Set up? Anatomy of the contrived Wilson "scandal"

Note to Readers
This article uses excerpts from mainstream news sources to establish how former Amb. Joseph C. Wilson IV morphed over months from the anonymous source of a forgotten CIA-requested report, to theself-described outraged husband at the center of Washington's latest political firestorm. The sources these excerpts are drawn from are extensive and easily could make a fair-sized booklet. Therefore, the excerpts are necessarily tightly focused, and the reader is encouraged to:

Takeoff Point for Controversy
"The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."
State of the Union Address, President George W. Bush, 1/28/03

Background
Mar. 31, 2003: In a lengthy New Yorker article (Who lied to whom?) Seymour Hersh writes: "The Bush Administration's reliance on...Niger documents may...have stemmed from more than bureaucratic carelessness or political overreaching. Forged documents and false accusations have been an element in U.S. and British policy toward Iraq at least since the fall of 1997...President Bill Clinton...hinted of renewed bombing, but...the British and...Americans were losing the battle for international public opinion. A former Clinton Administration official told me that London had resorted to...spreading false information about Iraq. The British propaganda program...was known to a few senior officials in Washington. 'I knew that was going on,' the former Clinton Administration official said of the British efforts."

"The chance for American intelligence to challenge the documents came as the Administration debated whether to pass them on to ElBaradei...A former intelligence officer told me that some questions about the authenticity of the Niger documents were raised inside the government by analysts at the Department of Energy and the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. However, these warnings were not heeded."

" 'Somebody deliberately let something false get in there,' the former high-level intelligence official added. 'It could not have gotten into the system without the agency being involved. Therefore it was an internal intention. Someone set someone up.' "

Bill Moyers interviews Joseph Wilson
Just one month to the day after the SOUA, on Feb. 28, Bill Moyers conducts a lengthy interview of Joseph Wilson for PBS. (Click for full transcript.) This is a golden opportunity (and contemporaneous to the SOUA), yet at no time does Wilson—who claims to have been immediately concerned about the Iraq-Africa reference in the SOUA—raise his concerns with Moyers. In fact, there is exactly one reference to the SOUA and then only in passing as Wilson and Moyers speculate as to what might be Hussein's reaction to the threats of war.

The first published reference to Wilson
Although it keeps bubbling in Leftist/Democrat circles, the story fades publicly until Walter Pincus of the Washington Post writes an article titled "CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data." Published June 12, Pincus writes:

"Armed with information purportedly showing that Iraqi officials had been seeking to buy uranium in Niger...the CIA in early February 2002 dispatched a retired U.S. ambassador to the country to investigate the claims, according to the senior U.S. officials and the former government official...The sources spoke on condition of anonymity and on condition that the name of the former ambassador not be disclosed."

"After returning to the United States, the envoy reported to the CIA that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said...However, the CIA did not include details of the former ambassador's report and his identity as the source, which would have added to the credibility of his findings, in its intelligence reports that were shared with other government agencies. Instead, the CIA only said that Niger government officials had denied the attempted deal had taken place, a senior administration said."

" 'This gent made a visit to the region and chatted up his friends,' a senior intelligence official said, describing the agency's view of the mission. 'He relayed back to us that they said it was not true and that he believed them.' "

"When the British government published an intelligence document on Iraq in September 2002 claiming that Baghdad had 'sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,' the former ambassador called the CIA officers who sent him to Niger and was told they were looking into new information about the claim, sources said. The former envoy later called the CIA and State Department after Bush's State of the Union speech and was told 'not to worry,' according to one U.S. official."

Who would know of, and want these phone calls made public except Wilson? It's clear that Wilson, himself, was the source who called Pincus' attention to his, by then, all-but-forgotten trip to Africa. So it's fair at this point to ask: Why did Wilson plant this nugget about himself in Pincus' story? Was he ticked because his report was not used? Significantly, this veiled reference to himself provided an excuse for Wilson's subsequent outing of himself as the "retired ambassador." Also significantly, without this Pincus story there would have been no curious reporters like Robert Novak to continue the hunt for additional story material—and no opportunity for Mrs. Plame-Wilson to later also be "outed."

Wilson "outs" himself
Note that Pincus reports "the sources" had asked him to keep the name of the "former ambassador" secret, and Pincus complied. Yet just three weeks later, Wilson "outs" himself in his July 6 New York Times article entitled What I Didn't Find in Africa. He begins with the following provocative claim:

"Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq?...Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."

His experience with the administration? Huh?! Some CIA mid-level officials asked him to look into the Iraq-Niger connection a year earlier. He made a report and they filed it. End of his "experience with the administration."

In this NYT article, Wilson goes on to say—with no small touch of conceit: "It was my experience in Africa that led me to play a small role in the effort to verify information about Africa's suspected link to Iraq's nonconventional weapons programs. Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me...In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the [CIA] that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake...by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office."

Note that Wilson does not say what prompted the CIA to select him for this mission beyond his "experience in Africa." Who called his experience to the CIA officials' attention in February 2002? This is a very legitimate question, so Robert Novak was quite right when he tried to find out how a long-time Democrat, former member of Bill Clinton's National Security staff, and contributor to the Al Gore and John Kerry presidential campaigns, was chosen to conduct this mission. And why did the CIA even need to turn to a retired ambassador in the first place? The then-current U.S. ambassador to Niger had also looked into the matter and had come to the same conclusions.

Before he left Niger, Wilson said he briefed the ambassador on his findings. After returning to Washington...he provided "a detailed briefing to the CIA [and]...the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip...Though I did not file a written report..."

Wilson then claims he "thought the Niger matter was settled and went back to my life. (I did take part in the Iraq debate, arguing that a strict containment regime backed by the threat of force was preferable to an invasion.) In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a 'white paper' asserting that...Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country."

If, in 2002, Wilson was so concerned, as he professes today, he could have written an article immediately after the British dossier was published. The subject was the hottest one on the media radar, and he would have had no trouble getting it published that September. Yet he waited about 10 months before writing this NYT piece. Why? In it he tacks on the fresh concern about the President's SOUA (remember, he hadn't said a word about it to Moyers in February). Why?

Wilson continued, "Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa...The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them."

Wilson concludes his NYT piece with the following paragraph. By the way, note how the tenor of his commentary is becoming more harsh. Also note his subtle pique about—from his point of view—the CIA's failure to give his report the weight he expected.

"The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses."

Wilson ratchets up his charges and rhetoric
In a July 6 Washington Post piece titled, "Ex-Envoy: Nuclear Report Ignored," Richard Leiby and Walter Pincus help Wilson get up a head of steam on this story.

(A couple of curiosities: What is the connection between Pincus and Wilson? How is it that Leiby and Pincus have this article all ready to go—complete with harsh quotes from Wilson—ON THE SAME DAY Wilson's article appears in the New York Times?)

The Leiby-Pincus article begins: "Joseph C. Wilson, the retired United States ambassador whose CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002 helped debunk claims that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium there for nuclear weapons, has said for the first time publicly that U.S. And British officials ignored his findings and exaggerated the public case for invading Iraq...'It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war,' Wilson said yesterday. 'It begs the question, what else are they lying about?' "

Again note the ratcheting up of tone—in his own NYT article on the same day, Wilson says IF his report was deemed inaccurate; IF it was ignored then a legitimate argument can be made. In contrast, here it's a declarative statement that the administration misrepresented the facts, and Wilson introduces the entirely unsupported notion that the administration is "lying."

Leiby and Pincus also put this nugget in their piece: "After Bush's speech, Wilson said he contacted the State Department, noted that the Niger story had been debunked and said, 'You might want to make sure the facts are straight.' " Note the similarity and—more importantly—the difference in what Wilson wrote in his own NYT piece:

"The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them."

In concluding their article, Leiby and Pincus write, "Last week, Wilson said of Hussein: 'I'm glad the tyrant is gone.' But he does not believe the war was ever about eliminating Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. It was, he said, a political push to 'redraw the map of the Middle East.' While his family prepared for a Fourth of July dinner, he proudly showed a reporter photos of himself with Bush's parents."

So at least one reporter knew Mrs. Plame-Wilson personally—not only knew her, but shared Fourth of July dinner with her and the Wilson family BEFORE THE NOVAK PIECE. Who in their right mind would take bets at this point that the reporter in question was NOT Pincus?! In fact, the dual statements about the State Department phone call clearly demonstrate that Leiby and Pincus had an advance copy of Wilson's NYT article.

Robert Novak steps into it
Prompted by Wilson's NYT piece and curiosity as to why Wilson was selected for the Niger trip, Robert Novak writes, "Mission to Niger" on July 14. He begins: "The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet's knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided."

"Wilson's report that an Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger was highly unlikely was regarded by the CIA as less than definitive, and it is doubtful Tenet ever saw it. Certainly, President Bush did not, prior to his 2003 State of the Union address, when he attributed reports of attempted uranium purchases to the British government."

Novak briefly discusses background to the Wilson mission, then writes: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. 'I will not answer any question about my wife,' Wilson told me."

Novak also notes: "All this [the Niger trip and Wilson's report] was forgotten until reporter Walter Pincus revealed in the Washington Post...that an unnamed retired diplomat had given the CIA a negative report. Not until Wilson went public...however, did his finding ignite the firestorm...During the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, Wilson had taken a measured public position—viewing weapons of mass destruction as a danger but considering military action as a last resort. He has seemed much more critical of the administration since revealing his role in Niger," Novak observes.

In his conclusion, Novak quotes Wilson: "After the White House admitted error, Wilson declined all television and radio interviews. 'The story was never me,' he told me, 'it was always the statement in (Bush's) speech.' " (Note in the David Corn piece below how this morphs also.)

Oh, really. Never about him, but always about the SOUA statement. This is the same Joseph Wilson who, at the beginning of this saga, said he first became concerned when the British government released its dossier in September 2002. So which is it, Joe?

Hungry for a Bush scandal, the Left leaps
The first charge that the Bush administration "outed" Wilson's wife in order to "punish" him comes in a piece by David Corn in The Nation on July 16—a scant two days after Novak's piece appeared. Titled, "A White House Smear," the piece begins with a suitably inflammatory Leftist spin:

"Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security-and break the law-in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others?...It sure looks that way, if conservative journalist Bob Novak can be trusted."

Of course, Novak neither said nor implied any such thing, but pointing that out wouldn't suit Corn's purpose. Instead, without a shred of evidence, Corn claims, "Wilson caused problems for the White House, and his wife was outed as an undercover CIA officer." Corn then takes the Wilson statement about it "not being about me," and turns it into, "I will not answer questions about my wife. This is not about me and less so about my wife. It has always been about the facts underpinning the President's statement in the state of the union speech." In quotes, no less. So was this a new quote directly from Wilson to Corn, or did Corn deliberately rephrase the original quote in Novak's piece to make it stronger from Corn's point of view? In other words, is Wilson embellishing his tale, or is Corn lying?

In a presumed attempt to write sympathetically of Mrs. Plame-Wilson, Corn then goes on to add insult to a presumed injury by bringing the couple's children into the story: "So he will neither confirm nor deny that his wife—who is the mother of three-year-old twins—works for the CIA. But let's assume she does. That would seem to mean that the Bush administration has screwed one of its own top-secret operatives in order to punish Wilson or to send a message to others who might challenge it."

Corn goes on to say, "The sources for Novak's assertion about Wilson's wife appear to be 'two senior administration officials.' If so, a pair of top Bush officials told a reporter the name of a CIA operative who apparently has worked under what's known as "nonofficial cover" and who has had the dicey and difficult mission of tracking parties trying to buy or sell weapons of mass destruction or WMD material. If Wilson's wife is such a person—and the CIA is unlikely to have many employees like her—her career has been destroyed by the Bush administration. (Assuming she did not tell friends and family about her real job, these Bush officials have also damaged her personal life.) Without acknowledging whether she is a deep-cover CIA employee, Wilson says, 'Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of...Aldrich Ames.' If she is not a CIA employee and Novak is reporting accurately, then the White House has wrongly branded a woman known to friends as an energy analyst for a private firm as a CIA officer."

Corn "assumes" that she did not tell friends and family about her real job, so how does Corn know that she worked under "nonofficial cover?" How does he know what mission she had been assigned? If even the mention of her name and employment with the CIA is so damaging, why did Corn go further than Novak and reveal her cover type and mission? And good heavens, but he now has Wilson saying this is the stuff of Aldrich Ames!

Corn goes on: "Novak tells me that he was indeed tipped off by government officials about Wilson's wife and had no reluctance about naming her. 'I figured if they gave it to me,' he says. 'They'd give it to others....I'm a reporter. Somebody gives me information and it's accurate. I generally use it.' And Wilson says Novak told him that his sources were administration officials."

So yet another curiosity pops up in this saga: In the 10/1/03 article discussing his role, Bob Novak's description of what happened contradicts what, in July, Corn said Novak told him. Was Corn lying then, or was Novak bragging to him then, or is Novak lying now?

In any case, Corn quotes Wilson again: " 'Stories like this,' Wilson says, 'are not intended to intimidate me, since I've already told my story. But it's pretty clear it is intended to intimidate others who might come forward. You need only look at the stories of intelligence analysts who say they have been pressured. They may have kids in college, they may be vulnerable to these types of smears.' "

Note how, between February and July, Wilson's story morphs from no mention during the Moyers interview, to a phone call to State to voice concern, then a statement indicating that he's OK with everything as long as the Administration admitted its SOUA mistake, to the above quote with its suggestion of danger to kids, to where we are today.

Corn ends with the theme we've heard from the Left ever since his article appeared: "The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and misused intelligence to make their case for war. Now there is evidence Bushies used classified information and put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk merely to settle a score. It is a sign that with this gang politics trumps national security."

"A thuggish act?" Evidence? "Put the nation's counter-proliferation efforts at risk to settle a score?" Quite list of assertions, based as they are on zero evidence of any such thing. In fact, when looked at in the sequence above, Wilson seems to have been the person who set up the whole story.

You make a good point about the initial emphasis on Cheney. IIRC the antiwar forces still had a "get Halliburton" orientation at that time, which sort of fizzled later, but during the time period we're discussing it was still a focus.

I don't think Wilson was the mastermind, either, and I wasn't meaning to suggest that he was, just that his handlers may have brought him into the operation even before his reaction to the 2003 SOTU. To fill in some background on his pre-2003 activity: his book mentions discussions he had with Brent Scowcroft shortly after 9/11 where they expressed concerns about neocon influence on Bush's Iraq policy; that would be before his Niger trip, so at least in private conversations with people like Scowcroft he was having that type of discussion already in late 2001. His first public statements opposing action in Iraq were shortly after his Niger trip, in May 2002 at a meeting of Scowcroft’s American-Turkish Council, in conjunction with a presentation by Turkish General Cevik Bir, who expressed views similar to Wilson's during his talk. Wilson had worked with Bir on NATO and Iraq operations when he was stationed in Germany in 1995-1997, and Bir had expressed his criticisms of the US embargo of Iraq to Wilson then, Wilson's book also mentions. When Wilson retired from diplomatic service in 1998 he remained in contact with Middle Eastern contacts he had made during his diplomatic service such as Bir. If there was some link between Wilson's Middle Eastern business contacts and someone at VIPS, that might explain how Wilson got involved with the pro-Palestinian people at VIPS. The link may have been McGovern or perhaps someone else who was a mutual point of contact between Wilson's business circles and VIPS. The first place I'd look would be for someone from VIPS who was in contact with Brent Scowcroft, Cevik Bir, Mohammed Alamoudi, or Elias Aburdene.

1982 : (THIS IS THE YEAR DOUG THOMPSON SAYS HE MET "TERRENCE J WILKINSON" - See CAPITOL HILL BLUE, TRUTHOUT.ORG, NIGERFLAP, 16 WORDS keywords on FR) In 1982, while I was working for Congressman Manuel Lujan of New Mexico, a man came up to a me during a gathering in Albuquerque and introduced himself as Terrance J. Wilkinson. He said he was a security consultant and gave me a business card with his name and just a Los Angeles phone number. A few weeks later, he called my Washington office and asked to meet for lunch. He seemed to know a lot about the nuclear labs in New Mexico and said he had conducted "security profiles" for both Los Alamos and Sandia National Labs. Lujan served on the committee with oversight on both labs and he offered his services if we ever needed briefings.
We already had nuclear experts on the committee, on loan from the Department of Energy, and we never used Wilkinson for briefings but we kept in touch over the years. He said he had served in Vietnam with Army Special Force, worked for Air America, later for the FBI and as a consultant for the CIA. He said he had helped other Republican members of Congress I called some friends in other GOP offices and they said yes, they knew Terry Wilkinson. "You can trust him, he's one of the good guys," one chief of staff [*My note: anonymously?]told me. When I left politics and returned to journalism, Wilkinson became a willing, but always unnamed, source.
Over the last couple of years, Wilkinson served as either a primary or secondary source on a number of stories that have appeared in Capitol Hill Blue regarding intelligence activities. In early stories, I collaborated his information with at least one more source. His information usually proved accurate and, over time, I came to depend on him as a source without additional backup.
...Today, a White House source I know and trust said visitor logs don't have any record of anyone named Terrance J. Wilkinson ever being present at a meeting with the President. Then a CIA source I trust said the agency had no record of a contract consultant with that name. "Nobody, and I mean nobody, has ever heard of this guy," my source said.
I tried calling Terry's phone number. I got a recorded message from a wireless phone provider saying the number was no longer in service. I tried a second phone number I had for him. Same result.
Then a friend from the Hill called. "You've been had," she said. "I know about this guy. He's been around for years, claiming to have been in Special Forces, with the CIA, with NSA. He hasn't worked for any of them and his name is not Terrance Wilkinson."
Both of his phone numbers have Los Angeles area codes but an identity check through Know-X today revealed no record of anyone named Terrance J. Wilkinson ever having lived in LA or surrounding communities.
His email address turns out to be a blind forward to a free email service where anyone can sign up and get an email account. Because it was not one of the usual "free" services like Hotmail, Yahoo or such, I did not recognize it as one (although you'd think that someone like me would have known better).
The bottom line is that someone has been running a con on me for 20 some years and I fell for it like a little old lady in a pigeon drop scheme. I've spent the last two hours going through the database of Capitol Hill Blue stories and removing any that were based on information from Wilkinson (or whoever he is). I've also removed his name, quotes and claims from Tuesday's story about the White House and the uranium claims.
Erasing the stories doesn't erase the fact that we ran articles containing informattion that, given the source, were most likely inaccurate. And it doesn't erase the sad fact that my own arrogance allowed me to be conned. It will be a long time (and perhaps never) before I trust someone else who comes forward and offers inside information. The next one who does had better be prepared to produce a birth certificate, a driver's license and his grandmother's maiden name. Any news publication exists on the trust of its readers. Because I depended on a source that was not credible, I violated the trust that the readers of Capitol Hill Blue placed in me. I was wrong. I am sorry. -------- 'BREAKING: Conned big time "CIA Witness" to White House Lying about Intel story found to be FRAUD,' by Doug Thompson, Capitol Hill Blue, July 9, 2003, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/943260/posts

[* My note : Note that "Marc Ash of ArtFix.com and Truthout.org fame has LA phone numbers on his whois site registration" and that Truthout is the site which forwarded the Cap Hill Blue article to Japan Today without accredation, and put the whole Wilson story into international news from which CNN apparently picked it up. CNN curiously left out mention of T J Wilkinson's name]

Also see the spelling "Wilkinsson"

He went to Niger in February 2002. His op-ed came out on July 6, 2003. He spoke to a few reporters anonymously in between those dates.

The Italian reporter came out in July 2003 and said she had earlier obtained the forged Niger documents and turned them over to "US diplomats."

July was when portions of the NIE were declassified.

July 1 was when Blix retired.

July 2, 2003 HIllary Clinton was in Paris peddling her book and...Chirac's wife said she would support a Hillary presidential run.

On July 4th 2003 Wilson and Valerie had reporters over to his house according to the Wash Post's Leiby & Pincus, who wrote that he showed a reporter some photos of himself with Bush's parents. Note that Wilson's contact with reporters came before Novak's article.

On July 5, 2003 Waxman wrote letter to Bush "outlining a letter he received from the International Atomic Energy Agency regarding the forged Niger documents. The letter "raises new questions about why the administration withheld the evidence from the IAEA for over six crucial weeks in December and January and - even then - failed to share the conclusions of U.S. intelligence officials that the evidence was bogus."

[* My note: Why would some unknown person in the IAEA contact Henry Waxman, and not, say, the President? Rumsfeld? Condi Rice? The US UN ambassador? The Senate intelligence committee? Judging from this, the IAEA was ticked off because it wanted information the US didn't want to give it. Now why would the IAEA want US intel? How did it know the US had intel it wanted? How would the IAEA know what the conclusions of "US intelligence officials" were if the US "intelligence officials" weren't giving intel to the IAEA?]

July 6 was when Wilson's op ed was published.

July 7, 2003 Bush leaves for Africa

JULY 8, 2003 : (CAPITOL HILL BLUE PUBLISHES DOUG THOMPSON ARTICLE UNDER THE TITLE "White House Admits Bush Lied About Iraqi Nukes" - See the mythical "TERRENCE J WILKINSON")
The bold headline was backed by an equally assertive lead-in, which stated "After weeks of denial, the White House Monday finally admitted President Bush lied in his January State of the Union Address when he claimed Iraq had sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa." This assertion went far beyond what other news organizations were reporting, which was that the Bush administration had admitted that the claim made in the State of the Union Address was based on information the President later found to be unreliable. There were other eye-raising details in the story, however.
The article quoted a "CIA advisor" named Terrance J. Wilkinson, claiming he had been present at two White House briefings attended by the President. "The report had already been discredited," the story quoted Wilkinson as stating. "This point was clearly made when the president was in the room during at least two of the briefings" said Wilkinson, who claimed Bush responded in anger. "He said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn't prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could," the Capitol Hill Blue story continued Wilkinson's quote. "He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured the country." Wilkinson claimed to have written "numerous memos" questioning the use of "intelligence information that we knew to be from dubious sources." While American troops continue to search Iraq for a smoking gun regarding weapons of mass destruction, these allegations, if true, would be the smoking gun the left wing of American politics has been searching for in their quest to discredit the Bush administration.
- by freeper William McKinley, GAMES PEOPLE PLAY, July 10, 2003

RAY MCGOVERN: "We have indeed. There have been a few courageous people who have stood on principle at some personal cost. Ironically, we intelligence professionals, we, unfairly, we tend to dismiss foreign service officers as knee-jerk mouthpieces for the administration. Well, three such foreign service officers have stood on principle and have quit, some of them before the war ever started, and they have issued eloquent statements as to how their conscience would not permit them to have to tell these lies to folks, to try to rally support for an unjust US policy. There is Andrew Wilke in Australia, an incredible person whom Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity had to this country. We all chipped in and paid for his fare. He spoke in Congress at one of the congressional hearings. Andrew quit the Office of National Assessments in Australia, which is the CIA counterpart, eight days before the war, because he could no longer countenance his country going into a war on the basis of intelligence that he saw to be bogus." -------- “The Crazies Are Back”: Bush Sr.’s CIA Briefer Discusses How Wolfowitz & Allies Falsely Led the U.S. To War," discussion, Wednesday, September 17th, 2003, http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=03/09/17/1543215 [leftwing wacko source]

I'm behind today, so I'll catch up on several posts at once here:

Wendy, yes, I remember VIPS asking for Scowcroft to head the investigation. They got a lot of propaganda mileage out of his editorial, also.

Thanks for the McGovern links. I notice he also cites Vincent Cannistraro, who would be a link to pre-VIPS propaganda agents. On previous threads we've discussed some indicators Lyndon LaRouche's organization is playing a role in coming up with some of the neocon conspiracy theories being disseminated by VIPS and like sources. I think that would fit in with the observation on the pro-Palestinian slant of VIPS.

You and piasa are both recalling different parts of what was reported on how Wilson met Plame: Wilson met her while receiving an American-Turkish Council award during a reception at the Turkish embassy in Washington, according to pp. 240-241 of his book.

On Wilkinson:

He said he had served in Vietnam with Army Special Force, worked for Air America, later for the FBI and as a consultant for the CIA.

Is there anyone he says he didn't work for?--LOL. He was probably Deep Throat's secret source, too :-)

Piasa, your point that they are also opposing the Office of Special Plans at the Pentagon is good to bear in mind as well. Basically, I think they're opposing anyone in any department whose Middle Eastern policies are at odds with their goals on Israeli-Palestinian relations and a few other key issues. They also seem to oppose anyone in CIA or its Middle Eastern assets linked to Woolsey, Chalabi, or Ghorbanifar (as far as I can tell--I'm still trying to figure out exactly what the deal with the latter two is). I think underlying this are some long-term dynamics within the intelligence community in the Middle East that trace back to the era of the Iran-Contra operation. My own suspicion is that the big players pulling Wilson's strings from behind the scenes are linked to the same group that was involved in compromising William Buckley, etc. Figuring into the Buckley kidnapping were the narcoterrorist networks of Imad Fayez Mugniyah and Monzer Al-Kassar, which is getting into the territory of BCCI and threatens to wander off into Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, but we can reign it in and bring it back within two degrees of Joseph Wilson through Wilson's Rock Creek associate Elias Aburdene. It seems to be a short skip from Rock Creek to BCCI.

Piasa, good observations on the convergence of events in July 2003. This seems to help explain the timing of Wilson's op-ed.

I wonder what Wilke was doing before he got involved with VIPS.

Definitely there is a long-term feud coming into play here, between the neocons who never trusted Saddam and wanted to oust him from the beginning, and a group in the intelligence community who believed he could be turned into an ally because of his lack of religious fervor.

I have some suspicions regarding the timing of Wilson coming out, but I don't know if I'd ever be able to confirm them. Apparently there was British intelligence we weren't supposed to have access to, but did. So we couldn't openly admit that we hadn't based the SOTU speech partially on the Niger documents--thus all the mea culpas for using them, when in reality they didn't come into play. But the UK was working to officially get permission for us to see that intel from the third party they got it from. This is something I've heard--don't know how much truth there is to it. If it is, this would all have to come out before that or there would be no value to it because we wouldn't have to pretend we'd relied on them...

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