Posted on 06/01/2007 10:40:44 AM PDT by kellynla
WASHINGTON -- In a rare rebuke of a public official by name, the Senate Select Intelligence Committee has issued a scathing report blasting former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV.
The report claims Wilson mislead the public and the intelligence committee about his trip to Niger in 2002 on behalf of the CIA to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium in Africa.
Best know as the husband of former CIA officer Valerie Plame, Ambassador Wilson was catapulted to the limelight after he published an Op-Ed in The New York Times on July 6, 2003, that accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence on Iraq to make the case for war.
In his New York Times article, Wilson said that in February 2002 he was asked by the Central Intelligence Agency to travel to Niger to investigate "a particular intelligence report" that documented the sale of uranium to Iraq by the Niger government.
The CIA wanted him to "check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office," after Vice President Dick Cheney had raised questions about the purported uranium deals, he wrote.
Once he arrived in Niger's capital, Niamey, Wilson says he met with U.S. Ambassador Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, then "spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea" and meeting with former government officials and others involved in the uranium business. "It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place."
And that is what he reported back to the CIA and to the State Department African Affairs Bureau, Wilson wrote. But according to the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation, released last Friday, much of what Wilson wrote in the article, and has said since, about the trip "is not true."
Wilson wrote to the committee in July 2004 when they released an exhaustive investigation into the Niger uranium story that included the finding that he had been sent to Niger at the suggestion of his wife. Wilson claimed that was "not true."
At the time, the Committee did not release the full text of the e-mail sent by Valerie Plame on Wilson to her superior that recommended him for the job, "thinking it was unnecessary in light of the other evidence" they had made public.
But now, "considering the controversy surrounding this document," the Senate committee decided to make the full text available to the public. The Valerie Plame e-mail shows without any doubt that she recommended her husband for the mission in Niger.
After recounting an earlier fact-finding mission he had carried out in Niger for the Agency, as well as his good contacts "with both the [prime minister] and the former minister of mines," she concluded by saying that her husband "may be in a position to assist. Therefore, request your thoughts on what, if anything to pursue here."
In sworn testimony before the House committee on Oversight and Government Reform in March of this year, however, Plame denied categorically that she had suggested her husband's name. "I did not recommend him. I did not suggest him," she said.
It was Valerie Plame's recommendation for the mission that caught the eye of Vice President Dick Cheney when Wilson's Op-Ed first appeared and ultimately led to the Special Counsel investigation into how her name — supposed classified — was "leaked" to the press.
The committee found that internal intelligence community notes of meetings in which Valerie Plame participated "did not mark her name with a (C) as would be required to indicate that her association with the CIA was classified," as both Plame and her husband have said. These aren't the only instance where Wilson's account did not square with the facts, the senators found.
Wilson has said in his book and in numerous public appearances that reports he reviewed from the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, "indicated that there was nothing to the Niger-Iraq uranium story . . . This too is untrue," the committee found. On the contrary, Owens-Kirkpatrick wrote a cable to the State Department which said that the initial CIA reporting of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal "provides sufficient details to warrant another hard look at Niger's uranium sales."
Although Nigerien officials insisted in meetings with the Americans that no uranium would be sold to rogue nations, "we should not dismiss out of hand the possibility that some scheme could be, or has been, underway to supply Iraq with yellowcake from here," she wrote.
Perhaps the most damning conclusion of the Senate report has been known for nearly three years, but has remained classified until now. In the initial July 2004 report, the Senate committee reported that the intelligence community "used or cleared the Niger-Iraq uranium intelligence fifteen times before the President's State of the Union address and four times after, saying in several papers that Iraq was ‘vigorously pursuing uranium from Africa.'"
Despite that finding, Democrats led by Michigan Sen. Carl Levin blasted President Bush for the "16 words" in the January 2003 speech that described Iraq's efforts to acquire uranium from Africa, calling them an effort to "cherry-pick" intelligence and to "mislead" the country and the world in a "rush to war."
In fact, the U.S. intelligence community continued to believe in the veracity of the Niger uranium story for many months after the speech, and didn't call back its original reporting until June 2003 — well after the liberation of Iraq.
And will he pardon Valerie Plame? :)
with a dull knife
I hope Valerie Plame gets her just rewards. That would not include a pardon of any kind, but the most severe punishment possible. A weekend with Jimmy Carter and Rosie O’Donnell.
The committee is controlled by the Dems now. I guess it takes a Dem to issue a scathing report.
I hope we don’t have to wait until Jan 09 for President F.D. Thompson to issue the pardon along with the ones for the border control agents.
reminds me of a Richard Pryor routine about how teens fight now, compared to back in his day. “You go out there with this old $h!t (dukes up, Marquess of Queensbury style), and they’ll just kick you in the nuts.” Problem with the analogy is that not many Republicans have anything down there to get kicked.
Oh, those people have no power.
People who have power like, I don’t know Ken Melman for example, get their pink panties in a bunch whenever the college Repubs do something cool.
Can anyone locate this report other than the coverage here on Newsmax?
I never thought I would say this, but what is the White House thinking? Is Bush really this stupid? Who is filtering out all the calls, faxes and emails to complain? Do they never talk to the voters? Do they really think we will just roll over?
this is worth emailing to all the media and talk radio!!
Why didn’t they do this a couple of years ago??
Break some lives and this ilk will restrain itself more. Wilson knew all along there would be no real price for his antics. Put a price on it, and his compatriots will be less likely to do similar stuff.
Bankrupt them, ruin them, take their house, send some stud over to seduce his wife, break up his marriage, make his children cry, etc.
Until GOPers find the stones to ruin people in this way, they will continue to be the ones getting ruined.
The Bush administration has known all along that Wilson lied. It took longer to nail down his wife’s lie about who suggested him for the Niger trip.
That he was lying was the whole reason the VP and others were trying to refute him and wound up falling into the trap which rogue CIA elements had set for them. They got accused of trying to punish Wilson by “outing” his wife. When that charge wouldn’t hold trial water, Libby was charged with lying and covering up during an investigation. for which he was convicted.
The legal process has played out this far, all the while with the Bush admin. knowing Wilson was lying. So assuming a pardon seems a big assumption, unless Bush would decide to say that the Wilsons got off scot free despite lying, therefore Libby shouldn’t be tagged for it (whether he lied or not).
Yeah, you're right. That would be cruel and inhumane punishment.
College repubs seldom do cool things. Not a lot of wisdom intheir ranks, sad to say.
I’m not talking about doing an affirmative action cookie sale. I’m talking about locking on to a serious political enemy and just ruining their life.
Whatever.
Perjury hurts if you do it before a grand jury, but you can lie with impunity to the powerless pissants of Congress, and then laugh in their faces. Nothing will happen to Plame or Wilson.
At the rate Bush is going, by the time he gets around to giving a pardon he will have no constituency left that will appreciate it.
I find the GOP rank & file to be notably weak in this area, too.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.