Baby Steps Towards The Truth

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post prints a bit of a Wilson-basher today.  Why do we care?  The current Plame leak coverage has settled on the theme that the White House was determined to "discredit" Wilson.  In that context, an understanding of the White House motive might be enriched if the media admitted that Wilson lacked credibility, and that "discrediting" him amounted to correcting the record.

Folks who make it past the summary of Wilson's political history will eventually learn a bit about his veracity.  But first, for context, let's use Wolf Blitzer as our benchmark for the Wilson story as the media was presenting it.  On July 13, after Wilson's leaks, after the Wilson op-ed, after Tenet explained the background to the Wilson trip, Blitzer summarized the story thusly:

...11 months earlier, you, the Bush administration, had sent Joe Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador to Niger, to find out whether it was true. He came back, reported to the CIA, reported to the State Department, it wasn't true, it was bogus. The whole issue was bogus. And supposedly, you never got word of his report.

That was the media environment which Wilson helped to create.  Let's go to the WaPo:

(a) Did Wilson actually see the forged documents?

Wilson told The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports." Wilson had to admit he had misspoken.

On a better day, the WaPo would pick up Wilson's explanation of this apparent error when he spoke to Paula Zahn after the Senate report had criticized his memory:

ZAHN: I want you to respond to that very specific allegation in the addendum to the Senate report, which basically says that your public comments not only are incorrect, but have no basis in fact.

WILSON: Well, I'm not exactly sure what public comments they're referring to. If they're referring to leaks or sources, unidentified government sources in articles that appeared before my article in "The New York Times" appeared, those are either misquotes or misattributions if they're attributed to me.

Hmm, would Mr. Pincus care to address Mr. Wilson's charge that Mr. Pincus misquoted or misattributed Mr. Wilson's remarks in his June 12, 2003 story?  Or should we simply add that to the burgeoning "Wilson lacks credibility" file?  Imagine our surprise - Matthew Continetti of the Weekly Standard found Mr. Pincus to be less than forthcoming on this point.

(b) Was Wilson's wife involved in selecting him for the trip?

Wilson has maintained that Plame was merely "a conduit," telling CNN last year that "her supervisors asked her to contact me."

But the Senate committee found that "interviews and documents provided to the committee indicate that his wife . . . suggested his name for the trip." The committee also noted a memorandum from Plame saying Wilson "has good relations" with Niger officials who "could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." In addition, notes on a State Department document surmised that Plame "had the idea to dispatch him" to Niger.

The CIA has always said, however, that Plame's superiors chose Wilson for the Niger trip and she only relayed their decision.

Well.  In his book, "The Politics of Truth", Wilson said (p. 346) that "the assertion that Valerie had played any substantive role in the decision to ask me to go to Niger was false on the face of it... So what if she conveyed a request to me to come to the Agency to talk about Niger? She played absolutely no part in the decision to send me there."

On the other hand, TIME couldn't get him to answer that question last summer:

That means Wilson was also shading the story: "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," he wrote in his 2004 book The Politics of Truth. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." When asked last week by TIME if he still denies that she was the origin of his involvement in the trip, he avoided answering.

(c) Was Cheney, or Cheney's office, briefed on Wilson's report?

On another item of dispute -- whether Vice President Cheney's office inspired the Wilson trip to Niger -- Wilson had said the CIA told him he was being sent to Niger so they could "provide a response to the vice president's office," which wanted more information on the report that Iraq was seeking uranium there. Tenet said the CIA's counterproliferation experts sent Wilson "on their own initiative."

Wilson said in a recent interview: "I never said the vice president sent me or ordered me sent."

He never said that?  Here is Kristof from May 2003, with Wilson as a source:

I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger.

...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 anyway.

More Kristof, June 13, 2003:

Condoleezza Rice was asked on "Meet the Press" on Sunday about a column of mine from May 6 regarding President Bush's reliance on forged documents to claim that Iraq had sought uranium in Africa. That was not just a case of hyping intelligence, but of asserting something that had already been flatly discredited by an envoy investigating at the behest of the office of Vice President Dick Cheney.

...Mr. Cheney's office got wind of [the Niger report] and asked the C.I.A. to investigate.

...My understanding is that while Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet may not have told Mr. Bush that the Niger documents were forged, lower C.I.A. officials did tell both the vice president's office and National Security Council staff members.

For those lacking a dictionary, the Merriam-Webster tells us  that "behest" means "1 : an authoritative order : COMMAND; 2 : an urgent prompting".

(d) Was Wilson's report conclusive?  The WaPo gives us this:

Wilson's central assertion -- disputing President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger -- has been validated by postwar weapons inspections. And his charge that the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq has proved potent.

[Big Skip]

Wilson also had charged that his report on Niger clearly debunked the claim about Iraqi uranium purchases. He told NBC in 2004: "This government knew that there was nothing to these allegations." But the Senate committee said his findings were ambiguous. Tenet said Wilson's report "did not resolve" the matter. [See Tenet's July 11, 2003 statement].

The WaPo could have done more, but they have moved in the right direction by noting some flaws in Wilson's original stage-setters. 

And they are a fountain of insight in comparison with the NY Times.  When the Times wrote their long account of the Judy Miller saga and the backstory to the Plame leaks, they made no mention of Nick Kristof's columns, even though his May 6 effort noted above is widely credited with launching Joe Wilson.

Today, the Times has a modest breakthrough as they confront their tortured past while discussing the timing of the conversation between Libby and Cheney about Wilson and his wife:

On June 12, 2003, the day of the conversation between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby, The Washington Post published a front-page article reporting that the C.I.A. had sent a retired American diplomat to Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium there. The article did not name the diplomat, who turned out to be Mr. Wilson, but it reported that his mission had not corroborated a claim about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material that the White House had subsequently used in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

An earlier anonymous reference to Mr. Wilson and his mission to Africa had appeared in a column by Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times on May 6, 2003. Mr. Wilson went public with his conclusion that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times.

My goodness.  It seems finally to have dawned on the Times editors that they can not continue to cover this story under the pretense that Joe Wilson sprang from the earth, fully grown, with his op-ed on July 6.

Will the Times ever get around to acknowledging that much of the material presented by Kristof was not accurate?  Will they acknowledge that one possible motivation for the White House attack on Wilson's credibility was that Wilson was not credible?

One day at a time at the Times.

 

Comments

[Geek, Esq.]

Determining who, between the administration under investigation for perjury and the fickle Mr. Wilson, is more credible is like arguing whether Beavis or Butthead was the smart one.

[TM]

Touche.

[clarice]

Laurie Mylroie signalled what was going on with the unelected bureaucracy in the DoS and CIA years ago--Bush v, The Beltway, and the Kristof/Pincus?Wilson fandango is but one example of a runamok mandarinate which long ago decided it and it alone could and should dictate UR foreign policy.

[clarice]

Laurie Mylroie signalled what was going on with the unelected bureaucracy in the DoS and CIA years ago--Bush v, The Beltway, and the Kristof/Pincus?Wilson fandango is but one example of a runamok mandarinate which long ago decided it and it alone could and should dictate US foreign policy.

[ICallMasICM]

Butthead was the smart one.

[eli]

Not the least bit relevant:
1. The correct record is that there was no transaction with Niger... the hawks wilfully let themselves be duped. Attacking the messanger is a sideshow. Maybe he's a liar, maybe he was misquoted. The point is that he was unquestionably correct about shabby evidence used for a war.
2. You can't have it both ways. Was the entrenched bureaucracy underestimating our enemy or was it overestimating our enemy?! It doesn't matter WHO sent who to Niger, they weren't going to find anything, because, as we leaned by occupying Iraq and searching every conrner- there was no unranium. Period. Ideology meet facts.

[Cornholio]

Then that would make Wilson...Beavis.

[Jon H]

"Laurie Mylroie signalled what was going on with the unelected bureaucracy in the DoS and CIA years ago--Bush v, The Beltway"

You mean her book which decried the CIA's underestimating of the threat of Iraqi WMD, which was an obstacle for Bush's war?

Funny, I thought the White House blamed the CIA for *overestimating* the threat!

Anyway, Laurie Mylroie is a grade-A tinfoil hat kook. And she looks like Paul Wolfowitz in drag.

[cheesecake]

No one in the administration ever said Iraq bought yellowcake from Niger. Only that Iraq was seeking yellow cake. Something that Wilson's trip ending up supporting.

And by the way, Iraq already had an additional 500 pounds of yellow cake in it's possession:

"The story begins at the end of the first Gulf War when inspectors found a 500 ton cache of refined yellow cake uranium at Iraq’s primary nuclear research facility in Al-Tuwaitha outside of Bagdhad. The cache was part of a huge inventory of nuclear materials discovered by UN inspectors that included low-level radioactive material of the type used for industrial and medical purposes as well as a quantity of highly enriched uranium suitable for bomb production."

[paul]

How did Wilson know he was sent by the VP's office?

How did he know that his material was used in a report that originally he said was given to the Veep?

Apparently Joe Wilson was more in the know with the CIA than Cheney was...

Which begs the question: Did Joe wilson have more sources of intel from the CIA, than Cheney or Tenet?

Plame (and probably several friends) were blabbing like high schoolers. If she was a clandestine agent, she sure didn't learn her job well.

[Jim E.]

Laurie Mylroie thinks Arabs were behind the Oklahoma City bombing. And she co-wrote a book with Judy Miller.

[clarice]

Isn't it interesting that Scowcroft whose attacks on the Administration are now at a fever pitch, is the employer of Pavitt, Plame's ex-boss. And wasn't it Pavitt who, among other things, first denied that Plame had anything to do with the Mission to Niger .(wouldn't that be a great name for an opera buffo?)

No matter what the outcome of this investigation, I will continue to believe that this was a snakey operation by rats in the CIA aided by the media for the benefit of Kerry who would certainly have yielded to the mandarinate.

[Anderson]

Because the CIA was pissed at the administration, does not make the administration right and the CIA wrong.

Because State was pissed at being ignored, does not make the administration right and State wrong.

Maybe the bureaucracy was fighting back because it saw a once-in-a-generation foreign-policy train wreck taking place, with all messages to the engineer being ignored? "More coal!" was all they heard ...

[clarice]

Mylroie also correctly tagged the Iraqis with masterminding the WTC bombing using the false flag of islamonutcases and linked (correctly) Ramzi Yusef and Sheik Bin Al Shieb (Sp?) to that operation and to Saddam.

Would that we had people like her instead of the generic blonde dope on the inside of Langley.

[clarice]

The CIA missed, among other things, the Pak nuke souk, the Libyan nuclear program, Saddan's bio chem program.It encouraged a fake coup which Chalabi warned them was a fake, costing thousands of lives. Once upon a time the left distrusted them as much as I do--what changed your minds? Their damned ineffectiveness? LOL

[Sue]

Jon H,

Well, if nothing else you wrote convinced me "Laurie Mylroie is a grade-A tinfoil hat kook" then looking like "Paul Wolfowitz in drag" will certainly solidify your argument.

[CaseyL]

"Mylroie also correctly tagged the Iraqis with masterminding the WTC bombing using the false flag of islamonutcases and linked (correctly) Ramzi Yusef and Sheik Bin Al Shieb (Sp?) to that operation and to Saddam.

I think Clarice *is* Laurie Mylronie.

[beatingthedrum]

Paul Wolfowitz in drag? Thank you for solving my big Halloween costume problem!

But do I add vampire teeth or would that be over the top?

[Jim E.]

clarice wrote: "No matter what the outcome of this investigation, I will continue to believe . . .[blames CIA, media, John Kerry]"

clarice admits that she is in faith-based mode. Facts don't matter to her. That's been obvious, but she's made it explicit. We know little of what the GJ knows, yet clarice has already made her conclusions and she's stickin' to 'em. And now she's denigrating Valerie Plame's service to the country. Kook.

Yet clarice has her own fan-club on these threads.

[clarice]

Yes, I am denigrating the undoubtedly outstanding service of an undoubtedly genius analyst who despite her wit and wisdom just happened to marry the biggest clown in Washington.LOL

[DwightKSchrute]

So if Wilson lacks credibility or his claims are off base, why not come out and say it at the time? GWB and his admin has shown a extreme distaste for admitting wrong choices (Miers being the current case in point). So why not go on the airwaves and say "This guy is a liar and his info is flat wrong!"? Why give backchannel surrogates like Novak and Miller info on his wife?

TM asks "Will they acknowledge that one possible motivation for the White House attack on Wilson's credibility was that Wilson was not credible?"

Perhaps Wilson's the biggest liar this side of Baghdad Bob. But given plenty of opportunity the White House never came out and made this case. Instead Cheney, 3 months after having discussing Wilson and Plame with Tenent and Libby (according to Libby's notes), goes on Meet the Press and says "but I guess—like I say, I don’t know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn’t judge him. I have no idea who hired him" when Russert says the CIA Cheney responds "Who in the CIA, I don’t know.". So perfect opportunity to say "You know what Tim I think this guy has serious credibility problems." or "I think when all the facts come out you'll see that his story is filled with innacuracies".

But Cheney instead thought the right approach was to lie on tv about how much he knew. I didn't like when Slick Willie lied to the country and I don't like it now when it's Dick Cheney.

[Jim E.]

I thought we were talking about Valerie Plame, not Laura Bush.

[Jeff]

No matter what the outcome of this investigation, I will continue to believe that this was a snakey operation by rats in the CIA aided by the media for the benefit of Kerry who would certainly have yielded to the mandarinate.

Thank you for your honesty, clarice.

[Sue]

Dwight,

How did Cheny lie? In those quotes? He probably didn't know who hired him. His wife didn't hire him, she merely suggested him. He probably didn't know which person in the CIA hired him, since Tenet had denied doing so. Now, did Cheney keep the information from us that he knew Wilson's wife worked at the CIA? Yes. But isn't that what the beef is about? Talking about a CIA agent?

[Lesley]

TM: "My goodness. It seems finally to have dawned on the Times editors that they can not continue to cover this story under the pretense that Joe Wilson sprang from the earth, fully grown, with his op-ed on July 6."

Tom, maybe the Times editors regarded Joe Wilson as latter day Topsy:

"I s'pect I just growed. Don't think nobody never made me." - Uncle Tom's Cabin -

[Jim E.]

Sue wrote: "His wife didn't hire him, she merely suggested him."

You just tip-toed right off the Bush-defender reservation with that comment. If you weaken Plame's role in this, the administration's pleas of trying to correct the record are severely undercut.

[paul]

"Because the CIA was pissed at the administration, does not make the administration right and the CIA wrong.

Because State was pissed at being ignored, does not make the administration right and State wrong."

Well, either state and spooks work for the Adminstration, or they work against it...

Given the traction Louis Freeh has found among dems(and republicans!), deriding Clinton, it clearly is a matter of deciding the favorite message and accepting its messenger. I can't recall ever voting for someone at the State Dept or the CIA...

At least you had the guts to admit that the CIA and Foggy Bottom disliked this adminstration, but to follow that thought to its conclusion would lead one to believe that both depts would leak info like a sieve that proved their views, but remain mum on info that was inconvenient/inconsistent to their beliefs.

[kal palnicki]

The matter comes down to who outed a CIA agent. Why worry about the small stuff of who said what and when? After all GW Bush says all sorts of things that are later ignored, such as if anyone in the White House leaked anything, that person would be fired. A crime was committed, several crimes were committed. The bulk of them on the part of the administration.

[Gettin Gud]

Watch out!!!! We are going to have a bunch of angry, terrorist-supportin', America-hatin' Libs in a couple of days.

[pollyusa]

Rumor from Wonkette

Word on the rainy streets of Washington is that Patrick Fitzgerald will be recalling some witnesses soon. Conflicting word is that he will announce indictments Thursday.

[clarice]

OT but mac signed out as the hurricane was bearing down on him and hasn't returned since. He must be going insane. If we don't hear from him in 24 hours I say we rustle up a search party and a grief counselor and head on down to rescue him.

[Sue]

Jim E,

Care to show me where anyone said Ms. Flame 'hired' her husband?

[Reg Jones]

TM you forgot a golden oldie...

Joe Wison, did the former Niger prime minister [Mayaki] meet with any Iraqi officials in June 1999?

In brief:

1. Wilson says “yes” during his private CIA debrief in March, 2002.

2. Wilson fails to mention the meeting in his NYT op/ed and his first “Meet the Press” in July, 2003.

3. Wilson lies and says “no” during a “Frontline” PBS Interview in August, 2003.

4. Wilson lies and says “no” twice during his second “Meet the Press” interview in October, 2003.

5. Wilson says “yes” during his third “Meet the Press” interview in May, 2004.

6. Wilson says “yes” to SSCI committee staff --report released in July, 2004.

[clarice]

Reg, any cites, please?

[politicaobscura]

I agree with Sue on this, as opposed to Jim E. who said:

You just tip-toed right off the Bush-defender reservation with that comment. If you weaken Plame's role in this, the administration's pleas of trying to correct the record are severely undercut.

I don't recall anyone saying Plame hired Wilson. You are trying to lie to us, are ya Jim?

It is a proven fact that Wilson lied about his wife's role in the selection process, Jim E.... just accept it and move on... it is very weak part of your case to try to say that Plame had no role in his selection... next issue???

[owl]

I agree clarice--this was CIA/media to advance the Democratic position. They were just practicing up with the previous 100 campaigns.

NYT starts the ball rolling with Kristoff, publishes Wilson, pushes the "outing" theme, screams the loudest for a prosecutor, keeps Miller in jail (Miller's letter to Public Editor), and trashes Miller good when she doesn't produce.

So now we all sit and wait to see if they bagged Rove on #101.

[Jim E.]

Sue,
As far as I am aware, there is zero evidence that Plame "hired" her husband, or had any significant input at all. (It seems she may have suggested him, though.)

The only people who claim Plame played a large role in Wilson's mission are Bush/Cheney defenders. They have no evidence for their claim and are motivated by trying to discredit Wilson.

[TM]

Hmm, fighting back in June 2003 about the decision to go to war has a certain post-flight lock barn door ring to it.

The theory I prefer is that, like any proper bureaucracy, the CIA took the stand that "Iraq has WMDs, unless they don't" - then, after the initial occupation, all we heard was "We told you so - they don't".

You just tip-toed right off the Bush-defender reservation with that comment. If you weaken Plame's role in this, the administration's pleas of trying to correct the record are severely undercut.

Huh? WHat about "involved", or "suggested"?

[Sue]

You have been here much longer than I have, so I can't argue what some said at an earlier date than when I first arrived. However, I will say that since I have been here, no one has even hinted that Ms. Flame hired her husband, but merely suggested him. Sometimes the facts work as well as the lie. ;) Ask Libby, if you doubt me.

[windansea]

As far as I am aware, there is zero evidence that Plame "hired" her husband, or had any significant input at all. (It seems she may have suggested him, though.)

JimE...are you dumb or just infected with BDS

Nobody sez she hired him....she did suggest him and write a memo about his experience and contacts in the region.

The very next day someone "hired" Wilson....a logical person would conclude that her input was indeed significant.

[Pablo]

" A crime was committed, several crimes were committed. The bulk of them on the part of the administration."

If you think "outing Plame" was a crime you are mistaken. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982 is a very narrowly drafted statute, and it requires for conviction that the person whose identity was disclosed was a covert agent in a foreign country within the preceding five years.

Plame hadn't been outside the country for at least six years, was married to a former diplomat and was raising a family.

As to the rest of the "crimes" commited by the administration would you care to provide hard, convincing evidence to those of us who are not members of your faith-based congregation of drooling Bush haters?

Jim E.,

Google Jayna Davis. There is overwhelming evidence, including at least 20 eyewitness accounts, backing the claim that there was indeed a ME connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.

[CaseyL]

Breaking, from Steve Clemons:

1. 1-5 indictments are being issued. The source feels that it will be towards the higher end.

2. The targets of indictment have already received their letters.

3. The indictments will be sealed indictments and "filed" tomorrow.

4. A press conference is being scheduled for Thursday.

A comment on Steve's blog notes that 1 indictment = 1 person; that is, each indictment can contain multiple charges.

[Keith]

If Rove and Libby and others had received letters saying that they were going to be indicted, then wouldn't they have already resigned? Why stay on if you know what's going to happen? Why not strike preemptively?

Hmmmm....

[Geek, Esq.]

The meaning of "indictment" is sufficiently vague that we probably need to hear from Clemons's source.

For example: The AIPAC indictment had multiple defendants accused of multiple crimes:
http://www.fas.org/irp/ops/ci/franklin0805.pdf

[Geek, Esq.]

If Rove and Libby and others had received letters saying that they were going to be indicted, then wouldn't they have already resigned? Why stay on if you know what's going to happen?

Because, when you're holding a sealed envelope, it's time to play "Let's Make a Deal."

[PaulS]

And saying 1 to 5 doesn't really inspire confidence that somebody's very much in the loop.

[topsecretk9]

Is type pad acting kinda hanky?

OT- sorry still stuck on this
Just a thought, but did Pincu's piece just crumb a successful defamation suit, and is running around be quoted in newspapers calling the admin a bunch of lying asshole bastards sort of a crumb as well?

[Sue]

Maybe last night's headline in the NYTs was the pre-emptive strike. I've heard today that Libby's lawyer was the leaker.

[Jim E.]

I didn't mean to parse the word "hire." That wasn't my intent, and it's my fault for not being more clear. My only point was to say that if Plame's role in all of this is diminished, then the administration's push-back looks even more petty. I doubt the public, which won't really care about Wilson's trip anyway when indictments are announced, is going to get too hot and bothered about whether Plame "suggested" Wilson. Big whoop. The CIA decides who to send, not Libby.

I am left wondering why the administraiton had to push-back so covertly, and then deny, deny, deny when asked about it.

[Keith]

Because, when you're holding a sealed envelope, it's time to play "Let's Make a Deal."

Maybe you want to play a deal as far as your conviction. But if you're Karl Rove, and you know that it's going to be announced that you've been indicted (sealed or not), don't you resign ahead of time? That way, it shows that you're (a) honorable; (b) that Bush wouldn't tolerate you; (c) that all the news stories about the indictment say, "former WH aide...", etc.

If Rove knows he's going to have to resign, why hasn't he done it? That tells me that if Clemons is right, Rove and Libby are not the ones being indicted.