Unfortunately bloomberg is intentionally lying again.
The Senate Intelligence Committee & the Butler Commission clearly proved that Joe Wilson Lied repeatedly. The CIA even felt that Wilson's report added to the evidence that Saddam tried to buy Yellowcake from Niger.
Here's what the Senate Intelligence Committee Report had to say about Wilson and his wife.
pg 442 — 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.
From the beginning, this entire "scandal" has been Joseph's Wilson's doing. His public statements and interviews with reporters are what created this entire mess.
pg 443 — 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:
I can understand the Democrats reluctance. After all, the entire "Bush lied, people died" campaign was based upon Joseph Wilson's bombastic claims that Bush had "twisted" the intelligence to reach the foregone conclusion that he wanted. Now that they had discovered that it was Wilson that lied, not Bush, to officially admit that in the report would have been extremely embarrassing to the Democratic leadership. So they left it a "gray" area, hoping that there was enough wiggle room to continue the meme.
There wasn't.
With regard to Plame's involvement, the report's official conclusion should have been:
pg 443 — 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.
Note that the 2002 trip was not the first time that Plame had promoted her husband for a trip to Niger. On page 25 of the official report (from which the conclusions should have been drawn) is this statement:
Problems with the Intelligence Community's HUMINT efforts
were also evident in the Intelligence Community's
handling of Iraq's alleged efforts to acquire uranium
from Niger. The Committee does not fault the CIA for
exploiting the access enjoyed by the spouse of a CIA
employee traveling to Niger. The Committee believes,
however, that it is unfortunate, considering the
significant resources available to the CIA, that this was
the only option available.
On page 39 the Committee report reads:
Some 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." This was
just one day before CPD sent a cable [redacted]
requesting concurrence with CPD's idea to send the former
ambassador to Niger and requesting any additional
information from the foreign government service on their
uranium reports. The former ambassador's wife told
Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to
send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her
husband on behalf of the CIA and told him "there's this
crazy report" on a purported deal for Niger to sell
uranium to Iraq.
The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on
the CIA's behalf [redacted] The former ambassador was
selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to
her supervisors that her husband was planning a business
trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to
use his contacts in the region [redacted] . Because the
former ambassador did not uncover any information about
[redacted] during this visit to Niger, CPD did not
distribute an intelligence report on the visit.
Page 43 reads
Later that day, two CIA DO officers debriefed the former
ambassador who had returned from Niger the previous day.
The debriefing took place in the former ambassador's home
and although his wife was there, according to the reports
officer, she acted as a hostess and did not participate
in the debrief. Based on information provided verbally by
the former ambassador, the DO case officer wrote a draft
intelligence report and sent it to the DO reports officer
who added additional relevant information from his notes.
The Committte should have concluded, officially, as Chairman Roberts did individually, that Wilson's wife was the one who suggested his trip.
As to Wilson's charge that his trip had "debunked" the Niger story, the Committee found otherwise.
pg 444 — 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.
The Democrats' failure to agree to this must bear part of the burden of this ongoing scandal. Had they agreed to including this in the official conclusions, the matter would have ended there, and the country would have been less divided. (Remember, prior to the "Bush lied" meme, the country was united in the war against terror with the exception of the loony anti-war radicals.)
Finally, there are two points that I haven't seen addressed much, if at all. First, Wilson has carefully parsed his story about Niger by claiming that there was no agreement between Niger and Iraq to ship uranium. He cites the difficulty of bypassing the multiple checks against uranium falling into the wrong hands, the impossibility of annually shipping the amount of uranium purported to have been agreed to and the fact that "the French would never allow it".
Knowing what we know now about French involvement in the Oil For Food scandal, the last point is at least questionable, but the rest of what Wilson says is true. It ignores, however, the major finding of his trip — namely that Iraq was making inquiries about obtaining yellowcake. This was an important piece of intel that buttressed the case that Iraq had not given up its attempts to reconstitute its WMD program.
Wilson is being completely disingenuous by ignoring that salient fact.
Second, Wilson has made a number of statements that raise questions about the source of his knowledge.
ppg 44,45 — When the former ambassador spoke to Committee
staff, his description of his findings differed from the
DO intelligence report and his account of information
provided to him by the CIA differed from the CIA
officials' accounts in some respects. First, the former
ambassador described his findings to Committee staff as
more directly related to Iraq and, specifically, as
refuting both the possibility that Niger could have sold
uranium to Iraq and that Iraq approached Niger to
purchase uranium. The intelligence report described how
the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it
difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium
to rouge nations, and noted that Nigerien officials
denied knowledge of any deals to sell uranium to any
rogue states, but did not refute the possibility that
Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium.
Second, the former ambassador said that he discussed with
his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have
appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium
transaction.
In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the
alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should
have appeared on any documentation of such a deal. The
only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the
meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former Prime
Minister Mayaki.
Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts
told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged
Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the
information was the H B intelligence service. The DO
reports officer told Committee staff that he did not
provide the former ambassador with any information about
the source or details of the original reporting as it
would have required sharing classified information and,
noted that there were no "documents" circulating in the
IC at the time of the former ambassador's trip, only
intelligence reports from [redacted] intelligence
regarding an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Meeting
notes and other correspondence show that details of the
reporting were discussed at the February 19, 2002
meeting, but none of the meeting participants recall
telling the former ambassador the source of the report
[redacted].
So where did Wilson get access to the documents he claimed to have seen?
Is it possible that his wife, Valerie Plame, gave him classified materials to in an attempt to strengthen his position vis-a-vis "Bush lied"?
It certainly seems a point worth pursuing.
antimedia.us
captainsquartersblog.com
web.mit.edu
When the Wilson brouhaha broke, the British established a commission under Lord Butler to investigate prewar intelligence on Iraq from MI5 and MI6:
We conclude that, on the basis of the intelligence
assessments at the time, covering both Niger and the
Democratic Republic of Congo, the statements on Iraqi
attempts to buy uranium from Africa in the Government’s
dossier, and by the Prime Minister in the House of
Commons, were well-founded. By extension, we conclude
also that the statement in President Bush’s State of the
Union Address of 28 January 2003 that:
The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein
recently sought significant quantities of uranium from
Africa was well-founded. (Paragraph 499)
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=21499123
