Clueless Joe Wilson

Slate ^ | 17 Apr 06 | Christopher Hitchens

[rellimpank]

Nobody appears to dispute what I wrote in last week's Slate to the effect that in February 1999, Saddam Hussein dispatched his former envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, and former delegate to non-proliferation conferences at the United Nations, to Niger. Wissam al-Zahawie was, at the time of his visit, the accredited ambassador of Iraq to the Vatican: a more senior post than it may sound, given that the Vatican was almost the only full European embassy that Iraq then possessed. And nobody has proposed an answer to my question: Given the fact that Niger is synonymous with uranium (and was Iraq's source of "yellowcake" in 1981), and given that Zahawie had been Iraq's main man in nuclear diplomacy, what innocent explanation can be found for his trip

[Enchante]

Good info, thanks! I don't doubt for a second that Niger might have shipped uranium ore to Libya (or a number of other countries) by sea if they thought they could get away with it..... I was only saying that the (apparent) lack of a good road meant that the adjacent location of Libya did not necessarily make it likely that they would obtain their uranium from Niger. However, there are relatively few possible sources, and given the atrocious record of French companies and government with the "oil for food" program, no rational person (that excludes Joe Wilson and his fans) could possibly take any assurances of the French consortium which runs Niger's uranium mines with the slightest confidence. Also, even if high officials were 'clean' that doesn't mean some middle officials in-country couldn't have worked out a scheme to "cook the books" and siphon off some of the ore for their own corrupt purposes. Given that Iraq (and Libya, and other rogue states) would be willing to pay top dollar (nay, perhaps much more than top dollar) for any illicit uranium they could obtain, there were all kinds of motives and incentives for the players to try to deceive the USA. Joe Wilson's naivete (or wilful ignorance) about these matters is one of the most appalling aspects of the whole affair. Then there is the total failure of the MSM to see through him and ask some hard questions.

[nopardons]

I haven't read the rest of the thread, yet, but, IIRC, yes, I do seem to remember that Wilson NOW has some kind of business deal with Niger and Gabon, through his second, FRENCH ex-wife.

[nopardons]

That's what I was thinking of! :-)

[Fedora]

LOL--yep, that's the one :-)

[nopardons]

My memory is usually VERY good, but right now, it's a bit slow at pulling up some exact facts and you know why. LOL

Mail coming your way. :-)

[FreedomCalls]

He's either a double agent (for the French?) or perhaps a rogue agent.

You do know that his ex-wife (Jacqueline Marylene Giorgi), a French citizen and mother of his first children, was accreditied as a French diplomat and assigned to several French embassies overseas in West Africa as, ahem, "cultural liason," right? That's where they met before he married her. They were assigned to the same country, he from the US and she from France.

[BIGLOOK]

"Niger has two commodities ......yellow cake and sand. Iraq already has sand."

Charles Krauthammer

( That's a close recollection of the quote, Dave; don't have it on tape.)

[6SJ7]

You do know that his ex-wife (Jacqueline Marylene Giorgi), a French citizen and mother of his first children, was accreditied as a French diplomat and assigned to several French embassies overseas in West Africa as, ahem, "cultural liason," right? That's where they met before he married her. They were assigned to the same country, he from the US and she from France.

I did not know that. Very interesting!

[Grampa Dave]

I struck on this one, too. Yahoo search can't find the quote.

[aculeus]

BTTT

[Enchante]

URGENT - FREEPER RESEARCHERS NEEDED!! This could be a key to finally breaking open this sordid case. I'm parking these links (at bottom) here for the moment until I have time to research these matters further - but for anyone who has some time, here's a name that is emerging in a HUGE way as a major player in the cesspool inhabited by Joe Wilson and friends:

MARC GROSSMAN!!!

MARC GROSSMAN, the Clinton administration's AMBASSADOR TO TURKEY, was a college classmate of Joe Wilson, served as #2 in our Turkish embassy during the first Gulf War (when Joe Wilson had been in the corresponding position in the neighboring US embassy in Baghdad). There are all sorts of quotes and indications that Grossman has acted ala Larry Johnson behind the scenes with the media, feeding them (highly biased) info quotes to advance Joe Wilson's spin.

Further, Marc Grossman went on to be a senior State Dept. official under Powell and Armitage (advancing to the top of the career foreign service ladder), and is reportedly a KEY WITNESS for Fitzgerald claiming he told Scooter Libby the name of Valerie Pflame.

Remember, this multi-year assault on the WH by Joe Wilson and pals has been all about trying to stop the "Bush Doctrine" in its tracks and force US policy in the Middle East back onto a liberal Clintonite track. All the particulars about Valerie Pflame, etc. are overshadowed by the immense effort behind the scenes and in the media to try to stop Bush from pursuing a policy framework which is unpopular with Arab/Islami governments, the political left, and most of all our own State/CIA liberal bureaucrats.

Marc Grossman may turn out to be the Rosetta Stone that allows us to decipher many separate activities, articles, quotations, etc.

Yes, folks, we have a possible (likely) close crony of Joe Wilson emerging as a high State Dept. official (now retired) who very likely orchestrated a good part of this scam and may even be one of the main people trying to smear Libby (oh, I mean cooperate with the prosecutor, of course).


http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1640


http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/04/widen_the_net.html#comment-16251709

Hate to link the lefty loons at Truthout, but this may actually be a very valuable article for reasons unintended or unforseen by the author:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041406A.shtml

[Enchante]

To all: here are just a couple of the items that the blogger "Aj Strata" has come up with (Marc Grossman has all sorts of points of connection with both Joe Wilson and Rand Beers - remember that Beers headed the foreign policy team for the Kerry campaign and thus was in line for a major FP role in any Kerry administration):

http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/1640

---

Update: Anyone going to be shocked if Grossman knows Rand Beers, the other Kerry campaign worker to know Joe Wilson and his wife! They have travelled together (here), and worked together (here and here), and get quoted together in the same story (opposite sides, here). Why am I not surprised, they both worked for or around State. Is this damniing? Not on its face.

Update: Reading the rantings of Marc Grossman in this latest Leapold piece I think we have found our man. The guy is as obsessed and emotional as Larry Johnson and the VIPS loons. He probably was part of the effort to get back at Bush. It is quite likely he knew the Wilsons and knew of Val’s position. Wilson called friends in State to discuss how to deal with the SOTU. Grossman echoes Wilsons rants line for line. We may have the conspirators who tried to play a sad hoax on the American people throug a compliant and easily fooled media. Read Grossman’s comments and tell me the guy is ‘objective’!

[Howlin]

See #51, please.

[Enchante]

Another useful link - though this article is written with the usual left-spin, it reveals some of the role played by Marc Grossman behind the scenes, with the media, and with the prosecutor:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_jason_le_060414_libby_says_he_can_t_.htm

[Enchante]

Marc Grossman has gone into private life to become Vice-Chair of "The Cohen Group" ..... a bi-partisan international consulting group founded by none other than Bill Clinton's last Secretary of Defense, Bill Cohen:

http://www.cohengroup.net/team-wsc.html

That by itself doesn't prove anything, of course, and Cohen is a RINO not a Dem (arguably RINOs are worse!!), but for one of the chief media hit-men against Libby and the WH to end up in a prominent (presumably very lucrative) position under one of the men most responsible for the international policies of the PREVIOUS administration..... well, there's more than a bit of an odor about that, don't you think?

All of the links I am looking at suggest that at the very least Grossman was an active agent in furthering the asinine "revenge plot" story in the media and with the prosecutor. He is also a crucial, perhaps THE crucial witness for Fitzgerald claiming to have told Libby sensitive info about the oh-so-secret Valerie Pflame.

Libby's defense team seems to be hitting this point hard in a recent court filing, arguing that they need a lot more info from and about Grossman and others at State because Libby says he has no recollection of Grossman telling him anything about Pflame. Of course, even if it were so it does not have the significance that the prosecutor has attributed because the whole case is so bogus, but right now it's Libby's word vs. Grossman's..... so if Grossman does turn out to be any kind of buddy of Joe Wilson, and/or does turn out to have orchestrated any of this garbage behind the scenes, then the case should be thrown out and Grossman and Wilson should be prosecuted instead.

[Enchante]

Marc Grossman is also an excellent candidate for the unnamed senior State Dept. official who, by Wilson's own account (in first Vanity Fair article) urged Wilson to pour oil on the embers of the early controversy (May - July 2003) about WMDs and the SOU address. Was Grossman the one who urged Wilson to go public? My best guess at this time was that it was either Grossman or his immediate superior, Armitage. Both are now known to hate people in the WH and to have worked hard to block Bush initiatives in foreign policy.

[VANITY FAIR}: "Wilson immediately called a couple of people in the government, whose identities he will not divulge—”They are close to certain people in the administration,” he says—and warned them that if Rice would not correct the record he would. One of them, he says, told him to write the story. So at the beginning of July he sat down to write “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.”

[griswold3]

Ditto!!

[griswold3]

"Joe Wilson's naivete (or wilful ignorance) about these matters is one of the most appalling aspects of the whole affair. Then there is the total failure of the MSM to see through him and ask some hard questions."
Saw Hitchens on Hardball. Matthews was a complete asshole as usual when Hitchens tried to explain to Chrissy that Wilson was not being "discredited" but that Wilson was a liar.

[Fedora]

Another State Department member Wilson was in contact with during the SOTU timeframe was Walter Kansteiner from the African division, who had been involved in arranging Wilson's trip to Niger.

[kcvl]

http://www.state.gov/cms_images/grossman_marc.gif


BIOGRAPHY

Marc Grossman
Under Secretary, Political Affairs
Term of Appointment: 03/26/2001 to 02/25/2005

Marc Grossman was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 23, 2001 and sworn in as Under Secretary for Political Affairs on March 26, 2001.

Ambassador Grossman has been a career Foreign Service Officer since 1976. He was Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Human Resources, from June 2000 to February 2001, and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, from August 1997 to May 2000. From November 1994 to June 1997, he served as U.S. Ambassador to Turkey. Prior to this, from January 1993 to September 1994, he was Special Assistant to the Secretary of State and Executive Secretary of the Department of State.

Before assuming these duties, Ambassador Grossman served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs. He was Executive Assistant to Deputy Secretary of State John C. Whitehead, from September 1986 to January 1989.

From 1984 to 1986, Ambassador Grossman was the Deputy Director of the Private Office of Lord Carrington, then Secretary General of NATO.

Other overseas assignments include tours as a political officer at the U.S Mission to NATO and in Islamabad. In Washington, DC he also has served as Deputy Special Adviser to President Carter and in several capacities for the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.

Ambassador Grossman earned a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MSc. in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.