What Is Happening At The WaPo?

If an editorial can induce aneurysms, the Washington Post may have killed or wounded a significant slice of left-leaning America with their effort on Sunday - in "A Good Leak" they both defend Libby's leak of the NIE to Judy Miller and beat on Joe Wilson.  Since they also buried a seemingly-significant story about who at the White House knew what and when on the Niger-uranium question, we wonder if there has been a Ben Domenech-inspired coup at the WaPo.  [A more serious defense of the WaPo is here - basically, Woodward, Pincus, and the editors have insider knowledge about who leaked and why.]

First, their praise of the leak, with emphasis added:

A Good Leak
President Bush declassified some of the intelligence he used to decide on war in Iraq. Is that a scandal?

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do. But the administration handled the release clumsily, exposing Mr. Bush to the hyperbolic charges of misconduct and hypocrisy that Democrats are leveling.

...There was nothing illegal or even particularly unusual about that; nor is this presidentially authorized leak necessarily comparable to other, unauthorized disclosures that the president believes, rightly or wrongly, compromise national security. Nevertheless, Mr. Cheney's tactics make Mr. Bush look foolish for having subsequently denounced a different leak in the same controversy and vowing to "get to the bottom" of it.

Wow.  Of course, these are presumably the same editors hyping the "punish Wilson" excerpt from the Fitzgerald filing, so go figure.

LOTS of reaction at Memeorandum; I may scout a few lefty sites to perform a body count, but let me try to anticipate their outrage on the Wilson segment.  To do that I have to take the unaccustomed role of Joe Wilson apologist, but here we go:

Mr. Wilson originally claimed in a 2003 New York Times op-ed and in conversations with numerous reporters that he had debunked a report that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger and that Mr. Bush's subsequent inclusion of that allegation in his State of the Union address showed that he had deliberately "twisted" intelligence "to exaggerate the Iraq threat."  The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

Well, per the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report from July 2004, it is true that there were aspects of his report that supported that conclusion, since Wilson noted an Iraqi overture from 1999 that may have been related to uranium.  However, his report was considered inconclusive.  From the report:

Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq.

Let's go back to the editorial:

Mr. Wilson subsequently claimed that the White House set out to punish him for his supposed whistle-blowing by deliberately blowing the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, who he said was an undercover CIA operative. This prompted the investigation by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald. After more than 2 1/2 years of investigation, Mr. Fitzgerald has reported no evidence to support Mr. Wilson's charge.

As much as I agree, this editorial is appearing in the very same paper that reported this on Saturday, in the lead:

As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" -- using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

And this was in the Friday edition:

Fitzgerald's brief uses unusually strong language to rebut this claim. In light of the grand jury testimony, the prosecutor said, "it is hard to conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson."

My goodness, regular readers of the WaPo risk whiplash.  [That said, the WaPo editors surely know who Bob Woodward's source is for his Plame leak; they also must know Walter Pincus' source.  So they may have unpublished reasons to be skeptical of the "punishment" theory.]  Let's press on:

Mr. Libby's motive in allegedly disclosing her name to reporters, Mr. Fitzgerald said, was to disprove yet another false assertion, that Mr. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by Mr. Cheney. In fact Mr. Wilson was recommended for the trip by his wife.

Devoted Wilso-philes will swoon at the notion that Libby's motive may have been to correct the record.  As to the idea that it is a "fact" that Wilson's wife recommended him for the trip, stand back! 

Wilson's position has shown admirable flexibility in the face of new facts; here he is chatting with TIME in the famous Matt Cooper article:

In an interview with TIME, Wilson, who served as an ambassador to Gabon and as a senior American diplomat in Baghdad under the current president's father, angrily said that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to Africa. "That is bulls__t. That is absolutely not the case," Wilson told TIME. "I met with between six and eight analysts and operators from CIA and elsewhere [before the Feb 2002 trip]. None of the people in that meeting did I know, and they took the decision to send me. This is a smear job."

The Senate report told a different story - here is Susan Schmidt of the WaPo from July 2004:

Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

Can't fault the WaPo editors for lack of consistency.  Joe Wilson fired back, and it is fair to say this has been a point of contention (some of my thoughts here).

In any case, both Wilson's position and the coverage at TIME have been evolving - here is a TIME account from August 2005:

...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.  But he has maintained all along that Administration officials conducted a "smear job" on him and outed his wife in revenge.

Time to survey the battlefield.

MORE:  Odd - Joe Wilson emails SusanG at the Daily Kos, but skips past the spousal question to focus on the schizophrenia at the WaPo.  Joe and I, thinking as one - that ought to make at least one of us uncomfortable.

Brad DeLong uses the one of my favorite phrases to describe the WaPo.

ERiposte and ThinkProgress make me look concise, but add some points.  I am going to dispute Think Progress on this:

CLAIM: Wilson said Cheney sent him to Africa “Mr. Libby’s motive in allegedly disclosing her name to reporters, Mr. Fitzgerald said, was to disprove yet another false assertion, that Mr. Wilson had been dispatched to Niger by Mr. Cheney.” [Washington Post, 4/9/06]

FACT:

Wilson never said that Cheney sent him, only that the vice president’s office had questions about an intelligence report that referred to the sale of uranium yellowcake to Iraq from Niger. Wilson, in his New York Times article, said CIA officials were informed of Cheney’s questions. [Bloomberg, 7/14/05]

Groan - Nick Kristof is hazy on who said it or how it got started, but *someone* asserted that Wilson was sent "at the behest" (Kristof's phrase) of the office of the Vice President, and the White House certainly felt pressured to rebut it.  Here, for example, is the fact-proof Chris Matthews insisting repeatedly that Wilson was sent "at the behest" of the VP's office.  Perhaps the WaPo editors should have separated the office from the man, but to pretend that the idea was not out there (following, we should note, the Kristof columns (May 6, 2003; June 13, 2003) with Wilson as an anonymous source) is not reasonable.

MORE:  And if Wilson did not say Cheney sent him, he ought to ask his publicist to correct his current on-line bio.  or maybe the WaPo made their mistake by reading his bio, which says this:

Wilson is now at the center of a major political maelstrom involving the White House, the C.I.A. and the second gulf war in Iraq. In 2002, at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney, Wilson was assigned by the C.I.A. to investigate claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking to acquire uranium from Niger for the purpose of advancing his nuclear program. When his investigation turned up nothing, Wilson reported back to officials in Washington that there was no basis for the claims.

Hat tip to Maybee.

Comments

[topsecretk9]

I may scout a few lefty sites to perform a body count, but let me try to anticipate their outrage on the Wilson segment.

Not happy. Make sure to check Jeff Goldstein, he received a veiled sort of threat? Or something in his comment section.

[Beto Ochoa]

They're talkin' revoloution this week Top.
No Bullshit.

[MayBee]

I'm guessing the Jane Hamsher post was a joke.

Why does Joe never email TM? I want an email from Joe, dangnabbit!

[topsecretk9]

What a great day for a...for a....let me see...um, oh I don't know...WAPO Post Blog Comment jihad! It's been a while.

[Foo Bar]

With the help of blood pressure medication, I seem to have fended off an aneurysm so far. Regarding the editorial's claim that there was "nothing unusual" about what Libby did, note that on page 23 of the Fitz filing it says

Defendant testified that this July 8th meeting was the only time he recalled in his government experience when he disclosed a document to a reporter that was effectively declassified by virtue of the President’s authorization that it be declassified

Maybe Libby was not so experienced in these matters (in which case that wouldn't mean much) but it seems worth noting.

[Foo Bar]

Ah, my comment is now redundant given TM's link to ThinkProgress in his update...

[SteveMG]

The next Leonard Downie online chat should be quite interesting.

While the boldness, if you will, of the editorial was suprising, the Post editorial board has been generally critical of the whole Bush manipulated pre-war intelligence accusations.

So, this was not completely a lightning bolt out of a clear sky.

Good luck on that reconnaissance mission there TM; if anything happens we'll disavow any knowledge of ever having known you before.

Not very plausible, granted; but it's at least a denial.

And you have our complete approval to use anything we've posted here in support of your mission.

SMG

[Jake - but not the one]

Yes, I encourage TM to use anything I posted here as he wades through the fever swamp of the progressive blogs.

Go for it, Tom!

Jake

[TM]

Hey, glad to see Foo Bar and Jake not Neo are still with us and survived the experience.

[MayBee]

Just because I must:

Let's don't forget that when Joe had his chance to be his most forthright (EPIC), he said:
"I just want to assure you that that American ambassador who has been cited in reports in the New York Times and in the Washington Post, and now in the Guardian over in London, who actually went over to Niger on behalf of the government--not of the CIA but of the government--"

He is not exactly a dispeller of falsely-reported behesting notions in that statement.

[SteveMG]

I encourage TM to use anything I posted here as he wades through the fever swamp of the progressive blogs

Pardon me if I question your sincerity there Jake.

I mean, if he quotes some of your stuff they'll trace his IP address and force him to read James Wolcott (ahem) columns until he breaks.

SMG

[clarice]

SMG, I expect you to follow TM with a flashlight and a shiv--You are your brother's keepter.
The TAC Goddess hadith spoken..

[Joe Wilson]

Hi MayBee,are you as cute as your name?

[Rick Ballard]

Good lord, Tom. Set up a tip jar immediately. The cost of the Hazmat suits are going to break you. Don't forget to change the charcoal filters every twenty minutes or you're finished. Don't forget to disrobe in the garage and use appropriate air tight containers to dispose of the used suits either. Otherwise you'll never get the stink out of the house.

[MayBee]

Hi MayBee,are you as cute as your name?

Posted by: Joe Wilson |

****swoon****

[Jor]

Does any of this really matter? Even if the most ardent kos-diary-claim was proven (about the Niger debacle) beyond any TM far-flung scenario -- nothing would change. It would be excused -- "must have been done, etc. etc., national security". End of Story. This whole thing is one big circle jerk. Even if they deliberatily lied about all this crap, it doesnt really matter, because the lies all had "good intent".

[Rick Ballard]

MayBee,

Don't forget, he's a semimarried man.

[topsecretk9]

I see Joe Joe Mojo is making good on his Florida speech.

See SMG!

[SteveMG]

Clarice:
SMG, I expect you to follow TM with a flashlight and a shiv--You are your brother's keepter.

If you've ever seen TM in action over at the lefty sites, believe me I'd just be in the way.

I'd have to give the shiv to the lefty just to give him or her a fighting chance.

They'd still lose.

SMG

[Deagle]

Hey, there is no doubt that the Post is bipolar. This occurs only because the N.Y. Times pushes them further to the right... Ah, the bliss of left wing media...

[Rick Ballard]

"Even if they deliberatily lied about all this crap"

You need to pin that down a little tighter Jor. Which "all this crap" are you referring to? What Libby stands accused of has absolutely nothing to do with Ambasador Munchausen's fantasy. It has to do with recollections of conversations with reporters and investigators and a prosecutors seeming inability to ask a direct question.

'Cause twenty direct questions to twenty people could have wrapped this sucker up in two weeks had the investigation been other than a witch hunt.

[MayBee]

Hilarious!

[Jake - but not the one]

Survived, Tom? Flourished is closer to the truth.

You know how it is when you plant roses in piles of .....

NM

Jake

[Jake - but not the one]

Steve, I am sincere, but I don't expect anything to come of my offer.

Actually, I have no idea. TM remains his own person, and I don't think we see all of him here.

Jake

[clarice]

OT:The BBC reports that reducing air pollution cuases--ta da--global warming. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4880328.stm:lol1

Save the planet drive your SUV over a greenie

[Rick Ballard]

Roses don't do that well in cesspool Jacuzzi's, though. Maybe it's an aeration thing.

[SteveMG]

Jake:
Steve, I am sincere, but I don't expect anything to come of my offer.

I'm sure you were.

Twas' my tongue talking, firmly in cheek.

SMG

[Rick Ballard]

"Save the planet drive your SUV over a greenie"

I'm thinking of forming a consortium to develop 'Soylent Green Gas'. It involves the direct conversion of certain noxious carbon based and CO2 emitting life forms into a clean burning alternative fuel. It's guaranteed to reduce the carbon footprint of the human species, too.

There are a few legal technicalities involved in the involuntary aspects of the conversion process but, overall the planet will be a cleaner, healthier and less boring place if we can get this going.

[clarice]

I', glad that you're being very circumspect about this project...but I can read between the lines..I think the legal technicalities may be overwhelming in the absence of appropriate hadiths and compliant populations.

[Jake - but not the one]

Having no experience with cesspool jaccuzzis, Rick, I defer to your obviously superior experience.

Though why anybody would fool around with such a thing is beyond me.

Jake

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

What a spoilsport. Think of the marketing potential for 'Goregas - he's gone but you're still goin'.

It could be a real winner.

Pardon me, Tom, but this Rich Galen piece. although off topic has to be the best example I have seen to date of Arlie K. Evors "Acme Plan for Victory" working a little differently than the Wily E. Coyotes at the DNC had envisioned.

As Jeff said, "Just wait 'til you see what's ahead."

[Rick Ballard]

Weak, Jake, but if you would like a limited forum in which to discuss your ideas concerning Churchill and Iran, I would be, if not pleased, at least amenable, to hosting your thoughts at YARGB/Flares. I can guarantee that I will not slip into ad hominem in rebuttal (I only do that in threadjackings) but I cannot guarantee a warm reception from my fellow contributors.

[clarice]

So the DNC has scratched The Culture of Corruption and their neato defensive policy "First, we kill OBL", what's next? Where is R/S/S when we need him?

[Jake - but not the one]

Rick, is this a one-time offer, or may I think about it?

Jake

[Rick Ballard]

Nope, not a one time offer. Not even a one piece offer. If you can sustain yourself we'll try it for a couple of weeks. Click my name here and my name on the contributors list there and send me a word.doc. I'll publish without editing and be almost respectful in comments. I guarantee no ad homs from me and I will strongly suggest that contributors refrain from same. I can't speak for others, obviously. Can't really guarantee the contributors either.

[JJ]

Just in to the new Chairman of the Obvious (that would be moi, by default) --

From Mr. T's evil twin:

"I love it when a plan comes apart!"

And to think I got it before RAW STORY...

[Seixon]

I already tried to get the point across to eriposte that there was reason for Cheney and Libby to rebut the allegation that they sent Wilson, namely because the WaPo journalists screwed up (or did they really misquote Wilson? Wilson was nice and vague in his op-ed...) about that matter.

Chris Matthews repeating it certainly must have gotten their attention, as Libby called up Tim Russert to talk about something on MSNBC...

So yes, pretending that the notion that Wilson was sent by Cheney not being out there is rewriting history. Whose fault it is will have to be resolved by Wilson and Kristof.

However, Wilson said in his op-ed that he was pretty sure that Cheney would have gotten to know about his report on Niger.

Wilson was trying to implicate Cheney as having direct knowledge of his mission, in one way or another. That was the whole point of him babbling about the whole matter. If he hadn't made that a point, then he could not allege that Bush and Cheney were twisting intelligence.

Swoosh.

[clarice]

Correct. Why do you think the editors have finally come clean? (Actually when they obviously forced Pincus into a 2 1/2 year late correction, they first tried a walk back. But today's editorial is the clincher. Is it as simple as Woodward putting his foot down?))

[Rick Ballard]

Clarice,

Unless 'something big' happens this will be a very low turnout election. The economy is purring like a kitten and consumer confidence makes the second quarter look better than the first. Investor confidence is doing fine and the Fed is just playing at the margin.

The Iranians may kick things up in Iraq but they are too late - the Iraqi forces are going to take the brunt of any hits and they are going to make the Sunnis wish that they were facing Americans.

Barring something spectacular this is a 40% (at most) turnout election - and that ain't good for a left led Dem contingent.

[clarice]

Are you saying the WaPo figures it is beter to be on a winning side than to continue lying for the oppo which writes its slogans with big crayons and abandons them after a week or so when everyone has doubled over laughing at the stupidity of their offerings?

[Neo]

In 2002, the CIA sent Wilson to the African nation of Niger to investigate claims that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium there. The agency asked Wilson to make the trip
after Cheney asked for more information about the Niger claims. WaPo 5-Jun-2004

It was in the newspaper so it must be true.

[clarice]

It didn't mean that Cheney wanted them to send in a clown who was not required to sign a non disclosure agreement . It doesn't mean Cheny ever knew of his report which curiously was oral and not made known to anyone above the group which sent him. (The beauty of this Gambit was there is virtually not a single document except for his check expenses in the agency files.)

[MayBee]

You know what I think? I think the WaPo- Woodward, Pincus, and Bradlee- got tired of letting other publications frame the story that should be theirs.
In the recent Vanity Fair, you see Pincus trying to distance himself from the hullabaloo. And Bradlee can't have enjoyed getting kind of half-quoted about Woodward's source, even though the fact that UGO is unnamed and uncharged seems to blow right past people (see Lewis, Robert, and 1,Be The)

Vanity Fair, April 2006:
Pincus started by calling a source at the CIA...It was a given that all the calls were on background, that the information PIncus would get was on the basis of trust. "Nobody knew who the ambassador wwas," Pincus later said. "Whoever had brought in this guy was not at the top of the agency."
...
Pincus..believed that the process by which he had learned of [te Plame matter] was not a criminal act. "I thought it was damage control. My source had been trying to get me to stop writing about Joe Wilson. I believed that the Democrats were too woulnd up thinking that a crime had been committed."

---
I think the key players at the WaPo share the same feelings about the Plame story.

[sid]

If my boss wanted more info on a report I had given him, I would NOT find a co-worker's spouse who didn't have background in my industry, and send him out to find additional info. I would provide my boss with more in-depth documentation on the report. My boss should fire me if I gave him a report and then had to get more raw data before I could back-up the report!

In other words, Joe wasn't sent to provide more information on the report that already had been given to Cheney. Sending him was not actually responsive to Cheney's question as he knew nothing about the report Cheney had already been given. While his report confirmed the previous report, he could not (and did not) provide "more invormation on the claim" that had already been made.

[PaulV]

Woodward has files on everybody inside the beltway and knows where the skeletons are buried. He is this generation J. Edgar Hoover

[topsecretk9]

after Cheney asked for more information

What's up with that? Why did Cheney assume the CIA of all places would be able to supply him with *information*?

I'm sure the notion that a trip needed to be orchestrated in order to supply *information* contributed to the "boondoggle" view.

[Rick Ballard]

Sid,

You don't work for the DNC, do you? 'Cause, if you did, Ambassador Munchausen's African Odyssey would make all the sense in the world - at least the peddlin' of it after the fact would.

[topsecretk9]

Oh, Sid sort of said that too.

[Rick Ballard]

TS,

Yes he did. Plus anyone thinking that Joe's Odyssey was more than nepotism at its most scurrilous is smoking something that they should share.

Someday that stink is going to make everyone hold their nose. Not yet though.

[sid]

I couldn't get in the door of the DNC. Thus, neither Munchy's nor Fritz's positions make any sense at all!