Hopelessly Compromised

Evidently the NY Times is not able to report honestly and accurately on stories involving White House leaks and/or Joseph Wilson.  Presumably this is a consequence of their glorious history as publishers of the James Risen NSA warrantless eavesdropping story last December and the Joseph Wilson op-ed from July 6, 2003.

Let's check their breathless coverage of the latest:

Cheney's Aide Says President Approved Leak

By DAVID JOHNSTON and DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, April 6 — Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff testified that he was authorized by President Bush, through Mr. Cheney, in July 2003 to disclose key parts of what until then was a classified prewar intelligence estimate on Iraq, according to a new court filing.

The testimony by the former official, I. Lewis Libby Jr., cited in a court filing by the government made late Wednesday, provides an indication that Mr. Bush, who has long criticized leaks of secret information as a threat to national security, may have played a direct role in authorizing disclosure of the intelligence report on Iraq. 

Oh, the hypocrisy!  President Bush, who has criticized some leaks as a harming national security, does not seem to believe that all "leaks" (including authorized disclosures) harm national security.  Inconceivable!

The reporters let us catch our breath in paragraph four, reminding us that "The president has the authority to declassify information".

More air is let out of the balloon in paragraph six:

Mr. Libby did not assert in his testimony to a grand jury, first reported on the Web site of The New York Sun, that Mr. Bush or Mr. Cheney had authorized him to reveal the name of an undercover C.I.A. officer, Valerie  Wilson.

That is a wildly significant point.  However, the Times fails to cover the comment made by Special Counsel Fitzgerald (p. 27 of his filing), which is even stronger than a failure by Libby to assert something in testimony:

During this time, while the President was unaware of the role that the Vice President’s Chief of Staff and National Security Adviser [i.e., Libby, who had both jobs] had in fact played in disclosing Ms. Wilson’s CIA employment...

That is not just Libby asserting that the President was uninvolved in Libby's leaks of the Plame info; it is Fitzgerald saying so too.

And the balloon is fully deflated in the eleventh paragraph:

A little more than a week later, under continuing pressure, the White House published a declassified version of the executive summary of the estimate, in an effort to make the case that Mr. Bush's statement had been justified by the intelligence community's best judgment.

So Bush authorized an informal release of some part of the NIE to one reporter a week before portions were made public.  Commence impeachment hearings!

The Times relates this to the Wilson trip to Niger, and, hmm, misinforms their readership about the material presented in their own paper:

The leak was intended, the court papers suggested, as a rebuttal to an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, by Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former United States ambassador and the husband of Ms. Wilson. Mr. Wilson wrote that he traveled to Africa in 2002 after Mr. Cheney raised questions about possible nuclear purchases by Iraq. Mr. Wilson wrote that he concluded it was "highly doubtful" Iraq had sought nuclear fuel from Niger.

At Mr. Cheney's office, the Op-Ed article was viewed "as a direct attack on the credibility of the vice president (and the president) on a matter of signal importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq," according to the court papers filed by the prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald.

Well.  "Mr. Wilson wrote that he concluded it was "highly doubtful" Iraq had sought nuclear fuel from Niger" is, presumably, an intentional mis-characterization of the Wilson op-ed.  The relevant sentence from Wilson's op-ed is this:

It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

Regardless of his doubts about whether such a "transaction had ever taken place", Mr. Wilson's report to the CIA included a hint that Iraq had, in fact *sought* uranium from Niger.  Here is George Tenet responding to Joe Wilson's op-ed on July 11, 2003:

He reported back to us that one of the former Nigerien officials he met stated that he was unaware of any contract being signed between Niger and rogue states for the sale of uranium during his tenure in office. The same former official also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence also covered this in their 2004 report - one wonders how the Times reporters could have missed it:

Niger Conclusions

(U) Conclusion 12. Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents9 on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.

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.

As to whether the op-ed was a direct attack on the credibility of the Vice-President and President, here is Wilson's lead:

Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?

Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

Not a hard call.

Out thoughts on this latest revelation are here.

MORE:  Props to the Times for including links to the Fitzgerald filing and the Wilson op-ed.

Comments

[topsecretk9]

Great Fisk, TM!

I am even more miffed they didn't reserve just one paragraph to expound on the subpoena's they received regarding notes on the other 6 of 8. They told the AP, Tenet and Ari, I just can't understand why they haven't revealed the other 6.

[Chants]

The NYT appears to have the *real* story, a real scoop.

But it will not report it.

Post Jayson Blair, one would expect the paper to be punctilious about disclosing its role in misleading its readers.

But it obviously is not in regards to this story.

Is there something about this story which has the Times more invested in this story other than the Wilson op-ed? Because to me, they could sell a lot more copy by reporting straight.

There is something missing and the Times is not telling us what it is. At least that is my "malicious speculation" based on what I see here.

[topsecretk9]

Also, could someone please forward this to Fitz's office, a good primer for why "public record/domain" is not altogether prudent and/or reliable for things such as, oh I don't know, building a criminal case or supervising a subordinate...ripe for more Andrea Mitchell style restabs at the public record ( which is oddly exactly what the "dismiss what Comey said then" defense is)

[topsecretk9]

There is something missing and the Times is not telling us what it is. At least that is my "malicious speculation" based on what I see here.

Well, Nic Kristoff is getting expensive.

[Chants]

*GASP*

You're not implying that the Times knew, through Kristoff, that Plame worked at the CIA, well before Novak's column, are you?

[Patton]

What I would like to see is the CORRECTION in the NYT:

Joe Wilsons OP-ED led people to believe he had debunked the contract documents as forgeries when in fact HE NEVER SAW THEM, AND NEVER MENTIONED THEM IN HIS REPORT BACK TO THE CIA. In fact, they were not revealed as forgeries until a year after the SOTU.

In addition, Joe Wilsons main contention that oversight was too strong in Niger to allow a illicit transfer of Uranium has been proven to be incorrect due to the illicit transfer of Niger Yellowcake to Pakistan to build their Nuclear Program.

And finally, Joe Wilson himself has long maintained and did up until the time of the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein continued to possess WMD and would use them against us.

[Patton]

Joe Wilson....Making Bushs' case:

"There is now no incentive for Hussein to comply with the inspectors or to refrain from using weapons of mass destruction to defend himself if the United States comes after him. And he will use them; we should be under no illusion about that. - Joseph Wilson

And he will use them; we should be under no illusion about that. - Joseph Wilson

And he will use them; we should be under no illusion about that. - Joseph Wilson

And he will use them; we should be under no illusion about that. - Joseph Wilson

I TAKE IT THE LEFTIES AGREE WITH JOE WILSONS PRE-WAR ASSESSMENT??
Maybe Bush thought Iraq had WMD because Joe Wilson kept saying he did.

[Patton]

So the left wants Bush to believe Joe Wilson when he says there was no Yellowcake deal...but NOT believe Joe when he says Saddam has WMD and will use them against us.

[Chants]

It was a couple of months after the SOTU that the forgeries were exposed.

But yes, Wilson apparently misrepresented his role in the exposure, big time.

However, there remains the possibility that he had unauthorized access to the transcripts of the documents.

Remember. He was given an "operational clearance" for his mission, and the transcripts were present at the February 2002 CIA meeting, as was Wilson.

Operational clearance means, to me, that oops, the CIA didn't get the required security clearance required for these transcripts to even be present at the meeting Joe Wilson attended.

Ostensibly, with no standard security clearance, Joe Wilson could write what he wanted to write about his trip.

In short, when everyone found out that the CIA messed up, it resorted to the "Operation Clearance" fiction, and Wilson admitted to his "literary flair".

[larwyn]

MacRanger:
It's going to be a BANG of a Summer

Remember when I mentioned that Bush was known as an excellent poker player at Harvard?
...........
....... Bush is about to show his cards and he's actually holding the Ace. Two developments:

1. The long standing investigation into Senator Jay (meet me in Syria) Rockefeller, Senator Dick Durbin, Ron Wyden, and three others is coming to a close. Notice that in today's news Rockefeller's statements are absent as are Durbin's. Sources say to expect a conclusion by the end of May.
............
.... the Bush administration is about to pull some trump cards on certain key editors and journalists who are - "itchy" to 'make a deal' and actually cover the story in a positive and informative light after all.

Ck out his immigration posts w/Teddy quotes too.

[larwyn]

test

[Patton]

Chants,

Wilson admits he neither saw the documents, nor was told what the dates/signatures were on the documents.

In addition, no documents or anything relating to documents was in his report back to CIA.

After the IAEA concluded they were forgeries, Wilson then used that as an 'in' with the media to make them believe he knew that a year earlier.

[Patton]

The biggest joke in all of this is how far Wilson had dropped while still thinking he was running with the big dogs.

Wilson thought he was on a important mission for the Vice President and his report would end up on Cheney's desk.

While the fact is his report was one of thousands intellgience analysts receive every week. Wilson still can't admit his reports consumer was some GS-12 analysts who mostly disregarded it as meaningless, while Wilson was day dreaming of Medals of Freedom pinned on his chest by President Kerry.

[Chants]

I agree with you in part, and disagree with you in part, Patton. But it's nothing upon which we can't agree.

Wilson has a huge ego. He had some unathorized access to the transcripts that related to the forgeries. He went to Niger and reported back the the CIA. Later, after the forgeries were debunked, he thinks he had a role in it. He really thinks it, big ego an all, due to his access to the transcripts earlier.

So he not only used the debunking as an in, he thinks he is the in.

He did recant later. But this recanting -- and here is where we disagree -- stemmed more from the exposed security breaches at the CIA, not the fact that he could not have seen the original documents.

Here is what needs to be determined. How closely did the transcripts reflect the actual documents themselves.

Regardless, and on this we can agree. Whatever he did in Niger, it menat little to nothing to exposing the 16 words.

[davod]

It is time someone figured out how the inserts are placed in the New York Times. Then maybe someone could arrange to include an insert detailing the NYTs mistruth/half truths regarding this matter.

[Patton]

Chants...if you go back and read Wilsons interviews about the relevant timeframe he admits:

He never saw the documents during this period.

Never saw the transcript or report of what the documents contain.

Never was told the names/dates on the documents

Included absolutely nothing in his report back about documents.

[kim]

Next Pinch will argue that the President can only declassify what the New York Times sees fit to print.
======================================

[Cecil Turner]

He did recant later. But this recanting -- and here is where we disagree -- stemmed more from the exposed security breaches at the CIA, not the fact that he could not have seen the original documents.

Sorry, but that doesn't scan. The statement he was forced to recant was: “among the Envoy’s conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because ‘the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.” But in fact the contemporaneous reporting from the US Ambassador in Niger said the opposite:

On February 18,2002, the embassy in Niger disseminated a cable which reported that the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal “provides sufficient detail to warrant another hard look at Niger’s uranium sales. The names of GON [government of Niger] officials cited in the report track closely with those we know to be in those, or closely-related positions.

The Ambassador didn't believe the reports, but it was based on production and official statements, not documents:

However, the purported 4,000-ton annual production listed is fully 1,000 tons more than the mining companies claim to have produced in 2001.” The report indicated that the ambassador had met with the Nigerien Foreign Minister to ask for an unequivocal assurance that Niger had stuck to its commitment not to sell uranium to rogue states.

On the way out of Niamey, Wilson says:

I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own.

No mention of any documents issues. Further, the date error is not something a casual inspection would reveal (SSCI):

The only mistake in any of the reports regarding dates, is that one date, July 7,2000, is said to be a Wednesday in the report, but was actually a Friday.

The contention Joe discovered this, and then failed to mention it to whomever showed him the documents (or that they failed to pass on the discovery as their own work), is hard to credit; especially since the documents themselves weren't available.

The far more likely scenario is that Wilson needed a hook for his claims of earlier debunking, and the IAEA's report of sloppy forgeries provided a perfect "gotcha." And just as his claims of VP "behesting" were buffed up to make it look like the VP had to've seen his report, the claim of previous forgery exposure would make subsequent Administration actions inexcusable. It hangs together entirely too well to be anything other than a calculated, but false, narrative. Wilson's admission (under oath) seals it.

[kim]

He changed his mind about WMD when none were found, he acted as if he'd debunked the Yellow Cake letters when he hadn't, he suggested that Cheney was involved in his sending and his wife was not, he ignores the 1999 meeting that is in his report, and he jumped to the conclusion that there were repercussions directed at his wife.

This is a liar with a guilty conscience. Yet he has staunch defenders, and his meme persists. I persist at failing to understand why we call this the Information Age. Disinformation thrives well in this environment, too.
========================================

[Chants]

Patton and Cecil, it is hard for me to recant my obstinate and unorthodox opinion. But I do now.

But I am still more than a little concerned over this "operational clearance" issue.

Why was there no proper security clearance? Can we really nail this on the slovenliness of nepotism, because, well, I don't see a better explanation?

[Jake]

When are the adults going to step in and shut this mess of a prosecution down?

[enderbury]

First time poster, long time reader.

I gotta tell you folks, this whole Plame affair is more fun than I've had in a long time. Thanks to all of you Plamaniacs for all your analyses.

I have a PREDICTION:

When the judge dismisses the case against Libby, the MSM headlines will contain the words "stunning surprise" and "baffling development".

[TM]

He did recant later. But this recanting -- and here is where we disagree -- stemmed more from the exposed security breaches at the CIA, not the fact that he could not have seen the original documents.

An interesting point here is how both sides switched sides. Waay back, I pounded the table that Wilson was lying and could not have debunked the forgeries; ardent lefties took the other side.

But sometime in 2005 (IIRC), it dawned on me that it would be a beautiful thing (in a ghastly and partisan way, of course) if Wilson *had* debunked the forgeries. Because it is perfectly clear from the SSCI report and others that the CIA ignored his imagined debunking in March 2002.

Which, despite Wilson's eanrest hopes, changes the story from "Cheney twisted/ignored the intel" to what - either "The CIA, including my wife, buried the truth", or "The CIA, including my wife, is so incompetent they can't hear the truth when you tell it to their faces".

Not great stories for Wilson to be telling, so one can see why he took a new tack.

Anyway, it is fun to head off to eriposte, which spent a lot of time (again, IIRC) "proving" that Wilson had access to enough info to have debunked the forgeries.

[Neo]

Why does this Wilson story continue to sound like the punch line of a Steve Martin joke, the plumber's joke that ends with the punch line .. "I said sprocket not socket" ?

In this story the punch line is .. sought not bought.

[Cecil Turner]

But sometime in 2005 (IIRC), it dawned on me that it would be a beautiful thing (in a ghastly and partisan way, of course) if Wilson *had* debunked the forgeries.

A great argument, if I could just get my brain to think in a twisty enough fashion to believe Wilson's document debunking was a possibility. Perhaps fortunately, I can't.

Props to Chants for open-mindedness. And I can't figure out that clearance thing either, especially since you'd expect a former Ambassador to have one (or to be able to get one very quickly). At the very least, a non-disclosure agreement would seem to be routine.

[Neo]

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.

This statement, in this context seems true, but the idea that Niger was not "able" to see yellowcake to Iraq is bogus.
When Libya gave up it's program, it had 4X the amount of yellowcake that analysts thought it had. To figure out where the extra yellowcake came from one needs only to look at a map. There just to the south, on the southern border in fact, is Niger.

[pollyusa]

It's clear Libby and Cheney knew by mid June that the CIA no longer found the uranium claims credible. They also knew that the INR had always doubted the uranium story.

CIA analysts wrote then-CIA Director George Tenet in a highly classified memo on June 17, 2003, "We no longer believe there is sufficient" credible information to "conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad."

snip

Sources familiar with the matter say that both Cheney and Libby were informed of the findings in the June 17 memo only days after Tenet himself read and reviewed it.
Waas 2/2/06

Why then would Libby be authorised to go out and selectively leak/declassifiy only the portions of the NIE that contend that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure” uranium. When he knew that contention to be deemed not credible.

Defendant testified that he thought he brought a brief abstract of the NIE’s key judgments to the meeting with Miller on July 8. Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure” uranium.
GOVERNMENT’S RESPONSE TO DEFENDANT’S
THIRD MOTION TO COMPEL DISCOVERY 4/05/06

[MayBee]

Polly- could it be because they were trying to explain what they blieved they knew in 2002- March 2003, when they were building the case to depose Saddam?
What they no longer believed in June 2003 hardly matters. We were already there.
Do you find Waas to have been conssitently reliable?

[boris]

I agree MayBee, looka lika hindsight blindness.

[Cecil Turner]

Why then would Libby be authorised to go out and selectively leak/declassifiy only the portions of the NIE that contend that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure” uranium. When he knew that contention to be deemed not credible.

In the first place, he was covering what was known at the time (which is the only piece of information that matters to dispute a charge of "twisting intelligence"). In the second, the CIA wasn't the source of the claim in the first place, so their subsequent admission they didn't have enough information to support that conclusion was hardly a news flash. In the third, the entire NIE section (complete with the caveats pertaining to aluminum tubes) was released in the following days, so the charge of selective leaking is bunkum. In all, Waas's piece is a lot more misleading than anything he claims the Administration did.

[TM]

Why then would Libby be authorised to go out and selectively leak/declassifiy only the portions of the NIE that contend that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure” uranium.

Well, the NIE doesn't *really* make a strong case for the uranium story.

However, it makes a strong case for the *point* of the uranium story, which was that Saddam had nuclear aspirations.

Libby's story is weird on that point - presumably he meant Tenet's July 11 comments about the Wilson trip.

[Sue]

http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/04/hopelessly_comp.html#comment-15922680>Polly

There is that 20/20 hindsight thing kicking in. In June/July 2003, Libby was defending their actions, pre-invasion. Not what they knew post-invasion. The attacks were, if I remember correctly, Bush lied, kids died.

[Sue]

Oops. Maybee beat me to it.

[Sue]

Well, geeze...I should have read backwards, as is my normal MO, and I would have seen my comment was not necessary. ::grin::

[MayBee]

Sue- Yours was better and with fewer typos.
:-)

[Eric "Otter" Stratton]

They can't do that to our secret government documents! Only we can do that to our secret government documents.

[cathyf]

And I can't figure out that clearance thing either, especially since you'd expect a former Ambassador to have one (or to be able to get one very quickly). At the very least, a non-disclosure agreement would seem to be routine.

You would also think that a relatively-recently-retired ambassador would still be contractually obligated to protect classified information. Even more importantly, you would expect that the spouse of a CIA employee, covert or not, would have to have signed some papers about not disclosing any secret information that might come into the spouse's knowledge.

I find Ms. Plame's career path very curious. (She is the same age as I am, and I applied to the CIA at the same time she did, right out of college. So it's kind of personal!) She started with the agency in the mid-80's, and went through training. Then she was posted to the Greek embassy under official cover (and to all reports, was a competent agent.) Then in 1994 she was outted by Aldrich Ames. Then she spent the next 3 years as a graduate student in Europe, at the Agency's expense, while at the same time the Clinton administration was cutting CIA funding by 20% and veteran agents were quitting and retiring in droves. Then she meets Joe and has a whirlwind courtship just absolutely calculated to give a security officer a heart attack. He is a former ambassador whose estranged wife is a foreign national (French) who has some vague free-floating "consultant" job where she does very little work for lots of money as an agent of various impoverished African countries whose only major export is uranium. So she's having a torrid affair with a married man whose wife is a foreign agent -- oh yeah, no chance of anything bad happening there! So then he retires from government on a tiny (by DC prices) little pension ($50K/yr) and she gets pregnant with twins. Now, as anyone who has ever had kids knows, babies are a huge big deal to take care of, and twins are a pretty crushing burden to somebody who is a full-time stay-at-home mom, but imagine having to get up to drive to Langley every day when you've been up all night -- day after day.

So, you know, it comes back to Deep Throat's advice to Woodward and Bernstein: "Follow the money." If the Wilson's had legitimate income to support their lifestyle, where did it come from? If they didn't, who was paying?

cathy :-)

[John M.W. Smith]

Soooo, the whole thing is just a bunch of partisan b.s., because we don't really have to take what Bush says seriously, anyway?

You clowns are ridiculous.

"...there's a lot of leaking in Washington, D.C. It's a town famous for it. And if this helps stop leaks of - this investigation in finding the truth, it will not only hold someone to account who should not have leaked - and this is a serious charge, by the way. We're talking about a criminal action, but also hopefully will help set a clear signal we expect other leaks to stop, as well. And so I look forward to finding the truth. ... I don't know who leaked the information, for starters. So it's hard for me to answer that question until I find out the truth."
George W. Bush, 10/06/03

[kim]

Little Johnnie, you're confusing the apples and oranges that the MSM is telling you are all apples. Did you read the WaPo editorial?
=================================

[larwyn]

WILSON ON CNN NOW!

spinning his heart out with
WOOOOOOOOF!

CNN isn't worried about supeonas
just yet.

"clear from filings"

Wooooof" "show a PLOT, ERRR PLAN"

[larwyn]

Wilson"we now know he leaked classified (Rove)."

"I would forgo the Handcuffs ....
should be frogmarched"

"no decisions yet on civil suits"

CNN MUST BE VERY PROUD

WONDER IF WILSON WILL BE KING TONIGHT?

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