Lisa Guliani
Victor Thorn Show interview with ex-CIA Agent Ray McGovern
Thu Aug 7 00:55:01 2003
64.140.158.140

It seems like Dick Cheney is at the center of it all.

The Victor Thorn Show interview with ex-CIA Agent Ray McGovern
by Victor Thorn and Lisa Guliani

http://www.babelmagazine.com/issue112/nwox112.html

Victor Thorn: One of the good things about this show’s format is that unlike the Nightly News where they only have two or three minute sound bytes or segments, we have an entire hour, so I want to look in depth at what went on with these forged Niger documents. It seems like Dick Cheney is at the center of it all. So first of all, tell us about how he sent a man named Joseph Wilson, who is a former U.S. ambassador, over to Niger to see if Iraq was actually trying to get uranium.

Ray McGovern: Yeah, I think you’re right, Victor. I think Cheney is what we used to call the “fellow behind the scenes”. It’s very clear that at the end of 2001, when the first information about the report that Iraq was said to be seeking uranium in Niger surfaced, that this really piqued the Vice President’s curiosity. After all, if there was an inclination to go after Iraq - and of course we know there was – that was very clear on the day of 9/11 – then what was better than to be able to suggest or even to prove that the Iraqis were reconstituting their nuclear weapons program which had been destroyed earlier by the UN inspection teams. So here’s a piece of evidence (or so-called) that suggested it had to do with Iraq, had to do with uranium, Iraq’s efforts to get it – so Cheney made it be known to the CIA that he was interested in having a follow-up on this. Get more details about this information. This is potentially very, very useful indeed. Well, the CIA looked at what they had, and frankly, the CIA has cut back so much on operations overseas that it didn’t have much in Africa. They knew of this one retired ambassador named Joe Wilson who had actually served in Niger, and who knew a good bit about such things and enjoyed wide respect all over the place. So they asked Joe, “Would you go down and talk to your old friends in Niger and look into this – see if you can get to the bottom of it?” Well, he went down (I guess they bought his ticket) and he talked to the various folks in the capitol of Nigerand - to the ambassador - and the ambassador had already sent in a report saying that the information she had was bogus. It didn’t take Joe very long to reach the same conclusion. As a matter of fact, when Joe came back and reported to the Vice President’s office, the CIA, and the State Department on March 9th of last year (2002), one of the major points he made was: even if Iraq were seeking uranium in Niger, and even if the government of Niger for whatever reason would wish to provide uranium to Iraq, it was impossible. Why? Because the government of Niger does not control uranium in Iraq. Who does? An international consortium led by France. That consortium controls every ounce of uranium and it’s duly recorded, and you can’t steal or secrete away any portion of that uranium without it being known to the consortium. So, on the face of it – this is really important – on the face of it, this report didn’t make any sense. Never mind the sourcing, never mind that it was a forgery, never mind any of that. So all this stuff these days about “who knew it was a forgery” and all this business – look at the information! It made no sense. It should have been put in a circular file and never seen again.

Victor Thorn: I think it’s important to reiterate that when Joseph Wilson did come back, he said that this information was worthless. He told not only the CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council, but also the Vice President. So he didn’t just come back and stay silent about this. It was very well-known in Washington circles that this was bogus.

Ray McGovern: Yes, but when you mention “bogus” we’re getting some pretty bogus stuff out of the administration, too. Cheney’s office is pretending that he was never told the results of this trip. George Tenet was careful to say (being head of the CIA), “I never told the President or Dick Cheney.” And so there’s a studied effort to exempt Cheney from any knowledge of this, which really reaches ludicrous proportions. It was really funny when Ari Fleischer was asked on the 7th of July about Joe Wilson’s mission, the first thing he thought to say was, “Well, there’s not much new there. Besides, the President – the Vice President – didn’t know anything about it.” But let’s talk about the report. He says, “Let me assure you, the Vice President didn’t know anything about it.” Talk about protesting too much…

Victor Thorn: All the press would have to say, though, is say that it’s National Security Council protocol that they MUST respond to all questions raised by these groups, and since it was at Cheney’s request to send Joe Wilson down there, it’s inconceivable that he didn’t know about it. Inconceivable.
FULL STORY HERE:
http://www.babelmagazine.com/issue112/nwox112.html


Victor Thorn: Ray, do you think that the final analysis of this is that the Bush administration knew these documents were forged and they figured that if they could convince the American people, convince Congress, and get this war rolling before we found out about it, by the time we did find out – we’ll already be in.

Ray McGovern: That about sums it up. That’s exactly it, yeah.



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