Posted on 10/09/2005 8:55:28 PM PDT by Fedora
Transcriber's introduction:
The following outline and transcript, created by the poster, are based on an audio recording of Joseph Wilson's evening keynote lecture to the Education for Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC) on June 14, 2003, delivered several weeks prior to Wilson's New York Times op-ed of 7/6/2003 which preceded the controversial Robert Novak article mentioning Valerie Plame's CIA background. Wilson's speech was immediately preceded by that of the other keynote speaker, Ray McGovern of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. After their individual speeches Wilson and McGovern held a joint question-and-answer session. Other participants in the forum and their respective topics of discussion included (biographical summaries are my abbreviations of original; see original link for additional details):
Introduction: Erik Gustafson, Gulf War veteran and EPIC founder; Zaid Albanna, Iraqi native and EPIC board member.
The Future of the Kurds in Post-War Iraq: Nijyar Shemdin, United States representative of the Kurdistan Regional Government and member of Iraqi National Congress of the Kurdistan Democratic Party; Mohammed Sabir Ismail, Iraqi-born physicist and PUK representative; Tanya Gilly, member of the Board of Directors of the Kurdish foundation and Women for a Free Iraq and participant in US State Department Future of Iraq project.
A Short History of Western Imperialism in Iraq: Judith Yaphe, Senior Research Fellow with the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University.
Religious Politics & Emerging Political Movements in Iraq: Juan Cole, Professor of Modern Middle East and South Asian History at the University of Michigan; Phebe Marr, senior fellow in the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University.
Human Rights and Humanitarian Concerns: Sermid D. Al-Sarraf, Esq., Iraqi-American attorney from Los Angeles who works with the Iraqi Jurist's Association; George Devendorf, Director of Emergency Operations for Mercy Corps; Bill Frelick, director of Amnesty International USA's Refugee Program; Marc Garlasco, Senior Military Analyst for Human Rights Watch.
Consequences of War & Occupation: Stephen Zunes, Middle East editor for the Foreign Policy in Focus Project, political analyst for National Public Radio, Pacifica Radio, the BBC, and MSNBC; Alistair Millar, Director of the Washington, DC office of the Fourth Freedom Forum; Glen Rangwala, lecturer in politics at Cambridge University, UK, coordinator of the Campaign against Sanctions on Iraq, originator of allegation that a major British intelligence dossier on Iraq issued by the Blair government had been plagiarized from a PhD student's thesis; Nathaniel Hurd, independent consultant on Iraq policy.
Iraqi Views on the Aftermath & Post-Conflict Resolution: Sam Kubba, Iraqi immigrant to US, Democratic Party member, FCDC Steering Committee Chair, Chairman and CEO of American Iraqi Chamber of Commerce, founding member of Iraqi American Alliance; Anas Shallal, co-founder of The Peace Cafe, a venue promoting dialogue among Jews and Arabs; Rahman Al-Jebouri, Iraqi native, coordinator of the Iraq Foundation; Jawad Al-Amiri, Iraqi immigrant to US active on Iraqi American Council; Tanya Gilly (see above on Gilly).
Outline and transcript notes: Due to the length of the lecture, only some select quotations are transcribed in full, with the outline indicating the general structure of Wilson's lecture and where the quoted comments fall in that structure. Digital numbers indicate minutes and seconds into audio where quoted statements occur. Passages in quotation marks are transcriptions of Wilson's original. The audio was transcribed in August 2004 and the transcript does not reflect any changes to the EPIC website which may have been made since that time. For the original audio see EPIC's website.
Outline/transcript:
I. Wilson's lecture:
A. Opening chit-chat
B. Niger
[1:25: "Let me just start out by saying, as a preface to what I really want to talk about, to those of you who are going out and lobbying tomorrow, I just want to assure you that that American ambassador who has been cited in reports in the New York Times and in the Washington Post, and now in the Guardian over in London, who actually went over to Niger on behalf of the government--not of the CIA but of the government--and came back in February of 2002 and told the government that there was nothing to this story, later called the government after the British white paper was published and said you all need to do some fact-checking and make sure the Brits aren't using bad information in the publication of the white paper, and who called both the CIA and the State Department after the President's State of the Union and said to them you need to worry about the political manipulation of intelligence if, in fact, the President is talking about Niger when he mentions Africa. That person was told by the State Department that, well, you know, there's four countries that export uranium. That person had served in three of those countries, so he knew a little bit about what he was talking about when he said you really need to worry about this. But I can assure you that that retired American ambassador to Africa, as Nick Kristof called him in his article, is also pissed off, and has every intention of ensuring that this story has legs. And I think it does have legs. It may not have legs over the next two or three months, but when you see American casualties moving from one to five or to ten per day, and you see Tony Blair's government fall because in the U.K. it is a big story, there will be some ramifications, I think, here in the United States, so I hope that you will do everything you can to keep the pressure on. Because it is absolutely bogus for us to have gone to war the way we did."]
C. Critique of Bush's four reasons for going to war with Iraq
[Includes statements: 5:13: "Now here in the United States on September 11, 2001, we suffered the lost of two buildings in New York and severe damage to one building in Washington and we suffered the loss of roughly 3,000 lives. In Iraq during the Shock and Awe bombing campaign, we now know that over 3,000 Iraqis were killed. . .and Lord knows how many buildings in downtown Baghdad and elsewhere were destroyed. . .how can we possibly assume that the anger that we felt when 3,000 of our fellow citizens were killed is not going to be felt in spades--not just in Iraq where 3,000 deaths represents to the relative population 10 times the number of deaths we suffered in our terrorist attack; or throughout the rest of the world. . .Of course we didn't find any terrorists when we got to Iraq, just as we haven't yet found any weapons of mass destruction, though on that score I remain of the view that we will find chemical and biological weapons, and we may well find something that indicates that Saddam's regime maintained an interest in nuclear weapons--not surprising if you live in a part of the world where you do have a nuclear-armed country, an enemy of yours, which is just a country away from you.". . .]
D. Argument against military intervention as means of liberation
[Includes statements: 14:05: "But I do know. . .that in order to have a liberation strategy, you have to have people who are willing to fight for their own liberation. Otherwise you will never get that liberation bounce that Ken Adelman promised us--that Richard Perle promised us, when he said that Iraqis would be cheering us from the rooftops at our marching in there." 15:52: "Evidence of that can be found in the Habbaniya gold market today. The price of gold jewelry in Habbaniya is cheaper than it is anywhere else in the world. And that is because the middle class has had to liquidate all their assets. In Iraq, like in many other parts of the world, people keep their assets, their wealth, in gold. . ."
E. Critiques results of war
[Includes statements: 19:00: "And even our military--and I speak to a lot of them; I used to be the political advisor to the commander in chief of US Armed Forces, Europe and I still have contacts in the command--even some of our military officers were absolutely dismayed at the slaughter they were inflicting upon poorly-trained, poorly-equipped Iraqi conscripts on the way up there."]
F. Predictions
[Includes statements: 19:46: "The real agenda in all this, of course, was to redraw the political map of the Middle East. Now that is code, whether you like it or not, but it is code for putting into place the strategy memorandum which was done by Richard Perle and his study group in the mid-90s, which was called 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for the Realm'. And what it is, cut to the quick, is if you take out some of these countries, or some of these governments, that are antagonistic to Israel, then you provide the Israeli government with greater wherewithal to impose its terms and conditions on the Palestinian people. . .But that is the real agenda. You can put weapons of mass destruction out there, you can put terrorism out there, you can put liberation out there. Weapons of mass destruction got hard-headed realists on board, through a bunch of lies. . ."
G. Recommendations
II. Follow-up Q&A discussion:
A. Introduction
B. Three questions taken for McGovern and Wilson: Regular cash payments to Iraqis? Importance of Iraqi middle class to creating democracy? How would Wilson suggest supporters go about implementing his proposals for Iraqi reconstruction?
C. Four questions taken for McGovern and Wilson: Risks to whistleblowers? Geopolitical agenda behind Iraq war to fill power vacuum left by fall of Soviet Union? Recommended talking points for talking to representatives? What do whistleblowers need to do to wake the public up?
8:05: In response to the question about risks to whistleblowers, Wilson refers to self as "the retired American ambassador to Africa who has been talking to the New York Times and the Washington Post".
11:08: In response to the question about what whistleblowers need to do to wake the public up, wherein the questioner mentions that, "You know, the documents are out there, thanks to Mr. [Glen] Rangwala and others, it was out there that this was all a lie, even before the war", McGovern replies that of all the administration's "lies", "the forgery of course is the most flagrant", and then Wilson adds, "on the last one [i.e. on the last question about what whistelblowers need to do], the administration was very careful about only talking, on the forgery, only talking at the Presidential level about uranium sales from Africa, until such time as it came out that they were talking about Niger, and then that was subsequently denied by the State Department, it was difficult to sort of make the case, although I think some of the people inside could have probably talked about it a little bit more openly ahead of time. The real problem with this is how this intelligence was used once it got in the hands of the policymakers, and clearly this was emphasized--the rumor part of it, the RUMINT was emphasized, and the debunking of it was just set aside. I think it probably has legs, too, because of the course the press operates on profits, and if they can make a scandal out of this they'll do it, you know, that'll be great. And you already hear people talking about the 'i' word."
13:33: In response to the question about the geopolitical agenda behind the Iraq war, Wilson replies, "On the other ones, the geopolitical situation, I think there are a number of issues at play; there's a number of competing agendas. One is the remaking of the map of the Middle East for Israeli security, and my fear is that when it becomes increasingly apparent that this was all done to make Sharon's life easier and that American soldiers are dying in order to enable Sharon to impose his terms upon the Palestinians that people will wonder why it is American boys and girls are dying for Israel and that will undercut a strategic relationship and a moral obligation that we've had towards Israel for 55 years. I think it's a terribly flawed strategy."
Regarding the second paragraph in my reply #57 to your #53, please see my follow-up explanation in #60; sorry I accidentally combined my reply to two posts there, and I apologize for any confusion.
Hopefully there is some means to determine when that was originally posted. The natural assumption would be it was posted shortly after the lecture, but in a court of law in this type of case I'd want something solid to substantiate that if I were Fitzgerald. I'd probably subpoena records from EPIC's server and Google's cache, as well as all participants in and all printed materials from the lecture to determine whether Plame's name was disclosed either orally or in print.
While I understand your argument, I'm not sure I agree. If she was covert, nothing Wilson would do would justify "outing" her, by anyone. If the media was looking for confirmation that they believed her to be CIA, anyone up as high as Rove and Libby knows that you can't even take a chance. The CIA will never confirm.
If you're out, you're out--it's like being pregnant --you are or you aren't.In any event the only report that she was "undercover" is from David Corn who wrote (The Nation) of the first articles. Wilson was obviously his anonymous source, and if he told that to Corn, he "outed" his wife. If he didn't, COrn is a liar.
As to what Fitz is going after--DOJ has very strict rules relating to ths issuance and substance of subpoenas to reporters. He can't go beyond the subpoena. And by agreement he can only go into those things named in the subpoena which relate to Libby.
She was not covert. Plame was working at Langley and according to Vainty Fair, most of the folks in the neighborhood seemed to know it. She drove every day to work. She also made political contributions using her cover company.
If the media was looking for confirmation that they believed her to be CIA, anyone up as high as Rove and Libby knows that you can't even take a chance. The CIA will never confirm.
It is my contention that the media was not interested in Wilson's wife, except to confirm Wilson's story that the VP and the CIA sent him to Niger to investigate the sale of uranium to Iraq. The fact that she was involved in the selection process was germane to the Wilson story. The VP's office stated, after the NYT story, that they had not requested the CIA to investigate and had no knowledge of it. Tenet said the same thing, i.e., he didn't direct it nor did he learn of the results.
On July 14, 2003, columnist Robert Novak wondered why Mr. Wilson, who had no intelligence background and strong anti-Bush views, had been selected for the Niger mission. "Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report," he wrote. That set off the Plame name game.
Wilson and the Dems claim that the WH "outed" Plame as retribution for Wilson's NYT article. In point of fact, it was Wilson who invited the media attention on his wife. He made false claims and made the connection to the CIA in his NYT article. He should have never mentioned in a newspaper article that he was acting on behalf of the CIA.
In his NYT article, Wilson stated, "The mission I undertook was discreet but by no means secret. While the C.I.A. paid my expenses (my time was offered pro bono), I made it abundantly clear to everyone I met that I was acting on behalf of the United States government." And he added, "In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau." So the CIA paid his expenses and as soon as he arrived back in DC, the first thing he did was to provide a detailed briefing to the CIA.
We now know that Wilson's NYT article was full of false information, including his conclusions, which actually supported to contention that Iraq and Niger were discussing uranium purchases.
Libby and Rove were rebutting Wilson's story. The fact that Wilson's wife sent him to Niger is a critical element in that rebuttal.
A while back I read that Corn had not been subpoenaed which I find especially curious given that his was the first article to raise the issue over Novak's column. Royce and Phelps who wrote the second article that I know of, were subpoenaed.
I have always found this mysterious friend intriguing. I didn't get the sense it was mutual friend in Wilson's description though:
He had been walking down Pennsylvania Avenue toward my office near the White House when he came upon Novak, who, my friend assumed, was en route to the George Washington University auditorium for the daily taping of CNN’s Crossfire. He asked Novak if he could walk a block or two with him, as they were headed in the same direction; Novak acquiesced. Striking up a conversation, my friend, without revealing that he knew me, asked Novak about the uranium controversy. It was a minor problem, Novak replied, and opined that the administration should have dealt with it weeks before.
Heck, this walking a block with someone is straight out of Whittaker Chamber's Witness. This is how I remember Chambers describing meetings with fellow communists in NYC.
I know! I've always thought that paragraph sounded too cliche like! What reporter (Novak) talks about their story to a stranger before its written?
Wilson had better start practicing his frog-march...
Totally agree. The concern I have is that Judge Tetel in his ruling denying Miller's appeal writes: "Yet the article had that effect precisely because the leaked information—Plame’s covert status—lacked significant news value...Had Cooper based his report on leaks about the leaks—say, from a whistleblower who revealed the plot against Wilson— the situation would be different."
So the judge refers to her as "covert" and then refers to "the plot against Wilson"???? Could it be something in those 8 redacted pages or this just legal talk and meaningless?
Joe Wilson was called by Fitzgerald last week. Somewhere in Freeperworld is an excerpt from an article where he brags of not being called to testify.
The inference of course, is since SP did not call him or contact him in any way, he was as clean as a whistle.
Do we know if he is set to testify?
Why would the SP contact him, unless it was to testify? He would have to be under oath for anything to be relevant, correct?
Of course he would - and would't you like to be a fly on the wall for that?!? If he didn't call him in to testify, the only other reason I can think Fitz would call him would be to ask him something in regards to Miller's upcoming visit today?
Correct. This is the reason why I stated that the reporters already knew the Wilson/Plame connection and were just trying to confirm the story of Wilson's trip. It was not a matter of Libby/Rove outing Plame or confirming that she worked for the CIA. That was really a given. The question was who sent Wilson to Niger and why. The reporters wanted to nail Cheney and Bush for putting out false information in the State of the Union address and manipulating the intelligence.
Exactly. Do you have any links to where Wilson says Cheney sent him..I'm trying to bookmark some of some of this stuff. Thanks!
After reading the article I mentioned, I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that phone call.
(swear & crass alert-not for the offfended)
I bet he sh!t his pants.
This whole story keeps my head spinning.
The initial issue is a no brainer-the spin offs confuse me.
Now there are others, even on FR, who think the President may be indicted. Go figure.
I can only speculate. Here's my hypothesis. If Fitz wants to call him as a witness and no lawyer has formally entered an appearance on his behalf, he may be calling to get the name of his counsel, if any.He was had someone speaking for him but that lawyer is not a criminal lawyer, and I do not know if he was present when Wilson and Plame were initially interviewed. He could just issue a subpoena to Wilson in the case that no lawyer has indicated being his counsel but time is running short.
That's my hypothesis.
This blogger (see below) 'Macsmind' writes of a scenario that several of us have thought about, that the reason Joe Wilson knew about the forged Niger uranium documents is that he had access to them through Valerie (or others in and around the CIA) and that his careless reference to them in relation to his 'report' unveiled that he was playing a dirty game with those such as the VIPS clowns to attack the administration. Details such as whether or not he saw them before his trip or how coordinated the entire plot may have been are less significant than the general point that whoever forged those documents is obviously playing a similar game to Joe Wilson; whether they worked together from the start or converged at some point is a separate issue from the fact that Wilson made an egregious blunder when he referred to the forged documents in explaining his report. Some interesting thoughts here:
___________________________________________________________
http://macsmind.blogspot.com/2005/10/plame-game-end-game.html
Plame Game - End Game
The noose around Joe Wilson and his co-horts necks in the most elaborate scheme ever devised against an Administration, is in fact tightening.
More will be coming in the next couple of days. The key is a familiar part of the story that has been before us all along:
From the Washington Post story recounting the Senate Report that began to knock down Wilson's house of cards last year:
"The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."
"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger."
No one has missed this, it is a bombshell admission (you can't "misspeak this"). The question I have been working on since that time is "How did Joe ...know?"
The fact - the inescapable fact - is that there is no way for Amb. Wilson to have known that UNLESS he KNEW that before he even made the trip because:
1. The docs were forged by rogue CIA (of which his wife played a part).
2. Joe went to Niger in an elaborate plan not to check the story, but provide cover for the story. (a trip his wife arraigned)
The only problem. Wilson and his own ego - and his big mouth.
UPDATE: In a previous post wherein I mentioned VIPS member Ray McGovern, here is some information, from 2003 on Ray and on VIPS connections you may not have heard of. Like walking in waste management plant, there is an unmistakeable stink in all this - you only have to follow the scent to get to the Plame Truth.
Here is an exerpt:
"VIPS does not seem to have a website, but its email is vips@counterpunch.org, and their open letter appears to have been published at CounterPunch (run by Alexander Cockburn, the Nation columnist), an outfit whose staple is stuff comparing Bush to Hitler. VIPS also published an open letter in opposition to the war at Common Dreams back in February. The spokesman for VIPS is Raymond McGovern, a retired CIA analyst. McGovern's email is also at CounterPunch. He is giving a briefing today with Rep. Dennis Kucinich. McGovern has compared the Iraq war to Vietnam, even saying that it could lead to nuclear war. He has charged that if WMDs are found in Iraq, they may well have been planted. He believes Tenet's job is safe because if Tenet were fired, he would reveal that the White House ignored intelligence warnings pre-9/11. McGovern has urged CIA analysts to illegally release (leak) classified documents to show what he believes to be true, specifically citing Daniel Ellsberg.
Another member of the VIPS steering committee is William Christison, who among other things believes that the Bush administration is attempting to colonize the Middle East, jointly with Israel. He believes that the war on terror is being used to turn the US into a military dictatorship. He is also a backer of the left-wing Urgent Call, along with people such as Noam Chomsky, Barbara Kingsolver, Julian Bond, and Jonathan Schell."
If you don't know some of those names, Google them to have the hair stand up on the back of your neck.
I have been "data-mining" Able Danger style, all day long running links between names familiar in this "story". So far I find it amazing, at how many of the names - linked to this case, run back to a very familiar Billionaire financier, George Soros.
The dots aren't completed yet, but the picture is becoming very clear. Again, within the agency, and even now outside there are people who know what happened and don't like it.
UPDATE II: This post explains my preliminary take on the very important link between the two Wilson visits to Niger and how they might relate to the forgeries. Sorry to keep having to add older posts, search features on this "blogger blog" are a lot to be desired.
On an earlier post 'Macsmind' seems to think that Joe Wilson himself was involved in a kind of cover operation since the 1999 trip he made to Niger and may even have obtained the Niger government letterhead used in the forgeries, etc. I don't see a reason for thinking people like Wilson would have set out on such a course before the Bush administration came into office. Maybe I'm missing something but his motivation seems to be rage at the Bush administration for what he views as a wrong-headed set of policies in the Middle East.
Thanks for the ping and the data from the blogger.
Lets hope that the truth comes out and exposes, Wilson, Foley, Plame, the NY Slimes, Martin and others involved in this attempted electronic coup of our president. It the truth does get out on this mess, it will make Rather/Mapes gate look like a walk in the park.
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