Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Bush administration intentionally reveals undercover CIA operative
JULY 30, 2003
JOSH MARSHALL
Investigation? No, Bush should pick up the phone
Enough already. Enough excuse-making.
We know that two senior members of the Bush administration intentionally blew the cover of an undercover CIA officer whose job is combating weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation. And their motivation was pure politics.
The president should find out who they are, reprimand them or, preferably, fire them. But instead of being outraged, he doesn’t even seem to care.
In case you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, let me explain.
You know about Joe Wilson, the retired diplomat who traveled to Niger at the request of the CIA last year to get to the bottom of those claims about uranium sales to Iraq. Wilson says the White House disregarded or ignored his report debunking the allegations because it weakened their case that Saddam was rapidly rebuilding his nuclear weapons program.
After he went public with his charges in a New York Times op-ed article, the White House did all it could discredit Wilson’s mission by portraying him as a small-time operator whose investigation amounted to little. That’s no surprise, I guess. We’re all adults in this town. And if Wilson was going to hold the White House to account in public, he had to expect he’d get hit back.
But they didn’t stop there. To get back at Wilson, they blew the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative specializing in tracking other countries’ efforts to acquire WMD.
How do we know this? Because two weeks ago syndicated columnist Robert Novak fingered Wilson’s wife as an “Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction” on the say-so of “two senior administration officials.” They told him Plame had suggested Wilson for the job.
Now, as it happens, it’s not even clear that this charge — that Wilson’s wife got him the gig in Niger — is true. The more relevant point, however, is that two senior administration officials publicized her identity which they almost certainly knew only because of their access to government secrets.
Consider what that means.
CIA agents work under different sorts of “cover.” There’s “official cover” — like when an agent is assigned to a U.S. embassy under the guise that he or she is a foreign service officer. Then there’s “nonofficial” cover — like when your business cards say you’re a manager at Acme Overseas Energy Corporation, but you really work for the CIA.
Plame is in that latter category.
By telling the world who she really works for, those senior administration officials not only jeopardized her career, they also compromised whatever operations she may have worked on, whatever networks she may have developed or relationships she may have cultivated. According to one highly-respected retired CIA officer who I spoke to Monday, revealing the identity of a “NOC” like Plame could literally put the lives of those who cooperated with her at risk. To reveal her identity, he told me, was “grossly irresponsible.”
Some of the White House’s spinners have been putting out the word that Plame may not that been that covert an agent after all. So maybe broadcasting her identity wasn’t such a big deal. This isn’t that easy an argument to refute since, precisely because Plame is a covert agent, it’s difficult to find out just what she does or precisely what her status is.
My sources tell me that Plame formerly worked abroad under nonofficial cover and has more recently worked stateside. Her position today may be less sensitive than it was when she worked abroad. But she still works on WMD proliferation issues. And, at a minimum, any operation that she may once have been involved in is probably now fatally compromised, any company which provided her cover is now exposed.
However that may be, though, just how deep undercover does a CIA operative have to be before blowing her cover becomes a problem?
So far, the White House’s reaction has been awfully weaselly. When pressed, Scott McClellan told reporters: “I’m saying no one was certainly given any authority to do anything of that nature, and I’ve seen no evidence to suggest there’s any truth to it.”
Frankly, I think Novak’s column gives us plenty of evidence. But who cares whether Andy Card signed off on it or not. It never should have happened at all — not least of which because it probably violated federal law. No one at the White House should think it’s okay to use the privileged information vouchsafed to them for national security reasons to settle political scores. And, after all, I thought WMD proliferation was something were concerned about.
To date, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have called for investigations and any number of other senators have told reporters that some sort of inquiry is probably in order. But let’s be honest. We don’t really need any investigations, with all their depositions and fancy lawyers and public grandstanding. If the president wanted to, he could wrap this up with a few quick phone calls. So why doesn’t he?
A few years back, this town sped into paroxysms over claims that the Clinton White House had used FBI files to smear its critics. Even according to Ken Starr, those charges turned out to be baseless. This outrage, on the other hand, actually happened. And, when you think about it, that sort of makes it worse.
JOSH MARSHALL
Investigation? No, Bush should pick up the phone
Enough already. Enough excuse-making.
We know that two senior members of the Bush administration intentionally blew the cover of an undercover CIA officer whose job is combating weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation. And their motivation was pure politics.
The president should find out who they are, reprimand them or, preferably, fire them. But instead of being outraged, he doesn’t even seem to care.
In case you’re not familiar with what I’m talking about, let me explain.
You know about Joe Wilson, the retired diplomat who traveled to Niger at the request of the CIA last year to get to the bottom of those claims about uranium sales to Iraq. Wilson says the White House disregarded or ignored his report debunking the allegations because it weakened their case that Saddam was rapidly rebuilding his nuclear weapons program.
After he went public with his charges in a New York Times op-ed article, the White House did all it could discredit Wilson’s mission by portraying him as a small-time operator whose investigation amounted to little. That’s no surprise, I guess. We’re all adults in this town. And if Wilson was going to hold the White House to account in public, he had to expect he’d get hit back.
But they didn’t stop there. To get back at Wilson, they blew the cover of his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA operative specializing in tracking other countries’ efforts to acquire WMD.
How do we know this? Because two weeks ago syndicated columnist Robert Novak fingered Wilson’s wife as an “Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction” on the say-so of “two senior administration officials.” They told him Plame had suggested Wilson for the job.
Now, as it happens, it’s not even clear that this charge — that Wilson’s wife got him the gig in Niger — is true. The more relevant point, however, is that two senior administration officials publicized her identity which they almost certainly knew only because of their access to government secrets.
Consider what that means.
CIA agents work under different sorts of “cover.” There’s “official cover” — like when an agent is assigned to a U.S. embassy under the guise that he or she is a foreign service officer. Then there’s “nonofficial” cover — like when your business cards say you’re a manager at Acme Overseas Energy Corporation, but you really work for the CIA.
Plame is in that latter category.
By telling the world who she really works for, those senior administration officials not only jeopardized her career, they also compromised whatever operations she may have worked on, whatever networks she may have developed or relationships she may have cultivated. According to one highly-respected retired CIA officer who I spoke to Monday, revealing the identity of a “NOC” like Plame could literally put the lives of those who cooperated with her at risk. To reveal her identity, he told me, was “grossly irresponsible.”
Some of the White House’s spinners have been putting out the word that Plame may not that been that covert an agent after all. So maybe broadcasting her identity wasn’t such a big deal. This isn’t that easy an argument to refute since, precisely because Plame is a covert agent, it’s difficult to find out just what she does or precisely what her status is.
My sources tell me that Plame formerly worked abroad under nonofficial cover and has more recently worked stateside. Her position today may be less sensitive than it was when she worked abroad. But she still works on WMD proliferation issues. And, at a minimum, any operation that she may once have been involved in is probably now fatally compromised, any company which provided her cover is now exposed.
However that may be, though, just how deep undercover does a CIA operative have to be before blowing her cover becomes a problem?
So far, the White House’s reaction has been awfully weaselly. When pressed, Scott McClellan told reporters: “I’m saying no one was certainly given any authority to do anything of that nature, and I’ve seen no evidence to suggest there’s any truth to it.”
Frankly, I think Novak’s column gives us plenty of evidence. But who cares whether Andy Card signed off on it or not. It never should have happened at all — not least of which because it probably violated federal law. No one at the White House should think it’s okay to use the privileged information vouchsafed to them for national security reasons to settle political scores. And, after all, I thought WMD proliferation was something were concerned about.
To date, Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) have called for investigations and any number of other senators have told reporters that some sort of inquiry is probably in order. But let’s be honest. We don’t really need any investigations, with all their depositions and fancy lawyers and public grandstanding. If the president wanted to, he could wrap this up with a few quick phone calls. So why doesn’t he?
A few years back, this town sped into paroxysms over claims that the Clinton White House had used FBI files to smear its critics. Even according to Ken Starr, those charges turned out to be baseless. This outrage, on the other hand, actually happened. And, when you think about it, that sort of makes it worse.
Friday, July 25, 2003
CIA probe finds secret Pentagon group manipulated intelligence on Iraqi threat
CIA probe finds secret Pentagon group manipulated intelligence on Iraqi threat
By Jason Leopold
Online Journal Assistant Editor
July 25, 2003—A half-dozen former CIA agents investigating prewar intelligence have found that a secret Pentagon committee, set up by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2001, manipulated reams of intelligence information prepared by the spy agency on the so-called Iraqi threat and then delivered it to top White House officials who used it to win support for a war in Iraq.
The former CIA agents were asked to examine prewar intelligence last year by Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet. The former agents will present a final report on their findings to the Pentagon, the CIA and possibly Congress later this year. More than a dozen calls to the White House, the CIA, the National Security Council and the Pentagon for comment were not returned.
The ad hoc committee, called the Office of Special Plans, headed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and other Pentagon hawks, described the worst-case scenarios in terms of Iraq's alleged stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and claimed the country was close to acquiring nuclear weapons, according to four of the CIA agents, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the information is still classified, who conducted a preliminary review of the intelligence.
The agents said the Office of Special Plans is responsible for providing the National Security Council and Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and Rumsfeld with the bulk of the intelligence information on Iraq's weapons program that turned out to be wrong. But White House officials used the information it received from the Office of Special Plans to win support from the public and Congress to start a war in Iraq even though the White House knew much of the information was dubious, the CIA agents said.
For example, the agents said the Office of Special Plans told the National Security Council last year that Iraq's attempt to purchase aluminum tubes were part of a clandestine program to build an atomic bomb. The Office of Special Plans leaked the information to the New York Times last September. Shortly after the story appeared in the paper, Bush and Rice both pointed to the story as evidence that Iraq posed a grave threat to the United States and to its neighbors in the Middle East, even though experts in the field of nuclear science, the CIA and the State Department advised the White House that the aluminum tubes were not designed for an atomic bomb.
Furthermore, the CIA had been unable to develop any links between Iraq and the terrorist group al-Qaeda. But under Feith's direction, the Office of Special Plans came up with information of such links by looking at existing intelligence reports that they felt might have been overlooked or undervalued. The Special Plans office provided the information to the Pentagon and to the White House. During a Pentagon briefing last year, Rumsfeld said he had "bulletproof" evidence that Iraq was harboring al-Qaeda terrorists.
At a Pentagon news conference last year, Rumsfeld said of the intelligence gathered by Special Plans, "Gee, why don't you go over and brief George Tenet? So they did. They went over and briefed the CIA. So there's no there's no mystery about all this."
CIA analysts listened to the Pentagon team, nodded politely, and said, "Thank you very much," said one government official, according to a July 20 report in the New York Times. That official said the briefing did not change the agency's reporting or analysis in any substantial way.
Several current and former intelligence officials told the Times that they felt pressure to tailor reports to conform to the administration's views, "particularly the theories Feith's group developed."
Moreover, the agents said the Office of Special Plans routinely rewrote the CIA's intelligence estimates on Iraq's weapons programs, removing caveats such as "likely," "probably" and "may" as a way of depicting the country as an imminent threat. The agents would not identify the names of the individuals at the Office of Special Plans who were responsible for providing the White House with the wrong intelligence. But, the agents said, the intelligence gathered by the committee sometimes went directly to the White House, Cheney's office and to Rice without first being vetted by the CIA.
In cases where the CIA's intelligence wasn't rewritten the Office of Special Plans provided the White House with questionable intelligence it gathered from Iraqi exiles from the Iraqi National Congress, a group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, a person who the CIA has publicly said is unreliable, the CIA agents said.
More than a dozen CIA agents responsible for writing intelligence reports for the agency told the former CIA agents investigating the accuracy of the intelligence reports they were pressured by the Pentagon and the Office of Special Plans to hype and exaggerate intelligence to show Iraq as being an imminent threat to the security of the U.S.
The White House has been dogged by questions for nearly a month on whether the intelligence information it had relied upon was accurate and whether top White House officials knowingly used unreliable information to build a case for war. The furor started when George W. Bush said in his January State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium ore from Africa. Bush credited British intelligence for the claims, but the intelligence was based on forged documents. The Office of Special Plans is responsible for advising the White House to allow Bush to use the uranium claims in his speech, according to Democratic Senators and a CIA agent who are privy to classified information surrounding the issue.
CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility last week for allowing Bush to cite the information, despite the fact that he had warned Rice's office that the claims were likely wrong. Earlier this week, Stephen Hadley, an aide to Rice, said he received two memos from the CIA last year, before Bush's State of the Union address, alerting him to the fact that the uranium information should not be included in the State of the Union. Hadley, who also took responsibility for failing to remove the uranium reference from Bush's speech, said he forgot to advise Bush about the CIA's warnings.
Hawks in the White House and the Pentagon seized upon the uranium claims before and after Bush's State of the Union address, telling reporters, lawmakers and leaders of other nations that the only thing that can be done to disarm Saddam Hussein is a preemptive strike against his country.
The only White House official who didn't cite the uranium claim is Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to Greg Thielmann, who resigned last year from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research—whose duties included tracking Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs—he personally told Powell that the allegations were "implausible" and the intelligence it was based upon was a "stupid piece of garbage."
Patrick Lang, the former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence, said the Office of Special Plans "cherry-picked the intelligence stream" in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat. Lang said in interviews with several media outlets that the CIA had "no guts at all" to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he said was now dominating U.S. foreign policy.
Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counter-terrorist operations, said he has spoken to a number of working intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up "fraudulent" intelligence, "a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi."
In an October 11, 2002 report in the Los Angeles Times, several CIA agents "who brief Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz on Iraq routinely return to the agency with a long list of complaints and demands for new analysis or shifts in emphasis."
"There is a lot of unhappiness with the analysis," usually because it is seen as not hard-line enough, one intelligence official said, according to the paper.
Another government official said CIA agents "are constantly sent back by the senior people at Defense and other places to get more, get more, get more to make their case," the paper reported
Now, as U.S. military casualties have surpassed that of the first Gulf War, Democrats in the House and Senate are starting to question whether other information about the Iraqi threat cited by Bush and his staff was reliable or part of a coordinated effort by the White House to politicize the intelligence to win support for a war.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is investigating the issue but so far neither the Senate intelligence committee nor any Congressional committee has launched an investigation into the Office of Special Plans. But that may soon change.
Based on several news reports into the activities of the Office of Special Plans, a number of lawmakers have called for an investigation into the group. Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, D-California, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, wrote a letter July 9 to Congressman Duncan Hunter, R-California, chairman of the Armed Services committee, calling for an investigation into the Office of Special Plans.
The Office of Special Plans should be examined to determine whether it "complemented, competed with, or detracted from the role of other United States intelligence agencies respecting the collection and use of intelligence relating to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and war planning. I also think it is important to understand how having two intelligence agencies within the Pentagon impacted the Department of Defense's ability to focus the necessary resources and manpower on pre-war planning and post-war operations," Tauscher's letter said.
Congressman David Obey, D-Wisconsin, also called for a widespread investigation of the Office of Special Plans to find out whether there is any truth to the claims that it willfully manipulated intelligence on the Iraqi threat. During a July 8 congressional briefing, Obey described what he knew about Special Plans and why an investigation into the group is crucial.
"A group of civilian employees in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, all of whom are
political employees have long been dissatisfied with the information produced by the established intelligence agencies both inside and outside the department. That was particularly true, apparently, with respect to the situation in Iraq," Obey said. "As a result, it is reported that they established a special operation within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which was named the Office of Special Plans. That office was charged with collecting, vetting, and disseminating intelligence completely outside the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that the information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with the established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the National Security Council and the president [sic] without having been vetted with anyone other than [the Secretary of Defense]."
"It is further alleged that the purpose of this operation was not only to produce intelligence more in keeping with the pre-held views of those individuals, but to intimidate analysts in the established intelligence organizations to produce information that was more supportive of policy decisions which they had already decided to propose."
By Jason Leopold
Online Journal Assistant Editor
July 25, 2003—A half-dozen former CIA agents investigating prewar intelligence have found that a secret Pentagon committee, set up by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October 2001, manipulated reams of intelligence information prepared by the spy agency on the so-called Iraqi threat and then delivered it to top White House officials who used it to win support for a war in Iraq.
The former CIA agents were asked to examine prewar intelligence last year by Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet. The former agents will present a final report on their findings to the Pentagon, the CIA and possibly Congress later this year. More than a dozen calls to the White House, the CIA, the National Security Council and the Pentagon for comment were not returned.
The ad hoc committee, called the Office of Special Plans, headed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith and other Pentagon hawks, described the worst-case scenarios in terms of Iraq's alleged stockpile of chemical and biological weapons and claimed the country was close to acquiring nuclear weapons, according to four of the CIA agents, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the information is still classified, who conducted a preliminary review of the intelligence.
The agents said the Office of Special Plans is responsible for providing the National Security Council and Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice and Rumsfeld with the bulk of the intelligence information on Iraq's weapons program that turned out to be wrong. But White House officials used the information it received from the Office of Special Plans to win support from the public and Congress to start a war in Iraq even though the White House knew much of the information was dubious, the CIA agents said.
For example, the agents said the Office of Special Plans told the National Security Council last year that Iraq's attempt to purchase aluminum tubes were part of a clandestine program to build an atomic bomb. The Office of Special Plans leaked the information to the New York Times last September. Shortly after the story appeared in the paper, Bush and Rice both pointed to the story as evidence that Iraq posed a grave threat to the United States and to its neighbors in the Middle East, even though experts in the field of nuclear science, the CIA and the State Department advised the White House that the aluminum tubes were not designed for an atomic bomb.
Furthermore, the CIA had been unable to develop any links between Iraq and the terrorist group al-Qaeda. But under Feith's direction, the Office of Special Plans came up with information of such links by looking at existing intelligence reports that they felt might have been overlooked or undervalued. The Special Plans office provided the information to the Pentagon and to the White House. During a Pentagon briefing last year, Rumsfeld said he had "bulletproof" evidence that Iraq was harboring al-Qaeda terrorists.
At a Pentagon news conference last year, Rumsfeld said of the intelligence gathered by Special Plans, "Gee, why don't you go over and brief George Tenet? So they did. They went over and briefed the CIA. So there's no there's no mystery about all this."
CIA analysts listened to the Pentagon team, nodded politely, and said, "Thank you very much," said one government official, according to a July 20 report in the New York Times. That official said the briefing did not change the agency's reporting or analysis in any substantial way.
Several current and former intelligence officials told the Times that they felt pressure to tailor reports to conform to the administration's views, "particularly the theories Feith's group developed."
Moreover, the agents said the Office of Special Plans routinely rewrote the CIA's intelligence estimates on Iraq's weapons programs, removing caveats such as "likely," "probably" and "may" as a way of depicting the country as an imminent threat. The agents would not identify the names of the individuals at the Office of Special Plans who were responsible for providing the White House with the wrong intelligence. But, the agents said, the intelligence gathered by the committee sometimes went directly to the White House, Cheney's office and to Rice without first being vetted by the CIA.
In cases where the CIA's intelligence wasn't rewritten the Office of Special Plans provided the White House with questionable intelligence it gathered from Iraqi exiles from the Iraqi National Congress, a group headed by Ahmad Chalabi, a person who the CIA has publicly said is unreliable, the CIA agents said.
More than a dozen CIA agents responsible for writing intelligence reports for the agency told the former CIA agents investigating the accuracy of the intelligence reports they were pressured by the Pentagon and the Office of Special Plans to hype and exaggerate intelligence to show Iraq as being an imminent threat to the security of the U.S.
The White House has been dogged by questions for nearly a month on whether the intelligence information it had relied upon was accurate and whether top White House officials knowingly used unreliable information to build a case for war. The furor started when George W. Bush said in his January State of the Union address that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium ore from Africa. Bush credited British intelligence for the claims, but the intelligence was based on forged documents. The Office of Special Plans is responsible for advising the White House to allow Bush to use the uranium claims in his speech, according to Democratic Senators and a CIA agent who are privy to classified information surrounding the issue.
CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility last week for allowing Bush to cite the information, despite the fact that he had warned Rice's office that the claims were likely wrong. Earlier this week, Stephen Hadley, an aide to Rice, said he received two memos from the CIA last year, before Bush's State of the Union address, alerting him to the fact that the uranium information should not be included in the State of the Union. Hadley, who also took responsibility for failing to remove the uranium reference from Bush's speech, said he forgot to advise Bush about the CIA's warnings.
Hawks in the White House and the Pentagon seized upon the uranium claims before and after Bush's State of the Union address, telling reporters, lawmakers and leaders of other nations that the only thing that can be done to disarm Saddam Hussein is a preemptive strike against his country.
The only White House official who didn't cite the uranium claim is Secretary of State Colin Powell. According to Greg Thielmann, who resigned last year from the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research—whose duties included tracking Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs—he personally told Powell that the allegations were "implausible" and the intelligence it was based upon was a "stupid piece of garbage."
Patrick Lang, the former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defense Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence, said the Office of Special Plans "cherry-picked the intelligence stream" in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat. Lang said in interviews with several media outlets that the CIA had "no guts at all" to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he said was now dominating U.S. foreign policy.
Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counter-terrorist operations, said he has spoken to a number of working intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up "fraudulent" intelligence, "a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi."
In an October 11, 2002 report in the Los Angeles Times, several CIA agents "who brief Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz on Iraq routinely return to the agency with a long list of complaints and demands for new analysis or shifts in emphasis."
"There is a lot of unhappiness with the analysis," usually because it is seen as not hard-line enough, one intelligence official said, according to the paper.
Another government official said CIA agents "are constantly sent back by the senior people at Defense and other places to get more, get more, get more to make their case," the paper reported
Now, as U.S. military casualties have surpassed that of the first Gulf War, Democrats in the House and Senate are starting to question whether other information about the Iraqi threat cited by Bush and his staff was reliable or part of a coordinated effort by the White House to politicize the intelligence to win support for a war.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is investigating the issue but so far neither the Senate intelligence committee nor any Congressional committee has launched an investigation into the Office of Special Plans. But that may soon change.
Based on several news reports into the activities of the Office of Special Plans, a number of lawmakers have called for an investigation into the group. Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher, D-California, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, wrote a letter July 9 to Congressman Duncan Hunter, R-California, chairman of the Armed Services committee, calling for an investigation into the Office of Special Plans.
The Office of Special Plans should be examined to determine whether it "complemented, competed with, or detracted from the role of other United States intelligence agencies respecting the collection and use of intelligence relating to Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and war planning. I also think it is important to understand how having two intelligence agencies within the Pentagon impacted the Department of Defense's ability to focus the necessary resources and manpower on pre-war planning and post-war operations," Tauscher's letter said.
Congressman David Obey, D-Wisconsin, also called for a widespread investigation of the Office of Special Plans to find out whether there is any truth to the claims that it willfully manipulated intelligence on the Iraqi threat. During a July 8 congressional briefing, Obey described what he knew about Special Plans and why an investigation into the group is crucial.
"A group of civilian employees in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, all of whom are
political employees have long been dissatisfied with the information produced by the established intelligence agencies both inside and outside the department. That was particularly true, apparently, with respect to the situation in Iraq," Obey said. "As a result, it is reported that they established a special operation within the Office of the Secretary of Defense, which was named the Office of Special Plans. That office was charged with collecting, vetting, and disseminating intelligence completely outside the normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that the information collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with the established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the National Security Council and the president [sic] without having been vetted with anyone other than [the Secretary of Defense]."
"It is further alleged that the purpose of this operation was not only to produce intelligence more in keeping with the pre-held views of those individuals, but to intimidate analysts in the established intelligence organizations to produce information that was more supportive of policy decisions which they had already decided to propose."
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Administration could have leaked the identity of a CIA agent
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 24, 2003
SCHUMER ASKS MUELLER TO OPEN AN FBI INVESTIGATION INTO ILLEGAL LEAK OF CIA AGENT'S IDENTITY
Unauthorized leaking of a CIA agent's identity is punishable by 10 years in prison, jeopardizes the lives of the brave agents on the front lines of the war on terror
News reports suggest that Administration could have leaked the identity of a CIA agent to discredit a critic of the President and intimidate others from speaking out
US Senator Charles Schumer today asked FBI Director Robert Mueller to open an investigation into reports that two senior members of the Bush Administration illegally disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative. According to Section 421a of the Intelligence Identities and Protection Act, the unauthorized identification of a CIA operative is a criminal act punishable by up to ten years in federal prison.
On July 14, 2003, an article by a syndicated columnist appeared in newspapers across the country identifying Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative specializing in Weapons of Mass Destruction. The columnist quoted “senior administration officials” as his sources. Plame is the spouse of long-time State Department veteran Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson recently wrote an op-ed disputing the White House's claims about potential uranium exports from Niger to Iraq, sparking the current debate about whether the White House knowingly manipulated information about Iraq's nuclear program. The disclosure of Plame's identity was part of an apparent attempt to impugn Wilson's credibility and to intimidate others from speaking out against the Administration.
"This is one of the most reckless and nasty things I’ve seen in all my years of government," Schumer said. "Leaking the name of a CIA agent is tantamount to putting a gun to that agent’s head. It compromises her safety and the safety of her loved ones, not to mention those in her network and other operatives she may have dealt with. On top of that, the officials who have done it may have also seriously jeopardized the national security of this nation."
The unauthorized disclosure of information relating to the identity of American intelligence officials is a crime punishable by fines and up to 10 years in prison under the Intelligence Identities and Protection Act. The FBI has investigated leaks before, as recently as June 2002 when leaks of classified testimony given to the Committee by National Security Director LT. General Michael V. Hayden. The FBI questioned nearly 100 people, including all 37 members of the House and Senate intelligence committees and some 60 staff members. Vice President Cheney was one of the prime movers behind that investigation, as were the leaders of the Joint Select Committee at the time, Democratic Senator Bob Graham and Republican Representative Porter Goss.
"This current scandal is just as serious as the one from June 2002. We’re talking about the lives of potentially hundreds of people being put at risk. The FBI needs to find out who made the name of this agent public and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. There can be zero tolerance for this kind of action," Schumer said.
By "burning" Ms. Plame, Schumer said these senior administration officials may have made it impossible for her to do her job. This comes at a time when intelligence in her specialty - Weapons of Mass Destruction - is sorely needed as the threats posed by Iran and North Korea are escalating.
In a letter being sent to Mueller today, Schumer wrote that "By disclosing the identity of a reportedly senior undercover operative who is active in our nation’s fight against the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), Administration officials have possibly endangered Ms. Plame and her entire network of intelligence contacts in order to avoid political embarrassment. In the process, they may also have undermined our national security just as the specter of WMD threats from North Korea and Iran loom on the horizon."
"If that facts that have been reported publicly are true, it is clear that a crime was committed. The only questions remaining to be answered are who committed the crime and why," Schumer's letter continued.
For a copy of Schumer's letter click here.
SCHUMER ASKS MUELLER TO OPEN AN FBI INVESTIGATION INTO ILLEGAL LEAK OF CIA AGENT'S IDENTITY
Unauthorized leaking of a CIA agent's identity is punishable by 10 years in prison, jeopardizes the lives of the brave agents on the front lines of the war on terror
News reports suggest that Administration could have leaked the identity of a CIA agent to discredit a critic of the President and intimidate others from speaking out
US Senator Charles Schumer today asked FBI Director Robert Mueller to open an investigation into reports that two senior members of the Bush Administration illegally disclosed the identity of a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operative. According to Section 421a of the Intelligence Identities and Protection Act, the unauthorized identification of a CIA operative is a criminal act punishable by up to ten years in federal prison.
On July 14, 2003, an article by a syndicated columnist appeared in newspapers across the country identifying Valerie Plame as an undercover CIA operative specializing in Weapons of Mass Destruction. The columnist quoted “senior administration officials” as his sources. Plame is the spouse of long-time State Department veteran Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson recently wrote an op-ed disputing the White House's claims about potential uranium exports from Niger to Iraq, sparking the current debate about whether the White House knowingly manipulated information about Iraq's nuclear program. The disclosure of Plame's identity was part of an apparent attempt to impugn Wilson's credibility and to intimidate others from speaking out against the Administration.
"This is one of the most reckless and nasty things I’ve seen in all my years of government," Schumer said. "Leaking the name of a CIA agent is tantamount to putting a gun to that agent’s head. It compromises her safety and the safety of her loved ones, not to mention those in her network and other operatives she may have dealt with. On top of that, the officials who have done it may have also seriously jeopardized the national security of this nation."
The unauthorized disclosure of information relating to the identity of American intelligence officials is a crime punishable by fines and up to 10 years in prison under the Intelligence Identities and Protection Act. The FBI has investigated leaks before, as recently as June 2002 when leaks of classified testimony given to the Committee by National Security Director LT. General Michael V. Hayden. The FBI questioned nearly 100 people, including all 37 members of the House and Senate intelligence committees and some 60 staff members. Vice President Cheney was one of the prime movers behind that investigation, as were the leaders of the Joint Select Committee at the time, Democratic Senator Bob Graham and Republican Representative Porter Goss.
"This current scandal is just as serious as the one from June 2002. We’re talking about the lives of potentially hundreds of people being put at risk. The FBI needs to find out who made the name of this agent public and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law. There can be zero tolerance for this kind of action," Schumer said.
By "burning" Ms. Plame, Schumer said these senior administration officials may have made it impossible for her to do her job. This comes at a time when intelligence in her specialty - Weapons of Mass Destruction - is sorely needed as the threats posed by Iran and North Korea are escalating.
In a letter being sent to Mueller today, Schumer wrote that "By disclosing the identity of a reportedly senior undercover operative who is active in our nation’s fight against the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), Administration officials have possibly endangered Ms. Plame and her entire network of intelligence contacts in order to avoid political embarrassment. In the process, they may also have undermined our national security just as the specter of WMD threats from North Korea and Iran loom on the horizon."
"If that facts that have been reported publicly are true, it is clear that a crime was committed. The only questions remaining to be answered are who committed the crime and why," Schumer's letter continued.
For a copy of Schumer's letter click here.
Tuesday, July 22, 2003
Bush Proposed Doubling Costs Of Prescription Drugs For Veterans
This year Bush proposed increasing prescription drugs costs for veterans. The Bush plan would have included a new $250 enrollment fee and a co pay increase from $7 to $15 for veterans earning over $24,000. On July 21, the House Appropriations Committee agreed to a Democratic amendment to reject the Bush fee increases and recoup the $264 million in costs by reducing administrative funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs. [Reuters, 7/14/03; Washington Post, 7/22/03]
Friday, July 18, 2003
U.S. ignored WMD message, analyst says
U.S. ignored WMD message, analyst says
Canadian Press
Friday, Jul 18, 2003
Toronto — A conference of top-level military analysts was told that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — a message that later fell on deaf ears in the U.S. capital, analysts say.
Former Canadian military officer-turned-analyst Sunil Ram remembers the January, 2001, conference Understanding the Lessons of Nuclear Inspections and Monitoring in Iraq: A Ten-Year Review.
What he heard at the meeting he has repeated for months, he says, getting little attention from the mainstream media: that U.S. President George W. Bush had no grounds to base the invasion of Iraq on the disarmament issue.
"The people doing the presentation were weapons inspectors and former weapons inspectors and senior members of (U.S. government) agencies," Mr. Ram said in an interview.
"These were the guys on the ground (in Iraq) who had this stuff (weapons facilities) taken apart."
The conclusion they reached, he said, was that "Iraq's nuclear weapons program (didn't exist) because (the Iraqi government) had dismantled it."
He said the message of experts at the meeting was heard loud and clear by many U.S. military and political officials.
He acknowledged that the message did not necessarily mean Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was not trying to acquire nuclear capability, but he pointed out that months before the United States was insisting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to other nations, top U.S. officials had been told the opposite.
The Washington meeting dealt specifically with nuclear weapons, but Mr. Ram said it also addressed chemical and biological weapons to a smaller extent. Even there, he said, the danger to the world from such weapons was dismissed by the presenters.
If there were such weapons in Iraq at that time, he said, "they were negligible in quantity and militarily meaningless."
He also rejected Mr. Bush's view that biological and chemical weapons could have been a threat to the world in the hands of Mr. Hussein.
"The major problem that has not been picked up by the media is that nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction, whereas biological and chemical weapons are akin to weapons of mass terror. They are militarily ineffective."
Mr. Ram is not the only Canadian military analyst who has believed for months that weapons of mass destruction did not exist to any significant extent in Iraq before the 2003 war.
Scott Taylor, publisher of Esprit de Corps, a magazine on Canadian military affairs, was in Iraq before and after the war and says it was common knowledge — despite insistence of U.S. officials such as Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld — that it was not a certainty that the weapons would be found.
"The unit the Americans had sent (to Iraq) on April 9 (was sent) to find these weapons of mass destruction and secure them (but they) have all come up empty handed," Mr. Taylor said.
"That unit has in fact suspended its operations, and the people (on the team) have a report out to say they do not expect to find any chemical or biological weapons."
Referring to the now-disproved allegation in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address that Mr. Hussein was negotiating for uranium with an African country, Mr. Taylor said: "What's left in his speech isn't enough to justify (the invasion of Iraq), especially when things are not going as smoothly as expected."
Mr. Taylor also believes what has happened is a form of vindication for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who refused to send troops to Iraq.
"Obviously this is not a time to gloat," he said. "We can't say at this point 'I told you so,' (but) anybody who had anybody on the ground (in Iraq) or was reading the actual intelligence could have predicted this."
Mr. Taylor also believes that Canada's refusal makes it a likely candidate to take a significant role in rebuilding Iraq. He described the reaction of Iraqi people to the fact that he is Canadian: "I was there and all the time people were actually saying (to me) 'Jean Chrétien No. 1' when they knew you were from Canada."
Mr. Ram, however, had a less sympathetic view of Canada's status in light of its refusal to join the war.
"We are paying a much greater price economically and it is apparent in the way the Bush administration has treated us," he said.
Canadian Press
Friday, Jul 18, 2003
Toronto — A conference of top-level military analysts was told that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction months before the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks — a message that later fell on deaf ears in the U.S. capital, analysts say.
Former Canadian military officer-turned-analyst Sunil Ram remembers the January, 2001, conference Understanding the Lessons of Nuclear Inspections and Monitoring in Iraq: A Ten-Year Review.
What he heard at the meeting he has repeated for months, he says, getting little attention from the mainstream media: that U.S. President George W. Bush had no grounds to base the invasion of Iraq on the disarmament issue.
"The people doing the presentation were weapons inspectors and former weapons inspectors and senior members of (U.S. government) agencies," Mr. Ram said in an interview.
"These were the guys on the ground (in Iraq) who had this stuff (weapons facilities) taken apart."
The conclusion they reached, he said, was that "Iraq's nuclear weapons program (didn't exist) because (the Iraqi government) had dismantled it."
He said the message of experts at the meeting was heard loud and clear by many U.S. military and political officials.
He acknowledged that the message did not necessarily mean Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was not trying to acquire nuclear capability, but he pointed out that months before the United States was insisting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was a threat to other nations, top U.S. officials had been told the opposite.
The Washington meeting dealt specifically with nuclear weapons, but Mr. Ram said it also addressed chemical and biological weapons to a smaller extent. Even there, he said, the danger to the world from such weapons was dismissed by the presenters.
If there were such weapons in Iraq at that time, he said, "they were negligible in quantity and militarily meaningless."
He also rejected Mr. Bush's view that biological and chemical weapons could have been a threat to the world in the hands of Mr. Hussein.
"The major problem that has not been picked up by the media is that nuclear weapons are weapons of mass destruction, whereas biological and chemical weapons are akin to weapons of mass terror. They are militarily ineffective."
Mr. Ram is not the only Canadian military analyst who has believed for months that weapons of mass destruction did not exist to any significant extent in Iraq before the 2003 war.
Scott Taylor, publisher of Esprit de Corps, a magazine on Canadian military affairs, was in Iraq before and after the war and says it was common knowledge — despite insistence of U.S. officials such as Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld — that it was not a certainty that the weapons would be found.
"The unit the Americans had sent (to Iraq) on April 9 (was sent) to find these weapons of mass destruction and secure them (but they) have all come up empty handed," Mr. Taylor said.
"That unit has in fact suspended its operations, and the people (on the team) have a report out to say they do not expect to find any chemical or biological weapons."
Referring to the now-disproved allegation in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address that Mr. Hussein was negotiating for uranium with an African country, Mr. Taylor said: "What's left in his speech isn't enough to justify (the invasion of Iraq), especially when things are not going as smoothly as expected."
Mr. Taylor also believes what has happened is a form of vindication for Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who refused to send troops to Iraq.
"Obviously this is not a time to gloat," he said. "We can't say at this point 'I told you so,' (but) anybody who had anybody on the ground (in Iraq) or was reading the actual intelligence could have predicted this."
Mr. Taylor also believes that Canada's refusal makes it a likely candidate to take a significant role in rebuilding Iraq. He described the reaction of Iraqi people to the fact that he is Canadian: "I was there and all the time people were actually saying (to me) 'Jean Chrétien No. 1' when they knew you were from Canada."
Mr. Ram, however, had a less sympathetic view of Canada's status in light of its refusal to join the war.
"We are paying a much greater price economically and it is apparent in the way the Bush administration has treated us," he said.
Thursday, July 17, 2003
Did Bush Administration Reveal Undercover CIA Agent?
A White House Smear
07/16/2003 @ 4:13pm
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.
In a recent column on Nigergate, Novak examined the role of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV in the affair. Two weeks ago, Wilson went public, writing in The New York Times and telling The Washington Post about the trip he took to Niger in February 2002--at the request of the CIA--to check out allegations that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium for a nuclear weapons program from Niger. Wilson was a good pick for the job. He had been a State Department officer there in the mid-1970s. He was ambassador to Gabon in the early 1990s. And in 1997 and 1998, he was the senior director for Africa at the National Security Council and in that capacity spent a lot of time dealing with the Niger government. Wilson was also the last acting US ambassador in Iraq before the Gulf War, a military action he supported. In that post, he helped evacuate thousands of foreigners from Kuwait, worked to get over 120 American hostages out Iraq, and sheltered about 800 Americans in the embassy compound. At the time, Novak's then-partner, Rowland Evans, wrote that Wilson displayed "the stuff of heroism." And President George H. W. Bush commended Wilson: "Your courageous leadership during this period of great danger for American interests and American citizens has my admiration and respect. I salute, too, your skillful conduct of our tense dealings with the government of Iraq....The courage and tenacity you have exhibited throughout this ordeal prove that you are the right person for the job."
The current Bush administration has not been so appreciative of Wilson's more recent efforts. In Niger, he met with past and present government officials and persons involved in the uranium business and concluded that it was "highly doubtful" that Hussein had been able to purchase uranium from that nation. On June 12, The Washington Post revealed that an unnamed ambassador had traveled to Niger and had reported back that the Niger caper probably never happened. This article revved up the controversy over Bush's claim--which he made in the state of the union speech--that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa for a nuclear weapons program.
Critics were charging that this allegation had been part of a Bush effort to mislead the country to war, and the administration was maintaining that at the time of the speech the White House had no reason to suspect this particular sentence was based on faulty intelligence. "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said days before the Post article ran. "But no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions." Wilson's mission to Niger provided more reason to wonder if the administration's denials were on the level. And once Wilson went public, he prompted a new round of inconvenient and troubling questions for the White House. (Wilson, who opposed the latest war in Iraq, had not revealed his trip to Niger during the prewar months, when he was a key participant in the media debate over whether the country should go to war.)
Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad. the payback came. Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "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 allegation.
Wilson caused problems for the White House, and his wife was outed as an undercover CIA officer. Wilson says, "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."
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.
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 Kim Philby and 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. That would not likely do her much good.
This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in prison. Journalists are protected from prosecution, unless they engage in a "pattern of activities" to name agents in order to impair US intelligence activities. So Novak need not worry.
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 where's the investigation? Remember Filegate--and the Republican charge that the Clinton White House was using privileged information against its political foes? In this instance, it appears possible--perhaps likely--that Bush administration officials gathered material on Wilson and his family and then revealed classified information to lash out at him, and in doing so compromised national security.
Was Wilson's wife involved in sending him off to Niger? Wilson won't talk about her. But in response to this query, he says, "I was invited out to meet with a group of people at the CIA who were interested in this subject. None I knew more than casually. They asked me about my understanding of the uranium business and my familiarity with the people in the Niger government at the time. And they asked, 'what would you do?' We gamed it out--what I would be looking for. Nothing was concluded at that time. I told them if they wanted me to go to Niger I would clear my schedule. Then they got back to me and said, 'yes, we want you to go.'"
Is it relevant that Wilson's wife might have suggested him for the unpaid gig. Not really. And Wilson notes, with a laugh, that at that point their twins were two years old, and it would not have been much in his wife's interest to encourage him to head off to Africa. What matters is that Wilson returned with the right answer and dutifully reported his conclusions. (In March 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that the documents upon which the Niger allegation was based were amateurish forgeries.) His wife's role--if she had one--has nothing but anecdotal value. And Novak's sources could have mentioned it without providing her name. Instead, they were quite generous.
"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."
Will there be any inquiry? Journalists who write about national security matters (as I often do) tend not to big fans of pursuing government officials who leak classified information. But since Bush administration officials are so devoted to protecting government secrets--such as the identity of the energy lobbyists with whom the vice president meets--one might (theoretically) expect them to be appalled by the prospect that classified information was disclosed and national security harmed for the purposes of mounting a political hit job. Yet two days after the Novak column's appearance, there has not been any public comment from the White House or any other public reverberation.
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.
07/16/2003 @ 4:13pm
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.
In a recent column on Nigergate, Novak examined the role of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV in the affair. Two weeks ago, Wilson went public, writing in The New York Times and telling The Washington Post about the trip he took to Niger in February 2002--at the request of the CIA--to check out allegations that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium for a nuclear weapons program from Niger. Wilson was a good pick for the job. He had been a State Department officer there in the mid-1970s. He was ambassador to Gabon in the early 1990s. And in 1997 and 1998, he was the senior director for Africa at the National Security Council and in that capacity spent a lot of time dealing with the Niger government. Wilson was also the last acting US ambassador in Iraq before the Gulf War, a military action he supported. In that post, he helped evacuate thousands of foreigners from Kuwait, worked to get over 120 American hostages out Iraq, and sheltered about 800 Americans in the embassy compound. At the time, Novak's then-partner, Rowland Evans, wrote that Wilson displayed "the stuff of heroism." And President George H. W. Bush commended Wilson: "Your courageous leadership during this period of great danger for American interests and American citizens has my admiration and respect. I salute, too, your skillful conduct of our tense dealings with the government of Iraq....The courage and tenacity you have exhibited throughout this ordeal prove that you are the right person for the job."
The current Bush administration has not been so appreciative of Wilson's more recent efforts. In Niger, he met with past and present government officials and persons involved in the uranium business and concluded that it was "highly doubtful" that Hussein had been able to purchase uranium from that nation. On June 12, The Washington Post revealed that an unnamed ambassador had traveled to Niger and had reported back that the Niger caper probably never happened. This article revved up the controversy over Bush's claim--which he made in the state of the union speech--that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium in Africa for a nuclear weapons program.
Critics were charging that this allegation had been part of a Bush effort to mislead the country to war, and the administration was maintaining that at the time of the speech the White House had no reason to suspect this particular sentence was based on faulty intelligence. "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency," national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said days before the Post article ran. "But no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions." Wilson's mission to Niger provided more reason to wonder if the administration's denials were on the level. And once Wilson went public, he prompted a new round of inconvenient and troubling questions for the White House. (Wilson, who opposed the latest war in Iraq, had not revealed his trip to Niger during the prewar months, when he was a key participant in the media debate over whether the country should go to war.)
Soon after Wilson disclosed his trip in the media and made the White House look bad. the payback came. Novak's July 14, 2003, column presented the back-story on Wilson's mission and contained the following sentences: "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 allegation.
Wilson caused problems for the White House, and his wife was outed as an undercover CIA officer. Wilson says, "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."
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.
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 Kim Philby and 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. That would not likely do her much good.
This is not only a possible breach of national security; it is a potential violation of law. Under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, it is a crime for anyone who has access to classified information to disclose intentionally information identifying a covert agent. The punishment for such an offense is a fine of up to $50,000 and/or up to ten years in prison. Journalists are protected from prosecution, unless they engage in a "pattern of activities" to name agents in order to impair US intelligence activities. So Novak need not worry.
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 where's the investigation? Remember Filegate--and the Republican charge that the Clinton White House was using privileged information against its political foes? In this instance, it appears possible--perhaps likely--that Bush administration officials gathered material on Wilson and his family and then revealed classified information to lash out at him, and in doing so compromised national security.
Was Wilson's wife involved in sending him off to Niger? Wilson won't talk about her. But in response to this query, he says, "I was invited out to meet with a group of people at the CIA who were interested in this subject. None I knew more than casually. They asked me about my understanding of the uranium business and my familiarity with the people in the Niger government at the time. And they asked, 'what would you do?' We gamed it out--what I would be looking for. Nothing was concluded at that time. I told them if they wanted me to go to Niger I would clear my schedule. Then they got back to me and said, 'yes, we want you to go.'"
Is it relevant that Wilson's wife might have suggested him for the unpaid gig. Not really. And Wilson notes, with a laugh, that at that point their twins were two years old, and it would not have been much in his wife's interest to encourage him to head off to Africa. What matters is that Wilson returned with the right answer and dutifully reported his conclusions. (In March 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that the documents upon which the Niger allegation was based were amateurish forgeries.) His wife's role--if she had one--has nothing but anecdotal value. And Novak's sources could have mentioned it without providing her name. Instead, they were quite generous.
"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."
Will there be any inquiry? Journalists who write about national security matters (as I often do) tend not to big fans of pursuing government officials who leak classified information. But since Bush administration officials are so devoted to protecting government secrets--such as the identity of the energy lobbyists with whom the vice president meets--one might (theoretically) expect them to be appalled by the prospect that classified information was disclosed and national security harmed for the purposes of mounting a political hit job. Yet two days after the Novak column's appearance, there has not been any public comment from the White House or any other public reverberation.
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.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
President Caught In Another Lie.
07/15/03: During a press briefing at the Whitehouse with United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan on Monday, 07/14/03, our president continued to lie to the American people.
This latest instance of Presidential deceit relates to the reasons for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
When questioned about his comments in the state of the union address relating to the now discredited claim that Iraq tried to buy Uranium yellowcake from Niger, the president said.
"The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful."
This as clearly a lie by our president, "And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power"
President Bush has rewritten history and provided a new reason as to why he ordered the US invasion of Iraq.
The actual circumstances were that the UN inspectors were in Iraq and the Iraqi government was providing unfettered access to UN weapons inspectors. UN inspectors were busy dismantling Iraqi missiles when they were instructed to leave Iraq, prior to the US - UK invasion.
This is just one more example of president Bush hiding one lie behind another.
Why will our main stream media not follow up on theses outrages untruths and insist that the president be held accountable for his lies.
The full text of the presidents remarks can be found here http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030714-3.html
This latest instance of Presidential deceit relates to the reasons for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
When questioned about his comments in the state of the union address relating to the now discredited claim that Iraq tried to buy Uranium yellowcake from Niger, the president said.
"The larger point is, and the fundamental question is, did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program? And the answer is, absolutely. And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region. I firmly believe the decisions we made will make America more secure and the world more peaceful."
This as clearly a lie by our president, "And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power"
President Bush has rewritten history and provided a new reason as to why he ordered the US invasion of Iraq.
The actual circumstances were that the UN inspectors were in Iraq and the Iraqi government was providing unfettered access to UN weapons inspectors. UN inspectors were busy dismantling Iraqi missiles when they were instructed to leave Iraq, prior to the US - UK invasion.
This is just one more example of president Bush hiding one lie behind another.
Why will our main stream media not follow up on theses outrages untruths and insist that the president be held accountable for his lies.
The full text of the presidents remarks can be found here http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030714-3.html
Thursday, July 10, 2003
Rumsfeld: Iraq war not about new arms evidence
Iraq war not about new arms evidence: Rumsfeld
Thu, 10 Jul 2003
WASHINGTON - The United States didn't declare war on Iraq because of new evidence of banned weapons, U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday.
Rumsfeld said the U.S. declared war because it saw existing evidence of Iraqi arms programs in "a dramatic new light" following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Rumsfeld made the comments in an appearance before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.
On Tuesday, the White House acknowledged that U.S. President George Bush's claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was based on forged information.
RELATED STORY: Bush wrong on Iraqi nuclear weapons
Though Bush justified the invasion to topple former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein largely by referring to his alleged possession of chemical and biological weapons and possible pursuit of nuclear weapons, such arms have not been found in the 10 weeks since the war ended.
FROM JUNE 3, 2003: Report says no weapons of mass destruction
Congressional committees are evaluating whether the administration may have used faulty or exaggerated intelligence on Iraq's weapons to justify the war.
Rumsfeld also told the committee that talks were under way to increase NATO involvement in Iraq peacekeeping efforts.
Written by CBC News Online staff
Thu, 10 Jul 2003
WASHINGTON - The United States didn't declare war on Iraq because of new evidence of banned weapons, U.S. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld said on Wednesday.
Rumsfeld said the U.S. declared war because it saw existing evidence of Iraqi arms programs in "a dramatic new light" following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Rumsfeld made the comments in an appearance before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee.
On Tuesday, the White House acknowledged that U.S. President George Bush's claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was based on forged information.
RELATED STORY: Bush wrong on Iraqi nuclear weapons
Though Bush justified the invasion to topple former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein largely by referring to his alleged possession of chemical and biological weapons and possible pursuit of nuclear weapons, such arms have not been found in the 10 weeks since the war ended.
FROM JUNE 3, 2003: Report says no weapons of mass destruction
Congressional committees are evaluating whether the administration may have used faulty or exaggerated intelligence on Iraq's weapons to justify the war.
Rumsfeld also told the committee that talks were under way to increase NATO involvement in Iraq peacekeeping efforts.
Written by CBC News Online staff
White House 'lied about Saddam threat
White House 'lied about Saddam threat'
Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday July 10, 2003
The Guardian
A former US intelligence official who served under the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war accused the White House yesterday of lying about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
The claims came as the Bush administration was fighting to shore up its credibility among a series of anonymous government leaks over its distortion of US intelligence to manufacture a case against Saddam.
This was the first time an administration official has put his name to specific claims. The whistleblower, Gregory Thielmann, served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September, and had access to the classified reports which formed the basis for the US case against Saddam, spelled out by President Bush and his aides.
Mr Thielmannn said yesterday: "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq."
He conceded that part of the problem lay with US intelligence, but added: "Most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided."
As Democrats demanded a congressional enquiry, the administration sharply changed tack. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told the Senate the US had not gone to war against Iraq because of fresh evidence of weapons of mass destruction but because Washington saw what evidence there was prior to 2001 "in a dramatic new light" after September 11.
At a press conference yesterday, Mr Thielmann said that, as of March 2003, when the US began military operations, "Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbours or to the United States".
In one example, Mr Thielmann said a fierce debate inside the White House about the purpose of aluminium tubes bought by Baghdad had been "cloaked in ambiguity".
While some CIA analysts thought they could be used for gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, the best experts at the energy department disagreed. But the national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, said publicly that they could only be used for centrifuges.
Mr Thielmann also said there was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida. He added: "This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude ... 'We know the answers - give us the intelligence to support those answers'."
Responding to claims of deliberate distortions, Mr Bush accused his critics of "trying to rewrite history" and insisted "there is no doubt in my mind" that Saddam "was a threat to world peace".
Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday July 10, 2003
The Guardian
A former US intelligence official who served under the Bush administration in the build-up to the Iraq war accused the White House yesterday of lying about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.
The claims came as the Bush administration was fighting to shore up its credibility among a series of anonymous government leaks over its distortion of US intelligence to manufacture a case against Saddam.
This was the first time an administration official has put his name to specific claims. The whistleblower, Gregory Thielmann, served as a director in the state department's bureau of intelligence until his retirement in September, and had access to the classified reports which formed the basis for the US case against Saddam, spelled out by President Bush and his aides.
Mr Thielmannn said yesterday: "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq."
He conceded that part of the problem lay with US intelligence, but added: "Most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided."
As Democrats demanded a congressional enquiry, the administration sharply changed tack. The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told the Senate the US had not gone to war against Iraq because of fresh evidence of weapons of mass destruction but because Washington saw what evidence there was prior to 2001 "in a dramatic new light" after September 11.
At a press conference yesterday, Mr Thielmann said that, as of March 2003, when the US began military operations, "Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbours or to the United States".
In one example, Mr Thielmann said a fierce debate inside the White House about the purpose of aluminium tubes bought by Baghdad had been "cloaked in ambiguity".
While some CIA analysts thought they could be used for gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, the best experts at the energy department disagreed. But the national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, said publicly that they could only be used for centrifuges.
Mr Thielmann also said there was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaida. He added: "This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude ... 'We know the answers - give us the intelligence to support those answers'."
Responding to claims of deliberate distortions, Mr Bush accused his critics of "trying to rewrite history" and insisted "there is no doubt in my mind" that Saddam "was a threat to world peace".
CBS News | Bush Knew Iraq Info Was Dubious
CBS Evening News
Bush Knew Iraq Info Was Dubious
WASHINGTON, July 10, 2003
Original title was "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False", was changed on July 12, 2003
(CBS) Senior administration officials tell CBS News the President’s mistaken claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was included in his State of the Union address -- despite objections from the CIA.
Traveling with the president in Africa, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Friday said that the CIA had cleared the reference to the attempted uranium purchase.
Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.
CIA officials warned members of the President’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.
The White House officials responded that a paper issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: “Iraq has ... sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” As long as the statement was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections and that’s how it was delivered.
“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” Mr. Bush said.
The statement was technically correct, since it accurately reflected the British paper. But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true.
Today at a press conference during the President’s trip to Africa, Secretary of State Colin Powell portrayed it as an honest mistake.
“There was no effort or attempt on the part of the president or anyone else in the administration to mislead or to deceive the American people,” said Powell.
But eight days after the State of the Union, when Powell addressed the U.N., he deliberately left out any reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa.
“I didn’t use the uranium at that point because I didn’t think that was sufficiently strong as evidence to present before the world,” Powell said.
That is exactly what CIA officials told the White House before the State of the Union. The top CIA official, Director George Tenet, was not involved in those discussions and apparently never warned the President he was on thin ice.
Secretary Powell said today he read the State of the Union speech before it was delivered and understood it had been seen and cleared by the intelligence community. But intelligence officials say the director of the CIA never saw the final draft.
©MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Bush Knew Iraq Info Was Dubious
WASHINGTON, July 10, 2003
Original title was "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False", was changed on July 12, 2003
(CBS) Senior administration officials tell CBS News the President’s mistaken claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was included in his State of the Union address -- despite objections from the CIA.
Traveling with the president in Africa, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Friday said that the CIA had cleared the reference to the attempted uranium purchase.
Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.
CIA officials warned members of the President’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.
The White House officials responded that a paper issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: “Iraq has ... sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” As long as the statement was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections and that’s how it was delivered.
“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” Mr. Bush said.
The statement was technically correct, since it accurately reflected the British paper. But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true.
Today at a press conference during the President’s trip to Africa, Secretary of State Colin Powell portrayed it as an honest mistake.
“There was no effort or attempt on the part of the president or anyone else in the administration to mislead or to deceive the American people,” said Powell.
But eight days after the State of the Union, when Powell addressed the U.N., he deliberately left out any reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa.
“I didn’t use the uranium at that point because I didn’t think that was sufficiently strong as evidence to present before the world,” Powell said.
That is exactly what CIA officials told the White House before the State of the Union. The top CIA official, Director George Tenet, was not involved in those discussions and apparently never warned the President he was on thin ice.
Secretary Powell said today he read the State of the Union speech before it was delivered and understood it had been seen and cleared by the intelligence community. But intelligence officials say the director of the CIA never saw the final draft.
©MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Sunday, July 06, 2003
(Destroy the) Healthy Forests Initiative
The health-by-logging approach reveals the wide separation between two opposing views concerning the best use of U.S. forests. The administration, seeing the forests as a source of extractive wealth, presses for more logging and road-building in wilderness areas. Its strategists appear determined to mute or override the provision of the 1976 National Forest Management Act requiring that forest plans "provide for the diversity of plant and animal communities."
The economic argument for increased road-building and logging is unfounded. It is contradicted by the U.S. Forest Service's own measure of forests' contributions to the nation's economy. Of the $35 billion yielded in 1999 (the last year for which a comprehensive accounting was published), 77.8 percent came from recreation, fish and wildlife, only 13.7 percent from timber harvest, and the modest remainder from mining and ranching. Roughly the same disproportion existed in the percentages of the 822,000 jobs generated by national forests.
The economic argument for increased road-building and logging is unfounded. It is contradicted by the U.S. Forest Service's own measure of forests' contributions to the nation's economy. Of the $35 billion yielded in 1999 (the last year for which a comprehensive accounting was published), 77.8 percent came from recreation, fish and wildlife, only 13.7 percent from timber harvest, and the modest remainder from mining and ranching. Roughly the same disproportion existed in the percentages of the 822,000 jobs generated by national forests.
Cutting Funding for National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Immediately after taking office, the first budget approved by G.W. Bush cut the funding for NREL by over 35% from $373M to $237M. [Department of Energy Website]
Saturday, July 05, 2003
Clear (the) Skies (of birds) Initiative
The Clear Skies legislation sets new targets for emissions of sulfur dioxide, mercury, and nitrogen oxides from U.S. power plants. But these targets are weaker than those that would be put in place if the Bush administration simply implemented and enforced the existing law! Compared to current law, the Clear Skies plan would allow three times more toxic mercury emissions, 50 percent more sulfur emissions, and hundreds of thousands more tons of smog-forming nitrogen oxides. It would also delay cleaning up this pollution by up to a decade compared to current law and force residents of heavily-polluted areas to wait years longer for clean air compared to the existing Clean Air Act.
All articles in this archive are used under "fair use" as they are important to the national discussion of whether or not the people of this country are being deceived by their government. These articles are used as evidence in that discussion.
