Time for ROVE and the White House TO BE INDICTED....by THE CIA!!!! Call and support this action....MONEY WELL SPENT! Maybe Kenny Star is AVAILABLE FOR THE PROSECUTION
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Former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson 4th, speaks on NBC's
'Meet the Press' July 6, 2003.
CIA seeks probe of
White House
Agency asks Justice to investigate leak of
employee’s identity
EXCLUSIVE
MSNBC AND NBC NEWS
WASHINGTON, Sept. 26 — The CIA has asked the
Justice Department to investigate allegations that
the White House broke federal laws by revealing
the identity of one of its undercover employees in
retaliation against the woman’s husband, a former
ambassador who publicly criticized President
Bush’s since-discredited claim that Iraq had
sought weapons-grade uranium from Africa, NBC
News has learned.
THE FORMER ENVOY, Joseph Wilson, who was
acting ambassador to Iraq before the first Gulf War, was
dispatched to Niger in 2002 to investigate a British
intelligence report that Iraq sought to buy uranium there.
Although Wilson discredited the report, Bush cited it in his
State of the Union address in January among the evidence he
said justified military action in Iraq.
The administration has since had to repudiate the claim.
CIA Director George Tenet said the 16-word sentence
should not have been included in Bush’s Jan. 28 speech and
publicly accepted responsibility for allowing it to remain in the
president’s text.
Wilson published an article in July alleging, however, that
the White House recklessly made the charge knowing it was
false.
“We spend billions of dollars on intelligence,” Wilson
wrote. “But we end up putting something in the State of the
Union address, something we got from another intelligence
agency, something we cannot independently verify, in an area
of Africa where the British have no on-the-ground
presence.”
WHITE HOUSE DENIALS
The next week, columnist Robert Novak published an
article in which he revealed that Wilson’s wife, Valerie
Plame, was a covert CIA operative specializing in weapons
of mass destruction. “Two senior administration officials told
me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to
investigate,” Novak wrote.
The White House has denied being Novak’s source,
whom he has refused to identify. But Wilson has said other
reporters have told him White House officials leaked Plame’s
identity.
NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell reported Friday night
that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to
investigate whether White House officials blew Plame’s
cover in retaliation against Wilson. Revealing the identities of
covert officials is a violation of two laws, the National
Agents’ Identity Act and the Unauthorized Release of
Classified Information Act.
ATTEMPTS TO REMOVE CLAIM
When the Niger claim first arose, in February 2002, the
CIA sent Wilson to Africa to investigate. He reported
finding no credible evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium
from Niger.
The CIA’s doubts about the uranium claim were
reported through routine intelligence traffic throughout the
government, U.S. intelligence officials said. Those doubts
were also reported to the British.
The Niger report included a notation that it was
unconfirmed when it was published in the October 2002
National Intelligence Estimate, the classified summary of
intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs.
The CIA had the Niger claim removed from at least two
speeches before they were given: Bush’s October address on
the Iraqi threat, and a speech by U.N. Ambassador John
Negroponte.
As the State of the Union address was being written,
CIA officials protested over how the alleged uranium
connection was being portrayed, so the administration
changed it to attribute it to the British, who had made the
assertion in a Sept. 24 dossier.
By MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson with NBC’s Andrea
Mitchell. |
