The always interesting Matt Yglesias goes off on the latest William Safire column:
...Did the sixteen words get in "with no objection from C.I.A.?" Yes, they did. Yet the CIA objected to including the exact same statement in earlier speeches -- notably the Cincinnati speech of October 2002 -- and George Tenet has explained that he only failed to object to including the sixteen words because he neglected to actually read the speech.
...The generous interpretation here is that Safire is uncritically passing along disinformation from his friends in the White House. A less generous interpretation would suggest that he's been following this story closely enough to know perfectly well what the Senate report said and just doesn't really care.
The "exact same statement"? That is simply not accurate, as we shall see.
A generous interpretation would be that Matt is simply passsing along other people's talking points; a less generous interpretation is that he's been following this story closely enough to know perfectly well what the Senate report said and just doesn't really care.
But we do care - the October language was not at all the same as the 16 Words, and was struck for being overly specific. In fact, the CIA suggested language (for a never-published October paper) very similar to the 16 Words. That said, in between there are some rally points for the Administration critics.
Let's excerpt the report starting at p. 55, helpfully titled "The Cinncinnati Speech":
On October 4, 2002, the NSC sent a draft of a speech they were preparing for the President to deliver in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was draft six of the speech and contained the line, "and the regime has been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from Africa - an essential ingredient in the enrichment process."
Those are not exactly the 16 Words, are they? Or even close.
And a bit later, we complete the cover-up with this:
On October 7, 2002, President Bush delivered the speech in Cincinnati without the uranium reference. On the same day, the CIA prepared comments on a draft White House paper, A Grave and Gathering Danger. The comments suggested a change to the draft language saying "better to generalize the first bullet as follows: Sought uranium from Africa to feed the enrichment process." The original text from the White House had said "sought uranium oxide, an essential ingredient in the enrichment process, from Africa." The White House did not publish the paper.
People make mistakes.
More complete excerpts below. A long, tedious explanation of the 16 Word debacle (which addresses this very point) is here, courtesy of Holden of Eschaton. And since Holden is making today the same point I made a few days ago, at least one of us should be nervous. The Times addressed his question - why are Admin defenders more animated on this point than the Admin itself? - yesterday, BTW.
On October 4, 2002, the NSC sent a draft of a speech they were preparing for the President to deliver in Cincinnati, Ohio. It was draft six of the speech and contained the line, "and the regime has been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from Africa - an essential ingredient in the enrichment process."
...The ADDI said an Iraq nuclear analyst - he could not remember who - raised concerns about the sourcing and some of the facts of the Niger reporting, specifically that the control of the mines in Niger would have made it very difficult to get yellowcake to Iraq. [Joe Wilson's point!]
...Based on the analyst's comments, the ADDI drafted a memo for the NSC outlining the facts that the CIA believed needed to be changed, and faxed it to the Deputy National Security Advisor and the speech writers. Referring to the sentence on uranium from Africa the CIA said, "remove the sentence because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from the source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory."
Later that day, the NSC staff prepared draft seven of the Cincinnati speech which contained the line, "and the regime has been caught attempting to purchase substantial amounts of uranium oxide from sources in Africa." Draft seven was sent to CIA for coordination.
...On July 16, 2003, the DCI testified before the SSCI that he told the Deputy National Security Advisor that the "President should not be a fact witness on this issue," because his analysts had told him the "reporting was weak." The NSC then removed the uranium reference from the draft of the speech.
Although the NSC had already removed the uranium reference from the speech, later on October 6, 2002 the CIA sent a second fax to the White House which said, "more on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British."
On October 7, 2002, President Bush delivered the speech in Cincinnati without the uranium reference. On the same day, the CIA prepared comments on a draft White House paper, A Grave and Gathering Danger. The comments suggested a change to the draft language saying "better to generalize the first bullet as follows: Sought uranium from Africa to feed the enrichment process." The original text from the White House had said "sought uranium oxide, an essential ingredient in the enrichment process, from Africa." The White House did not publish the paper.
An old point, but it's also interesting that the "well founded" claim didn't survive long enough to find its way into Powell's UN presentation a few days after the SOTU. Count me as someone who thinks that the UK needs to show us the details on the non-forged intel before a final judgement on the validity of the "16 words"
can be made.
Posted by: Matt | July 19, 2004 at 05:38 PM
I haven't been following this new wrinkle closely. Is there anything in the story that makes the Plame leak anything less than the felony it's always been? If Joe Wilson's a charlatan, isn't he a charlatan that pissed off the White House enough to issue a little payback?
Posted by: Jeff | July 19, 2004 at 06:59 PM
Jeff -- the problem with your question is that we DON'T know that it was indeed a felony -- we don't even know the exact status of Ms. Plame, i.e., whether or not she actually qualified as a "covert operative" or not.
There is a good discussion of this very topic at the WSJ here:
http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110005343#kerfuffle
I think the silence of the administration may be partly explained by the fact that the blogosphere picked up the story and started Fisking Wilson so quickly. And if the blogs can do Karl Rove's work for him, why not let them?
That strategy was working pretty well with the Richard Clarke implosion --- until Abu Ghraib came out.
For me, THAT was the moment the war became a disaster. And it has put me on the brink of not voting for Bush...which doesn't mean I'll vote for J-Squared.
Where, oh where, have the George Mitchells of the Democratic Party gone? Guys you might not agree with, but you can still trust...?
Posted by: EGC | July 19, 2004 at 07:50 PM
Matt, the validity of the Sixteen Words was never in question. That's the whole point -- and that was clear on July 6, 2003. There was no reason to think that Wilson, based on what he said/wrote at the time, was telling us anything of note about the British assessment referred to in the SOTU. Much less that he had any basis to make the outrageous charge of deception or manipulation by the administration. We're only discussing Wilson today because of his invidious and contemptible allegations, not because he shed any light on any aspect of pre-war intel. He didn't.
The recent reports have only indicated
what (under-reported) British statements started to make clear immediately after the start of this non-event -- that there was a substantial basis for the Africa/uranium assessment.
I have no idea what your initial take on Wilson's claims or the Sixteen Words was. However, if you're now requiring to see the full intel file on the matter to decide -- I'm assuming you were even more non-committal back then, since anyone familiar with the subject and with the intel process saw nothing particularly compelling in Wilson's op-ed.
Posted by: IceCold | July 19, 2004 at 07:55 PM