Through leaks and smears, Senate chairman protects White House to blame CIA, Democrats
Larisa Alexandrovna
Niger forgeries and WMDS – Roberts fingers CIA
SOURCE: RAW STHORY
As more questions surface on the Administration's lies about WMD and forged Niger documents, Roberts becomes a staunch Bush defender, deflecting pre-war "failures" away from the White House and pinning all blame on the CIA.
On July 11, 2003 - five days after former ambassador Joseph Wilson writes an article for the New York Times challenging the White House claim of Niger uranium sales to Iraq, Roberts issues a statement:
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"What now concerns me most," he remarks, "is what appears to be a campaign of press leaks by the CIA in an effort to discredit the President."
Ironically, on the same day that Roberts issues his statement, CIA chief George Tenet takes full responsibility for the uranium claim and its insertion in the State of the Union.
What follows is a bizarre war of departments as the CIA and the White House duke it out. The latter's campaign is abetted by Roberts in the Senate, Goss in the House and Hadley and John Bolton at State.
Three days after the Roberts volley at the CIA and Tenet's apology for the uranium claim in the President's State of the Union, CIA covert asset Valerie Plame Wilson -- wife of Joseph Wilson -- is outed by conservative columnist Robert Novak. The leak seems aimed at both Wilson and his wife, as a part of carefully orchestrated strategy on the part of senior White House officials.
In late September 2003, now-CIA director Porter Goss, acting in his capacity as then chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, concludes that the CIA is to blame for Iraq pre-war intelligence failures.
Like Roberts, Goss is said to be "...under the spell of Vice-President Dick Cheney and that his presence on the joint 9/11 inquiry gave the administration a deal of protection."
The following day, the CIA asks the Department of Justice to investigate the Plame outing.
Fixing the fix: Leaks and blame games
In July 2003, two astonishing political strategies merge: Hadley takes responsibility for the Niger statements -- though CIA Director Tenet has already done so -- and on the same day, Roberts calls Hadley to testify in pre-war intelligence failures.
"We have made an inquiry with the National Security Council, with [National Security Adviser Condoleezza] Rice and asked to meet with Mr. Hadley and any other person that might be of particular interest to us," Roberts says. "So we will be in the business of taking a hard look at that."
Roberts' claims of taking "a hard look" seem to dismiss the working relationship he had with Hadley earlier in the year, when the latter acted as liaison between the CIA and Roberts. Hadley had delivered documents that the CIA allegedly never saw and the NSA had acquired at least a year in advance -- used as evidence of Iraq's WMD program.
What follows is a series of White House salvos, aimed at Senate Democrats, the CIA and policy skeptics, aiming to shift blame away from the Administration. Classified documents and smears become White House tools of choice.
First, blame the CIA
In late October, 2003, Roberts puts together a report evaluating U.S. intelligence failures in the build-up to war. Even though Roberts was aware of the Niger forgeries earlier in the year and knew of the issues surrounding the White House false WMD claims and refused to investigate, the report exonerates the White House and the Senate and again places intelligence failures at the door of the CIA.
Someone then leaks the draft of the report to the Washington Post and Roberts begins to issue statements, at the encouragement of Dick Cheney, calling CIA pre-war intelligence "sloppy."
Rockefeller publicly questions Roberts efforts' in clearing the Administration of wrongdoing.
[Roberts was trying to] "lay all of this out on the intelligence community and never get to any other branches of government; in particular the White House and associated high and visible government agencies," Rockefeller told Knight Ridder.
In January of 2004, after Chief Weapons Inspector David Kay reports that no WMDs were found in Iraq, Democrats and some Republicans begin calling for investigations, again.
Second, blame the Democrats
In the wake of Kay's report Roberts responds to bipartisan calls for an investigation by once again deflecting criticism towards Senate Democrats, who he claims are "politicizing" the Intelligence Committee.
Several months prior, as the questions surrounding the Wilson outing and Iraq pre-war intelligence begin to spill into public discourse, another leak occurs in which Democrats are set up for criticizing the administration.
"Fox News has obtained a document believed to have been written by the Democratic staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee that outlines a strategy for exposing what it calls "the administration's dubious motives" in the lead-up to the war in Iraq."
Roberts expresses his dismay.
"I'm pretty despondent right now," he tells Reuters, “it's sort of like a personal slap in the face after you have worked over time to come up with what we think is going to be a very good report on how to improve our intelligence capabilities."
The question of who leaked the document remains unanswered.
Finally, blame Wilson and close the books
In July 2004, Roberts and the Senate Intelligence Committee release their long-awaited WMD report which unsurprisingly places all blame on the CIA. Roberts uses the report as an additional platform on which to further attempt to discredit both Joseph and Valerie Wilson.
Republicans embed Roberts' false assertion that Valerie Wilson sent her husband to Niger in talking points and media fodder. Although both Wilson and the CIA correct the record, Roberts, White House staff and others continue to make the charge.
Roberts pitches the case for closing the book on the lead-up to war.
"I don't think there should be any doubt that we have now heard it all regarding prewar intelligence," he quips. "I think that it would be a monumental waste of time to replow this ground any further."
Now, blame Fitzgerald
With the pre-war intelligence failures firmly put to rest, Roberts shifts his focus to Valerie Wilson's outing, which has been percolating for over a year.
In July of this year, Roberts frames the Plame outing as not really the outing of a covert agent.
"I must say from a common sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the CIA headquarters, I don't know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert," he tells CNN.
But that approach does not poll well. Roberts instead shifts the focus to the investigation and the Republican special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald himself.
According to the Boston Globe, Roberts intends to investigate what "covert protections for CIA agents" are really needed.
All eyes are now on Fitzgerald's probe.
Muriel Kane contributed research to this article.
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ELLSBERG ON THE CHARLES GOYETTE SHOW 11/02/05 ..WOW!!
http://www.charlesgoyette.com/archive/media/2005-11-02-Charles-03.mp3
http://www.ellsberg.net/index.htm
