War Without End

Alpha · Posted: Tue Jul 19, 2005 3:44 pm Post subject:

Just saw the following message thread on the Google Newsgroups:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/alt.politics.bush/browse_frm/thread/a7b3e62f3d84c1d6/129cd1480ec20ad9#129cd1480ec20ad9

MSNBC's 'Hardball' is doing a broadcast on Fitzgerald later today (July 19th, 2004) at 4:00 PM on the west coast (8 PM on the east coast) and then repeating at 8 PM on the west coast and at 11 PM on the east coast and repeating again at 1 AM on the west coast and at 4 AM on the east coast.. Ambassador Wilson's attorney (Christopher Wolf) was excellent on 'Hardball' last night (July 18th, 2005) as one can read the transcript of what he had to say via the following URL when it gets added there if it hasn't been already:

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3719710/

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/8627361/

BROWN: Coming up, we‘re going to talk to the attorney for former Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, when our HARDBALL special investigation into the CIA leak returns.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(NEWS BREAK)

BROWN: Welcome back to HARDBALL. I‘m Campbell Brown, in for Chris Matthews.

And we‘re back with Dick Sauber, the attorney for “TIME” magazine‘s Matthew Cooper. And also joining us now is attorney Christopher Wolf, who is advising former Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife.

Welcome. Good to have you here.

CHRISTOPHER WOLF, ATTORNEY FOR JOE WILSON AND VALERIE PLAME: Thank you, Campbell.

BROWN: Tell me what struck you and the Wilsons about Matt Cooper‘s account of his grand jury testimony.

WOLF: Well, it was the first detailed description of the conversation that Mr. Cooper had had with Mr. Rove. And it confirmed, as we suspected all along , that Mr. Rove did in fact leak Valerie Wilson‘s identity to a reporter or reporters.

BROWN: But do you believe that Rove knew that she was a covert CIA operative? Isn‘t that what‘s important here?

WOLF: Well, that‘s being investigated by Mr. Fitzgerald, and we don‘t know the answer to that.

But it certainly was reckless of him not to confirm her status before identifying her. Whether it was illegal or not remains to be seen, but it was not the kind of conduct that someone with a security clearance in the White House should have engaged in.

BROWN: How do you think Rove learned who Valerie Plame was?

WOLF: It would be complete speculation on our part.

But we do know this much, that he had very senior level access to classified information. And, more importantly, the CIA itself determined that this was a major breach of national security sufficient to warrant a criminal investigation, which is why it was referred to the Justice Department.

And, notably, if you read the decision of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in ruling on the reporter‘s privilege issue, they recognize—without, of course, citing the evidence, because it‘s secret and confidential—they recognized that this is a serious issue of a breach of national security.

BROWN: Do you believe he violated his security clearance, Rove? Do you believe that, based on...

(CROSSTALK)

WOLF: I don‘t have personal knowledge. I don‘t know what‘s going on in the grand jury. I don‘t know what the evidence is.

But I do know that, as John Podesta pointed out yesterday on “Meet the Press,” the Mr. Rove had signed a nondisclosure agreement that provides that even confirming classified information is prohibited. So, whether it was illegal or not, I don‘t know. It certainly seemed inappropriate, and, in our view, was reckless.

BROWN: What do you think about this, Dick? Let me go back to you on it, because some in Congress are even talking about having Rove‘s security clearance revoked or trying to. Do you think he violated it?

SAUBER: I really don‘t know. I do know that, in this city every day since I‘ve been a defense lawyer, people are investigated for inappropriate handling of classified material. So, there‘s a plethora of laws and regulations and statutes out there that might address a situation like this.

I don‘t know if the information was classified. I don‘t know whether he released it inappropriately. I think that‘s what Mr. Fitzgerald is trying to get to the bottom of. And I do agree—I think that the under-seal submission that Mr. Fitzgerald gave to the judges contains a lot of the information that would explain whether or not there‘s been a national security breach.

BROWN: I want to go back to the question a moment ago of how he may have known, because of this new information about this secret State Department memo and also this briefing book that was prepared for Dr. Condoleezza Rice prior to her being secretary of State, so that she could then go on the Sunday shows and sort of rebut many of these claims. Does that change your opinion, all this new information, in any way?

WOLF: Well, it really doesn‘t. But it does confirm what we had suspected and what Ambassador Wilson has written his book and said in public statements, that this information, whatever it‘s nature, was used as political payback, was used to feed a campaign against someone who was the first to blow the whistle on the administration with respect to its claim of using nuclear weapons in Iraq.

BROWN: But let me interrupt.

WOLF: Sure.

BROWN: Did—is it not possible that—that administration officials, that Rove, that Libby, had a right to question those findings?

WOLF: Well, you know, they didn‘t question them. In fact, the day after Joe Wilson‘s article appeared in “The New York Times,” his op-ed, Condoleezza Rice and the White House confirmed that the 16 words in the State of the Union, the words that raised the specter of a mushroom cloud, should not have been in the State of the Union, and, notably, the White House has not retracted that retraction.

That‘s the whistle-blowing that Joe Wilson engaged in. And there was no reason based on that for the White House then to engage in a personal attack on his family.

BROWN: OK. I do want to ask you - we‘re going to take a quick break, but about the question of whether Joe Wilson may have a separate credibility problem, though, when we come back.

WOLF: Sure.

BROWN: We‘ll be back with more with Christopher Wolf and Dick Sauber.

This is a HARDBALL special investigation, only on MSNBC.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: We‘re back with two of the lawyers in the CIA leak investigation, Dick Sauber, who represents “TIME” magazine reporter Matt Cooper, and Christopher Wolf, attorney for former Ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife.

And let me ask you, Republicans are out there hammering your guy right now. Does Joe Wilson have a credibility problem?

WOLF: I don‘t think so at all. In fact, if you look at the whole history of this affair, Joe Wilson kept secret his mission to Niger for two years—or for a year, rather, before he wrote his op-ed. And even before he wrote his op-ed, he tried to get the administration to correct the statements he made, which he thought were distorting his findings.

It was only after the administration made its claims, that there was this specter of nuclear weapons obtained by Iraq from Niger, did he go public. No. Joe Wilson was appointed by both Presidents Bush and Clinton. He enjoyed a very good relationship with President Bush I. He, until this episode, was not a partisan person. He freely admits he has become one, as is his right as an American citizen.

BROWN: Right. But there are—there are other questions here, because he suggested that he was sent on this mission by the vice president‘s office.

(CROSSTALK)

WOLF: No, he never did. He never did. And that‘s one of the ...

BROWN: He said he thought he may have been...

WOLF: No.

BROWN: He wasn‘t unclear on it.

WOLF: No.

BROWN: Hey, look, come on. I talked to him. I interviewed him right after his...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: ... came out.

WOLF: I understand, but if you read his book—if you read his book and if you read...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: But he never let on in any way, shape or form that his wife was involved in the discussions about how he should go—or why he should go.

WOLF: What he said was that his understanding—his understanding was, Campbell, that the vice president‘s office had asked the CIA to look into this issue of whether Iraq was seeking to obtain nuclear fissionable material from Niger.

He then had meetings at the CIA and his wife participated on the periphery. And what he also said was, she was not the one who authorized his trip or engineered his trip. All of that is true. And all of the discussion about this is simply a sideshow. It has nothing to do with the ultimate report which he gave, which, as I said earlier, the White House confirmed and admitted that the 16 words should not have been in the State of the Union.

BROWN: Also, at the time that he wrote his op-ed, he was advising Senator Kerry and the Kerry campaign, correct?

WOLF: I don‘t believe that‘s right. At the time he wrote his op-ed was 2003. In 2004, he became involved in the campaign.

BROWN: And that‘s when he became a partisan, based on the reaction to his op-ed and what he viewed as a smear campaign.

WOLF: He became a partisan—he‘s spoken for himself on this, but as I understand it, he became—he became a partisan because he believed the American people had been lied to about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, and he disagreed with going to war in Iraq.

BROWN: Dick, you said that‘s what initially interested Matt in this whole story and his desire to pursue it was what he viewed as a smear campaign against Wilson. Explain that.

SAUBER: Well, well, what Matt said was that, when Ambassador Wilson‘s op-ed piece came out, the White House then said that the 16 words that made it into the State of the Union address should not have been in there. They weren‘t fully supported. And yet, within a few days, he began hearing from administration officials things that seemed to undercut Ambassador Wilson‘s credibility.

What Matt couldn‘t do is to reconcile both facts. If they—if the administration was retracting support for those 16 words, why then start to undermine Ambassador Wilson‘s credibility? That was the contradiction that led to and was the basis of and the point of his article in “TIME” online entitled “War on Wilson.”

BROWN: Why—let me go back to the big picture, I guess. How do the Wilson‘s want to see this play out?

WOLF: Well, they want justice to be done, and they have complete confidence in the criminal justice system.

And they want to see the grand jury complete its mission, and they want to see the special prosecutor complete his work. And whatever the results are, they are. But they believe that this needs to be thoroughly investigated. They don‘t believe that the White House has done what it said it would do at the beginning, which is tell everything and let everything be known. And they have complete faith in the American system of justice.

BROWN: Based on what we know now, do both of you think that indictments will ultimately be handed down?

SAUBER: I honestly have no idea whether there will be indictments to come out of this.

WOLF: I have no idea either. But certainly this is a prosecutor who has worked very hard and a grand jury that‘s been sitting for quite some time. So, needless to say, it will be interesting to see the results.

BROWN: There‘s been a lot of talk about Joe Wilson, but we have not yet heard from Valerie Plame-Wilson. What does she think about this? How has it affected here life and her ability to do her job, frankly?

WOLF: Well, you‘re not going to hear from her, because she‘s an intensely private person. I happen to be not only their lawyer, but their next-door neighbor.

And for—until July 2003, which was five years after becoming their next-door neighbor, I had no idea that Valerie Wilson was an undercover agent. She said she was a consultant, which, in Washington, typically means you‘re either unemployed or have worked for a failed political campaign. So, I backed off, and I didn‘t press.

I know Valerie Wilson as a loving mother of twins and as someone who volunteers for her church and works for charities and likes to putter in her garden. I know her as an intensely private person. And this has been a terribly painful episode for her.

More importantly, it‘s been a terrible episode for the United States, because Valerie Wilson working undercover had sources all over the world, who conceivably have been put in jeopardy, as the D.C. Circuit itself recognized in its published opinion. It‘s that breach of national security which is of paramount interest to both the Wilsons. And the personal harm to Valerie is secondary, but obviously important.

BROWN: All right. We have got to end on that note.

Christopher Wolf and Dick Sauber, thank you very much. Appreciate your both being here.

WOLF: Thank you.

BROWN: And when we

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Check this message thread (URL) about 'JINSA John' Bolton's association to JINSA (Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) after doing a search for JINSA at www.google.com:

JINSA ZIONIST OPERATIVE JOHN BOLTON JUST NAMED AS US AMBASSADOR:

http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2005/03/07/jinsa-israel-firster-john-bolton-named-as-us-ambassador.php

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0306/S00082.htm

Alpha

washingtonpost.com
Legal Analysts Critical of N.Y. Times Reporter's Stance in Leak Probe
By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, July 13, 2005; A07

Tim Russert of NBC, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post and Matthew Cooper of Time were all subpoenaed in the Valerie Plame leak investigation. But only New York Times reporter Judith Miller is in jail today.

Although many media advocates hail Miller's sacrifice for what she and the Times see as a bedrock journalistic principle of protecting a promise to a source, some legal analysts say her imprisonment stems from a confrontational legal strategy adopted by the Times.

Geoffrey Stone, a University of Chicago law professor, said journalists, like doctors and lawyers, are under no obligation to remain silent about a source who has waived confidentiality. "It's the source's privilege, not the reporter's," he said. "If the source doesn't want confidentiality, the reporter has no business insisting on it. . . . If it's a matter of conscience instead of a matter of law, you can do whatever you want. As a legal matter, it's absurd."

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan sent Miller to the Alexandria Detention Center last week after she refused to testify in the probe of whether Bush administration officials illegally disclosed that Plame was an undercover CIA operative. Plame's identity was revealed in a column by Robert D. Novak eight days after her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, wrote an op-ed piece in the Times criticizing White House assertions about Iraq's nuclear program during the run-up to the U.S. invasion.

The White House directed high-level officials to sign general waivers releasing journalists from any pledge of confidentiality on the Plame matter, but Cooper said last week that such waivers "are not worth the paper they're written on" because they are inherently coercive. Cooper agreed to testify after announcing that his source had personally released him from his promise of anonymity. Miller has steadfastly refused to testify.

Earlier in the investigation, NBC and Post journalists who were subpoenaed worked out agreements with special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald to provide limited testimony in ways they said did not compromise their promises to sources. Novak and his attorney have refused to say whether he cooperated with the prosecutor.

Floyd Abrams, the veteran First Amendment lawyer who represents Miller, said the situation faced by the other reporters may have been different. But he added: "Their willingness to reach an accommodation with Mr. Fitzgerald may have been greater than Judy's.

"We pursued every angle on this case in terms of trying to avoid the current situation, while still preserving Judy's honor and her compliance with her promises to sources," he said.

Times Executive Editor Bill Keller said Miller is doing a "brave and honorable" thing. "The simple fact is that Judy made a promise to a source that she would protect his anonymity. That source has not granted her any kind of a waiver from that promise, at least one that she finds persuasive or believes was freely given, and she feels bound by that pledge. And more than that, she feels that, if she breaks that pledge, she will compromise her ability to do her job in the future."

Post reporters who answered prosecutors' questions also declined to rely on the paper waivers.

Some analysts hailed the Times's stance, contrasting it with Time Inc. Editor in Chief Norman Pearlstine's decision to surrender Cooper's notes and e-mails after the Supreme Court refused to hear the magazine's appeal.

Lucy Dalglish, executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said "the Times's legal strategy was to back up their reporter. This was Judy, and she said right up front, 'I'm not cooperating, period.' " She said Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. "is willing to stand on this principle, and I don't think there's any way he would have tried to talk her into compromising."

Stone and other legal experts say they assume that Novak has testified under some sort of waiver or compromise. Miller, by contrast, never wrote a story about the Plame matter.

Miller was not protecting a classic whistle-blower bent on exposing wrongdoing, Stone said, but rather officials who were seeking to discredit Wilson. "In this context, you're talking about people who were violating the law and manipulating the press," he said.

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, said that "with all the reporters who found ways around this, there was the impression that the New York Times was spoiling for a fight." But he added that there is no way to know for sure.

Turley said he found it "strange" that Miller and her attorney have said nothing about seeking a personal waiver from her source or sources. "That seemed to me a step they could have taken," he said.

Abrams declined to address that point. "I can't go into whether she sought it, but I can tell you she doesn't have it," he said.

"Judy and Matt both felt very strongly that the waivers referred to in court by Judge Hogan -- preprinted forms from the Department of Justice that people were instructed to sign by their superiors -- do not constitute the sort of waivers a journalist ought to accept as truly freeing the journalist from the obligation of confidentiality," Abrams said. "Both of them believed this was simply a form of coercion."

Abrams represented Time and Cooper before they hired separate lawyers.

In an internal Time e-mail, obtained by Newsweek magazine, Cooper reported to an editor that senior White House aide Karl Rove had told him "on double super secret background" that it was "Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the agency on wmd [weapons of mass destruction] issues who authorized the trip" that the former diplomat took to Niger. Wilson investigated whether Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was trying to obtain uranium from that country. Rove and his attorney have denied that Rove disclosed Plame's identity to reporters.

Cooper provided limited testimony last year after receiving a personal waiver from I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff. Russert, Pincus and Kessler also provided limited depositions with the consent of their sources.

Abrams, who represented the Times in 1978 when reporter Myron Farber was jailed for 40 days in the case of a doctor accused of killing patients, also takes a dim view of waivers from sources. In that case, he recalled, Farber refused to identify his sources even after some of the sources acknowledged their role in court.

Miller could be jailed for four months, the time remaining in the current grand jury's term. During last week's hearing, however, Fitzgerald described her as "breaking the law" and having committed a "crime." He could take the unusual step of trying to convert her civil contempt to a charge of criminal contempt, which, if she were convicted, would carry a longer jail term.

"That would overstep the legitimate bounds of simply trying to get Judy Miller to testify as to what her sources told her," Abrams said. "It would constitute a sort of punitive overreach."

Alpha

Waxman: 11 Security Breaches in Plame Case
By Rep. Henry Waxman
YubaNet

Friday 22 July 2005

The disclosure of the covert identity of Valerie Plame Wilson in a July 14, 2003, column by Robert Novak has triggered a criminal investigation and led to calls for congressional investigations. The Novak column, however, appears to be only one of multiple leaks of Ms. Wilson's identity. A new fact sheet released today by Rep. Waxman documents that there appear to be at least 11 separate instances in which Administration officials disclosed information about Ms. Wilson's identity and association with the CIA.

New Fact Sheet Details Multiple Administration Security Breaches Involving Valerie Plame Wilson

On July 14, 2003, columnist Robert Novak revealed that the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a covert CIA agent. This disclosure of classified information has triggered a criminal investigation by a Special Counsel and led to calls for congressional investigations.

The Novak column, however, appears to be only one of multiple leaks of Ms. Wilson's identity. As this fact sheet documents, there appear to be at least 11 separate instances in which Administration officials disclosed information about Ms. Wilson's identity and association with the CIA.

Under Executive Order 12958, the White House is required to investigate any reports of security breaches and take "prompt corrective action," such as suspending the security clearances of those involved. Unlike prosecutions for criminal violations, which require "knowing" and "intentional" disclosures, the executive order covers a wider range of unauthorized breaches, including the "negligent" release of classified information. There is no evidence that the White House has complied with its obligation to investigate any of the 11 reported instances of security breaches relating to Ms. Wilson or to apply administrative sanctions to those involved.

The Disclosures of Valerie Wilson's Identity

1. The Disclosure by Karl Rove to Columnist Robert Novak
In a column dated July 14, 2003, Robert Novak first reported that Valerie Plame Wilson was "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." [1] Mr. Novak cited "two senior administration officials" as his sources. [2] According to multiple news reports, one of these two sources was Karl Rove, the Deputy White House Chief of Staff and the President's top political advisor. [3] During a phone call on July 8, 2003, Mr. Rove confirmed for Mr. Novak that Ms. Wilson worked at the CIA. During this conversation, Mr. Novak referred to Ms. Wilson "by her maiden name, Valerie Plame," and said he had heard she was involved in "the circumstances in which her husband … traveled to Africa." [4] Mr. Rove responded, "I heard that, too." [5] Mr. Novak's name also appeared "on a White House call log as having telephoned Mr. Rove in the week before the publication of the July 2003 column." [6]

2. The Disclosure by a "Senior Administration Official" to Columnist Robert Novak
In addition to his communications with Mr. Rove, Mr. Novak learned about Ms. Wilson's identity through communications with a second "senior administration official." [7] Mr. Novak's second source has not yet been publicly identified. Mr. Novak has stated, however, that the source provided him with Ms. Wilson's identity. As he stated: "I didn't dig it out, it was given to me." [8] He added: "They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it." [9]

3. The Disclosure by Karl Rove to TIME Reporter Matt Cooper
During a phone call on July 11, 2003, Mr. Rove revealed to TIME reporter Matt Cooper that Ms. Wilson worked at the CIA on weapons of mass destruction. [10] Mr. Cooper reported that this "was the first time I had heard anything about Wilson's wife." [11] Mr. Rove provided this information on "deep background," said that "things would be declassified soon," and stated, "I've already said too much." [12]

4. The Disclosure by Scooter Libby to TIME Reporter Matt Cooper
During a phone call on July 12, 2003, TIME reporter Matt Cooper asked the Vice President's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby "if he had heard anything about Wilson's wife sending her husband to Niger." [13] Mr. Libby replied, "Yeah, I've heard that too," or words to that effect. [14] Mr. Libby provided this information "on background." [15]

5. The Disclosure by an "Administration Official" to Washington Post Reporter Walter Pincus
On July 12, 2003, an "administration official" told Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus that "Wilson's trip to Niger was set up as a boondoggle by his CIA-employed wife."[16] Mr. Pincus has not publicly identified his source, but has stated that it "was not Libby."[17]

6. The Disclosure by a "Top White House Official" to an Unidentified Reporter
In addition making disclosures to Mr. Novak, Mr. Cooper, and Mr. Pincus, White House officials may have had conversations about Ms. Wilson with three other reporters about Ms. Wilson's identity. According to the Washington Post, a "senior administration official" confirmed that "before Novak's column ran on July 14, 2003, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife." [18] According to this official, "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge." [19] Press reports suggest that one of these unidentified reporters may be NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. [20]

7. The Disclosure by a "Top White House Official" to an Unidentified Reporter
In addition making disclosures to Mr. Novak, Mr. Cooper, and Mr. Pincus, White House officials may have had conversations about Ms. Wilson with three other reporters about Ms. Wilson's identity. According to the Washington Post, a "senior administration official" confirmed that "before Novak's column ran on July 14, 2003, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife." [21] According to this official, "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge." [22] Press reports suggest that one of these unidentified reporters may be NBC Meet the Press host Tim Russert. [23]

8. The Disclosure by a "Top White House Official" to an Unidentified Reporter
In addition making disclosures to Mr. Novak, Mr. Cooper, and Mr. Pincus, White House officials may have had conversations about Ms. Wilson with three other reporters about Ms. Wilson's identity. According to the Washington Post, a "senior administration official" confirmed that "before Novak's column ran on July 14, 2003, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife." [24] According to this official, "Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge." [25] Press reports suggest that one of these unidentified reporters may be MSNBC Hardball host Chris Matthews. [26]

9. The Disclosure by an Unidentified Source to Wall Street Journal Reporter David Cloud
On October 17, 2003, Wall Street Journal reporter David Cloud reported that an internal State Department memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel "details a meeting in early 2002 where CIA officer Valerie Plame and other intelligence officials gathered to brainstorm about how to verify reports that Iraq had sought uranium yellowcake from Niger." [27] This "classified" document had "limited circulation," according to "two people familiar with the memo." [28]

10. The Disclosure by an Unidentified Source to James Guckert of Talon News
On October 28, 2003, Talon News posted on its website an interview with Ambassador Joseph Wilson in which the questioner asked: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency or clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?" [29] Talon News is tied to a group called GOP USA [30] and is operated by Texas Republican Robert Eberle. [31] Its only reporter, James Guckert (also known as Jeff Gannon), resigned when it was revealed that he gained access to the White House using a false name after his press credentials were rejected by House and Senate press galleries. [32] In a March 2004 interview with his own news service, Mr. Guckert stated that the classified document was "easily accessible." [33] In a February 11, 2005, interview with Wolf Blitzer of CNN, Mr. Guckert said the FBI interviewed him about "how I knew or received a copy of a confidential CIA memo," but he refused to answer FBI questions because of his status as a "journalist." [34] A week later, Mr. Guckert changed his account, claiming he "was given no special information by the White House or by anybody else." [35]

11. The Disclosure by a "Senior Administration Official" to Washington Post Reporters Mike Allen and Dana Milbank
On December 26, 2003, Washington Post reporters Mike Allen and Dana Milbank reported on details about the classified State Department memo, writing that it was authored by "a State Department official who works for its Bureau of Intelligence and Research." [36] The Post story was attributed to "a senior administration official who has seen" the memo. [37] The Post also reported that the CIA was "angry about the circulation of a still-classified document to conservative news outlets" and that the CIA "believes that people in the administration continue to release classified information to damage the figures at the center of the controversy, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his wife, Valerie Plame." [38]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
[1] Robert Novak, The Mission to Niger, Chicago Sun-Times (July 14, 2003).
[2] Id.
[3] Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on CIA Officer, New York Times (July 15, 2005). See also Rove Confirmed Plame Indirectly, Lawyer Says, Washington Post (July 15, 2005).
[4] Id.
[5] Id.
[6] Rove Confirmed Plame Indirectly, Lawyer Says, Washington Post (July 15, 2005).
[7] Robert Novak, The Mission to Niger, Chicago Sun-Times (July 14, 2003).
[8] Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover, Newsday (July 22, 2003).
[9] Id.
[10] Matt Cooper, What I Told the Grand Jury, TIME (July 25, 2005).
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] The When and How of Leak Being Probed, Washington Post (Nov. 26, 2004).
[17] Id.
[18] Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry; CIA Agent's Identity Was Leaked to Media, Washington Post (Sept. 28, 2003).
[19] Id.
[20] Secrets and Leaks, Newsweek (Oct. 13, 2003) (stating that she "heard in the White House that people were touting the Novak column and that that was the real story").
[21] Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry; CIA Agent's Identity Was Leaked to Media, Washington Post (Sept. 28, 2003).
[22] Id.
[23] Reporter Held in Contempt in CIA Leak Case, Washington Post (Aug. 10, 2004) (describing a July 2003 telephone conversation between Mr. Russert and Mr. Libby).
[24] Bush Administration Is Focus of Inquiry; CIA Agent's Identity Was Leaked to Media, Washington Post (Sept. 28, 2003).
[25] Id.
[26] Secrets and Leaks, Newsweek (Oct. 13, 2003) (reportedly stating to Mr. Wilson, "I just got off the phone with Karl Rove, who said your wife was fair game").
[27] Memo May Aid Leak Probe, Wall Street Journal (Oct. 17, 2003).
[28] Id.
[29] Leaks Probe Is Gathering Momentum, Washington Post (Dec. 26, 2003). See also Senate Intel Report Discredits Wilson's Claims About Iraq, Niger, Talon News (July 13, 2004) (confirming that Talon reported on the memo in October 2003).
[30] Leaks Probe Is Gathering Momentum, Washington Post (Dec. 26, 2003).
[31] Democrats Want Investigation of Reporter Using Fake Name, New York Times (Feb. 11, 2005).
[32] Id.
[33] Id.
[34] Rumsfeld Visits Iraq, CNN (Feb. 11, 2005).
[35] Anderson Cooper 360, CNN (Feb. 18, 2005). See also Web Site Owner Says He Knew of Reporter's 2 Identities, New York Times (Feb. 20, 2005) (claiming that referring to the memo as though he had it was "merely an interview technique").
[36] Leaks Probe Is Gathering Momentum, Washington Post (Dec. 26, 2003).
[37] Id.
[38] Id.

Alpha · Posted: Mon Jul 25, 2005 8:54 am Post subject: Intelligence Was Cooked in Israel

This article appears in the February 21, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Behind the Iraq Dossier Hoax:
Intelligence Was Cooked in Israel
by Jeffrey Steinberg

According to media accounts, the 10 Downing Street "dossier," cited favorably by U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell in his disastrous Feb. 5 report to the United Nations Security Council, was plagiarized from an American graduate school paper, based on information more than a decade old. The scandal that erupted when the Blair dossier hoax hit the press, seriously undermined the credibility of those war party advocates of an immediate Anglo-American invasion of Iraq. As Lyndon LaRouche wrote, Powell was set up by a gang of public relations flacks who can't think straight.

So far so good. But a deeper probe into the scandal reveals that there was good reason that the spin-meisters at the Coalition Information Center—the Washington-London civilian government propaganda unit that crafted both the Blair dossier and major portions of Secretary Powell's own lighter-than-air book of evidence—did not reveal the sources of their information. The entire cooked intelligence picture was "Made in Israel." It was cooked up at a right-wing think-tank complex notorious as a hotbed of radical Likudnik propaganda, and with links to the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney, via his Chief of Staff Lewis Libby and his former client, Marc Rich.

The essential facts are as follows: Two days before Powell's UN appearance, 10 Downing Street issued a 16-page paper, "Iraq: Its Infrastructure of Concealment, Deception, and Intimidation," purportedly based on high-level British intelligence data. In fact, at least 11 of the 16 pages were lifted, verbatim, from an Israeli journal, Middle East Review of International Affairs, whose sole proprieter is Dr. Barry Rubin, an American-born Israeli citizen. The 11 pages were drawn from two articles, by Ibrahim al-Marashi and Robert Rabil, that appeared in the September 2002 edition of that journal.

Al-Marashi's article, a profile of Iraqi intelligence, was drawn, largely, from Iraqi government documents confiscated during the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Al-Marashi, in turn, heavily footnoted his article to other, earlier stories published in Rubin's obscure online journal, by Amazia Baram, the journal's deputy editor.

This was no bit of grammar school plagiarism. The public relations team that put together the Blair and Powell propaganda drivel were themselves linked to Rubin and his fellow Israeli pranksters, through Ahmed Chalabi's discredited and corrupt Iraqi National Congress (INC). Chalabi, University of Chicago protégé of the late utopian Albert Wohlstetter, then fugitive swindler, was adopted as the Iraqi oppositionist-of-choice by Israeli "X Committee" agent and chairman of the Defense Policy Board Richard Perle and his British Arab Bureau handler, Dr. Bernard Lewis, in the 1980s.

Rubin and the Chicken-hawk Intelligence Agency
Rubin issued a statement following the Downing Street dossier flap, taking full credit for the cooked intelligence report. His only complaint was that, while the Blair government apologized to Al-Marashi, they did not issue a similar public statement of regret to him and his journal.

To have done so would have been suicidal, as a quick review of Rubin's pedigree makes clear.

According to three current biographies, Prof. Barry Rubin is the deputy director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Israel, and a senior fellow at Hebrew University's Harry Truman Center and Haifa University's Jewish-Arab Center. He is the director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center, research director of the Lauder School of Government Policy and Diplomacy, and a senior fellow at the International Center for Counterterrorist Policy (ICT)—all of which are part of the Interdisciplinary Center, Israel's first private university, in Herzliya.

The Lauder School was named after Ronald Lauder, the former Reagan Ambassador to Austria, former president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, soon-to-be-successor of Edgar Bronfman Sr. as head of the World Jewish Congress, and a notorious financier of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The ICT, which co-sponsored a May 26, 2002 Herzliya center conference on suicide terrorism with the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai Brith, is financed by the Marc Rich Foundation, the tax shelter of fugitive Russian Mafiya don Marc Rich. Avner Azulay, a former Mossad officer and director of the Rich Foundation, is an ICT director. Another publicly listed associate of the ICT is Maj. Gen. Meir Dagan, one of Ariel Sharon's most notorious thugs, and the current head of the Mossad.

Rubin, a transplanted Israeli citizen, still spends a good deal of time in the United States. On Feb. 4, he was one of the speakers at a Willard Hotel luncheon in Washington sponsored by Eleana Benador Associates, a New York City public relations firm that counts among its clients the entire chicken-hawk apparatus. Among the other speakers with Rubin were Benador clients Perle, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney, Laurie Mylroie, former UN weapons inspector Richard Spertzel, and former Iraqi weapons scientist Khidhir Hamza.

Rubin is also the chief Middle East columnist for Conrad Black's Hollinger Corp.-owned Jerusalem Post, and a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), the think-tank spawn of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the official Israel lobby in America. His writings frequently appear in Middle East Quarterly, the hyper-shrill propaganda journal of Daniel Pipes. Rubin and Pipes are both funded by the Bradley Foundation, one of the quartet of ultra-right-wing tax-exempt funds, along with the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Olin Foundation, and the Mellon Scaife Foundation.

Typical of Rubin's prolific writings was a Dec. 3, 2002 Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal, entitled "Sharon the Centrist?" The article celebrated Sharon's Likud party primary victory over Netanyahu, and assailed both Netanyahu and the Labor Party candidate, Gen. Amram Mitzna, whom Rubin labelled an apologist for the Yasser Arafat whom he termed an unrepentant terrorist.

In his Benador schpiel, Rubin echoed Perle and Doug Feith's "A Clean Break" strategy, arguing that the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein would herald the "third Arab revolution" of the postwar period, triggering a spontaneous outbreak of democracy, human rights, and free trade throughout the Arab world. Rubin's simplistic fantasy of a Middle East re-made in the American-Israeli image has prompted some genuine experts to denounce him as the "Bernard Lewis for dummies." Princeton Professor Lewis is the author of the "Arc of Crisis" strategy for permanent instability in the Middle East.

The Coalition Information Center
It takes two to tango. The Blair dossier—based on the cooked-in-Israel propaganda of Rubin—and the Powell UN speech, were both largely the work of the Coalition Information Center (CIC), an Anglo-American government propaganda unit set up to counter opposition to the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan, and later transformed into a permanent shared venture of the White House and 10 Downing Street.

According to recent news accounts in New Yorker magazine and the New Republic, the CIC was the brainchild of Gen. Wayne Downing (USA-ret.)—who was chief of counter-terrorism at the National Security Council until last June—and his deputy, former CIA officer Linda Flohr. The two hired a discredited public relations firm, the Rendon Group, which had a reputation for burning through government cash, but which had been instrumental in the launching of Chalabi's INC. Downing, before joining the White House team, was the "military advisor" to the INC. In mid-February, Downing was in India, as part of a delegation from the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), another thinly-disguised Israeli espionage and recruiting front which targets retired American military and intelligence officers.

John Rendon, a Jimmy Carter-era Democratic National Committee executive director, made his connections to Team Bush in 1989, when he handled the propaganda for the overthrow of Gen. Manuel Noriega. In Panama, Rendon hooked up with CIA Iran-Contra operative Flohr, who got Rendon the propaganda contract for Operation Desert Storm. In 1991, President Bush signed a Presidential Finding, authorizing a covert campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and Rendon got an estimated $150 million in CIA cash to manufacture a Potemkin Village opposition to the Baghdad regime, built around Chalabi. According to investigative reporters Seymour Hersh and Jeff Stein, most of the CIA money went to overpaid public relations consultants, posh London flats, flights on the Concorde, and even more suspect cash diversions. Ultimately, the CIA Inspector General got into the act, and Rendon was dumped by the Agency.

Things improved for this crowd, once again, when "Bush 43" came to town. Flohr, who had gone to work for the Rendon Group after retiring from the CIA in 1994—and working for Oliver North's bullet-proof vest company—was tapped by Downing to join him at the National Security Council (she is now officially listed as the director of counter-terrorism for the NSC and director of security for the Office of Homeland Security). Not only did Rendon put together the CIC, but, following Sept. 11, 2001, he won a $100,000 per month Pentagon contract to work for the short-lived Office of Strategic Influence. This was a black-propaganda unit inside the Feith's "chicken-hawk intelligence agency" led by William Luti, a retired Navy captain who was seconded to the Pentagon from the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney. When the New York Times exposed the planned OSI agitprop unit, the plans were scrapped, but Rendon retained the Pentagon cash-flow.

Alpha

Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net
White House Effort To Discredit Critic Examined in Detail

By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, July 27, 2005; A01
The special prosecutor in the CIA leak probe has interviewed a wider range of administration officials than was previously known, part of an effort to determine whether anyone broke laws during a White House effort two years ago to discredit allegations that President Bush used faulty intelligence to justify the Iraq war, according to several officials familiar with the case.

Prosecutors have questioned former CIA director George J. Tenet and deputy director John E. McLaughlin, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow, State Department officials, and even a stranger who approached columnist Robert D. Novak on the street. In doing so, special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has asked not only about how CIA operative Valerie Plame's name was leaked but also how the administration went about shifting responsibility from the White House to the CIA for having included 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium from Africa.

Most of the questioning of CIA and State Department officials took place in 2004, the sources said.

It remains unclear whether Fitzgerald uncovered any wrongdoing in this or any other portion of his nearly 18-month investigation. All that is known at this point are the names of some people he has interviewed, what questions he has asked and whom he has focused on.

Fitzgerald began his investigation in December 2003 to determine whether any government official knowingly leaked Plame's identity as a CIA employee to the media. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, has said his wife's career was ruined in retaliation for his public criticism of Bush. In a 2002 trip to Niger at the request of the CIA, Wilson found no evidence to support allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from that African country and reported back to the agency in February 2002. But nearly a year later, Bush asserted in his State of the Union speech that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, attributing it to British, not U.S., intelligence.

Fitzgerald has said in court that he had completed most of his investigation at a time he was pressing for New York Times reporter Judith Miller to break her silence and testify about any conversations she had with a specific administration official about Plame during the week before Plame's identity was revealed.

Miller, who never wrote a story about the matter, is in jail for refusing to comply with a court order to testify. Court records show Fitzgerald is seeking information about communications she had with the Bush official between July 6 and July 13, 2003, when the White House was attempting to discredit Wilson and his allegations.

Fitzgerald appears to believe that Miller's conversations may help him get to the bottom of the leak and the damage-control campaign undertaken by senior Bush officials that week.

Using background conversations with at least three journalists and other means, Bush officials attacked Wilson's credibility. They said that his 2002 trip to Niger was a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but CIA officials say that is incorrect.

One reason for the confusion about Plame's role is that she had arranged a trip for him to Niger three years earlier on an unrelated matter, CIA officials told The Washington Post.

Miller's role remains one of many mysteries in the leak probe. It is unclear to whom, if anyone, she spoke to about Plame, and why she emerged as a central figure in the probe despite never having written a story about the case. Also murky is the role of Novak, who first publicly identified Plame in a syndicated column published July 14, 2003.

Lawyers involved in the case have confirmed that Novak discussed Plame with White House senior adviser Karl Rove four or more days before the column identifying her ran. But the identity of another "administration" source cited in the column is still unknown. Rove's attorney has said Rove did not identify Plame to Novak.

In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury -- acting on a tip from Wilson -- has questioned a person who approached Novak on Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003, six days before his column appeared in The Post and other publications, Wilson said in an interview. The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post, asked Novak about the "yellow cake" uranium matter and then about Wilson, Wilson said. He first revealed that conversation in a book he wrote last year. In the book, he said he tried to reach Novak on July 8, and they finally connected on July 10. In that conversation, Wilson said he did not confirm his wife worked for the CIA but that Novak told him he had obtained the information from a "CIA source."

Novak told the person that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA as a specialist in weapons of mass destruction and had arranged her husband's trip to Niger, Wilson said. Unknown to Novak, the person was a friend of Wilson and reported the conversation to him, Wilson said.

Novak and his attorney, James Hamilton, have declined to discuss the investigation, as has Fitzgerald.

Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson's wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.

Harlow said that after Novak's call, he checked Plame's status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame's name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified information.

In a column published Oct. 1, 2003, Novak wrote that the CIA official he spoke to "asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause 'difficulties' if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name."

Harlow was also involved in the larger internal administration battle over who would be held responsible for Bush using the disputed charge about the Iraq-Niger connection as part of the war argument. Based on the questions they have been asked, people involved in the case believe that Fitzgerald looked into this bureaucratic fight because the effort to discredit Wilson was part of the larger campaign to distance Bush from the Niger controversy.

Wilson unleashed a multimedia attack on Bush's claim on July 6, 2003, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," in an interview in The Post and writing his own op-ed article in the New York Times, in which he accused the president of "twisting" intelligence.

Behind the scenes, the White House responded with twin attacks: one on Wilson and the other on the CIA, which it wanted to take the blame for allowing the 16 words to have remained in Bush's speech. As part of this effort, then-national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley spoke with Tenet during the week about clearing up CIA responsibility for the 16 words, even though both knew the agency did not believe Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, according to a person familiar with the conversation. Tenet was interviewed by prosecutors in the leak case, but it is not clear whether he appeared before the grand jury, a former CIA official said.

On July 9, Tenet and top aides began to draft a statement over two days that ultimately said it was "a mistake" for the CIA to have permitted the 16 words about uranium to remain in Bush's speech. He said the information "did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed."

A former senior CIA official said yesterday that Tenet's statement was drafted within the agency and was shown only to Hadley on July 10 to get White House input. Only a few minor changes were accepted before it was released on July 11, this former official said. He took issue with a New York Times report last week that said Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, had a role in Tenet's statement.

The prosecutors have talked to State Department officials to determine what role a classified memo including two sentences about Plame's role in Wilson's Niger trip played in the damage-control campaign.

People familiar with this part of the probe provided new details about the memo, including that it was then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage who requested it the day Wilson went public and asked that a copy be sent to then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to take with him on a trip to Africa the next day. Bush and several top aides were on that trip. Carl W. Ford Jr., who was director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the time and who supervised the original production of the memo, has appeared before the grand jury, according to a former State Department official.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/26/AR2005072602069_pf.html

Alpha

Bush Aide Learned Early of Leaks Probe
By Dafna Linzer
The Washington Post

Monday 25 July 2005

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said yesterday that he spoke with White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. immediately after learning that the Justice Department had launched a criminal investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity. But Gonzales, who was White House counsel at the time, waited 12 hours before officially notifying the rest of the staff of the inquiry.

Many details of the investigation led by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald are unknown. Sources close to the case have said Fitzgerald is looking into possible conflicts between what President Bush's senior adviser Karl Rove and vice presidential staff chief I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby told a grand jury, and the accounts of reporters who spoke with the two men.

Gonzales said yesterday on "Fox News Sunday" that he is among the group of top current and former Bush administration officials who have testified to the grand jury about the unmasking of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative. Gonzales, who has recused himself from the case, would not discuss details of his testimony but said he learned about Plame's work from newspaper accounts.

In the New York Times yesterday, columnist Frank Rich reported that when Gonzales was notified about the investigation on the evening of Monday, Sept. 29, 2003, he waited 12 hours before telling the White House staff about the inquiry. Official notification to staff is meant to quickly alert anyone who may have pertinent records to make sure they are preserved and safeguarded.

Asked on CBS's "Face the Nation" about the report, Gonzales said the Justice Department had informed his office around 8 p.m. and that White House lawyers said he could wait until the next morning before notifying the staff. He did not say why he called Card.

"I specifically had our lawyers go back to the Department of Justice lawyers and ask them, 'Do you want us to notify the staff now, immediately, or would it be okay to notify the staff early in the morning?' And we were advised, go ahead and notify the staff early in the morning, that would be okay." He said most of the staff had left by the time the Justice Department called and that "no one knew about the investigation."

But he acknowledged telling one person: "the chief of staff. And immediately the next morning, I told the president. And shortly thereafter, there was notification sent out to all the members of the White House staff," Gonzales said.

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), appearing on the same program, questioned why Gonzales would not have notified the staff immediately by e-mail and suggested that Fitzgerald now pursue whether Card may have given anyone in the White House advance notice to prepare for a criminal investigation.

"The real question now is, who did the chief of staff speak to? Did the chief of staff pick up the phone and call Karl Rove? Did the chief of staff pick up the phone and call anybody else?" Biden asked.

The case centers on the White House response in the days after July 6, 2003, when former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence on Iraq's weapons arsenal to justify war. In an op-ed piece, Wilson wrote that the government sent him to Niger to investigate assertions that Iraq had tried to acquire materials there for a nuclear weapon and that he had reported back, before the war, that no proof had been found to support the allegations.

Eight days after Wilson's article appeared, Robert D. Novak published a syndicated column suggesting that the administration did not take Wilson's findings seriously and noting that Wilson's wife -- Plame -- was a CIA operative who had suggested him for the trip.

After accusations that someone in the administration had jeopardized an operative's cover in political retaliation, the Justice Department appointed Fitzgerald in December 2003 to investigate.

Asked on CBS why he did not investigate the leak when it first became public, Gonzales said: "This is the kind of issue that I felt that we should wait and see whether or not there would be some kind of criminal investigation. And of course, there was."

-------

Alpha

From The New York Times, 7/27/05:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/27/politics/27leak.html

Ex-Aide on Periphery of Leak Inquiry

By ANNE E. KORNBLUT

POUND RIDGE, N.Y. -

From the road, it is barely possible to see the home where Ari
Fleischer lives.

Tucked away behind a secured fence and a thicket of shrubbery, Mr.
Fleischer, the former White House press secretary, is where he wants
to be these days: nearly invisible.

For the two years since he left the White House - on the very day in
July 2003 that Robert D. Novak printed the name of a Central
Intelligence Agency operative in his syndicated newspaper column - Mr.
Fleischer has been caught up in the investigation of who supplied that
information to the columnist and whether it was a crime.

The prosecutor in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, called Mr.
Fleischer to appear before the grand jury that is investigating the
leak.

One person familiar with Mr. Fleischer's testimony said he told the
grand jury that he was not Mr. Novak's source.

And Mr. Fleischer, who was never shy about championing his Republican
bosses, seems not to fit Mr. Novak's description, in a subsequent
column, of his primary source as "no partisan gunslinger."

But Mr. Fleischer was in the middle of the developments that
surrounded the White House's response to the criticism leveled by
Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former diplomat, who on July 6, 2003, publicly
said the administration had "twisted" intelligence about the nuclear
ambitions of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq.

In the week that followed Mr. Wilson's assertions in an Op-Ed article
in The New York Times, Mr. Fleischer played a central role as the
White House acknowledged that six months earlier, President Bush
should not have cited intelligence about Iraqi efforts to acquire
uranium from Africa in his State of the Union address.

Mr. Wilson, who had traveled to the African nation of Niger in 2002 at
the request of the C.I.A. to look into the uranium reports, had
challenged Mr. Bush's statement.

A White House telephone log shows that Mr. Fleischer received a call
from Mr. Novak on July 7, 2003, but a person familiar with Mr.
Fleischer's testimony said he told prosecutors he never returned the
call.

Mr. Fleischer was aboard Air Force One with Mr. Bush and several other
senior administration officials as they traveled across Africa that
week.

And while a classified State Department memorandum that identified Mr.
Wilson's wife, Valerie Wilson, as a C.I.A. operative, was also on
board, Mr. Fleischer has told the grand jury that he never saw the
document, according to the person familiar with his testimony.

["I'm cooperating with the investigators, and refer all questions to
them," Mr. Fleischer said on Tuesday, after turning away a reporter at
his house on Monday.]

The people who discussed the testimony of Mr. Fleischer and other
witnesses asked not to be named because Mr. Fitzgerald, the special
prosecutor, has asked anyone involved in the case not to talk about
it.

At least one person who provided an account of Mr. Fleischer's role
did so in the belief that it would remove suspicion from Mr.
Fleischer.

As the investigation has progressed, according to people who have been
officially briefed on the inquiry, investigators have lessened their
interest in Mr. Fleischer's activities and those of other top White
House press aides at the time as more senior administration figures
have attracted greater attention.

Those figures include Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's top political adviser, and
I. Lewis Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

________________________________________________________

Alpha · Posted: Fri Jul 29, 2005 6:10 am Post subject: Follow the Uranium

http://www.nytimes.com

July 17, 2005
Follow the Uranium
By FRANK RICH
"I am saying that if anyone was involved in that type of activity which I referred to, they would not be working here."
- Ron Ziegler, press secretary to Richard Nixon, defending the presidential aide Dwight Chapin on Oct. 18, 1972. Chapin was convicted in April 1974 of perjury in connection with his relationship to the political saboteur Donald Segretti.

"Any individual who works here at the White House has the confidence of the president. They wouldn't be working here at the White House if they didn't have the president's confidence."
- Scott McClellan, press secretary to George W. Bush, defending Karl Rove on Tuesday.

WELL, of course, Karl Rove did it. He may not have violated the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, with its high threshold of criminality for outing a covert agent, but there's no doubt he trashed Joseph Wilson and Valerie Plame. We know this not only because of Matt Cooper's e-mail, but also because of Mr. Rove's own history. Trashing is in his nature, and bad things happen, usually through under-the-radar whispers, to decent people (and their wives) who get in his way. In the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain's wife, Cindy, was rumored to be a drug addict (and Senator McCain was rumored to be mentally unstable). In the 1994 Texas governor's race, Ann Richards found herself rumored to be a lesbian. The implication that Mr. Wilson was a John Kerry-ish girlie man beholden to his wife for his meal ticket is of a thematic piece with previous mud splattered on Rove political adversaries. The difference is that this time Mr. Rove got caught.

Even so, we shouldn't get hung up on him - or on most of the other supposed leading figures in this scandal thus far. Not Matt Cooper or Judy Miller or the Wilsons or the bad guy everyone loves to hate, the former CNN star Robert Novak. This scandal is not about them in the end, any more than Watergate was about Dwight Chapin and Donald Segretti or Woodward and Bernstein. It is about the president of the United States. It is about a plot that was hatched at the top of the administration and in which everyone else, Mr. Rove included, are at most secondary players.

To see the main plot, you must sweep away the subplots, starting with the Cooper e-mail. It has been brandished as a smoking gun by Bush bashers and as exculpatory evidence by Bush backers (Mr. Rove, you see, was just trying to ensure that Time had its facts straight). But no one knows what this e-mail means unless it's set against the avalanche of other evidence, most of it secret, including what Mr. Rove said in three appearances before the grand jury. Therein lies the rub, or at least whatever case might be made for perjury.

Another bogus subplot, long popular on the left, has it that Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor, gave Mr. Novak a free pass out of ideological comradeship. But Mr. Fitzgerald, both young (44) and ambitious, has no record of Starr- or Ashcroft-style partisanship (his contempt for the press notwithstanding) or known proclivity for committing career suicide. What's most likely is that Mr. Novak, more of a common coward than the prince of darkness he fashions himself to be, found a way to spill some beans and avoid Judy Miller's fate. That the investigation has dragged on so long anyway is another indication of the expanded reach of the prosecutorial web.

Apparently this is finally beginning to dawn on Mr. Bush's fiercest defenders and on Mr. Bush himself. Hence, last week's erection of the stonewall manned by the almost poignantly clownish Mr. McClellan, who abruptly rendered inoperative his previous statements that any suspicions about Mr. Rove are "totally ridiculous." The morning after Mr. McClellan went mano a mano with his tormentors in the White House press room - "We've secretly replaced the White House press corps with actual reporters," observed Jon Stewart - the ardently pro-Bush New York Post ran only five paragraphs of a wire-service story on Page 12. That conspicuous burial of what was front-page news beyond Murdochland speaks loudly about the rising anxiety on the right. Since then, White House surrogates have been desperately babbling talking points attacking Joseph Wilson as a partisan and a liar.

These attacks, too, are red herrings. Let me reiterate: This case is not about Joseph Wilson. He is, in Alfred Hitchcock's parlance, a MacGuffin, which, to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, is "a particular event, object, factor, etc., initially presented as being of great significance to the story, but often having little actual importance for the plot as it develops." Mr. Wilson, his mission to Niger to check out Saddam's supposed attempts to secure uranium that might be used in nuclear weapons and even his wife's outing have as much to do with the real story here as Janet Leigh's theft of office cash has to do with the mayhem that ensues at the Bates Motel in "Psycho."

This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.

So put aside Mr. Wilson's February 2002 trip to Africa. The plot that matters starts a month later, in March, and its omniscient author is Dick Cheney. It was Mr. Cheney (on CNN) who planted the idea that Saddam was "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time." The vice president went on to repeat this charge in May on "Meet the Press," in three speeches in August and on "Meet the Press" yet again in September. Along the way the frightening word "uranium" was thrown into the mix.

By September the president was bandying about the u-word too at the United Nations and elsewhere, speaking of how Saddam needed only a softball-size helping of uranium to wreak Armageddon on America. But hardly had Mr. Bush done so than, offstage, out of view of us civilian spectators, the whole premise of this propaganda campaign was being challenged by forces with more official weight than Joseph Wilson. In October, the National Intelligence Estimate, distributed to Congress as it deliberated authorizing war, included the State Department's caveat that "claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa," made public in a British dossier, were "highly dubious." A C.I.A. assessment, sent to the White House that month, determined that "the evidence is weak" and "the Africa story is overblown."

AS if this weren't enough, a State Department intelligence analyst questioned the legitimacy of some mysterious documents that had surfaced in Italy that fall and were supposed proof of the Iraq-Niger uranium transaction. In fact, they were blatant forgeries. When Mohamed ElBaradei, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said as much publicly in the days just before "shock and awe," his announcement made none of the three evening newscasts. The administration's apocalyptic uranium rhetoric, sprinkled with mushroom clouds, had been hammered incessantly for more than five months by then - not merely in the State of the Union address - and could not be dislodged. As scenarios go, this one was about as subtle as "Independence Day" and just as unstoppable a crowd-pleaser.

Once we were locked into the war, and no W.M.D.'s could be found, the original plot line was dropped with an alacrity that recalled the "Never mind!" with which Gilda Radner's Emily Litella used to end her misinformed Weekend Update commentaries on "Saturday Night Live." The administration began its dog-ate-my-homework cover-up, asserting that the various warning signs about the uranium claims were lost "in the bowels" of the bureaucracy or that it was all the C.I.A.'s fault or that it didn't matter anyway, because there were new, retroactive rationales to justify the war. But the administration knows how guilty it is. That's why it has so quickly trashed any insider who contradicts its story line about how we got to Iraq, starting with the former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.

Next to White House courtiers of their rank, Mr. Wilson is at most a Rosencrantz or Guildenstern. The brief against the administration's drumbeat for war would be just as damning if he'd never gone to Africa. But by overreacting in panic to his single Op-Ed piece of two years ago, the White House has opened a Pandora's box it can't slam shut. Seasoned audiences of presidential scandal know that there's only one certainty ahead: the timing of a Karl Rove resignation. As always in this genre, the knight takes the fall at exactly that moment when it's essential to protect the king.

Alpha

Bush to Bypass Senate to Appoint Bolton - Sources

By Steve Holland
Reuters

Friday 29 July 2005

Washington - President Bush plans to bypass the US Senate and install John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations, officials said.

Bush can go around the Senate and give Bolton a "recess appointment" when the Senate begins its August recess this weekend. Bolton would be able to serve until January 2007, when a new Congress is sworn in.

Two US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said it was Bush's intent to make a recess appointment. An announcement could come as early as Monday.

Senate Democrats have stalled the nomination of Bolton, a favorite of conservatives, over accusations he tried to manipulate intelligence and intimidated intelligence analysts to support his hawkish views while the top US diplomat for arms control.

Asked about the possibility of a recess appointment for Bolton, White House spokesman Scott McClellan argued that the job needed to be filled soon.

"We need our permanent representative in place at the United Nations at this critical time. There is an effort under way to move forward on comprehensive reform," he said.

"And it's a critical time to be moving forward on this. The United Nations will be having their General Assembly meeting in September, and it's important that we get our permanent representative in place," he said.

A recess appointment would risk the wrath of the Senate at a time when Bush is pressing senators to support his nominee for Supreme Court justice, John Roberts. His confirmation hearings begin on Sept. 6.

"A recess appointment is not in the interest of the country. Mr. Bolton does not have the full confidence of the Senate. Sending him to the UN without the Senate's approval would send a mixed message to friend and foe alike," said Sen. Joseph Biden, a Delaware Democrat and a sharp critic of Bolton.

Thirty-five Senate Democrats and one independent sent Bush a letter on Friday urging him to find a different UN envoy.

A State Department Reversal

Questions about Bolton surfaced anew on Thursday when the State Department reversed itself and acknowledged that Bolton had given Congress inaccurate information when he wrote that he had not been questioned or provided information to jury or government investigations in the past five years.

At first, the State Department had insisted Bolton's answer was truthful.

But it later acknowledged that Bolton had failed to tell lawmakers that he had been interviewed as part of a State Department-CIA joint investigation on intelligence lapses that led to the Bush administration's claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger.
"When Mr. Bolton completed his form during the Senate confirmation process he did not recall being interviewed by the State Department inspector general. Therefore his form as submitted was inaccurate in this regard and he will correct the form," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

McClellan said the White House was not concerned by the episode.

Officials have said Bolton was not interviewed in special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

The White House has argued that Bolton should be given an up-or-down vote in the Senate but Democrats have blocked such a move.

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Alpha · Posted: Fri Aug 05, 2005 11:24 am Post subject:

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/08/cheney_drumbeat.html

Cheney's Nuclear Drumbeat
Commentary: How the vice-president fits into the Plame case.

By Jim Lobe

August 1, 2005

Introduction by Tom Engelhardt.

In a recent piece, The Media's Roving Eye, trying to establish a timeline that would offer context for the Plame case, I wrote the following:

"Vice President Cheney started the administration's atomic drumbeat to war in Iraq with a series of speeches on Saddam's supposed nuclear capabilities and desires beginning in August of 2002. (The crucial role of Cheney, whose eye was first caught by a Defense Intelligence Agency report on the Niger uranium documents back in February 2002, in the events that would become the Plame case, has been poorly covered...)"

As I soon found out, I did not stand apart from most others in poor coverage of Cheney's role. Jim Lobe, whose pieces for Inter Press Service I've quoted from, linked to, and recommended endlessly over the last years, sent a few lines my way to tell me that I, too, was off in my Cheney timeline, that the Vice President had started in on the subject of Saddam Hussein's supposed nuclear program significantly earlier than I realized, and that this mattered greatly in understanding the nature of the events to follow. I asked him for a bit of clarification and the next thing I knew I had a piece in hand -- Lobe's first appearance at Tomdispatch -- an exercise, as he put it, in the sorts of connections that begin to appear when you pull a single string in the tangled ball of yarn that is the history of the Plame case. It's a reminder, as he points out below, of how a powerful web of neocon insiders and outsiders (and their allies) set the U.S. on the path to war in Iraq.

What follows then, from the man who has, in my opinion, done better reportorial work on the neoconservatives and the Bush administration than any other reporter around, is a disquisition on timing -- on Vice President Cheney's behaviour immediately before and after former ambassador Joseph Wilson's report on Saddam's supposed search for Niger yellowcake.

Dating Cheney's Nuclear Drumbeat:

Framing the Plame Case
By Jim Lobe

In the wake of the release of the Downing Street Memo, there has been much talk about how the Bush administration "fixed" its intelligence to create a war fever in the U.S. in the many months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. What still remains to be fully grasped, however, is the wider pattern of propaganda that underlay the administration's war effort -- in particular, the overlapping networks of relationships that tied together so many key figures in the administration, the neoconservatives and their allies on the outside, and parts of the media in what became a seamless, boundary-less operation to persuade the American people that Saddam Hussein represented an intolerable threat to their national security.

Vice President Cheney, for instance, is widely credited with having launched the administration's nuclear drumbeat to war in Iraq via a series of speeches he gave, beginning in August 2002, vividly accusing Saddam of having an active nuclear weapons program. As it happens though, he started beating the nuclear drum with vigor significantly earlier than most remember; indeed at a time that was particularly curious given its proximity to the famous mission former Ambassador Joseph Wilson took on behalf of the CIA.

Cheney's initial public attempts to raise the nuclear nightmare did not in fact begin with his August 2002 barrage of nuclear speeches, but rather five months before that, just after his return from a tour of Arab capitals where he had tried in vain to gin up local support for military action against Iraq. Indeed, the specific date on which his campaign was launched was March 24, 2002, when, on return from the Middle East, he appeared on three major Sunday public-affairs television programs bearing similar messages on each. On CNN's "Late Edition," he offered the following comment on Saddam:

"This is a man of great evil, as the President said. And he is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time."

On NBC's "Meet the Press," he said:

"[T]here's good reason to believe that he continues to aggressively pursue the development of a nuclear weapon. Now will he have one in a year, five years? I can't be that precise."

And on CBS's "Face the Nation":

"The notion of a Saddam Hussein with his great oil wealth, with his inventory that he already has of biological and chemical weapons, that he might actually acquire a nuclear weapon is, I think, a frightening proposition for anybody who thinks about it. And part of my task out there was to go out and begin the dialogue with our friends to make sure they were thinking about it."

Why do I think that Cheney moment, that particular barrage of statements about Saddam's supposed nuclear program, remains so significant today, in light of the Plame affair?

For one thing, that Sunday's drum roll of nuclear claims indicated that the "intelligence and facts" were already being "fixed around the policy" four months before Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's MI6, reached that conclusion, as recorded in the Downing Street Memo. It's worth asking, then: On what basis could Cheney make such assertions with such evident certainty, nearly six months before, on September 7, 2002, Judith Miller and Michael Gordon of the New York Times first broke a story about how Iraq had ordered "specially designed aluminum tubes," supposedly intended as components for centrifuges to enrich uranium for Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program. Even five months later, after all, those tubes would still be the only real piece of evidence for the existence of an Iraqi nuclear program offered by Colin Powell in his presentation to the UN Security Council.

Indeed, on March 24 when Cheney made his initial allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program, we know of only two pieces of "evidence" available to him that might conceivably have supported his charges:

1) Testimony from Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a "defector" delivered up by Ahmad Chalabi's exile organization the Iraqi National Congress (INC), and enthusiastically recounted by the Times' Miller on December 20, 2001 (although rejected as a fabrication by both the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency). Al-Haideri claimed to have personally worked on renovations of secret facilities for biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons in underground wells, private villas, and under the Saddam Hussein Hospital in Baghdad as recently as 2000.

2) The infamous forged Niger yellowcake documents that, at some point in December, 2001 or January, 2002 somehow appeared on Cheney's desk, supposedly through the Defense Intelligence Agency or the CIA, though accounts differ on the precise route it took from Italian military intelligence (SISMI) to the Vice President's office. It was these and related documents that spurred Cheney to ask for additional information, a request that would eventually result in Wilson's trip to Niger in late February, which, of course, set the Plame case in motion. Wilson's conclusion -- that there was nothing to the story -- would echo the conclusions of both U.S. ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick and Marine Gen. Carlton W. Fulford Jr., then-deputy commander of the U.S. European Command who was also sent to Niger in February. A couple of days after his return to Washington, Wilson would be debriefed by the CIA.

How far up their respective chains of command Wilson's and Fulford's reports made it remains a significant mystery to this day. Cheney's office, which reportedly had reminded the CIA of the Vice President's interest in the agency's follow-up efforts even while Wilson was in Niger, claims never to have heard about either report. We do know that Fulford's report made it up to Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Myers whose spokesman, however, told the Washington Post in July 2003, shortly after Wilson went public on the New York Times op-ed page, that the general had "no recollection" of it and so no idea whether it continued on to the White House or Cheney's office.

Meanwhile, Cheney, whose initial curiosity set off this flurry of travel and reporting, appeared to have lost interest in the results by the time he left on a Middle Eastern trip in mid-March; at least, no information has come to light so far indicating that he ever got back to the CIA or anyone else with further questions or requests on the matter of whether Saddam had actually been in the market for Niger yellowcake uranium ore. Yet, within four days of his return to Washington, there he was on the Sunday TV shows assuring the nation's viewers that Iraq was indeed "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time."

Did he then acquire new information, perhaps from Iraq's neighbors, during his trip to the Middle East, or had he simply decided by then that the "facts" really had to be "fixed" -- or more precisely in Wilson's case, ignored altogether -- if the American people were to be persuaded that war was the only solution to the problem of Saddam Hussein? In any event, one can only describe his sudden lack of curiosity combined with his public certainty on the subject as, well… curious.

That Cheney did indeed make the initial request to follow up on the Niger yellowcake report appears now to be beyond dispute, and it also draws attention to another little-noted curiosity of the Plame case -- the knowledge and role of Clifford May, ex-New York Timesman, recent head of communications for the Republican National Committee (1997-2001), and president of the ultra-neo-conservative Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD). In an article at National Review Online (NRO) on September 29, 2003 (as pressure was building on John Ashcroft to appoint a special prosecutor in the case), he boasted that he had been informed by an unnamed former government official of Wilson's wife's identity long before her outing as a CIA operative by Robert Novak, on July 14, 2003, and so had assumed that her identity (and relationship to Wilson) had been an "open secret" among the Washington cognoscenti. He has subsequently told the Nation magazine's David Corn among others that he was interviewed by the FBI but has never been asked to testify on the subject before Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury.

In that NRO article, he also noted that he "was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson" following the ambassador's Times op-ed. Indeed, only five days after that op-ed appeared, on July 11, 2003, NRO published May's first attack on Wilson -- many more would follow right up to the present -- depicting the ambassador as a "pro-Saudi, leftist partisan with an axe to grind." The article -- and this is the curious part -- included the following passage: "Mr. Wilson was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify a U.S. intelligence report about the sale of yellowcake -- because Vice President Dick Cheney requested it, because Cheney had doubts about the validity of the intelligence report." This phrasing is fascinating because it purports to know Cheney's subjective motivation, and the motivation ascribed to him -- that he had "doubts" about the Niger story -- conflicts with everything we've otherwise come to understand about why he asked for the Niger story to be investigated. It hints, certainly, at how consciously Cheney would indeed fix the facts when it came to Saddam's nuclear doings.

Given this tidbit of curious information hidden in May's piece, it's important to know what former government officials might not only have told May about Plame's identity but possibly about Cheney's real thoughts on the subject of Saddam's nuclear program -- presuming, that is, that Cheney himself or Scooter Libby, his chief of staff, was not the source. Among May's board of advisers at FDD were several former government officials, a number of whom were known to be very close to Cheney and Libby as well as to Pentagon hawks like Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith. They included Richard Perle, head of the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. All of them played starring roles in efforts to tie Saddam's Iraq to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks as well as in raising the nuclear bogeyman well before Cheney did so on March 24, 2002.

In fact, a close examination of how the pre-war propaganda machine worked shows that it was led by the neocons and their associates outside the administration, particularly those on the Defense Policy Board (DPB) like Perle, Woolsey, and Kenneth "Cakewalk" Adelman (and Judith Miller of the Times) who had long championed the cause of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi exile organization, the INC, and were also close to the Office of Special Plans that Douglas Feith had set up in the Pentagon to cherry-pick intelligence. They would invariably be the first to float new "evidence" against Hussein (such as the infamous supposed Prague meeting of 9/11 conspirator Mohammed Atta with an Iraqi intelligence officer). They would then tie this "evidence" into ongoing arguments for "regime change" in Iraq that would often appear in the Times or elsewhere as news and subsequently be picked up by senior administration officials and fed into the drumbeat of war commentary pouring out of official Washington.

It is by now perfectly clear that the neo-conservatives on the outside were aided by like-minded journalists, particularly the Times' Miller -- then the only "straight" reporter on the client list of neoconservative heavyweights and columnists represented by Benador Associates -- and media outlets, especially the Wall Street Journal's editorial page and Fox News. Working hand-in-glove with the war hawks on the inside, they created a powerful and persuasive machine to convince the public that Saddam Hussein's Iraq represented an imminent and potentially cataclysmic threat to the United States that had to be eliminated once and for all. The failure to investigate and demonstrate precisely how seamlessly this web of intra- and extra-administration connections worked in the run-up to the war -- including perhaps in the concoction of the Niger yellowcake documents, as some former intelligence officials have recently suggested -- has been perhaps the most shocking example of the mainstream media's failure to connect the dots (the reporters from Knight-Ridder excepted.)

In that context, it is worth noting the first moment that the specter of an advanced Iraqi nuclear-weapons program was propelled into post-9/11 public consciousness. On December 20, 2001, the New York Times published Judith Miller's version of the sensational charges made by Chalabi-aided defector al-Haideri. Her report was immediately seized on by former CIA Director and DPB member Woolsey, (who had just spent many weeks trying desperately but unsuccessfully to confirm the alleged Mohammed Atta meeting in Prague that would have linked Saddam to the 9/11 attackers). Appearing that same evening on CNBC's "Hard Ball," he breathlessly told Chris Matthews, "I think this is a very important story. I give Judy Miller a lot of credit for getting it. This defector sounds quite credible." Within a week, he was telling the Washington Post that the case that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons was a "slam dunk." (Now, there's a familiar expression!) He continued confidently, "There is so much evidence with respect to his development of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles… that I consider this point beyond dispute."

One week later, Perle weighed in with an op-ed in the New York Times in which he also referred to Miller's work, albeit without naming her. "With each passing day, [Saddam] comes closer to his dream of a nuclear arsenal," he wrote.

"We know he has a clandestine program, spread over many hidden sites, to enrich Iraqi natural uranium [Nigerian yellowcake perhaps?] to weapons grade. We know he has the designs and the technical staff to fabricate nuclear weapons once he obtains the material. And intelligence sources know he is in the market, with plenty of money, for both weapons material and components as well as finished nuclear weapons. How close is he? We do not know. Two years, three years, tomorrow even? We simply do not know, and any intelligence estimate that would cause us to relax would be about as useful as the ones that missed his nuclear program in the early 1990's or failed to predict the Indian nuclear test in 1998 or to gain even a hint of the Sept. 11 attack."

It was a new argument being taken out for a test run, one that would become painfully familiar in the months that followed. At about that time, or shortly thereafter, a report about the mysterious Niger documents landed on Cheney's desk and the rest would be history.

Jim Lobe is a reporter for the Rome-based international news agency Inter Press Service and has followed the paths of the neocons since the early 1970s. Most of his work on the neocons can be accessed at his archive by clicking here.

Copyright 2005 Jim Lobe

War Without End

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