VPW - WTF?

Uhh, am I reading this correctly?

Wilson said it now appeared his wife's name was leaked by someone outside the White House, as an act of revenge to stop him and others from questioning the intelligence used to go to war with Iraq.

"This administration apparently decided the way to do that was to leak the name of my wife," he told NBC's "Meet The Press."

What? Now I sort of regret dismissing Ambassador Wilson as lacking in credibility, although pegging him as the William Ginsberg of this debacle looks pretty good.

And can we please have a break on this?

The former ambassador at the core of the White House leak controversy accused the Bush administration on Sunday of blowing his wife's CIA (news - web sites) cover to muzzle criticism over the Iraq (news - web sites) war and said they both now feared for her safety.

Wasn't I reading a NY Times story where he is showing off photos of his wife to a reporter, bragging about how gorgeous she is, and wondering who would play her in the movie? I had actually been peddling the "personal safety" issue, and dropped it as implausible in light of his behavior.

Sorry for the light links - developing....

MORE: Points to ponder - Amb. Wilson is not really in a position to know. Maybe someone is trying to warn him off, but an awful lot of other folks (at the WaPo, and their sources) seem to be wrong, too.

- Is it too soon to guess that a Defense Dept. neo-con chickenhawk might qualify as a "senior administration official"?

- Part of the Administration defense is that Amb. Wilson was an odd and unqualified choice for the CIA to make in response to a serious request by the Vice President. Can we use this latest "clarification" from the Ambassador to point out that he might not be a reliable investigator or credible reporter?

MORE: OK, the WaPo saw the show, and is not emphasizing the "outside the White House" line:

"I do believe, however, that the president would never have condoned or been party to anything like this," he said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Roll the tape! One presumes that either Amb. Wilson's remarks were misinterpreted in the early report, or that the WaPo is implicitly standing by their earlier reporting.

On "Wilson was casting his wife n a movie, how can he be worried about safety two days later?", a commenter points out that back in '91 he appeared at press conferences in Baghdad wearing a noose. So he's loosey-goosey, I should criticize? A future in the Foreign Service opens before me! And point taken.

"Outside the White House" might mean "inside the Executive Office Building across the street", where lots of the VP staff work. Now I need a White House map to go with my Mike Allen autographed WaPo Decoder Ring.

William Safire writes today. "Intimigate" is gaining traction as the name for this scandal, we note. And he denies being one of the "Insidery Six" - good point, he surely might have been.

UPDATE: The "Meet The Press" transcript.

OK, I have only read it twice, but I can't figure out how the Sue Pleming of Reuters got the notion that Amb. Wilson thought the initial leak came from outside the White House. Given the WaPo reaction, we are leaning towards "false alarm".

However, we note that the Ambassador does, not unreasonably, talk these things over with his wife, as his comments make clear. That being the case, one wonders again whether her thoughts, as a CIA officer in the WMD division, influenced what he reported to the CIA, and what he wrote in the Times. That drags her back into the story as a legitimate topic of inquiry - ah ha!

Excerpt supporting same:

Russert: “Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.”

Wilson: The—that particular comment is taken a little bit out of context. It was written—it was taken in response to a question about whether or not I was interested in seeing the investigation go forward, which, of course, I am. Additionally, at that time, that was before The Washington Post article which cited two other leakers. So my wife thinks I probably got carried away in the spirit of the moment. So I would amend and extend my remarks.

Comments

[Jon H]

It could be an error. Not unheard of on the wires.

It could also be Wilson trying to narrow it down to the VP's office, which is not in the White House. It's next door in the (Old?) Executive Office Building.

I think the 'movie' bit was in a Washington Post story.

[Gabriel Gonzalez]

Tend to agree with Jon that the sentence may merely be mangled.

Also, the movie bit was meant in jest. It's dishonest to present it otherwise (assuming you have seen the original source information).

Also, why are we talking about Wilson?

[John Rosenberg]

I've just posted a discussion of the NYT, WaPo, and The Nation seem to have reversed course on the goodness and wisdom of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. If you're interested, see:

http://www.discriminations.us/storage/002229.html

[TM]

John, we surely will.

An yes, I know he was kidding around about who would play her in the movie. But is that what you would say to a reporter if you were worried?

[Jon H]

TM writes: "An yes, I know he was kidding around about who would play her in the movie. But is that what you would say to a reporter if you were worried? "

I'd guess he was somewhat worried about his security in Baghdad when he wore the noose around his neck at the press conference.

It may just be his sense of humor.

[Jon]

"Can we use this latest "clarification" from the Ambassador to point out that he might not be a reliable investigator or credible reporter?"

Probably not, since it appears that David Kay has confirmed Wilson's report, through his investigations in Iraq. Which also confirms the results of General Fulford's investigation.

Remarkably good results if Wilson's not a reliable investigator or credible reporter. His track record is far, far better than others the Administration has relied on, like Chalabi.

If a guy who was *right* is not credible, but a guy like Chalabi who's always wrong *is* credible, what does that say about this Administration? Black is white, up is down, right is wrong and wrong is right.

[The CR]

Wilson inital claims wrt VPW:

-- Leak was made by Karl Rove

Wilson current claims:

-- Leak was by someone in administration

WaPo's Deep Throat 2 initial claims:

-- story was shopped to 6 reporters by WH

Current information:

-- None of the 6 have stepped forward to at least say "I was one of the 6"

-- Novak claims (and current wisdom agrees) that the leak was not from the WH

Conclusion:

Can any initial assumptions wrt VPW be credible?

We know that Novak published a column and VPW's identity was revealed, but based on current information it could have come from anyone (I think it was the Gary Coleman campaing myself). As far as facts are concerned we are at square one.

[TM]

Well, in Baghdad, no noose is good noose.

OK, the guy is loosey-goosey. I have written about Dick "Chain-gang" Cheney, so who am I to criticize?

But the credibility thing is trickier - it is not enough to be right, you ought to look good doing it, since perception drives reality.

I once went to an emergency room, and the doctor looked exactly like Steve Martin. I said to myself, one joke from this guy, and I am limping out of here. Digression.

We are grooving on the "Exec Office Building is not the White House" theory.

[Cecil Turner]

The claim Wilson was "right" about there being no uranium shopping mystifies me. Obviously he couldn't know--it's not like he searched the whole country--and the information available suggests there was.

The former Nigerian official who reported the Iraqi business overture in 1999 assumed they were talking about uranium (one of Niger's few exports, and Iraq had bought uranium before). Tenet says "we viewed the reporting on such acquisition attempts to be inconclusive"--not false. He goes on to say the infamous 16 words shouldn't have been used because they: "did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for Presidential speeches," not because they were untrue.

The British stand by their story. According to Jack Straw, "UK officials were confident that the dossier's statement was based on reliable intelligence which we had not shared with the US." There were also unconfirmed reports of Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium from the DR Congo. That may be the point of another British official who said: "We are sticking by our claim. We received intelligence from another country and we cannot share that with the US."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/07/13/wirq13.xml

David Kay's report doesn't mention uranium shopping in Africa. But nobody ever said the shopping trip was successful, so I'm not sure why anyone would expect his investigators to find new uranium ore in Iraq.

It's safe to say Wilson didn't find any uranium shopping in Africa. Generalizing that to a conclusion there wasn't any is unprovable and, in my opinion, likely false.

[HH]

Even the Daily Howler slams the NYT for claiming Wilson "proved" Bush false...

[Jon H]

Cecil Turner writes: "David Kay's report doesn't mention uranium shopping in Africa. But nobody ever said the shopping trip was successful, so I'm not sure why anyone would expect his investigators to find new uranium ore in Iraq. "

I think it wasn't in his public comments.

The Washington Post reported that Kay found that Iraq *declined* uranium offered from a country in Africa that was not Niger, and did not seek uranium from Niger.

If you missed that - An African country offered uranium to Iraq, and - according to David Kay - Iraq declined.

[Jon H]

I'll also note that Safire's the only place I've seen "Intimigate", so I wonder if that name is just gaining favor among his fellow Nixon administration alumni like Rummy and Cheney?

[TM]

Ahh, try "google-news" with "intimigate". TIME, for example, is on my side.

[Cecil Turner]

Jon,

The WaPo passage is appended below. (The reporter did say "decline" earlier in the story, but that wasn't a quote from Kay.)

"Kay provided a more mixed assessment of his finding. He said his team had turned up "no conclusive proof" that Iraq had tried to buy uranium ore from Niger, a controversial allegation made in Bush's State of the Union address. Kay said that cooperating Iraqi scientists had told his team about an unsolicited offer by another African country to sell uranium to Iraq, but that "there is no evidence," he added, that Iraq accepted the offer. "

This hardly disproves the shopping in Africa (not Niger) contention in the SOTU. The "unsolicited offer" may refer to reports last year of gangs in the DR Congo trying to sell smuggled uranium (they probably couldn't deliver). There were also reports the Congolese government intended to reopen the Shinkolobwe mine--and there are several other sources (of varying reliability)--and reports of interested Iraqi agents. To prove it never happened is an obvious impossibility.