said that when they saw the intelligence report they did not believe that it supplied
much new information and did not think that it clarified the story on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. They did not find
Nigerien denials that they had discussed uranium sales with Iraq as very surprising because they had no expectation that Niger
would admit to such an agreement if it did exist. The analysts did, however, find it interesting that the former Nigerien
Prime Minister said [to Wilson] an Iraqi delegation had visited Niger [in 1999] for what [the prime minister] believed was
to discuss uranium sales."
"REHM (7/12/05): I don’t understand what law has been broken in this Judith Miller case and
in the Matt Cooper case.
WOODWARD: I don’t either, and I have not seen any evidence that a law has been broken..."
ORIN (7/11/05): There is an issue of whether Karl Rove told the truth and the whole truth. But
what`s more important is, it is clear that Joe Wilson didn`t tell the truth. We have a bipartisan Senate Intelligence
Committee report that says, on virtually every point that Joe Wilson made, starting from denying his wife had him sent on
the trip, which turns out to be not true—
CHRIS MATTHEWS: Right. She did.
ORIN: She did. And to claiming that he found that there was no ties with Iraq and that he reported
that, which he did not report—he reported, if anything, the opposite. To claiming that he reported there were forged
documents, which was not true, because he never even saw the documents. So Joe Wilson`s credibility is seriously in question.
And what we now see is, what Karl Rove appears to have been doing was to be pointing out to Time magazine that Joe
Wilson could not be trusted, rather than trying to get even with Joe Wilson.
Another element necessary for applying the law is that the government had to be taking affirmative measures
to conceal the agent's identity.
Toensing says that on the contrary, the CIA gave Plame a desk job in which she publicly went to and
from work, allowed her spouse to do a mission in Africa without signing a confidentiality agreement
and didn't object to his writing an op-ed piece in the New York Times about his trip.
ABC, CBS and NBC are maintaining their relentless coverage of the CIA leak investigation, with 58 stories
on their morning and evening newscasts since July 10. But when a high-ranking Clinton administration official, Kenneth Bacon,
used an illegal leak to malign Linda Tripp, an anti-Clinton whistleblower, the networks were nearly completely silent.
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