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.") 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
-442-
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 "the sixteen
words." President Bush stated, " . . . the British government has learned that Saddam
Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." 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,
"[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.
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 "may have been forged because 'the
dates were wrong and the names were wrong,'" 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
- 4 4 3 -
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, "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." 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 "debunked" 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.
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 "debunked" the claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from
Africa. As discussed in the Niger section of the report, not only did he NOT "debunk"
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.
-444-
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 "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."
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.
. . . .
- 445 - |
