Posted on 06/28/2004 3:31:49 PM PDT by swilhelm73
Well, it's very important, actually, because it explains why the Brits kept on saying they believed Saddam was trying to get his hands on yellowcake from Niger, when the CIA--and their asset, Seymour Hersh--had loudly and piously blasted the president of the united states for saying it.
The CIA certainly knew that the Brits had both human and electronic evidence--no way that, at a minimum, wasn't shared with us--but they focused their assault on a forged document that came via Rome. But even there, the CIA certainly knew that the Italians hadn't taken the forged document seriously.
This is the story that led the White House to send former amb. Wilson to Niger to check it out, and he couldn't get anyone to confirm it for him. So Hersh came up with the novel idea that the hoax--that is, the forged document--had been perpetrated by "old boys" from CIA in order to gull the president and the likes of Cheney and Rumsfeld (and of course the legendarily gullible "neocons") so that they could then be discredited.
And then the CIA followed through, by calling for a criminal investigation of the White House--a rare and perhaps even unique event in our history--for a leak about the Wilson mission, which inter alia exposed his wife as a CIA undercover operative.
Maybe the White House is finally beginning to understand that the CIA doesn't want Bush reelected--I mean, how otherwise could "Anonymous" be publishing anti-Bush screeds?--and maybe even the president, famously loyal to Tenet, might be wondering how come the Agency was so happy to discredit the Niger yellowcake story when, if the Financial Times account is right, the Brits, the Italians, and even the French had good evidence (NOT the forgery) for the claim...
As I say, it's hard to navigate, but it's important.
Full disclosure: I'm told by various journalists that for the last several months, CIA folks have been trying to peddle the story that I was the forger, or somehow involved in the forgery. Very funny. Posted at 03:04 PM
One note, the White House didn't send Wilson. Officially no one knows who sent him. The smart money says it was his wife and her boss.
Under the lax security of the Clinton administration, all of our agencies have been infiltrated.
Correct if I am wrong but, didn't we discover this yellow cake after about the fourth week of the war starting? The locals were dumping it on the ground and stealing the plastic barrels to gather drinking water??? I can't remember the name of the town or village, but I remember the 'experts' stating that this was radioactive waste and were concerned about the locals.
Wilson wasn't sent to Niger on the basis of the "forged" documents, but other information. In fact, Tenet mentioned two other African countries which were suspect.
The Brits wouldn't tell the CIA what there inofrmation was, which perturbed Wilson very much.
The Brits might have spilled the info after Wilson's article was published, accounting for the "documents" that floated around.
Yes. It was wrapped up and tagged or something by the UN ---- and left there for years.
Thanks...I remember because I had never heard the term before. That was about the same time or before they discovered the 'pesticide' barrels buried too.
I recall that, but I don't think that was "yellow cake" but some kind of by-product that could be used in a "dirty bomb" but not an actual nuke ...
Ever since the Wilson/Plame story broke, I've felt there were elements in the CIA actively working at cross-purposes with the Bush administration. The whole "leak" story seemed like a setup.
Science classes were never my forte. :)
That was old spent stuff that Saddam's minions had previously shown to UN inspectors before Saddam threw them out the first time. It was used for legitimate industrial/scientific purposes (at least in the UN's opinion). The stuff had UN seals on it, but the Iraqi scientists abandoned the facility when the war began, and the local looters broke the seals, dumped the spent fuel, and used the contaminated barrels for water.
The IAEA, of course, blamed it all on the U.S.
The Niger yellowcake was another matter entirely.
Exactly so. The CIA has always been packed full of liberals from the Ivy League colleges and similar institutions.
But the clinton CIA was a whole lot worse than that. George Tenet was a clintonoid. Valerie Plame was obviously a clintonoid, although nobody ever heard of her before. Joe Wilson was a clintonoid. Whoever signed off on sending him to Africa was a clintonoid. Whoever refused to criticize Valerie Plame for nepotistically giving a critical job to her unqualified husband was a clintonoid.
I've been saying this for three years. George Bush should have fired George Tenet in January 2000. The man is worse than incompetent; he is a traitor to his boss and to his country. This was obvious, for instance, when Tenet shot down the well attested story of the meeting in Prague. And there are hundreds of other clintonoid sleepers in the agency who belong to the same breed. The CIA needs a MAJOR HOUSECLEANING.
Okay, thanks for clearing that up.
Small correction, Bush should have waited until taking office in January, 2001 to fire Tenet. Seriously the guy should have been out as soon as he had a replacement in place. That is one area Bush is weak in, he chose to be not Clinton, instead of the anti-Clinton.
I stand corrected. Of course when Bush came into office he was about three months behind on making appointments because of the chad wars and clinton's refusal to cooperate with him in the transition.
He STILL should have fired Tenet and the rest of them. Better to have no head of the CIA than an undermining traitor.
I don't think Tenet did that. He reported that he couldn't prove it one way or the other, similar to what Cheney says.
Its the unnamed CIA sources who allegedly say it didn't happen, arisen again in teh 9/11 Commission report.
You are correct. Tenet didn't 'shoot down' the story. The reason he couldn't confirm the meeting was an obvious one- the intel was obtained by a Czech agent, not a CIA agent, much as the intel for the attempted purchase of uranium in Africa came from non-CIA sources, namely, the UK's intelligence service. The CIA director would be stupid to sign off on intel his agency had no hand in collecting and cannot independently verify... it's risky enough to be held responsible for his own agency's squabbling factions of political appointees and hacks.
That's why the libs kept trying to target Condi and Cheney and Rumsfeld- they needed to trigger a Republican trophy resignation - not a resignation from someone who would bring to mind a failed Rat president. They goofed.
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