EW – Poor political pornography. Freakin’ awesome.

By now it is obvious to even a casual oberserver that Cheney was deep into discrediting Wilson. In fact it could be surmised that Cheney was behind the outing of Plame.

This administration leaks when it suits its political purpose and attacks leakers when it has something to hide.

From the false mobile bioweapons labs in Iraq, to secret prisons and torture, to warantless wiretaps to wholesale collection of call records of tens of millions of Americans they want to pursue the â€leakers†and using the country’s national security apparatus to identify the sources of these reports. They have much to lose if the dam breaks.

Billmon has a good post up. This is Nixon redux except that in the current instance they have used the state’s security organs and a coopted media to entrench their power.

Who will be the Church of our time? Will we be able to roll back this usurpation of power or will the â€national security†state continue to strengthen and the Bill of Rights and what this country stood for just be a vignette of history?

To only but the most caual obsevrer. Buck, Calculus.

It wasn’t discrediting Wilson. It was keeping the prurality facade going. All you have to do is wait it out till being a victor. Fail, no prob. Its the ebtraupereerial spirit. (And yes, I know thats not how its spelled).

It’s an evil enough plan to be pure Cheney.

But something about the Orwellian nature of falsifying Wilson’s report and then using the false interpretation against him: it reeks of Turdblossom.

Good to know that Fitzgerald has subpoenaed the records of the
White House Iraq Group.

The problem is Joe Wilson did not write a report, only debriefed CIA. So he had no control over what spin they were putting on his oral report. If there had been a written report, he could have said to the Admin or Roberts committe – hey, I wrote a report. Go check with CIA what I wrote.

ElBaradei mentioned the 1999 visit by an Iraqi official to a number of African countries in his 3/7/03 UN presenation.

For its part, Iraq has provided the IAEA with a comprehensive explanation of its relations with Niger and has described a visit by an Iraqi official to a number of African countries, including Niger in February 1999, which Iraq thought might have given rise to the reports.

The IAEA was able to review correspondence coming from various bodies of the government of Niger and to compare the form, format, contents and signature of that correspondence with those of the alleged procurement-related documentation.
ElBaradei’s U.N. Presentation 3/7/03 CNN

The WaPo story the next day 3/8/03 has the â€we fell for it†quote and note that this article has Britain handing over the forgeries.

The documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britain and reviewed extensively by U.S. intelligence. The forgers had made relatively crude errors that eventually gave them away — including names and titles that did not match up with the individuals who held office at the time the letters were purportedly written, the officials said. â€We fell for it,†said one U.S. official who reviewed the documents.
WaPo 3/8/03

Here is Wilson the next day on CNN reacting to the â€we fell for it†quote in the 3/8/03 WaPo.

WILSON: Well, the report I saw said that the Brits were involved. Maybe it was the British that passed this report on. I don’t know who else might have been involved, but I can tell you this: The report in â€The Washington Post†today said — quoted a U.S. official as saying, â€we just fell for it.â€

That’s just not good enough. Either he’s being disingenuous, or he shouldn’t be drawing a government paycheck.
CNN 3/8/03

Also, the documents were handed over twice. First, in electronic form, presumably directly to the IAEA in Vienna. ANd then, Baute got copies–as well as this additional justification–when he was in NY for Powell’s speech. Don’t know which of those the Brits were responsible for.

That Novak reference is definitely to the Wilson Mayaki reference, not the al Zahawie reference. I don’t know whether the date is an error, or a deliberate attempt to obscure the fact that he was providing information from Wilson’s trip report, which he notes in the same column is still classified.

I don’t know where he got the CIA comments. It’s possible the INR analyst’s comments talk about the CIA’s objections in the redacted bits (though that would be anticipatory, not historical). They almost certainly don’t appear in the CIA report, since that says nothing about the purported uranium deal. It sounds a lot like these comments in the SSCI:

(U) DIA and CIA analysts said that when they saw the intelligence report they did not believe that it supplied much new information and did not think that it clarified the story on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. They did not find Nigerien denials that they had discussed uranium sales with Iraq as very surprising because they had no expectation that Niger would admit to such an agreement if it did exist. The analysts did, however, find it interesting that the former Nigerien Prime Minister said an Iraqi delegation had visited Niger for what he believed was to discuss uranium sales.

(U) Because CIA analysts did not believe that the report added any new information to clarify the issue, they did not use the report to produce any further analytical products or highlight the report for policymakers. For the same reason, CIA’s briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report, despite the Vice President’s previous questions about the issue.

But these are portrayed as being interview comments, not emails or documents. It COULD mean Novak talked to someone at CIA who gave him CIA’s excuse for not briefing Dick on Wilson’s trip. Or it might mean there is a CIA document (perhaps sent to Libby with the others on June 9?) we don’t know about and the SSCI doesn’t want to talk about.

The Senate started their investigation in mid June 2003, so I guess it’s possible the CIA and DIA analysts testimony had been given by July 11, 2003 and passed along to Novak.

It’s possible Novak got the CIA take from Tenet’s statement or Rove/Libby/Hadley as they had seen Tenet’s statement.

Tenet’s statement said the Wilson report â€did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroadâ€. I don’t think Tenet’s statement was out by the time Novak’s column went out on July 11. (but as you know the timing of the release of Novak’s column is not clear)

Because this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad, it was given a normal and wide distribution, but we did not brief it to the President, Vice-President or other senior Administration officials.
Tenet Statement 7/11/03

so Wilson was making noise BEFORE March 8th, we know that for sure ???

cuz that means that the date when the bushistas learned of Wilson’s vocal opposition before Wilson appeared in public

and all of this occured BEFORE the war

this proves intent to falsly lead America into a war, so it’s gonna be important later on

for now, all of scooter’s lies are visable to the world

Pollyusa, EW,

>>> â€The documents had been given to the U.N. inspectors by Britainâ€

All the evidence we know to date indicates that the documents were handed over to the UN by the US Government only – and not the UK. The Taylor Report also said the same thing.

>>> â€Also, the documents were handed over twice. First, in electronic form, presumably directly to the IAEA in Vienna. ANd then, Baute got copies–as well as this additional justification–when he was in NY for Powell’s speech. Don’t know which of those the Brits were responsible for.â€

See above. In both cases, the source was the USG.

>>> â€that 1999 trip is a reference to al Zahawie, which is different from the reference to Joe Wilson’s trip.â€

Absolutely correct.

Sara,

You point is well taken and it is something I had considered….