The CIA gave the SSCI enough to prove that Wilson was lying in several particulars, so why did they hold back on these documents showing that the Wilson trip pre-dated the VP's request for more info?
I'll indulge in some rank speculation.
To protect themselves - the bureaucratic prime directive.
But from what?
From disclosure that the CIA was running an active disinformation op and "silent coup" against the WH and Cheney in particular. Wilson was sent out with the mission of first inducing reliance upon and then discrediting the African uranium reports. Like the forgeries themselves, he was intended to suck people into relying on his actual substantiation of Iraqi uranium scouting in Afrida, and to then repudiate it and pull the rug out from under them and discredit them. The CIA sent him. The CIA let him lie in the NYT. The CIA very reluctantly on a Friday evening issued a statement contradicting Wilson. The CIA first supported the 16 words, but then withdrew the support when it was completely unnecessary to do so, severely discrediting the President. The CIA resisted decassifying NIE portions that discredited Wilson, but was obviated by the President's declassification decision - a decision that was kept from the CIA at first. It was Tenet who first said Iraqi WMD was a slam dunk but later allowed Wilson to spread his lies, and later demanded a DOJ criminal prosecution over the WH's rebuttal of Wilson's lies. The target of that referral was Cheney.
The President might want to ask Tenet to give back that Medal of Freedom.
BTW, my speculation is incompatible with Occam's razor; take with appropriate doses of skepticism.
There has to be a reason why Wilson avoided a paper trail. Wilson avoided turning in a written report to CIA when he returned from Niger. Instead, Wilson (or Plame), arranged for some low level CIA wienies to go to his house and he dictated an after-action report to them.
And it was Tenet who issued a mea culpa without revealing that Wilson's report had actually lent substance to the reports about Iraq trying to acquire yellowcake from Niger.
There can be only two reasons for this: 1.) ignorance of the activities of his own organization, or 2.) a malignant intent to undermine the President's position from the very outset.
Great summation.
There were also the accusations that the VP was forcing CIA to shape intelligence to his liking before it was presented to the President. That never made sense to me -- until now.
It makes me think of the CIA like the old Mission: Impossible series... The agents would surround the (usually) 3rd World governments with an artificial reality, duping them into behaving against their own interests and then springing a trap.
Because Cheney operates by his own consistent intentions and procedures, he wasn't taken in. But that didn't stop Wilson and the Press (and Fitzgerald) from springing the trap.
Hence all of this current chaos and confusion....
The MSM has been quoting officials of the CIA from the beginning. That is why they stick to the story. They don't want to believe otherwise and will not bother to dig the information. There will have to be something to discredit the very people leaking the info, or proof identifying the actual leaker of this bogus story.
Nailed it!
The bottom line. The CIA is a rogue agency.
FYI...the statement the MSM has been making:
On July 18, 2003, the administration, facing criticism for the intelligence used to justify the war, declassified an eight-page part of the NIE dubbed "key judgments" and conducted a lengthy background briefing with reporters to discuss it.“Key judgments" is the operative word here. They were declassified by Tenet in October of 2002, six days after the NIE was complete per the following information:
On October 7, 2002 DCI Tenet sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee declassifying portions of its new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.
More articles:
A 25-page version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was released in October 2002. It made clear-cut statements about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities in two pages of "Key Judgments."The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." - Statement of Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL).
A copy of the Key Judgments document can be found here. Warning: .pdf file.
As usual, the MSM gets it wrong. The declassification was requested by the Dems and Tenet approved it, way before the MSM says it was done.
Interesting line of thought. At this point I tend to think the CIA coup attempt against Bush/Cheney came from a couple notches below Tenet in the chain of command, but there are a few missing pieces of information I think would be needed to state that with confidence. I'll be posting something else shortly with some thoughts on where I think the anti-Cheney faction of the Agency was concentrated, will ping you when I do.