1. Anonymous says:

    On another blog I had posted a timeline, based on the WaPo story, that I think helps in keeping the bioweapons lab story straight. So I’ll repeat it.

    2/5/03 – Colin Powell tells the U.N. Security Council, “We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.†His statement is based on diagrams generated by now-discredited informant Curveball.

    3/20/03 – Invasion of Iraq begins.

    April 2003 – Two trailers matching Curveball’s descriptions are found in separate locations in Iraq. “Both were painted military green and outfitted with a suspicious array of gear: large metal tanks, motors, compressors, pipes and valves.â€

    A debate ensues as to whether the trailers are really bioweapons facilities. “Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs.â€

    A CIA analyst in Washington prepares a draft white paper that will ultimately become the official CIA view. The draft refers to the trailers as “the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.â€

    5/25/03 – A team of nine volunteers, each with at least a decade of experience in one of the essential technical skills needed for bioweapons production, arrives in Iraq at the behest of the Defense Intelligence Agency. “Within the first four hours,†one of them relates, “it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs.â€

    5/26/03 – Rumors of the technical team’s observations travel across the Atlantic. “A stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.â€

    5/27/03 – The technical team’s preliminary report, reflecting its conclusion that the trailers were not bioweapons facilities, is transmitted to Washington.

    5/28/03 – The CIA publishes its white paper, “Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants,†on its Web site. The white paper bears the DIA seal.

    5/29/03 – President Bush declares, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.†He identifies the two trailers as mobile “biological laboratories.â€

    June 2003 – The technical team, now back in Washington, works on its final (still-classified) report. Many outsiders want to know if the team can soften its conclusions to leave open the possibility that the trailers were, in fact, bioweapons labs. “In the end, the final report—19 pages plus a 103-page appendix—remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.â€

    6/26/03 – Secretary of State Powell tells reporters that the “confidence level is increasing†that the trailers were intended for biowarfare.

    9/14/03 – Vice President Cheney on “Meet the Pressâ€: “We’ve, since the war, found two of them. They’re in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack.â€

    10/2/03 – David Kay, leader of the Iraq Survey Group, tells Congress that he was “unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs.†It turns out he was not apprised of the technical team’s findings until late 2003. “If I had known that we had such a team in Iraq,†says Kay, “I would certainly have given their findings more weight.â€

    2/5/04 – CIA Director George Tenet continues to assert that the bioweapons lab theory remains plausible. Although there was “no consensus†among intelligence officials, the trailers “could be made to work†as weapons labs, he said in a speech.

    September 2004 – The Iraq Survey Group’s final report to Congress finds that the trailers were “impractical for biological agent production,†lacking 11 components that would be crucial for making bioweapons. Instead, the trailers were “almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen.â€

  2. Anonymous says:

    The White Paper on the mobile labs is yet another example of ’instant declassification’ to Judy in an effort to mislead and lie to the public. Have you been able to document exactly how many of these there were in the run-up to the war, during the invasion, and after the invasion? Serial Leaker-in-Chief indeed.

  3. Anonymous says:

    What a surprise. Another declassified white paper written before facts had been gathered the classified version. And there’s Judy in the middle of it all.

    (P.S. You may be interested in today’s gaggle, via JMM.)

  4. Anonymous says:

    Interesting that the SAO told Judy that no pressure was exerted on the intelligence community to produce a certain outcome for the White Paper at exactly the same time that the technical team was receiving pressure to soften its results. What an obvious CYA tactic. Let’s hope that Warrick got one of the technical team members to spill the beans on who exactly the outsiders were that wanted them to soften the reports conclusions to leave open the possibility that the trailers were, in fact, bioweapons labs.

  5. Anonymous says:

    Nice job on the timeline and the post. The fact that the technical report disputing the findings remains undistributed is one of the key points.

    Here it is, years after the report and a long ways past the Iraq Survey Group open report on the same subject to Congress.

    What is the reason for it staying unreleased, not even a release with redacts, except for the coverup of the false statements being made while the report was in house?

  6. Anonymous says:

    I tend not to believe the worst things said about Miller here and elsewhere (she was an actual member of WHIG and so on), but it is just extraordinary to see her show up in all the controversies the way she does. That said, while it is impossible just by reading to disentangle the contributions of the two writers and of the editor(s?) to the June 7, 2003 article (though there are some safe guesses), the overall tilt of it, especially given how it starts off, is toward the skeptics. Miller almost certainly got the pushback from the other side. But unlike, say, her coauthored September 13, 2003 piece on the aluminum tubes skeptics, this one is not an actual hitjob on the skeptics. As a finished product of the Times, this one actually seems like something that deserves praise.

  7. Anonymous says:

    EW,

    Respectfully disagree with much of this post.

    The white paper was â€carefully qualified.†The word probably and unlikely appear over and over again (as noted in Miller’s May 21, articl which was also written with Broad). I think you completely miscategorize this article which most people i f they read in full would think that the trailers were bogus. You’re picking a few parts out instead of viewing the thrust of the article.

    â€the White Paper was designed to pre-empt the findings of the experts?â€

    actually….it seems like it was designed to attack back at the new york times. It criticized a May 13, 2003 editorial.

    It seems to me that Miller might’ve had trouble getting access with the military in June partly cause the Administration went to war on them.

    There’s a lot the Post missed.

    These experts seem to have been sent by the British Gov’t as well where they reported to Blair…as the Guardian reported in July of 2003 (links at my blog).

    I really think that this new Wash Post story along with the last Miller story show a different picture than what we’ve all been painting the last year or so.

    The Bush Administration’s main enemy in June of 2003 was the new york times…not necessarily Wilson. And Miller wasn’t the same friend of the Administration in June of 2003 as she most definitely was earlier. Whether she changed (and she’s given countless interviews which said as much the last year) just because of the criticism against her is anyone’s guess.

    I sure hope the British Press take this up. Because I’m curious if the Brits fought the Bush Admin to release the report.

  8. Anonymous says:

    â€What was Judy doing in Baghdad, if the experts who could answer her question were already back in DC and the UK?â€

    But guess which bioweapons expert was in Kuwait and Iraq June 5-11? None other than Dr. David Kelly, who was later confirmed as the expert source for an article in the Observer June 15, 2003, casting doubt on the â€mobile bioweapons lab†story. And of course, he and our Judy were buds from way back.

  9. Anonymous says:

    mamayaga

    Hmm, now that’s very interesting. Very interesting.

    Jeff

    Yes, you’re right, we don’t know what Broad did and what Judy did. For the NYT, at least, this was an attempt to make Judy put some balance in her writing (and was cited as proof taht Judy was always balanced). I’m particularly fascinated by the structure of it, which does start by highlighting the skeptics, but then sides with the shills, particularly in this paragraph:

    The depth of dissent is hard to gauge. Even if it turns out to be a minority view, which seems likely, the skepticism is significant given the image of consensus that Washington has projected and the political reliance the administration has come to place on the mobile units. At the recent summit meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, President Bush cited the trailers as evidence of illegal Iraqi arms.

    It gives balance and a fair assessment of both sides. But then says it is â€likely†that the dissent will remain the minority view. That’s a rather odd observation to make in such a balanced story.

    Ron

    I’m confused (but interested) in your disagreement. Are you saying that Judy’s June article, or her May one, was balanced? The White Paper may well have been caveated. But her May article was not, by any means. Which would be a pre-peat of what we now know was supposed to go on with the NIE and the Wilson report–Judy reports a skewed view of a classified document, framing it before it is declassified.

    Further, we know the leak to Judy/Broad was regarded within the IC as problematic, because when it came to release Kay’s preliminary report in September, the IC made sure it wouldn’t get leaked early, specifically referencing this May leak. That is, in September, the sane members of the IC took special care to make sure that Kay couldn’t leak his conclusions to Judy (or anyone else) early to spin them as having found WMDs and not–as was the case–come up with nothing.

    That later concern, added to the curious timing here, makes it particularly suspect. I agree that the June article is more balanced (and that’s largely the NYT’s attempt to recover it’s own reputation). But the early leak doesn’t seem to be.

  10. Anonymous says:

    Sorry to get off the subject some here, but is there a reason no one is commenting on Jason’s Leopold’s article the other day? Is there something I don’t know about this guy? From his article:

    â€According to four attorneys who over the past two days have read a transcript of the President Bush’s interview with investigators, Bush did not disclose to either investigators or the special counsel that he had authorized Cheney or any other administration official to leak portions of the NIE to Woodward and Miller or any other reporter. Rather, these people said the president said he frowned upon â€selective leaks.â€â€

    Here’s the link http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040606Y.shtml

  11. Anonymous says:

    But then says it is â€likely†that the dissent will remain the minority view. That’s a rather odd observation to make in such a balanced story.

    Yes, that is odd. But then the very same sentence goes on to make the point that even if it remains a minority view, the dissent remains significant because the claim about mobile labs had become important, and crucial to that claim was that it was uncontroversial, so the fact that there was real dissent undercut the public claims the administration was making about the evidence. It is a fascinating sentence, that telescopes all the tensions in the article as a whole. And it is worth noting that the substantive point remains the most impossible-to-answer for rightwingers. See, for example, Captainquarters’ or whatever today and then Kevin Drum’s response, which essentially makes exactly the point contained in the Times sentence.

  12. Anonymous says:

    It’s interesting that this episode happened at the same time as Plamegate blew up. Maybe one of Joe Wilson’s sins (in the eyes of the Administration) is that he helped push this great (fake) discovery of WMD’s off the front page. Makes this part of Judy’s testimony all the more interesting:

    Although I was interested primarily in my area of expertise – chemical and biological weapons – my notes show that Mr. Libby consistently steered our conversation back to the administration’s nuclear claims.

    Libby just couldn’t let go.

  13. Anonymous says:

    William

    One way of reading that Judy comment, in this context, is that Judy really was discovering, with the Mobile Weapons Labs, how shoddy the intell was. That she wasn’t really as interested in that.

    Of course, she certainly played the nuclear card several times in Baghdad.

    Anyway, that’s been my point all along, with Judy. She has been intimately involved in teh effort to protect the WMD claims. And Joe Wilson was just a part of that. Ergo, it was barely a hop to get from Judy to Wilson.

  14. Anonymous says:

    While awaiting a comment thread to open up to discuss Libby’s latest filing, I do have a comment about it.

    On pages 26-27, Libby’s lawyers write: â€A key component of Mr. Libby’s defense is that he had no motive to lie to either the FBI or the grand jury because he had no reason to believe, before July 14, 2003, that Ms. Wilson’s employment status was classified.â€

    It would seem that by the time Libby was interviewed by the FBI, and later, when he testified in front of the GJ, he had every reason to believe Plame’s status was classified. This particular motive argument seems laughable, considering that Libby had reason to worry he could subsequently be charged with knowingly outing a covert agent. When he testified (which seems the moment that actually matters), Libby certainly had motive to distance himself from anything to do with any disclosure related to Plame.

  15. Anonymous says:

    And Footnote 6 (â€We emphasize that, consistent with his grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or anyone elseâ€) seems gratuitous. Unless, that is, he wanted to send a signal that he’s never going to flip on the central point of the initial investigation.

  16. Anonymous says:

    emptywheel,

    Have you read the latest Team Libby filing? Jeralyn Merritt has it posted over at TalkLeft. I have no opinion about its legal quality, but it is positively fascinating from a narrative point of view. In an effort to get an expansive discovery, they make a series of assertions that they know will be disproved. For example, they say that because that Libby testified that he didn’t remember discussing Wilson’s wife with Grossman, they are entitled to investigate whether or not the alleged conversation ever took place. That’s pretty funny since Grossman’s involvement started from a phone call that Libby made (and for which there is almost certainly documentary evidence) and ended in a report prepared by the INR which specifically mentions Wilson’s wife.

    Team Libby then moves on to claim that the government injected the NIE disclosure into the case. Hello, your client is the one who spun up the rather ridiculous story about the NIE in the first place. They also stick with the theory that anything that got printed in the press gives them cause for discovery. They are also arguing that Plame’s status might not be classifed (again because Libby claims he didn’t know that) and, therefore, they get discovery to settle that matter. They have to know that her status was classified, therefore they really must be after something else.

    All in all, it seems pretty clear that neither the prosecution or defense is really arguing the perjury and obstruction charges, but they’re fighting the larger (and as yet uncharged) conspiracy case.

    Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t point out this little footnote:

    Further reasons why documents pertaining to Mr. Fleischer are material to the defense are set forth in the sealed Declaration of Theodore V. Wells, Jr., dated April 12, 2006.

  17. Anonymous says:

    Folks

    Sorry, I’m not going to get to the Libby filing until I get on a plane at midnight Bombay time tomorrow night–and then I’ve got 20 hours of flying to do, with no blogging layover. So I won’t be posting on it until next week sometime. But feel free to discuss among yourselves while I try to cram on a work project.

  18. Anonymous says:

    A neat way of framing the cutout theory without a lot of specifics developed at TNH here, is readable at a fairly staid law faculty site April 13 in a thread of a professor who is a little to the left of Volokh, slightly. The commenter writes one long paragraph that sounds like the Best of EW there.

  19. Anonymous says:

    EW- You put it together brilliantly.
    The Miller June 7th piece expresses ambiguity, yes, but, it’s this passage that reveals her point of view. She uses simple math to make the argument.

    In all, at least three teams of Western experts have now examined the trailers and evidence from them. While the first two groups to see the trailers were largely convinced that the vehicles were intended for the purpose of making germ agents, the third group of more senior analysts divided sharply over the function of the trailers, with several members expressing strong skepticism, some of the dissenters said.

    One sixth of the experts were skeptical

    She ends the article with this less than comforting reminder of 9/11

    â€It’s not built and designed as a standard fermenter,†he said of the central tank.

    â€Certainly, if you modify it enough you could use it. But that’s true of any tin can.â€

    Wonder if she had Libby’s July 8, NIE breakfast meeting penciled in yet. Too bad she never published that article. It would be an interesting read.

  20. Anonymous says:

    ISorry this was trom squeaky
    EW- You put it together brilliantly.
    The Miller June 7th piece expresses ambiguity, yes, but, it’s this passage that reveals her point of view. She uses simple math to make the argument.

    In all, at least three teams of Western experts have now examined the trailers and evidence from them. While the first two groups to see the trailers were largely convinced that the vehicles were intended for the purpose of making germ agents, the third group of more senior analysts divided sharply over the function of the trailers, with several members expressing strong skepticism, some of the dissenters said.

    One sixth of the experts were skeptical

    She ends the article with this less than comforting reminder of 9/11

    â€It’s not built and designed as a standard fermenter,†he said of the central tank.

    â€Certainly, if you modify it enough you could use it. But that’s true of any tin can.â€

    Wonder if she had Libby’s July 8, NIE breakfast meeting penciled in yet. Too bad she never published that article. It would be an interesting read.

  21. Anonymous says:

    Some news from the Post this evening:

    In a related development, The Post yesterday was subpoenaed by Libby’s defense team to produce records related to the case that the newspaper had not turned over to Fitzgerald. Eric Lieberman, a counsel at The Post, said the newspaper would comply by providing Libby with a complete copy of a memorandum by Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward from his interview with Libby on June 27, 2003.

    Woodward has said Libby spoke in the interview about the same intelligence report he discussed with other journalists. â€This action does not pose legal or journalistic concerns to The Post or Mr. Woodward,†Lieberman said.

  22. Anonymous says:

    Waas always adds new information; I have to study that thoroughly.
    On the WaPo link about Woodward, the article title is more worrisome: the judge gave the opposing batches of attorneys eight days to show cause why his ?signed? gag order should not take effect. The judge’s complaint: Libby’s barristers’ parsing to members of the press the president’s disclaimers, in a way to exonerate defendant Libby, with respect to who leaked National Intelligence Estimate segments and/or instructed Libby to.
    I thought EW in several moments fairly well depicted the carte blanche atmosphere in which Libby must have been feeling he was operating as the various intelligence departments’ documents afforded a smorgasbord of permutations of which source could serve as reference from which to leak various increments mosaic-style.
    I continue to worry about one strategy Libby’s barristers mentioned soon after his indictment, that of attempting to discover (much more than Fitzgerald had in the realm of) reporter work product; certainly a consistent trait of this administration, and, regrettably, some courts.

  23. Anonymous says:

    squeaky
    Yes, there is that ambiguity there. But in her depiction of the â€expert†panel, she is worng. All other accounts describe their opinion as unanimous.

    Again, when you leak something, you get to spin it so it helps you.

  24. Anonymous says:

    Just read the Waas.

    Again, nothing we haven’t been talking about here. (We’ve been talking about the CIA report for a while, including my analysis of it here. The most interesting thing is the question of timing. I’m fairly certain Libby got this permission in June, not July. If true, then Dick was denying knowing of the trip when he obviously did.

    I also think that Fitz deliberately didn’t tell us whose handwriting marked Wilson’s name on the CIA report received on June 9 (I’m certain that the CIA report was included). It may be a tease–he may know that Dick is one of the people who wrote in Wilson’s name.

    Back to the Internet-free airways now. But I’ll probably post on this Sunday.

  25. Anonymous says:

    I think the really significant thing about Leopold’s article is that it fingers Grossman as â€1†in the â€1 X 2 X 6†scenario. How on earth did Grossman know so much about Rove and Libby’s activities in September 2003?

  26. Anonymous says:

    Emptywheel & Associates Inc.,
    while following this link
    http://tinyurl.com/zhmel
    from a commenter at FDL on another subject, I came across this paragraph refering to Walter Pincus:-

    â€Michael Ruppert has posted his thoughts on Webb’s memorial service, and makes a vigorous case for the wounds having been self-inflicted. But it was Lisa Pease’s heartfelt, well-told and sad account that settled the issue for me. (Pease makes a cameo in Dark Alliance by forwarding to Webb a 30-year old story that reveals his early critic, The Washington Post’s Walter Pincus, to have been a CIA asset.)â€

    I don’t know if this is common knowledge in the village or not, whether it is true or not or even of it is relevent or not. But I thought I’d throw it up here in case it is any of the above.

  27. Anonymous says:

    Thanks William.
    Interesting article. Either way, one would have to assume that he is influenced by the Agency. There is simply no way the CIA wouldn’t be trying to use him.

    There was one comment though that stood out to me –
    â€The story ended by stressing Pillar’s (ex CIA) wish that the CIA be restructured along the lines of the Federal Reserve, which would keep the agency in the executive branch but theoretically insulate it from political meddling. Where some people might look at the current political climate in D.C. of partisan attack and recrimination and see an abyss, Pincus sees an opportunity for reform.â€

    The Federal Reserve, despite it’s misleading name, is not a government agency (check for it in the government listings in your phone book) and even though that fact isn’t common knowledge, I would think that Pincus would be aware of that. And if he was aware of that then he is pushing a barrow for at least a faction of the CIA and most likely a high up faction at that.
    Does anyone know if Pincus is a member of the Council for Foreign Relations?

  28. Anonymous says:

    From this site:-
    http://www.radiobergen.org/powergame/cfr.html

    â€The following journalists and media moguls were listed in the 1995 membership roster of the Council on Foreign Relations. Undoubtedly numerous names were missed, since they are not otherwise identified in the roster:

    Roone Arledge, Peter Grose, Walter H. Pincus,

    Sidney Blumenthal, Jim Hoagland, Norman Podhoretz,

    David Brinkley, Warren Hoge, Dan Rather,

    Tom Brokaw, David Ignatius, Stephen S. Rosenfeld,

    William F. Buckley, Jr. Robert G. Kaiser, A. M. Rosenthal,

    James E. Bruke, Marvin Kalb, Jack Rosenthal,

    Hodding Carter III, Peter R. Kann, Diane Sawyer,

    John Chancellor, Anne Karalekas, Daniel L. Schorr,

    George Crile III, Joe Klein, Robert B. Semple, Jr.

    Arnaud de Borchgrave, Morton Kondracke, Hedrick L. Smith,

    Karen DeYoung, Charles Krauthammer, George Stephanopoulos,

    Christopher S. Dickey, Irving Kristol, Strobe Talbott,

    Joan Didion, Jim Lehrer, Laurence A. Tisch,

    Leonard Downie, Jr. Joseph Lelyveld, Seymour Topping,

    Elizabeth Drew, Lee Lescaze, Robert C. Toth,

    Rowland Evans, Jr. Anthony Lewis, Mark Uhlig,

    James Fallows, Flora Lewis, Garrick Utley,

    Thomas L. Friedman, Mitchel Levitas, Katrina van den Heuvel,

    Suzanne Garment, Michael E. Lind, L. Bruce van Voorst,

    Leslie H. Gelb, Kati Marton, Milton Viorst,

    David R. Gergen, Jessica T. Mathews, Ben J. Wattenberg,

    Philip L. Geyelin, Karl E. Meyer, Craig R. Whitney,

    Georgie Anne Geyer, Sig Mickelson, Steven Weisman,

    Katharine Graham, Judith Miller, Lally G. Weymouth,

    James L. Greenfield, Rupert Murdoch, Roger W. Wilkins,

    Meg Greenfield, Jack Nelson, Mortimer B. Zuckerman,

    John B. Oakes. â€

  29. Anonymous says:

    better late than never

    emptywheel wrote: â€I’m confused (but interested) in your disagreement. Are you saying that Judy’s June article, or her May one, was balanced?â€

    The June one…I just mentioned the may one because it noted (as I did) that the white paper wasn’t definitive (or nuanced).

    …and yeah…I still kind of think that Miller might have been on the right track in June when she got pulled off the wmd beat

    I think the kelly angle noted above is very interesting…she was rather mad when he died and said some strange things…

    i have a feeling we[re going to have to wait until her book to learn more of the truth (though since she’s rather hard to trust who knows how much we’ll learn etc.)…but i have a funny feeling that it wasn’t us lefties that got her pushed off the wmd beat

    To me…more than anything…that white paper seems to be directed at the Times…just as the Plame leak also seems to point that way…

    (and remember the times was weak as hell back then post-jayson blair)