CIA leak case- "It's all about Iraq"
Thu Aug 25, 2005 17:30
64.140.158.30
CIA leak case- "It's all about Iraq"
8/24/2005 11:00:00 AM GMT
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/conspiracy_theory/fullstory.asp?id=250
The key issue in the CIA leak case has little directly to do with former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson; or his wife, Valerie Plame; the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officer, who was identified as a CIA operative in a newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003, or Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; or even President George W. Bush's alter ego, Karl Rove.
The whole case is about Iraq, manipulation, and the United States Congress being deceived into voting for an unprovoked war- It's about the perfect storm now gathering, as:
More lies behind the Iraq war and the 9/11 attacks are uncovered
Violence continues to escalate in Iraq
• More and more Americans find themselves agreeing with Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., that administration leaders seem to be "making it up as they go along."
Why was Valerie Plame's name leaked?
Wilson, Valerie's husband, exposed Bush's admin in a very serious lie. But almost immediately, top officials conceded that Ambassador Wilson was essentially correct in dismissing the flimsy report that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium in Africa.
So why go to such lengths to impugn Wilson's credibility; and what purpose would be served by harming his wife?
Revenge?
Whoever orchestrated this anti-Wilson campaign was definitely looking for payback for having the gall to challenge the veracity of the President of the United States. But it seems that their anger took them over the edge into lawbreaking.
The White House was angry at Wilson for his article published by the New York Times July 1, 2003 in which he explained the administration- authorized investigation into the 'Saddam tries to buys uranium from Niger' story. Wilson was shocked to see the President make the same claim in this year's State of the Union speech.
Wives were "fair game," Karl Rove, President Bush chief strategist from the beginning, told NBC's Chris Matthews at the time.
Angry at White House dissembling, Wilson had doffed his ambassadorial hat and thrown down the gauntlet when he told the press that the Iraq-Niger caper "begs the question about what else they are lying about." And, indeed, how many more untruths have been uncovered over the past two years?
Analysts suggest that the White House anti-Wilson campaign was aimed at serving notice that a similar fate awaits whoever tries to expose any of the lies used to "justify" the attack on Iraq.
Unfortunately the White House's cunning strategy to distract the American public and the world's attention away from Bush’s claims about Iraqi WMD has worked - at least until now.
Thus, the main motivation of the White House character assassins had more to do with the particular lie that Joseph Wilson exposed. For Saddam's alleged WMD was the most compelling threat that could be used to get Congress approval of this illegal war.
Source: Pravda
================
Conyers Calls For Investigation Into Ascroft's Role In CIA Leak ...
GOOGLE: CIA LEAK
==================================
LEAK-GATE: The White House Scandal Page
==================================
Career lawyer given oversight of CIA leak probe
Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription), MN - Aug 12, 2005
... disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer ... broad discretion to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago ... was appointed to investigate the leak in December ...
MORE:>>
A CIA Cover Blown, a White House Exposed
Submitted by editor on August 25, 2005 - 2:13pm.
By Tom Hamburger and Sonni Efron
Source: LA Times
http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/749
WASHINGTON — Toward the end of a steamy summer week in 2003, reporters were peppering the White House with phone calls and e-mails, looking for someone to defend the administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
About to emerge as a key critic was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who asserted that the administration had manipulated intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion.
At the White House, there wasn't much interest in responding to critics like Wilson that Fourth of July weekend. The communications staff faced more pressing concerns — the president's imminent trip to Africa, growing questions about the war and declining ratings in public opinion polls.
Wilson's accusations were based on an investigation he undertook for the CIA. But he was seen inside the White House as a "showboater" whose stature didn't warrant a high-level administration response. "Let him spout off solo on a holiday weekend," one White House official recalled saying. "Few will listen."
In fact, millions were riveted that Sunday as Wilson — on NBC's "Meet the Press" and in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post — accused the administration of ignoring intelligence that didn't support its rationale for war.
Underestimating the impact of Wilson's allegations was one in a series of misjudgments by White House officials.
In the days that followed, they would cast doubt on Wilson's CIA mission to Africa by suggesting to reporters that his wife was responsible for his trip. In the process, her identity as a covert CIA agent was divulged — possibly illegally.
For the last 20 months, a tough-minded special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has been looking into how the media learned that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.
Top administration officials, along with several influential journalists, have been questioned by prosecutors.
Beyond the whodunit, the affair raises questions about the credibility of the Bush White House, the tactics it employs against political opponents and the justification it used for going to war.
What motivated President Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove; Vice President Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; and others to counter Wilson so aggressively? How did their roles remain secret until after the president was reelected? Have they fully cooperated with the investigation?
The answers remain elusive. As Fitzgerald's team has moved ahead, few witnesses have been willing to speak publicly. White House officials declined to comment for this article, citing the ongoing inquiry.
But a close examination of events inside the White House two summers ago, and interviews with administration officials, offer new insights into the White House response, the people who shaped it, the deep disdain Cheney and other administration officials felt for the CIA, and the far-reaching consequences of the effort to manage the crisis.
July 6, 2003
Ten weeks after Bush landed aboard an aircraft carrier in front of a banner that proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, Wilson created his own media moment by questioning one of the central reasons for going to war.
He told how he was dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate the claim that Iraq had sought large quantities of uranium from the African nation of Niger. Wilson told "Meet the Press" that he and others had "effectively debunked" the claim — only to see it show up nearly a year later in the president's State of the Union speech.
Wilson appeared to be an eyewitness to administration dishonesty in the march to war.
The State of the Union speech had been a pillar of the administration's case for war, and Wilson was raising questions about one of its key elements: the claim that Iraq was a nuclear threat.
At the time of Wilson's disclosure, U.S. and United Nations officials had yet to turn up evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. A ragtag Iraqi insurgency had begun to strike back.
In public, the White House was predicting that weapons of mass destruction would be found. But behind the scenes, officials were worried about the failure to find those weapons and the possibility that the CIA would blame the White House for prewar intelligence failures.
Wilson seemed a credible critic: His diplomatic leadership as charge d'affaires in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq just before the 1991 bombing of Baghdad had earned him letters of praise from President George H.W. Bush.
That made him dangerous to the administration.
July 7, 2003
Within 24 hours, the White House reversed its view of the damage Wilson could do. He began to receive the attention of Rove, a man with a reputation for discrediting critics and disciplining political enemies, and of Libby, a longtime Cheney advisor and CIA critic.
There were grounds to challenge the former diplomat on the substance of his uranium findings: Wilson had no special training for that kind of mission; his conclusions about Niger were not definitive and were based on a few days of informal interviews; and they differed from the conclusions of British intelligence.
But it appears Rove was more focused on Wilson's background, politics and claims he ostensibly had made that his mission was initiated at the request of the vice president.
Rove mentioned to reporters that Wilson's wife had suggested or arranged the trip. The idea apparently was to undermine its import by suggesting that the mission was really "a boondoggle set up by his wife," as an administration official described the trip to a reporter, according to an account in the Washington Post.
This approach depended largely on a falsehood: that Wilson had claimed Cheney sent him to Niger. Wilson never made such a claim.
Libby reportedly told prosecutors that he did not know Plame's identity until a journalist told him. His lawyer did not return calls for comment.
Rove's lawyer has said his client did not know Plame's name or her undercover status when he first talked with reporters after Wilson's public statements.
"The one thing that's absolutely clear is that Karl was not the source for the leak and there's no basis for any additional speculation," attorney Robert Luskin said, adding that he was told Rove was not a target of the inquiry.
A Rove ally has said it was necessary for Rove to counter Wilson's exaggerated claims about the import of his mission.
However, some of Rove's colleagues say that he and others used poor judgment in talking about Wilson's wife.
"With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear our focus should have been on Wilson's facts, not his conclusions or his wife or his politics," said one official who was helping with White House strategy at the time.
In one White House conversation, investigators have learned, Rove was asked why he was focused so intently on discrediting the former diplomat.
"He's a Democrat," Rove said, citing Wilson's campaign contributions. By that time, Wilson had begun advising Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign.
Wilson's Mission
Joe Wilson's mission was launched in early 2002, after the Italian government came into possession of documents — later believed to have been forged — suggesting Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.
Cheney had been briefed about this, a Senate Intelligence Committee report said, and had asked for more information.
At CIA headquarters, agency officials cast about for ways to respond to the vice president's interest. An official recommended sending Wilson to Niger because of his experience there, including a previous mission for the CIA.
What role Plame played in securing the mission for her husband has become a noisy sideshow to the substantive questions his trip raised about prewar intelligence. It is not clear why Plame's role would have been relevant to Wilson's uranium findings. But it was very important in the campaign to discredit him.
Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper wrote that when he first asked Rove about Wilson on July 11, the presidential advisor told him Wilson's wife was "responsible" for her husband's trip.
Plame was then working in Washington under "nonofficial cover," meaning she posed as a nongovernment employee. A review of official documents shows that she had mentioned her husband as a possible investigator, emphasizing his familiarity with Niger and later writing a note to the chief of the CIA's counterproliferation division.
"My husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity," she wrote. Wilson says his wife wrote that note at the request of her boss after he was suggested by others. There are contradictory accounts of Plame's role, but CIA officials have said she was not responsible for sending Wilson.
Wilson was not an intelligence officer or investigator, but his resume suggested he was a logical candidate. He had served as ambassador to Gabon and in U.S. embassies in Congo and Burundi; he had experience with the trade of strategic minerals; and he was senior director for Africa on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration.
On his trip, he interviewed Niger officials and citizens and talked with French mine managers. He also spoke with the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, who recently had examined the Iraq uranium claim herself — as had a four-star general, Carlton W. Fulford Jr., deputy commander of the U.S. European Command.
Like Fulford and the ambassador, Wilson said, he concluded that there was little reason to believe Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger. He did learn, however, that Iraqi officials had previously met with counterparts from Niger.
Back in the U.S., Wilson presented his report orally to CIA officers. They wrote up his findings, gave him a middling "good" rating for his performance and, on March 9, routinely sent a copy to other agencies — including the White House — without marking it for the attention of senior officials.
Wilson would write later that his trip led him to believe that the administration had lied about the reasons for going to war. But in reading his report, some analysts thought that evidence of previous Iraqi visits to Niger was a sign of interest in that country's most valuable export, uranium. Others thought Wilson's report put to rest a dubious claim. The Senate Intelligence Committee and top CIA officials said his report was inconclusive.
Cheney, Libby and the CIA
At the Pentagon and in Cheney's office, a profound skepticism of the CIA produced what one State Department veteran termed an ongoing "food fight" over prewar intelligence.
The atmosphere prevailed even though the CIA joined the White House and Pentagon in concluding, incorrectly, that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was making progress developing weapons of mass destruction.
An ingrained antipathy toward the CIA may help explain the hostile reaction to Wilson's public claim that he and others had debunked the reported Iraqi interest in uranium from Niger.
That skepticism was validated for Cheney and Libby by more than a decade of CIA blunders they had observed from their days at the Pentagon.
"It's part of the warp and woof and fabric of DOD not to like the intelligence community," said Larry Wilkerson, a 31-year military veteran who was former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's chief of staff.
When Hussein invade
8/24/2005 11:00:00 AM GMT
http://www.aljazeera.com/cgi-bin/conspiracy_theory/fullstory.asp?id=250
The key issue in the CIA leak case has little directly to do with former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson; or his wife, Valerie Plame; the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officer, who was identified as a CIA operative in a newspaper column by Robert Novak on July 14, 2003, or Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; or even President George W. Bush's alter ego, Karl Rove.
The whole case is about Iraq, manipulation, and the United States Congress being deceived into voting for an unprovoked war- It's about the perfect storm now gathering, as:
More lies behind the Iraq war and the 9/11 attacks are uncovered
Violence continues to escalate in Iraq
• More and more Americans find themselves agreeing with Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., that administration leaders seem to be "making it up as they go along."
Why was Valerie Plame's name leaked?
Wilson, Valerie's husband, exposed Bush's admin in a very serious lie. But almost immediately, top officials conceded that Ambassador Wilson was essentially correct in dismissing the flimsy report that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium in Africa.
So why go to such lengths to impugn Wilson's credibility; and what purpose would be served by harming his wife?
Revenge?
Whoever orchestrated this anti-Wilson campaign was definitely looking for payback for having the gall to challenge the veracity of the President of the United States. But it seems that their anger took them over the edge into lawbreaking.
The White House was angry at Wilson for his article published by the New York Times July 1, 2003 in which he explained the administration- authorized investigation into the 'Saddam tries to buys uranium from Niger' story. Wilson was shocked to see the President make the same claim in this year's State of the Union speech.
Wives were "fair game," Karl Rove, President Bush chief strategist from the beginning, told NBC's Chris Matthews at the time.
Angry at White House dissembling, Wilson had doffed his ambassadorial hat and thrown down the gauntlet when he told the press that the Iraq-Niger caper "begs the question about what else they are lying about." And, indeed, how many more untruths have been uncovered over the past two years?
Analysts suggest that the White House anti-Wilson campaign was aimed at serving notice that a similar fate awaits whoever tries to expose any of the lies used to "justify" the attack on Iraq.
Unfortunately the White House's cunning strategy to distract the American public and the world's attention away from Bush’s claims about Iraqi WMD has worked - at least until now.
Thus, the main motivation of the White House character assassins had more to do with the particular lie that Joseph Wilson exposed. For Saddam's alleged WMD was the most compelling threat that could be used to get Congress approval of this illegal war.
Source: Pravda
================
Conyers Calls For Investigation Into Ascroft's Role In CIA Leak ...
GOOGLE: CIA LEAK
==================================
LEAK-GATE: The White House Scandal Page
==================================
Career lawyer given oversight of CIA leak probe
Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription), MN - Aug 12, 2005
... disclosed the name of an undercover CIA officer ... broad discretion to US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald of Chicago ... was appointed to investigate the leak in December ...
MORE:>>
A CIA Cover Blown, a White House Exposed
Submitted by editor on August 25, 2005 - 2:13pm.
By Tom Hamburger and Sonni Efron
Source: LA Times
http://mediachannel.org/blog/node/749
WASHINGTON — Toward the end of a steamy summer week in 2003, reporters were peppering the White House with phone calls and e-mails, looking for someone to defend the administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
About to emerge as a key critic was Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat who asserted that the administration had manipulated intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion.
At the White House, there wasn't much interest in responding to critics like Wilson that Fourth of July weekend. The communications staff faced more pressing concerns — the president's imminent trip to Africa, growing questions about the war and declining ratings in public opinion polls.
Wilson's accusations were based on an investigation he undertook for the CIA. But he was seen inside the White House as a "showboater" whose stature didn't warrant a high-level administration response. "Let him spout off solo on a holiday weekend," one White House official recalled saying. "Few will listen."
In fact, millions were riveted that Sunday as Wilson — on NBC's "Meet the Press" and in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post — accused the administration of ignoring intelligence that didn't support its rationale for war.
Underestimating the impact of Wilson's allegations was one in a series of misjudgments by White House officials.
In the days that followed, they would cast doubt on Wilson's CIA mission to Africa by suggesting to reporters that his wife was responsible for his trip. In the process, her identity as a covert CIA agent was divulged — possibly illegally.
For the last 20 months, a tough-minded special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has been looking into how the media learned that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.
Top administration officials, along with several influential journalists, have been questioned by prosecutors.
Beyond the whodunit, the affair raises questions about the credibility of the Bush White House, the tactics it employs against political opponents and the justification it used for going to war.
What motivated President Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove; Vice President Cheney's top aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; and others to counter Wilson so aggressively? How did their roles remain secret until after the president was reelected? Have they fully cooperated with the investigation?
The answers remain elusive. As Fitzgerald's team has moved ahead, few witnesses have been willing to speak publicly. White House officials declined to comment for this article, citing the ongoing inquiry.
But a close examination of events inside the White House two summers ago, and interviews with administration officials, offer new insights into the White House response, the people who shaped it, the deep disdain Cheney and other administration officials felt for the CIA, and the far-reaching consequences of the effort to manage the crisis.
July 6, 2003
Ten weeks after Bush landed aboard an aircraft carrier in front of a banner that proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, Wilson created his own media moment by questioning one of the central reasons for going to war.
He told how he was dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate the claim that Iraq had sought large quantities of uranium from the African nation of Niger. Wilson told "Meet the Press" that he and others had "effectively debunked" the claim — only to see it show up nearly a year later in the president's State of the Union speech.
Wilson appeared to be an eyewitness to administration dishonesty in the march to war.
The State of the Union speech had been a pillar of the administration's case for war, and Wilson was raising questions about one of its key elements: the claim that Iraq was a nuclear threat.
At the time of Wilson's disclosure, U.S. and United Nations officials had yet to turn up evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. A ragtag Iraqi insurgency had begun to strike back.
In public, the White House was predicting that weapons of mass destruction would be found. But behind the scenes, officials were worried about the failure to find those weapons and the possibility that the CIA would blame the White House for prewar intelligence failures.
Wilson seemed a credible critic: His diplomatic leadership as charge d'affaires in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq just before the 1991 bombing of Baghdad had earned him letters of praise from President George H.W. Bush.
That made him dangerous to the administration.
July 7, 2003
Within 24 hours, the White House reversed its view of the damage Wilson could do. He began to receive the attention of Rove, a man with a reputation for discrediting critics and disciplining political enemies, and of Libby, a longtime Cheney advisor and CIA critic.
There were grounds to challenge the former diplomat on the substance of his uranium findings: Wilson had no special training for that kind of mission; his conclusions about Niger were not definitive and were based on a few days of informal interviews; and they differed from the conclusions of British intelligence.
But it appears Rove was more focused on Wilson's background, politics and claims he ostensibly had made that his mission was initiated at the request of the vice president.
Rove mentioned to reporters that Wilson's wife had suggested or arranged the trip. The idea apparently was to undermine its import by suggesting that the mission was really "a boondoggle set up by his wife," as an administration official described the trip to a reporter, according to an account in the Washington Post.
This approach depended largely on a falsehood: that Wilson had claimed Cheney sent him to Niger. Wilson never made such a claim.
Libby reportedly told prosecutors that he did not know Plame's identity until a journalist told him. His lawyer did not return calls for comment.
Rove's lawyer has said his client did not know Plame's name or her undercover status when he first talked with reporters after Wilson's public statements.
"The one thing that's absolutely clear is that Karl was not the source for the leak and there's no basis for any additional speculation," attorney Robert Luskin said, adding that he was told Rove was not a target of the inquiry.
A Rove ally has said it was necessary for Rove to counter Wilson's exaggerated claims about the import of his mission.
However, some of Rove's colleagues say that he and others used poor judgment in talking about Wilson's wife.
"With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear our focus should have been on Wilson's facts, not his conclusions or his wife or his politics," said one official who was helping with White House strategy at the time.
In one White House conversation, investigators have learned, Rove was asked why he was focused so intently on discrediting the former diplomat.
"He's a Democrat," Rove said, citing Wilson's campaign contributions. By that time, Wilson had begun advising Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign.
Wilson's Mission
Joe Wilson's mission was launched in early 2002, after the Italian government came into possession of documents — later believed to have been forged — suggesting Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger.
Cheney had been briefed about this, a Senate Intelligence Committee report said, and had asked for more information.
At CIA headquarters, agency officials cast about for ways to respond to the vice president's interest. An official recommended sending Wilson to Niger because of his experience there, including a previous mission for the CIA.
What role Plame played in securing the mission for her husband has become a noisy sideshow to the substantive questions his trip raised about prewar intelligence. It is not clear why Plame's role would have been relevant to Wilson's uranium findings. But it was very important in the campaign to discredit him.
Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper wrote that when he first asked Rove about Wilson on July 11, the presidential advisor told him Wilson's wife was "responsible" for her husband's trip.
Plame was then working in Washington under "nonofficial cover," meaning she posed as a nongovernment employee. A review of official documents shows that she had mentioned her husband as a possible investigator, emphasizing his familiarity with Niger and later writing a note to the chief of the CIA's counterproliferation division.
"My husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity," she wrote. Wilson says his wife wrote that note at the request of her boss after he was suggested by others. There are contradictory accounts of Plame's role, but CIA officials have said she was not responsible for sending Wilson.
Wilson was not an intelligence officer or investigator, but his resume suggested he was a logical candidate. He had served as ambassador to Gabon and in U.S. embassies in Congo and Burundi; he had experience with the trade of strategic minerals; and he was senior director for Africa on the National Security Council in the Clinton administration.
On his trip, he interviewed Niger officials and citizens and talked with French mine managers. He also spoke with the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, who recently had examined the Iraq uranium claim herself — as had a four-star general, Carlton W. Fulford Jr., deputy commander of the U.S. European Command.
Like Fulford and the ambassador, Wilson said, he concluded that there was little reason to believe Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger. He did learn, however, that Iraqi officials had previously met with counterparts from Niger.
Back in the U.S., Wilson presented his report orally to CIA officers. They wrote up his findings, gave him a middling "good" rating for his performance and, on March 9, routinely sent a copy to other agencies — including the White House — without marking it for the attention of senior officials.
Wilson would write later that his trip led him to believe that the administration had lied about the reasons for going to war. But in reading his report, some analysts thought that evidence of previous Iraqi visits to Niger was a sign of interest in that country's most valuable export, uranium. Others thought Wilson's report put to rest a dubious claim. The Senate Intelligence Committee and top CIA officials said his report was inconclusive.
Cheney, Libby and the CIA
At the Pentagon and in Cheney's office, a profound skepticism of the CIA produced what one State Department veteran termed an ongoing "food fight" over prewar intelligence.
The atmosphere prevailed even though the CIA joined the White House and Pentagon in concluding, incorrectly, that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was making progress developing weapons of mass destruction.
An ingrained antipathy toward the CIA may help explain the hostile reaction to Wilson's public claim that he and others had debunked the reported Iraqi interest in uranium from Niger.
That skepticism was validated for Cheney and Libby by more than a decade of CIA blunders they had observed from their days at the Pentagon.
"It's part of the warp and woof and fabric of DOD not to like the intelligence community," said Larry Wilkerson, a 31-year military veteran who was former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's chief of staff.
When Hussein invade
