"A former high-level intelligence official told me that the information on Niger was judged serious enough to include in the President’s Daily Brief, known as the P.D.B., one of the most sensitive intelligence documents in the American system. Its information is supposed to be carefully analyzed, or “scrubbed.” Distribution of the two- or three-page early-morning report, which is prepared by the C.I.A., is limited to the President and a few other senior officials. The P.D.B. is not made available, for example, to any members of the Senate or House Intelligence Committees.”
Hersch here is quoting crackpot traitor Ray McGovern here. You can bet your bottom dollar.
Here is some more agit-prop lying from that raving anti-Semitic lunatic:
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/17/1543215
Wednesday, September 17th, 2003
“The Crazies Are Back”: Bush Sr.’s CIA Briefer Discusses How Wolfowitz & Allies Falsely Led the U.S. To War
AMY GOODMAN: Explain the forgeries.
RAY MCGOVERN: Well, the forgery we referred to before with respect to alleged Iraqi attempts to seek uranium in Niger.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, we always refer to that, but most people don’t know what the fraud was that was perpetrated. Explain what actually happened.
RAY MCGOVERN: What happened was this: in early 2002, Vice President Cheney learned that there was a report floating around that the government of Iraq was seeking uranium for nuclear weapons in the African country of Niger. He was so interested in that for obvious reasons, that he and his staff went to the Central Intelligence Agency and said tell me more about this. The CIA in response found out the best person to send down there, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who knew Africa like the palm of his hand, who had served in Niger as ambassador to other countries.
DAVID MACMICHAEL: Just to intrude here. Joe Wilson was particularly important for that. He had been the Deputy Chief of Mission in Baghdad just prior to the 1991 Iraq war and actually had been serving as effectively the US ambassador there, so he knew Iraq and he knew Africa.
AMY GOODMAN: He was Bush’s ambassador to Iraq at that time.
RAY MCGOVERN: Exactly, with high commendations from President Bush the First [Bush Senior]. So Joe went down there, spent eight days down there checking it out, with the ambassador down there and everybody else who knew this situation. He came back and said it was ‘highly dubious’. Number one: The government of Niger cannot, even if it wanted to, give uranium or sell uranium to Iraq. Why? Because it doesn’t control it. Who controls it? An international consortium led by the French. Every ounce of the uranium is accounted for. There is no way they could do that. Number 2: Iraq already has several, 50 tons of this yellow cake uranium it doesn’t know what to do with.
DAVID MACMICHAEL: And again, to intrude, all of which was under control of the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency
AMY GOODMAN: The yellow cake uranium that Saddam Hussein had.
DAVID MACMICHAEL: The existing uranium ore that they had.
RAY MCGOVERN: So on the strength of that, the ambassadors report was that, forget it, this is really bogus, this report. It just can’t…the first thing you do as an intelligence analyst or any kind of analyst is look at the substance of the report. If it makes no sense, it hardly matters what kind of source was behind it. But in this case it really did matter because later, it was discovered, that this report came from deliberate forgeries, and crude forgeries at that. And so, what I am reminded of is…
AMY GOODMAN: By whom?
RAY MCGOVERN: Well, it’s not clear. One asks themselves, Qui bono? Who would profit from this kind of thing? And a lot of people suggest it was the Israeli service, Mussad.
I wonder if he's emphasizing that to cover up for someone on one of the intelligence committees who had unauthorized access to the PDB through a leak.