Waxman: Rice hindering Niger forgeries probe

State Department blocked investigators' access to analyst who had raised alarms about the yellowcake forgeries before the State of the Union in 2003.
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Friday, May 04, 2007

Iraq Intelligence and Nuclear Evidence, Correspondence Regarding the Testimony of Secretary Rice

Committee Seeks Niger Documents and Testimony and Instructs State Department Not to Impede Probe

Today Chairman Waxman sent a letter to Secretary of State Rice (1) informing the Secretary that the legislative affairs officials in the Department should not hinder the Committee’s inquiry into why Secretary Rice and President Bush cited forged evidence to build a case for war against Iraq; (2) advising the Secretary that the Committee will depose a nuclear weapons analyst at the State Department; and (3) requesting relevant documents.

Documents and Links

• Letter to Secretary Rice- PDF
  

The pivotal import of Yellowcake, False Flags, & "Big Time" Evil

A reader responds to, "House oversight panel may look past Rice, Tenet in inquiry into uranium".

Seven Star Hand said...

The pivotal import of Yellowcake, False Flags, & "Big Time" Evil

Hello Marc and all,

Looks like things are finally heating up. The endgame will be interesting, to say the least!

The combination of George Tenet's book, At the Center of the Storm, Eisner & Royce's The Italian Letter and the books and research of many others in recent years now provides enough of a foundation for everyone to finally discern that 9:11 was a "false flag" operation against both the American public and the Muslim world. Likewise, the uncanny synchronicity of Al Qaeda's videos and other activities perfectly timed to reinforce and support the Bush/Cheney administration's political needs coupled with the actions of the Bush admin actually serving to strengthen Al Qaeda's position, now makes perfect sense. The apparent mistakes and chaos that have characterized the Iraq war, the easily prevented resurgence of the Taliban, and permitting Bin Laden to escape Tora Bora to a safe haven in Pakistan all fit the same pattern. It's hard to maintain a state of continuous war if you allow your made-to-order enemies to be defeated too early. It is likewise hard to remain a "war president" if your wars end too soon!

The letterhead used to forge the "Yellowcake letter" that was then used to help "sell" the Iraq war was stolen in Rome on 1/1/2001, more than nine months before 9:11 and before Little W. became president. Consequently, the use of the "Yellow-Cake Lie" was obviously discussed and planned before then! The import of this fact is that the Niger embassy in Rome was burglarized, before Bush became president, to lay the groundwork for the web of deception used to sell the Iraq War, after 9:11. More importantly, it is highly unlikely that the Iraq war could ever have been sold to the American public, without something like 9:11 happening first. Any excuses of other uses for the stolen letterhead are laughable since the letterhead burglary would have been pointless, without 9:11. This evidences foreknowledge of those attacks, a full nine months before they occurred, among other things!

Read more...

May 2, 2007 9:59:00 AM MDT

House oversight panel may look past Rice, Tenet in inquiry into uranium

By Helen Fessenden and Jackie Kucinich

May 01, 2007

Following a subpoena to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a letter to former CIA Director George Tenet last week, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee may cast an even wider net in its probe into why the administration made false pre-war claims that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium from Niger.

The panel’s chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), said last Thursday that the panel had not yet made a decision on how many more individuals it would contact, but indicated that he may consider it.

“We’ll take this one step at a time, and we’ll see,” he said. “I still think Rice will come in the end, but so far we’ve just gotten stonewalled.”

Regarding other names, a Democratic committee aide said “nothing is ruled out,” but added that “we’re just very early in the process.”

Rice has so far refused to meet with the committee on the matter and said on Sunday she would not comply with the subpoena. Through an aide, she has sent several letters to the panel, but Waxman has called those responses insufficient and vague. He has been sending letters to Rice regarding the uranium claim since spring 2003.

Some of the other names that have surfaced in this story include Alan Foley of the CIA and Robert Joseph of the National Security Council, who negotiated the language in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Africa. There is also Rocco Martino, the Italian free-lance operative who peddled the forged documents that were the genesis of this claim, which ultimately found its way into the State of the Union speech even though Tenet had previously intervened to take out similar language in an earlier speech.

Several members expressed strong interest in hearing from these individuals, and the panel’s ranking Republican, Tom Davis (R-Va.) said it would be “entirely appropriate to bring in others” even though he opposed the subpoena for Rice.
On their part, Democrats expressed strong interest in broadening the probe.

“I’d love to talk to Martino in particular,” said panel member Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.).

“It’s important to bring in whoever can shed light on this,” agreed Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.).

Davis and other Republicans argue that bringing in Rice would be a time-consuming distraction from her duties as secretary of state, and that two U.S. probes—under the Senate Intelligence Committee and the independent Silberman-Robb commission—have already looked into the question of faulty pre-war intelligence.

Rep. Chris Shays (R-Conn.) said Thursday that this debate “is like the Clinton impeachment. I voted against it because there was no purpose. In this case, I understand why the Democrats want to kick Bush, but what would it achieve?”

Democrats counter that those two inquiries were Republican-run and avoided the question of why top officials used that intelligence to make their pre-war claims. The Senate Intelligence Committee is still working on the second part of its inquiry, which looks at the politicization of intelligence, but has not completed its work yet.

While the panel ponders its next move, Waxman has indicated that, at least for now, he is not yet ready to consider the more drastic option of invoking contempt to bring Rice before the panel.

“We’re not there yet,” said Waxman.

As of yesterday, a spokeswoman for Waxman said little has changed despite Rice’s remarks Sunday.

But the standoff could take an interesting twist if the two sides fail to reach an agreement.

If Waxman ultimately chooses to cite Rice for failure to respond to the subpoena, and a resolution to hold her in contempt passes the House floor, her case could land at the foot of embattled colleague Attorney General Albert Gonzales, according to House rules.

According to a Congressional Research Service report, if an individual refuses to comply with a House-issued subpoena, a committee could hold the individual in contempt of Congress, an offense punishable by up to one year in prison and/or a $1,000 fine. To enforce the contempt of Congress, the House must pass the resolution with a simple majority.

If the House approves, the resolution would be sent to the Office of the U.S. Attorney for prosecution.

According to congressional analyst Ilona Nickels, the U.S. attorney could then choose to call in a grand jury to decide whether to indict and prosecute.

Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said that it would be unfortunate that the oversight of a White House official could fall under the responsibility of another White House official.

“This is an unfortunate wrinkle in the separation of powers,” Lilly said. “I think the House would have the standing to get a court order for her to appear in civil court.”

Lilly added, “It makes the nature of this issue a little more dramatic, considering the problems of the attorney general.”

According to Nickels, Anne Gorsuch, a former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, was the last administration official to be held in contempt. In 1982, the House voted to cite Gorsuch after she refused to provide requested documents concerning the Superfund to the Energy and Commerce Committee, then chaired by Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.).

But her case was never prosecuted because the Reagan White House eventually arranged an agreement to give the chairman access to the requested papers, Nickels wrote.

Ex-CIA analyst: Forged 'yellowcake' memo 'leads right back to' Cheney

House Panel Votes to Subpoena Condoleezza Rice

Wednesday, April 25, 2007 1:21 p.m. EDT

In rapid succession, congressional committees Wednesday ramped up their investigations of the Bush administration by approving a subpoena for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and granting immunity to a key aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

By 21-10, the House oversight committee voted to issue a subpoena to Rice to compel her story on the Bush administration's claim, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

Moments earlier in the committee chamber next door, the House Judiciary Committee voted 32-6 to grant immunity to Monica Goodling, Gonzales' White House liaison, for her testimony on why the administration fired eight federal prosecutors. The panel also unanimously approved - but did not issue - a subpoena to compel her to appear.

Simultaneously across Capitol Hill, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved - but did not issue - a subpoena on the prosecutors' matter to Sara Taylor, deputy to presidential adviser Karl Rove.

And in case Gonzales thought the worst had passed with his punishing testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the chairman and top Republican issued a new demand: Refresh the memory that Gonzales claimed had failed him 71 times during the seven-hour session.

"Provide the answers to the questions you could not recall last Thursday," Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and ranking Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, wrote to Gonzales on Wednesday.

© 2007 Associated Press.

House panel approves subpoena for Rice

House panel gives Gonzales aide immunity

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee voted Wednesday to grant immunity to Monica Goodling, a key aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during the firings of eight U.S. attorneys. She had refused to testify, invoking her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.

The 32-6 vote by the House Judiciary Committee surpassed the 2/3 majority required to grant a witness immunity from prosecution. A separate vote to authorize a subpoena for Goodling passed by voice vote.

Democrats said the votes were necessary tools to force into the open the story of why the prosecutors were fired and whether they were singled out to influence corruption cases.

The votes instruct a House lawyer to seek an immunity grant from a federal court. The grant would not take effect unless Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., chooses to issue Goodling a subpoena compelling her to testify, Conyers said.

Goodling and her lawyer have invoked her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, saying they believe Democrats have set a perjury trap for her. Conyers said Wednesday he hopes Goodling changes her mind and voluntarily tells the committee her story.

"I do not propose this step lightly," Conyers told the panel. "If we learn something new in the course of our investigation ... we can always stop the process s before the court issues an order."

Congressional Democrats investigating the Bush administration set rapid-fire votes in three committees Wednesday on subpoenas.

"If we are stonewalled then we can't hesitate to call on the powers available to us," said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif.

Those powers include the threat of subpoenas to prod the administration into answering questions on a raft of issues, including the firings of eight U.S. attorneys and President Bush's suggestion, now discredited, that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa.

Chief among the targets is Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose aides have insisted she has answered questions repeatedly before Congress and in the media about Bush's statement on uranium.

"We have hit a brick wall with the secretary of state," Waxman announced Wednesday. Rice, he said, "is giving us no choice but to proceed with a subpoena."

He postponed a vote on issuing a subpoena to former White House chief of staff Andrew Card on the same issue, saying White House Counsel Fred Fielding had make a compromise proposal worth pursuing.

Still, Republicans dismissed the subpoenas as political fishing expeditions by zealous majority Democrats eager to assert their newly won oversight power.

Rep. Tom Davis of Virgina, top Republican on Waxman's committee, called the Rice subpoena duplicative and evidence of a witchhunt. Though the uranium claim was false, Rice already has explained that she believed it to be true at the time.

Waxman's questions to her "have been asked and answered," Davis said.

"Subpoenaing Secretary Rice has more to do with political theater than legitimate oversight goals," said House Republican Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

The barrage of subpoenas is an example of the Democrats' newfound power and the plethora of White House business from which they have to choose after six years of a Republican majority that did virtually no executive branch oversight.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Two Explosive Books Tell the Inside Story of the Forged Iraq-Niger Docs That Helped Build the Case for War

Editor's note: I am moving to post at the secondary blog(also see new articles below).
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Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
EXCLUSIVE

Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3
Watch 128k stream Watch 256k stream Read Transcript

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In his January 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush declared the infamous sixteen words: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The claim was central to the administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking weapons of mass destruction and served as a basis for launching the Iraq invasion less than two months later. Bush’s declaration was based on an intelligence document that provided evidence about Iraq’s purchase of uranium from the African country of Niger. But there was one problem: the document was a fake. In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we speak with the authors of two explosive new books. Carlo Bonini is the Italian reporter who broke the Niger story. His new book is called “Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror.” Peter Eisner is a veteran foreign correspondent and is currently an editor at the Washington Post. His new book is “The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq.” [includes rush transcript - partial]

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It was one of the key justifications for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

President Bush: “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

President Bush made the statement in his January 2003 State of the Union. Those sixteen words were central to the administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking weapons of mass destruction and served as a basis for launching the Iraq invasion less than two months later. Bush’s declaration was based on an intelligence document that provided evidence about Iraq’s purchase of uranium from the African country of Niger. But there was one problem: the document was a fake.

Bush’s smoking gun evidence would quickly unravel and ignite a political firestorm that reached the highest levels of the US government. The story behind the forged document stretches from Italy to Niger to Iraq and deep into the corridors of the US intelligence community and the White House itself. The document played a key role in the chain of events that led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, in the CIA leak case.

And its effect continues to reverberate today. Congressmember Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, recently formally requested Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify before a committee hearing next week regarding the false Iraq-Niger claims.

Today, a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive: two explosive new books. Carlo Bonini is the Italian reporter who broke the story. His new book is called “Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror.” He is an investigative journalist with La Repubblica newspaper of Rome, and he joins us in our firehouse studio. Peter Eisner is a veteran foreign correspondent and is currently an editor at the Washington Post. His new book is “The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq.” He joins us from Washington, D.C.

• Peter Eisner. Veteran foreign correspondent. He is currently an editor at the Washington Post. He is co-author of “The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq.”

• Carlo Bonini. Investigative journalist with La Repubblica newspaper of Rome. He is co-author of “Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror.”

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RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: It was one of the key justifications for the US invasion of Iraq.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

AMY GOODMAN: President Bush made the statement in his January 2003 State of the Union address. Those sixteen words were central to the administration’s claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking weapons of mass destruction and served as the basis for launching the Iraq invasion less than two months later. Bush’s declaration was based on an intelligence document that provided evidence about Iraq's purchase of uranium from the African country of Niger.

But there was one problem: the document was fake.

Bush’s smoking gun evidence would quickly unravel and ignite a political firestorm that reached the highest levels of the US government. The story behind the forged document stretches from Italy to Niger to Iraq and deep into the corridors of the US intelligence community and the White House itself. The document played a key role in the chain of events that led to the conviction of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former Chief of Staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, in the CIA leak case.

And its effect continues to reverberate today. Congressmember Henry Waxman, the chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, recently formally requested Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify before a committee hearing next week regarding the false Iraq-Niger claims.

Today, in a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, two explosive new books. Carlo Bonini is the Italian reporter who broke the story. His new book is called Collusion: International Espionage and the War on Terror. He is an investigative journalist with La Repubblica newspaper of Rome. He joins us in our firehouse studio. Peter Eisner is a veteran foreign correspondent. He’s currently an editor at the Washington Post. His new book is called The Italian Letter: How the Bush Administration Used a Fake Letter to Build the Case for War in Iraq. He joins us from Washington, D.C. We welcome you both to Democracy Now!

I want to begin with Carlo Bonini. When did you first learn about this story?

CARLO BONINI: It was summer 2003, where there had been at the time few -- I mean, few reports from US that probably the smoking gun regarding the weapons of mass destruction was some way fabricated in Italy. And all of the sudden in the summer of 2003, we got these documents, these fake documents, and we found --

AMY GOODMAN: How did you get these fake documents?

CARLO BONINI: Well, a search gave us these documents. We had the chance to see how the documents were badly faked. And the most surprisingly thing was that we had the chance to identify the person who had a main role in faking the documents. And the name of this guy was Rocko Martino, a former Italian SISMI agent.

AMY GOODMAN: SISMI?

CARLO BONINI: SISMI is the Italian CIA. It’s the secret service, the counterintelligence service. And Rocco Martino made his way, and his documents made their way to the White House and to the sixteen words.

AMY GOODMAN: How? First, did you know him before?

CARLO BONINI: No. No. This guy came out of the blue. I mean, at least we never -- I mean, we didn't know the existence of him. But it was quite clear after a while that Rocco Martino didn't act by himself. I mean, the Italian job was not only by him. Rocco Martino could count on the complicity of the Italian SISMI. It was thanks to the Italian SISMI that at the beginning the content of the fake documents could be shared with the CIA, and it was because of Rocco Martino’s old friendship with an Italian reporter that the documents in the fall 2002 could be shipped to US through the US embassy in Rome.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Eisner, can you take it from there? And also place this in the context of when this happened in relation to President Bush uttering those sixteen words.

PETER EISNER: Well, in fact, Amy, the CIA and other members of the intelligence community had heard from SISMI in the first few days after 9/11, which was saying that there was information that they didn't specify about possible uranium purchases or attempts to buy uranium in Niger, and the CIA solicited more information from SISMI. And by early 2002, they actually had a version of one document saying that this had taken place.

Many parts of the CIA, from the outset, as early as September and October of 2001, simply did not believe that Iraq, for various reasons, was attempting to buy uranium or, in fact, trying to restart its nuclear program -- didn't need to buy uranium in Niger, because it already had uranium. Second of all, SISMI was not providing the source. It was not saying how it was getting the information. And third of all, they tended to doubt SISMI, in any case, because it's got a reliability problem among Western intelligence agencies. So, well before, more than a year before President Bush's State of the Union message, it was gravely doubted by key members of the intelligence community that it could have been that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium.

AMY GOODMAN: Would you agree, Carlo Bonini, with this assessment of SISMI having a problem with credibility in Western intelligence?

CARLO BONINI: I do agree. I do agree, and I think that the Nigergate story, as well as other stories, can prove it. Also, what Peter was saying, the problem with SISMI was that also -- I mean, along this complicated story called Nigergate, SISMI played a very untrusty role. We heard before that Bush relied on British intelligence. The problem is that it was the same hand feeding different mouths. I mean, Rocco Martino was feeding the British, was feeding the Americans, was feeding the French. That is the problem. I mean, the SISMI didn't ring the bell when it was the time to ring the bell. SISMI simply let the story go ’til January 2003, when it was too late.

AMY GOODMAN: Peter Eisner, talk more about who Rocco Martino was.

PETER EISNER: Rocco Martino was a failed former policeman, Italian policeman, a sometimes agent -- and that is, outside the house of SISMI -- who sometimes was able to provide nuggets of information to journalists and certainly was also working as a freelance for other intelligence agencies, even the French, or working for or providing them information for a stipend.

Rocco Martino approached a journalist named Elisabetta Burba at the Milan news magazine Panorama on October 7, 2002, and said he had some great material, a hot tip about Iraq and uranium, if she was interested. And that was how he first surfaced in this story. Elisabetta Burba and others at her magazine had heard of Martino before. They had gotten information from him before. They had paid him before. And she took a look at his documents, had immediate doubts, brought it into her editors, and started investigating.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break. When we come back, her response when President Bush gave that State of the Union address in 2003 and talked about Saddam Hussein trying to get uranium from Niger. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. We'll be back with these two reporters who have both documented these stories in two explosive books: Peter Eisner’s The Italian Letter, Carlo Bonini’s The Collusion. Stay with us.

[break]

Chairman Waxman Reiterates Request for Testimony from Secretary Rice

Monday, April 09, 2007
Administration Oversight, Iraq Intelligence and Nuclear Evidence

After receiving an insufficient response from the State Department's Legislative Affairs office, Chairman Waxman reiterates his request for Secretary Rice to testify on April 18 regarding President Bush's claims that Iraq attempted to procure uranium from Niger and other subjects.

Documents and Links

• Letter to Secretary Rice
• Response from State Department

Rice trying to dodge hearing on Iraq-Niger documents

On Iraq, Reporters May Be Missing Their Mark(et)

By Al Kamen
Wednesday, April 4, 2007; A11

The liberal media have been jumping all over Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) for accusing the press of not reporting all the good news in Iraq. There has been some improvement, McCain told reporters after strolling through the Shorja market in Baghdad. "But the American people are not getting the full picture of what's happening here.

"They are not getting the full picture of the drop in murders, the establishment of security outposts throughout the city, the situation in Anbar province, the deployment of additional Iraqi brigades who are performing well, and other signs of progress that have been made."

Instead, what does the press do? It harps on the hundreds killed around the country in the week before the visit, including at least 152 in Tall Afar, and the six U.S. soldiers killed the day McCain, wearing a flak jacket and surrounded by dozens of troops, was at the market.

We're now in the fifth year of the media's failure to report the good news from Iraq.

There has been much less attention paid to Rep. Mike Pence's assessment. Pence (R-Ind.) seemed most impressed by their shopping outing, saying he was able to "mix and mingle unfettered among ordinary Iraqis." Unfettered even by the troops all around them or the flak jackets the lawmakers wore.

Some nearby shopkeepers recalled that the day before the visit an Iraqi soldier had been shot by a sniper, and the day before that a sniper had killed two more victims.

Pence, however, said he came away from his "day at the market in Baghdad with a new sense of cautious optimism that freedom might just work for these people." The Shorja market, he said, was "like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

Really? Just like the weekend farmers market in the Minnetrista Cultural Center parking lot in Muncie?

Maybe not exactly. "There've been no shootings or car bombings" at that market since it opened a few years ago, said Robin Gibson, assistant metro editor of the Star Press in Muncie. So no dangers there at all? "Maybe some overeager dogs jumping at people," she ventured.

Avon Waters, a former features editor and writer for the Herald Bulletin in Anderson, the other relatively big town in Pence's largely rural congressional district, said he never wore a flak jacket and "never felt afraid" when he spent a couple of recent years covering farmers markets in Madison County, including places such as Elwood and Pendleton.

"No snipers or car bombs," Waters reported.

Well, there weren't any during the lawmakers' visit to the Baghdad market either, which enabled Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) to do some excellent shopping. "I bought five rugs for five bucks," he boasted. "People were engaging."

Remember when Mitt Romney's dad went to check things out in Vietnam?

A Purloined Letter?

I did call, I did write, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday in a letter to House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).

Waxman, Loop fans may recall, wrote to Rice last week saying that she had not responded to many of his letters over the years asking about the administration's bogus claims that Iraq wanted to buy uranium from Niger, how it handled classified information and other matters.

Because she hadn't responded, Waxman on Friday sent her an invitation to come up to the Hill for a hearing on April 18.

But yesterday, in a lengthy missive on her behalf by Jeffrey T. Bergner, assistant secretary for legislative affairs, the State Department said she has been quite responsive.

"Our records reflect that you have sent 49 individual letters . . . since 2003, 21 of which" went to Rice, Bergner said, and with the exception of one letter they haven't been able to find and a few recent ones they're working on, she's responded to everything.

"I'm sure that this thorough and comprehensive" response, department spokesman Sean McCormack said yesterday, will be sufficient to "obviate the need" for a formal hearing.

Stay tuned.

Can't Spell Limbo Without OMB

Susan E. Dudley will get one more hearing.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will, once again, take up her troubled nomination to oversee federal regulatory policy at the Office of Management and Budget.

Chairman Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) "is moving forward in the traditional manner with her nomination," committee spokeswoman Leslie Phillips told our colleague Stephen Barr.

President Bush named Dudley to the OMB post last August, and her confirmation hearing was held in November. The Senate adjourned without voting on her nomination, which the White House later resubmitted.

While in confirmation limbo, she has been serving as counselor to Clay Johnson III, a presidential buddy and the deputy director for management at the OMB.

Before her first nomination, Dudley wrote about regulation for the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, and her critics assailed her comments involving air bags, arsenic limits in drinking water and workplace injuries.

Tripp Goes Back to Court

Linda Tripp, erstwhile pal of Monica Lewinsky, is scheduled to appear today in Fauquier General District Court in Warrenton in a dispute with the Pentagon Federal Credit Union over unpaid credit card bills. Tripp now owes $2,822.68, with attorneys' fees and such included, on a consumer loan, according to papers filed with the court.

It's unclear whether Tripp will make it, though. The county sheriff's office, which tried to serve her notice of the court date, says she moved from Marshall and left no forwarding address, though they note that she may be working at a store in Middleburg.

Heading Out . . .

Richard Lawless, the deputy undersecretary of defense for Asia and Pacific affairs and an expert on Korean matters and China policy, is reported to be leaving his job in the next few weeks, apparently for personal reasons. The authoritative Nelson Report has it that Lawless's deputy, Jim Shinn, formerly the CIA's national intelligence officer for Asia, is expected to be nominated assistant secretary of defense for Asia.

Time to Change The ‘Back Channel’

March 26, 2007

By Rory O'Connor

Leave it to the New York Times to pronounce something “corrupt” and then wholeheartedly embrace it as “crucial.”

This week’s Sunday magazine piece by Max Frankel is the most recent and stunning example of the Times’ weird worldview. In a cover story, the paper’s former executive editor concludes that “the real lesson” of the recent Scooter Libby trial is that Washington’s “black market in information” — which the Times defines as “the messy and at times illicit traffic in secrets carried out among Washington officials and those who report on their doings” — is an evil necessary for democracy. “Leaks, backgrounders, favors, masked attribution: For decades, journalists and government officials have…manipulated one another and, to some extent, readers too,” the magazine noted. “It’s not pretty – as the Libby trial revealed. But it’s crucial.”

True, the trial provided a rare public glimpse at the corrupt nexus of Big Politics and Big Media — of which the Times is of course a charter member. While Frankel’s assessment that “it’s not pretty” is certainly sound, the rest of his analysis is unsurprisingly skewed. “Favors and masked attribution” do sound journalistically ugly and corrupt – as does “manipulating readers” – but the Washington back channel is certainly NOT crucial for anyone except perhaps the privileged players who participate in it. Moreover, it’s demonstrably BAD for our democracy. (Witness the ongoing carnage in Iraq, which the Times manipulated many of its readers into supporting!) Only charter members of the Big Media club, which performed so shamefully during the run up to both the war and the Libby trial, could conclude otherwise.

“So there I sat, watching the United States government in all its majesty dragging into court the American press (in all its piety),” Frankel’s article begins, mockingly, “Forcing reporters to betray confidences, rifling their files and notebooks, making them swear to their confused memories and motives and burdening their bosses with hefty legal fees — all for the high-sounding purpose, yet again, of protecting our nation’s secrets. Top-secret secrets! In wartime!”

Frankel is accurate in noting that Libby was indicted “as an agent of government who lied and obstructed justice to protect the misuse of secrets.” He is “no Daniel Ellsberg, who gave the top-secret Pentagon Papers to The New York Times to expose the nation’s devious drift into war in Vietnam.” Instead, Libby’s intent was “to defend misjudgments and misrepresentations on the path to war in Iraq.”

And that’s not all Frankel managed to get right. He also decried reporters’ “messy relations with officialdom,” as “celebrated correspondents routinely grant anonymity — better called irresponsibility — to government sources just to hear whispered propaganda and other self-serving falsehoods.”

To Frankel, it all sounds “so familiar”– and no wonder. As he writes, “government officials spreading secrets to shape a story and to advance their interests, large and small” have long been a staple of Washington. This is particularly of the New York Times, whether it involved LBJ whispering in Frankel’s ear or Scooter Libby nibbling on Judith Miller’s. A case in point, per Frankel: “On Tuesday, July 8, in what his normally detailed calendar listed only as a ‘private meeting,’ Libby spent two hours at breakfast with Judith Miller to enlist her help in countering Wilson’s attack. He told the grand jury that he admired her reporting, on Al Qaeda and chemical and biological weapons, and presumably also her prewar articles lending credence to the administration’s wild alarms about Iraqi W.M.D.’s — credulous articles that The Times eventually disowned.”

Frankel fails to explain, however, how the back channel relationship between Libby/Big Politics and Miller/Big Media was somehow “crucial” to our democracy. “Miller testified that Libby brought her selected excerpts from a top-secret National Intelligence Estimate to buttress his claim that long after Wilson’s mission, the C.I.A. still endorsed reports that Saddam Hussein had ‘vigorously’ pursued uranium in Africa,” Frankel reports. Credulous, indeed! Corrupt? Yes. Crucial? Hardly…

Instead of blaming the system, Frankel – like many Times writers before him – simply blames Miller, who he says should have realized, “that the remedy for bad leaks is more leaks.” He then takes a few gratuitous swipes at poor Judy, noting her “role in the case served no one very well. On cross-examination, she was rattled into multiple confessions of uncertainty, poor memory and wobbly note-taking.”

But somehow, while coming up with the correct diagnosis – “the shameless ease with which top-secret information is bartered in Washington for political advantage” — Frankel amazingly contends that the disease of corrupt relationships between Big Politics and Big Media is really good for all of us, and that our dying democracy needs no cure!

Explain to me, Max, why it is good for me that Vice President Cheney can use Meet the Press – “our best format,” as his communications chief Cathie Martin testified – to control “our message.” Maybe I’m dense – why are all your pals in Big Media so convinced they can do their jobs “only by subscribing to the convoluted code of conduct governing Washington interviews?”

After all, as you admit, “the system is sloppy and breeds confusion.” Scooter Libby, for example, often spoke “off the record” when he really meant “deep background.” And Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper seems equally confused, testifying that “off the record” meant a reporter couldn’t use the information given him – and then went ahead and used information Libby had given him “off the record.”

Despite these and numerous other examples of incompetence mixed with perfidy, Frankel somehow concludes it’s all for the best. “Clearly, from the perspective of the public interest, there are and always have been both good and bad leaks, true and illuminating betrayals of secrets as well as false and conniving ones.” To the Times man, “there are no neat lines of distinction.”

It’s quite clear how such ambiguity can serve the special interests of both sides of the Big Politics/Big Media equation. But how does it serve the reader, the citizen, and our democracy?

“Much as I enjoyed the human drama and revelations of the Libby case, I wound up regretting the rough ride of the law through the marketplace of information,” Frankel concludes. “Attorneys general should resist the temptation to interfere with newsgathering or to delegate such a decision to a single-minded special counsel. When a White House leak is suspected, it is hard to avoid an independent prosecutor, but it’s a pressure worth resisting.

“It may sound cynical to conclude that tolerating abusive leaks by government is the price that society has to pay for the benefit of receiving essential leaks about government. But that awkward condition has long served to protect the most vital secrets while dislodging the many the public deserves to know.”

In loose translation: Prosecutors of the realm let this back-alley market flourish. Attorneys general and others armed with subpoena power, please leave well enough alone. Back off. Butt out.

It’s true that the damage to newsgathering from the Libby trial “has been significant,” as Frankel notes. But it’s even truer that preserving the corrupt black market in information that pours through the “Washington back channel” is even more dangerous to journalism – and democracy – than a dozen Special Prosecutors could ever be.

Comment on this post...

Goodbye Yellowcake Road

© Steve Bell 2007 steve.bell@guardian.co.uk

Libby lied, troops died
March 8 2007, Sidney Blumenthal: 'Scooter' is but a part of a sordid political tragedy.

Libbygate: Now to the Real Story

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

So Scooter Libby has taken the fall.

Three and a half years and a long bloody war after he and a gang of war-mongers in the White House and Blair House, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, set out to undermine and trash the reputation of an Iraq war critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Libby has been found guilty of perjury, lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice by a Washington jury.

Now maybe special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and what passes for journalists in the mainstream media can get down to the real business of finding out just why the entire White House smear operation was unleashed upon a minor state department official and why they went so far as to violate federal law and expose his CIA-operative wife, Valerie Plame, in the process destroying her entire network of contacts for monitoring the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Because that's what this whole Libby story is really about.

The whole focus of the media in this case has been on the narrow, inside-the-Beltway question of who leaked information about Plame to the media.

Entirely forgotten or ignored has been what this leak was all about to begin with.

For that, you have to go back and look at what Wilson did in the first place that so enraged or frightened the Vice President and the President.

And that was to go to Niger, one of the poorest nations in Africa, to prove conclusively that there was no truth to a set of forged notes on the letterhead of the Niger embassy in Rome, purporting to be receipts for 400 tons of Niger uranium ore allegedly being sought by Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

Wilson knew those documents were cheap forgeries--the name of the mines official on the papers was someone who hadn't been in office for years--but he went to Niger anyhow, just to make doubly certain that no such purchase attempt had been made.

None had.

So the real question then is, who is behind those forged documents?

There is an interesting story here--and an important mystery to be solved.

As it happens, way back in early 2001 there was a pair of burglaries at the Niger Embassy in Rome and at the home of the Niger ambassador. Police investigating the crimes found that the only things stolen were official stationery and some official stamps, used to make documents official. A cleaning lady and a former member of Italy's intelligence service were arrested for the crimes. They were odd burglaries to be sure, since there is precious little one could use, or sell, such documents for, given the country involved. I mean, it might make sense to steal official stationery from the French Embassy in Rome, which a thief might use to finagle a pass to the Cannes Festival. But Niger?

Jump to October 2001. A few weeks after the 9-11 attacks, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, accompanied by his ministers of defense and intelligence, made a visit to the White House. There he reportedly handed over the forged Niger documents (they were on Niger government stationary, and had Niger government stamps!), which appeared to be receipts for uranium ore, made out to Saddam Hussein. Now forget the matter of why either Hussein or Niger's government would want paper receipts for such an illegal transaction, and forget the matter of how Hussein would have transported 400 tons of yellow dust across the Sahara to his country without somebody noticing. The simple fact is that Bush's own intelligence experts at the CIA and State Department promptly spotted the forgeries, and they were dumped.

We know this because we know, from the likes of onetime National Security Council counterterrorism head Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, that Bush was pushing for war with Iran almost as soon as he finished reading My Pet Goat following the attack on the Twin Towers. Surely if the White House had even thought those Niger documents might be legit, they would have leaked or broadcast them all over creation.

They didn't. The documents were deep-sixed, and mentioned to no one.

But according to some dedicated investigative reporters at the respected Italian newspaper La Repubblica, they resurfaced before long at a very suspicious meeting. This meeting occurred in December 2001 in Rome, and included Michael Ledeen, an associate of Defense Department Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith and a key figure in the White House's war-propaganda program, Larry Franklin, a top Defense Intelligence Agency Middle East analyst who later pleaded guilty to passing classified information to two employees of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), convicted Iraqi bank swindler Ahmed Chalabi, then head of the CIA-created Iraqi National Congress, and Harold Rhode of the sinister Defense Department Office of Special Plans, that office set up by the White House and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under Feith's direction to manufacture "evidence" to justify a war on Iraq. Also at this peculiar meeting were the heads of the Italian Defense Department and of SISMI, the Italian intelligence agency.

According to La Repubblica, it was at that meeting that a plan was hatched to resurrect the forged Niger documents, and to give them credibility by recycling them through British intelligence.

And that is what Bush was referring to when, in his 2003 State of the Union address, he famously frightened a nation by declaring, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Bush lyingly implied that this was new information, when in fact he knew--had to know--that the "evidence" in British hands was the same set of documents he had been offered by Berlusconi almost a year and a half earlier, which had been declared to be bogus.

No mainstream American media organization has pursued this story, or even published the details as reported in Italy. Most Americans, consequently, don't even know what a grand lie Bush and the White House perpetrated upon them and the Congress in order to win approval for an attack on Iraq.

Perhaps now that Libby has gone down for his part in this grotesque crime, some editor will ask the obvious question: Why did the White House and the Office of Vice President go to such extraordinary lengths to attack Wilson and his wife? And more importantly, who was behind those Niger embassy burglaries and the forged uranium ore sale documents? And what was OSP doing meeting in Rome in December 2001 with the head of Italian intelligence?

Make no mistake: this whole story has the odor of a "black op" designed to target the American people.

If so it was an act of high treason.

It is not just Libby who should go to jail for this crime. It is the president and vice president.

At this point, what should happen is that Fitzgerald, with Libby in the bag, would take the next step and hold the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence recommendation over the convict's head in order to try and win from him a promise of cooperation with the prosecution. Because Libby knows who was behind all this.

That's the way prosecutors go after criminal syndicates and conspiracies, but Fitzgerald has folded his tent, reportedly saying that he plans no further prosecutions.

That means it's up to Congress, which should take the cue and initiate impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney based on the evidence of crimes and obstruction that came out during the Libby trial testimony.

And of course, it's up to the media, which if they were still doing their job, would be all over this story.

11:29 am pst

Cheney's fixation

H.D.S. GREENWAY

By H.D.S. Greenway | February 27, 2007

WHAT THE perjury trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby really revealed was the astonishing lengths to which Vice President Dick Cheney and others in the Bush administration went to discredit Ambassador Joseph Wilson for his 2003 claim that the administration had been dead wrong about Saddam Hussein trying to buy material from Niger to make nuclear weapons. The intensity and single mindedness of this pursuit leapt out from the testimony.

The decision to "out" a covert CIA officer, Wilson's wife, which is a federal crime, showed a kind of desperation. The concept that she had sent her husband to Niger on some kind of boondoggle, instead of to investigate the Saddam sale, is bizarre in the extreme. With all due respect, Niger is neither Wilson's, or anybody else's, ideal boondoggle destination.

Second , the intensity of the Wilson smear campaign, long meetings with favored reporters in hotels and on the phone, even the using of classified information, seems obsessive.

As The New York Times put it: The evidence shows Cheney and Libby "countermanding and even occasionally misleading colleagues at the highest levels of Mr. Bush's inner circle" as they pursued a "covert public relations campaign ," not only to protect the case for going to war, but also Cheney's connection to flawed intelligence.

There you have it. In the most dysfunctional administration of our time, the vice president's office felt free to use classified information to bolster a false impression of Saddam's nuclear capabilities -- going to absurd lengths to keep the truth from the American people and perhaps even the White House. According to testimony, Cheney got Bush to declassify secret material, but the president was not told how Cheney was going to use it.

As for Wilson, his crime was to shout that the emperor had no clothes. And that had to be discredited and Wilson punished by hurting his wife.

We now know, of course, that weapons of mass destruction were more of an excuse, not the reason to go to war. Oh, the administration expected to find some, but, as the then deputy secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz would later say, WMD was just the thing everyone in the administration could agree on.

We know now that the real reason for invading Iraq was the neoconservative mantra, that Bush bought into after 9/11, that if we could only seize Iraq and make it over in our image we could transform the Middle East into a region favorable to America and Israel's interests.

--MORE--

U.S. soldier to be tried in Italy

By MARTA FALCONI, Associated Press Writer 31 minutes ago

A judge Wednesday ordered a U.S. soldier to stand trial in absentia for the fatal shooting of an Italian intelligence agent at a checkpoint in Baghdad, the prosecutor said.

Spc. Mario Lozano is indicted for murder and attempted murder in the death of Nicola Calipari, who was shot on March 4, 2005, on his way to the Baghdad airport shortly after securing the release of an Italian journalist who had been kidnapped in the Iraqi capital, prosecutor Pietro Saviotti said.

Another agent, who was driving the car, and the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, were wounded.

"This looks to me like the first step on a long road toward truth and justice, and I hope justice will come in the end," said a visibly emotional Rosa Calipari, the agent's widow.

Lozano was not at the hearing and his whereabouts are not known, but defendants can be tried in absentia in Italy. Judge Sante Spinaci set his trial date for April 17.

Prosecutors so far have not sought the soldier's arrest. Lozano, a member of the New York-based 69th Infantry Regiment, has said through friends in the military that he had no idea the car was carrying the Italians.

The case has strained U.S.-Italian relations. The United States and Italy drew different conclusions in reports on the incident. U.S. authorities have said the vehicle was traveling fast, alarming soldiers, who feared an insurgent attack. Italian officials claimed the car was traveling at normal speed and accused the U.S. military of failing to signal there was a checkpoint.

Calipari's death angered Italians, already largely opposed to the war in Iraq, and the agent was mourned as a national hero.

Dick's Talking Points

February 06, 2007

by emptywheel

emptywheel@earthlink.net

I made the point the other day that if Cheney were put on the stand, he might be put in a place where he refuted some of Libby's testimony. Specifically, Cheney might have to admit that he and Libby talked about revealing Plame's identity with reporters during the week of July 6. And this presents a problem, because it either means both Libby and Cheney would claim to have forgotten about Plame's ID, then learned it again as if it were new the week of the leak. Or, they'd effectively be admitting to leaking Plame's ID after having learned of it through classified channels, making it a possible violation of the IIPA (barring, of course, a Cheney claim to have declassified Plame's identity before leaking it to reporters, which is where I think we are heading).

But given what we know about how Cheney's own talking points on Plame evolved between June 10 and July 14, it is almost impossible for Cheney to argue that he--like Libby--forgot Plame's ID and learned it as if it were new. Which of course makes it difficult for Libby to argue that he forgot. If his boss was actively remembering, what are the chances Libby was actively forgetting? Huh.

So here's the evolution of Cheney's talking points, as best as I can reconstruct them.

Martin's News, June 11
The first that we know Cheney to have learned of Plame's CIA employee was when Cathie Martin told him (and Libby) in his office. Here's how Martin explains it:

[Cathie Martin]: First [conversation with Harlow] was pleasant [emphasizes] I had never spoken to him before, talked about press reports, I was asking him, "we didn't send him." so I was saying to him, you must have sent him, who is this guy, what are you saying to the press, they're not taking my word for it. I remember him being, I didn't know who he [Wilson] was either, but apparently his name is Joe Wilson he was a charge in Baghdad, and his wife works over here. I understand charge to be diplomat who works overseas. Had been a charge, former is my recollection of what that meant. [Martin h]as notes, but the notes don't have a precise date. Asked to see VP and shortly thereafter told him and Scooter was there as well, told them what I had learned. It was the same day. I remember going into VP's office Scooter was there which was pretty normal. He told me Ambassador's name and apparently he was a charge and his wife works at CIA. Don't remember any specific response.

Given the phone records from Harlow to OVP Press Office, this conversation appears to have taken place on June 11, possibly June 10. While Martin doesn't remember any response, the testimony suggests that Libby elicited this call to Martin when he called Grenier and asked him to state that Defense and State, as well as OVP, had expressed an interest in the Niger intelligence. At this point, then, the talking points focused on shifting the focus away from OVP and pointing it more generally to Defense, State, and OVP.

Cheney's News, June 18?
I'm going to place the second "talking point" on June 18. I'm guessing that's when Cheney really spoke to Libby and told him Plame worked in Counter-Proliferation.

I first raised some reasons to doubt Libby's dating of that meeting in this post. But apparently I'm not alone--like me, the FBI took a look at the note, noticed the date had been changed, and came to suspect that Libby altered the note after the fact. Here's what Libby said about altering the date:

L: June 12, but this symbol means I'm not sure.

F: What's this to the right?

L: It's a note later explaining that this is a telephone conversation with the VP about Iraq uranium and the Kristof article… it's indicating that this is something someone told the VP… and then this says the wife works for the Counterproliferation Division.

At some point he switches from telling me what someone else told him to talking points for the press — e.g., that we didn't know about forgeries until the IAEA said so. (these are the three/four points mentioned earlier — but "forgeries" somehow replaces the NIE as point three??)

F: Under the 12, were you correcting something?

L: Might ahve been an 18, then corrected it to 12… realized it wasn't the 18th. I couldn't tell without a microscope. (laughs)

F: Do you know how much later you added the material about VP, Kristof, Iraq, etc.? June, July, October?

L: Might have been June, but I don't know.

One thing that supports the notion that this note postdates the Pincus article is that it doesn't mention the Pincus article at all--and, as Jeff points out, it echoes a word Kristof used in the lede of his second column on this, "behest." That second column was published on June 13, a day after the Pincus article.

The curious thing about this timing, if it is correct (though frankly, it'd be true if this conversation took place any day after June 11) is that it suggests Cheney learned of Plame's employ at CIA then went to find more details. It suggests they deliberately learned where Plame worked, which further suggests they knew enough details to know she was covert.

In any case, on this mystery date, these are the talking points Cheney gave Libby:

functional office
CP--his wife works works in that division

Debriefing took place here
& was meeting in the region

4) OVP and Defense and State -- expressed strong interest in issue
1) didn't know about mission

2) didn't get report back

3) didn't have any indication of forgery was from IAEA

These talking points, one through four (or rather, in VP count, four to one through three), seem to focus on a response to the Kristof/Pincus/Kristof articles. Already, Dick has had to admit that he did express an interest in the underlying intelligence. Though he's still trying to implicate State and Defense in that interest too (I've asked before--is this Bolton at State and Feith at Defense, in which case he might as well have said OVP and OVP and OVP). And though the info on Wilson's debriefing and Plame's employ aren't part of the talking points yet, they're definitely part of Dick's understanding of the case.

Martin's Operative Talking Points

Now, there are an interim set of talking points that aren't really Cheney's talking points, but at least show how OVP was responding to this issue publicly from the mystery June date and July 6, when Wilson's oped comes out. These are Cathie Martin's talking points, which she says she had been using prior to July 6, and therefore had on hand to send to Ari for his July 7 press briefing. These talking points are:

• The Vice President's office did not request the mission to Niger.
• The Vice President's office was not informed of Joe Wilson's mission.
• The Vice President's office did not receive a briefing about Mr. Wilson's mission after he returned.
• The Vice President's office was not aware of Mr. Wilson's mission until recent press reports accounted for it.

At some point, I'll come back to assess the veracity of these talking points. But for the moment, note how the talking points evolve as they move from Cheney to Libby to Martin. The talking points lose all reference to Plame and the forgeries (curious, that). OVP appears to have given up its efforts to say that State (Bolton?) and Defense (Feith?) were interested in this as well, and now retreat to the "Vice President's office did not request the mission to Niger." to which they add the "not informed of mission" talking point. Of course, this leaves them in a precarious position. "Vice President's office did not request the mission to Niger" is close parsing here, since it's clear that OVP asked for more information and it's also clear that Dick's briefer said they'd get DO to get its contacts to look into the allegations. It's that precarious position that probably ended up getting them in trouble.

Cheney's Annotated Copy of Wilson's Op-ed, July 6?

And then we have Cheney's annotations on Wilson's op-ed. Libby has argued in this grand jury appearance that Cheney didn't take those notes contemporaneously, that he just came back after the Novak article and wrote them down, having conveniently decided to save the dead tree version of the op-ed, and brought it back to DC from Jackson Hole, where he had spent the long weekend.

I'm going to make an executive decision and label that story a bunch of horseshit, and assume that Cheney read and annotated the Wilson op-ed on July 6, when it came out.

In which case, we have Cheney writing a new set of talking points on July 6:

Have they done this sort of thing?

Send an Amb to answer a question?

Do we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work for us?

Or did his wife send him on a junket?

A pretty dramatic shift in talking points, even from the Libby ones from June 12 18. But note the focus. Cheney is attacking the genesis of the trip. This is significant, obviously, since he raises Plame. But it's also significant because it goes to the precarious position of OVP--that they had in fact asked for more information, which led to Wilson's trip. He's trying to attack what happened between the time he asked for more information and the time that Wilson got sent.

It's in that context that Cheney uses Plame's purported role in Wilson's trip as a talking point. It's absolutely damning, if we can prove that Cheney read this op-ed before the leaks started in earnest.

And I think we can prove that.

Cheney's Talking Points, July 8

There's one more reason why I'm fairly certain that Libby's story is horseshit Cheney wrote his notes on Wilson's op-ed contemporaneously. That's because part of the notes he wrote on Wilson's op-ed show up in the new talking points he dictates to Cathie Martin on July 8. Those talking points read:

It is not clear who authorized Joe Wilson's trip to Niger.

He did not travel to Niger at the request of the Vice President.

• The Vice President's office did not request the mission to Niger.
• The Vice President's office was not informed of Joe Wilson's mission.
• The Vice President's office did not received a briefing about Mr. Wilson's mission after he returned.
• The Vice President's office was not aware of Mr. Wilson's mission until this spring when the press reported it.

According to Mr. Wilson's own account, he was unpaid for his services.

Mr. Wilson never saw the documents he was allegedly trying to verify on his trip to Niger.

Mr. Wilson has said he was convinced that Niger could not have provided uranium to Iraq but, in fact, Niger did provide uranium to Iraq in the 1980's--200 tons of which are currently under IAEA seal.

Mr. Wilson provided no written report to the CIA or any other agency of his trip to Niger when he returned.

The Vice President was unaware of Joe Wilson, his trip or any conclusions he may have reached until this spring when it was reported in the press--over year after Mr. Wilson's trip.

Six months after his trip, the considered judgment of the intelligence community was that Saddam Hussein had indeed undertaken a vigorous effort to acquire uranium from Africa according to the National Intelligence Estimate. [my emphasis]

If you look at the original dictated notes, this draft, and the final, you can see most of what they were thinking. Cheney gave Martin a bunch of new talking points, several of them directly at that precarious position of theirs--their claims that they had nothing to do with Wilson's trip. They add that "it's not clear who authorized Wilson's trip." Reiterate that it was not at the request of Cheney (and Martin adds in all the talking points she had been using--the ones she gave to Ari to use).

And note that they shift their talking point about the awareness of Wilson's trip. Previously, they said, "the Vice President's office" was not aware of Wilson's trip (these are from the Ari talking points). Now they get more specific: "The Vice President was unaware of Joe Wilson, his trip, or any conclusions." As I will show in a later post, I suspect they realized they had learned of Wilson's trip, at least by March if not by February. So they could no longer claim that everyone in OVP (that'd be Scooter) was unaware of Wilson's trip, only that Cheney was unaware of the trip.

There's a lot more in these talking points, including the specious argument that since Niger gave Iraq uranium in the 1980s, before the consortium took over in Niger, then it was perfectly plausible they would do so again. And this is when they start referencing the NIE publicly, even though (as Martin's notes indicate) she wasn't sure she should refer to what she still believed to be classified conclusions from the NIE.

But the important point about these talking points is that Cheney references Wilson's op-ed. As hard as Libby tries, he cannot claim that Cheney only read Wilson's op-ed after the Novak article. Cheney uses an attack--the ridiculous attack about Wilson going pro bono--that he wrote in his op-ed talking points in the talking points he dictated to Martin on July 8.

Cheney's Potential Talking Point, July 12

And then there are the talking points that Cheney dictates to Libby on July 12 aboard Air Force 2.

On the Record

• The Vice President heard in his regular intelligence briefing that Iraq was trying to acquire Uranium from Niger. As part of the regular briefing process, the Vice President asked a question about the implication of Iraq trying to acquire Uranium from Niger. (Note: During the course of the year, the Vice President asks the Agency many questions.) The Agency responded within a day or two. The Agency said that they had reporting suggesting the possibility of such a transaction but the reporting lacked detail. The Agency pointed out that Iraq already had 500 tons of yellowcake, portions of which came from Niger according to the IAEA.
• The Vice President was unaware of the Joe Wilson trip and did not know about it until June of this year, when it was first discussed in the press.
• The Vice President did not see Wilson's trip report until recently.
• The Vice President saw the NIE last fall, which he took to be authoritative.

Deep Background (as Administration Official)

• The only written record of Joe Wilson trip included that "the former Prime Minister of Niger said he had been approached and met with a delegation of Iraqi officials in what he believed to be an effort to acquire more Uranium in 1999."

Notes

• Give straight report on NIE
• Mention "vigorously pursue."

In addition to dictating these written talking points on the plane, Libby has testified, Cheney may have talked about leaking Plame's identity to reporters.

Beyond the Plame addition unrecorded in the notes, though, there are a few interesting additions. First, Cheney has given up his efforts to pretend his request wasn't the genesis of the trip. There's a lot of disingenuousness in his explanation of the genesis of the trip, but he appears to have resigned himself to admitting to having set off the chain of events that led to Wilson getting sent.

The caveats about who saw what are now all limited to the Vice President--don't want to go on the record with easily disproven claims (though I'll work on them...). And then there's the bit that was somewhat new--the urge to leak inaccurate claims about the Mayaki part of Wilson's report, and the willingness to leak the NIE to all comers. Libby had wanted to add that to the talking points earlier in the week (see Libby's notes on the draft of Cheney's talking points), but only after Tenet's statement did they add it to explicit talking points (though Libby tried to go there with Judy on July 8). Clearly, OVP was ratcheting up its attacks, even after Tenet had admitted that the 16 words shouldn't have been in the SOTU.

Which makes the Plame tidbit all the more interesting. I firmly believe that Dick ordered Libby to leak Plame's identity to Judy Miller on July 8. But here Cheney is, discussing more widespread dissemination of her identity (knowing full well, of course, that Novak's article had hit the wires...). The mention of Plame shows a continuity of knowledge from when Cheney read the op-ed (some time on or before July 8), through the time Libby learned it as if it was new, to the time when Cheney was maybe talking about leaking Plame's ID on July 12.

Libby may be arguing that he forgot Plame's identity and learned it as if it were new. But there appears to be a clear continuity in Cheney's knowledge of Plame's identity. Which sort of makes Libby's "as if it were new" claims ring hollow.

February 06, 2007 at 15:10 in Bush/Republican Scandals, Contributor--emptywheel | Permalink

Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up: FRANK RICH - Cover-Up Crumbles

REPOSTED
THE COMPLETE ARTICLE WITH ALL HYPERLINKS

The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up

By FRANK RICH

Published: February 4, 2007

Thanks to the commotion caused by the White House leak case, damning evidence has slowly dribbled out.

IN the days since Dick Cheney lost it on CNN, our nation’s armchair shrinks have had a blast. The vice president who boasted of “enormous successes” in Iraq and barked “hogwash” at the congenitally mild Wolf Blitzer has been roundly judged delusional, pathologically dishonest or just plain nuts. But what else is new? We identified those diagnoses long ago. The more intriguing question is what ignited this particularly violent public flare-up.

The answer can be found in the timing of the CNN interview, which was conducted the day after the start of the perjury trial of Mr. Cheney’s former top aide, Scooter Libby. The vice president’s on-camera crackup reflected his understandable fear that a White House cover-up was crumbling. He knew that sworn testimony in a Washington courtroom would reveal still more sordid details about how the administration lied to take the country into war in Iraq. He knew that those revelations could cripple the White House’s current campaign to escalate that war and foment apocalyptic scenarios about Iran. Scariest of all, he knew that he might yet have to testify under oath himself.

Mr. Cheney, in other words, understands the danger this trial poses to the White House even as some of Washington remains oblivious. From the start, the capital has belittled the Joseph and Valerie Wilson affair as “a tempest in a teapot,” as David Broder of The Washington Post reiterated just five months ago. When “all of the facts come out in this case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great,” Bob Woodward said in 2005. Or, as Robert Novak suggested in 2003 before he revealed Ms. Wilson’s identity as a C.I.A. officer in his column, “weapons of mass destruction or uranium from Niger” are “little elitist issues that don’t bother most of the people.” Those issues may not trouble Mr. Novak, but they do loom large to other people, especially those who sent their kids off to war over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent uranium.

In terms of the big issues, the question of who first leaked Ms. Wilson’s identity (whether Mr. Libby, Richard Armitage, Ari Fleischer or Karl Rove) to which journalist (whether Mr. Woodward, Mr. Novak, Judith Miller or Matt Cooper) has always been a red herring.
---

The explanation for the hysteria has long been obvious. The White House was terrified about being found guilty of a far greater crime than outing a C.I.A. officer: lying to the nation to hype its case for war.

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE WITH ALL HYPERLINKS

Dick Cheney Was Briefed by CIA on Niger

Saturday, 03 February 2007

by Larry C Johnson

One of the peripheral benefits from the Scooter LIbby trial (apart from the pleasure of watching the Bush Administration lies exposed) is the release of documents that provide concrete evidence of the events that produced Nigergate (or, if you prefer, Plamegate). Scooter may be claiming a foggy memory but if you read and compare the new documents with previous material, such as the Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Iraq released in the summer of 2004, the fog will lift and you'll glean some new insights.

We have known all along that Dick Cheney asked the CIA to follow up on a DIA report about Iraq's effort to get uranium from Niger. Thanks to the latest document dump we now know that Dick Cheney received a preliminary brief from the CIA and the the Senate Intelligence Committee, in its 2004 report, covered up this fact.

On a chilly Tuesday morning almost five years ago, February 12, 2002, Dick Cheney’s CIA briefer arrived with a piece of finished intelligence that set in motion a series of events that exposed the identity of a CIA undercover officer, destroyed a CIA front company and compromised its various assets, and sent Scooter Libby to trial for perjury and obstruction of justice.

Dick Cheney read an article written by an analyst at the Defence Intelligence Agency titled, "Niamey signed on agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium to Baghdad". This report was based on intelligence obtained by CIA field operatives and published as an intelligence report (i.e. TD) on 5 February 2002. The source, our buddies the Italians. Thanks to the CIA memo introduced during the first week of the Libby trial, the CIA reported that Iraq and Niger allegedly signed an agreement in July of 2000 to purchase uranium. This TD was a follow up to information the CIA obtained in October 2001, also from the Italian intelligence service, which claimed the negotiations had started in 1999 and came to fruition in 2000.

We know from the July 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee (SSCI) report that the CIA analysts viewed the October report as uncorroborated and noted that even if this was true Iraq had no capability to process the yellowcake (see p. 36 of the SSCI July 2004 report).

DIA was less skeptical than the CIA and left the impression that it was a done deal. As the Senate Intelligence Committee reported in 2004, Dick Cheney asked his briefer to find out what the CIA knew about this. When a Vice President or President asks a question or makes a substantive comment in response to the briefing material, the Briefer always goes back to CIA Headquarters and sits in on a morning meeting of Senior CIA officials. When the CIA briefer got back to Headquarters, he briefed the Director of Operations (or his Deputy) and the the Director of Intelligence (or his Deputy).

This led to two courses of action. First, the Director of Intelligence sent the rock rolling down the hill until it hit an analyst in WINPAC--the analytical shop in CIA tasked with monitoring Iraq's WMD program. According to the CIA memo released in the Libby trial, we now know that In response to this tasking the analyst produced a Senior Power Executive Intelligence Brief on 14 February 2002 that concluded:

information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated.

Now here is the bullshit. The Republican led Senate Select Intelligence Committee claimed in July 2004 that:

The CIA sent a separate version of the assessment to the Vice President which differed only in that it named the foreign government service.

BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT, BULLSHIT!!! No. Unlike the DIA analyst, who accepted the report at face value, the CIA expressed skepticism and clearly conveyed that the information was suspect. Moreover, the CIA morning briefer gave this information to Vice President Cheney on Thursday morning, 14 February 2002.

Second, on Tuesday morning, 19 February 2002, the CIA's Counter Proliferation Division chaired an interagency meeting to discuss whether to send Ambassador Joe Wilson to Niger. As noted in a previous post (see Joe Wilson Vindicated), Joe even tried to talk them out of sending him but, as a good American, accepted the so-called boondoggle to Niger. And, when he returned, an intelligence report was generated.

Be sure of this, Dick Cheney was briefed on the results of Joe's trip. He may not have remembered the substance because the report--based on the debriefing of Joe Wilson--told a story that Dick Cheney did not want to hear. There is no way that a CIA Briefer, who knew of the Vice President's keen interest in the issue of Iraq, Niger, and uranium, would not present a piece of raw intelligence to the Vice President that addressed Cheney's question. In fact, the Vice President received the report on March 8, 2002 or March 9, 2002. Look for yourself. On page DX64.4 of the CIA memo, paragraph 6, we are informed that the CIA's Directorate of Operations widely disseminated the report and that the sensitive source, Joe Wilson, is highly reliable.

Cheney was given an intelligence report in response to his original query on 12 February, 2002. The report made clear that Niger was playing ball with the U.S. and was not about to even meet with Iraqis, much less sell them uranium. But Cheney and Bush had other plans. They were going to go to war with Iraq regardless of what the intelligence said. But we now have a clear picture that the intelligence community was trying to tell them uncomfortable truths that Bush and Cheney did not want to hear. Just remember that as the U.S. death toll in Iraq continues to soar.

Posted by Larry Johnson on Saturday, 03 February 2007 at 23:29 | Permalink

Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up: FRANK RICH - Cover-Up Crumbles

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE WITH ALL HYPERLINKS
The New York Times
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Why Dick Cheney Cracked Up

By FRANK RICH

Published: February 4, 2007

Thanks to the commotion caused by the White House leak case, damning evidence has slowly dribbled out.

IN the days since Dick Cheney lost it on CNN, our nation’s armchair shrinks have had a blast. The vice president who boasted of “enormous successes” in Iraq and barked “hogwash” at the congenitally mild Wolf Blitzer has been roundly judged delusional, pathologically dishonest or just plain nuts. But what else is new? We identified those diagnoses long ago. The more intriguing question is what ignited this particularly violent public flare-up.

The answer can be found in the timing of the CNN interview, which was conducted the day after the start of the perjury trial of Mr. Cheney’s former top aide, Scooter Libby. The vice president’s on-camera crackup reflected his understandable fear that a White House cover-up was crumbling. He knew that sworn testimony in a Washington courtroom would reveal still more sordid details about how the administration lied to take the country into war in Iraq. He knew that those revelations could cripple the White House’s current campaign to escalate that war and foment apocalyptic scenarios about Iran. Scariest of all, he knew that he might yet have to testify under oath himself.

Mr. Cheney, in other words, understands the danger this trial poses to the White House even as some of Washington remains oblivious. From the start, the capital has belittled the Joseph and Valerie Wilson affair as “a tempest in a teapot,” as David Broder of The Washington Post reiterated just five months ago. When “all of the facts come out in this case, it’s going to be laughable because the consequences are not that great,” Bob Woodward said in 2005. Or, as Robert Novak suggested in 2003 before he revealed Ms. Wilson’s identity as a C.I.A. officer in his column, “weapons of mass destruction or uranium from Niger” are “little elitist issues that don’t bother most of the people.” Those issues may not trouble Mr. Novak, but they do loom large to other people, especially those who sent their kids off to war over nonexistent weapons of mass destruction and nonexistent uranium.

In terms of the big issues, the question of who first leaked Ms. Wilson’s identity (whether Mr. Libby, Richard Armitage, Ari Fleischer or Karl Rove) to which journalist (whether Mr. Woodward, Mr. Novak, Judith Miller or Matt Cooper) has always been a red herring.
---

The explanation for the hysteria has long been obvious. The White House was terrified about being found guilty of a far greater crime than outing a C.I.A. officer: lying to the nation to hype its case for war.

THE COMPLETE ARTICLE WITH ALL HYPERLINKS

The CIA Got the Niger Documents!!!

by emptywheel

Here's the holy shit no one has noticed from yesterday. Here's the version of the INR memo introduced in court yesterday.

You'll note in the last paragraph of the second page--it says, "These documents, which were sent to Washington via both CIA and [State] Department channels..."

This is really big news. The CIA got the forgeries. But all this time, they've been saying CIA only got the forgeries through State.

Nope. They had their own copies. And still didn't analyze them until after it was too late.

Also note that it says that INR "may" have concluded the forgeries were forgeries earlier than January 12. This is totally disingenuous--they say they've looked at emails, but they clearly are ignoring the email the INR analyst sent back in October 2002. Huh. Still reading this, but it's time to go to the Court House.

January 24, 2007 at 08:01 in Bush/Republican Scandals, Contributor--emptywheel | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)