Money shot: (Wilson admits to using "a little literary flair")
>>Despite our hard and successful work to deliver a unanimous report, however, there were two issues on which the Republicans and Democrats could not agree:
1) whether the Committee should conclude that former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's public statements were not based on knowledge he actually possessed, and
2) whether the Committee should conclude that it was the former ambassador's wife who recommended him for his trip to Niger.
Niger
The Committee began its review of prewar intelligence on Iraq by examining the Intelligence Community's sharing of intelligence information with the UNMOVIC inspection teams. (The Committee's findings on that topic can be found in the section of the report titled, "The Intelligence Community's Sharing of Intelligence on Iraqi Suspect WMD Sites with UN Inspectors.")
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Shortly thereafter, we expanded the review when former Ambassador Joseph Wilson began speaking publicly about his role in exploring the possibility that Iraq was seeking or may have acquired uranium yellowcake from
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Africa. Ambassador Wilson's emergence was precipitated by a passage in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address which is now referred to as <font color=blue>"the sixteen words."<font color=black> President Bush stated, <font color=blue>" . . . the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."<font color=black> The details of the Committee's findings and conclusions on this issue can be found in the Niger section of the report.
What cannot be found, however, are two conclusions upon
which the Committee's Democrats would not agree. While
there was no dispute with the underlying facts, my
Democrat colleagues refused to allow the following
conclusions to appear in the report:
Conclusion: The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee. The former ambassador's wife suggested her husband for the trip to Niger in February 2002. The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on behalf of the CIA, also at the suggestion of his wife, to look into another matter not related to Iraq. On February 12, 2002, the former ambassador's wife sent a memorandum to a Deputy Chief of a division in the CIA's Directorate of Operations which said, <font color=blue>"[m]y 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."
This was just one day before the same Directorate of Operations division sent a cable to one of its overseas stations requesting concurrence with the division's idea
to send the former ambassador to Niger.
Conclusion: Rather than 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.
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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 that the Niger-Iraq
uranium documents <font color=blue>"may have been forged because 'the
dates were wrong and the names were wrong,'"<font color=black>
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. In addition, nothing in the report from the former
ambassador's trip said anything about documents having
been forged or the names or dates
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in the reports having been incorrect. The former
ambassador told Committee staff that he, in fact, did not
have access to any of the names and dates in the CIA's
reports and said he may have become confused about his
own recollection after the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and
dates on the documents were not correct. Of note, the
names and dates in the documents that the IAEA found to be
incorrect were not names or dates included in the CIA
reports.
Following the Vice President's review of an intelligence
report regarding a possible uranium deal, he asked his
briefer for the CIA's analysis of the issue. It was this
request which generated Mr. Wilson's trip to Niger. The
former ambassador's public comments suggesting that the
Vice President had been briefed on the information
gathered during his trip is not correct, however. While
the CIA responded to the Vice President's request for the
Agency's analysis, they never provided the information
gathered by the former Ambassador. The former ambassador,
in an NBC Meet the Press interview on July 6, 2003,
said, <font color=blue>"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."<font color=black> The former ambassador was speaking on the
basis of what he believed should have happened based on
his former government experience, but he had no knowledge
that this did happen.
These and other public comments from the former
ambassador, such as comments that his report <font color=blue>
"debunked"<font color=black> the Niger-Iraq uranium story, were incorrect
and have led to a distortion in the press and in the
public's understanding of the facts surrounding the Niger-
Iraq uranium story. The Committee found that, for most
analysts, the former ambassador's report lent more
credibility, not less, to the reported Niger-Iraq uranium
deal.
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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 <font color=blue>"debunked"<font color=black>
the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. As
discussed in the Niger section of the report, not only did
he NOT <font color=blue>"debunk"<font color=black> the claim, he actually gave some
intelligence analysts even more reason to believe that it
may be true. I believed very strongly that it was
important for the Committee to conclude publicly that many
of the statements made by Ambassador Wilson were not only
incorrect, but had no basis in fact.
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In an interview with Committee staff, Mr. Wilson was asked
how he knew some of the things he was stating publicly
with such confidence. On at least two occasions he
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 <font color=blue>"knew"<font color=black> 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 <font color=blue>"a little literary flair."<font color=black>
The former Ambassador, either by design or through
ignorance, gave the American people and, for that matter,
the world a version of events that was inaccurate,
unsubstantiated, and misleading. Surely, the Senate
Intelligence Committee, which has unique access to all of
the facts, should have been able to agree on a conclusion
that would correct the public record. Unfortunately, we
were unable to do so.. . . . <font size=3>
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