Time line failed to note Wilson charade
I looked at the Rocky’s time line of events ranging from President Bush’s Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address to the Oct. 28, 2005, indictment of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and couldn’t help but notice that the Rocky forgot to mention the 9/11 commission’s findings in early 2004 that debunked Joe Wilson’s self-serving and partisan claim that there were no dealings between Saddam Hussein and the Nigerien government to buy uranium.
Actually, pretty much the entire news media conveniently missed that little tidbit. I guess it wasn’t important — not when you’re trying desperately to bring down a president you don’t like.
Well, there was never a crime committed in the first place, but a special prosecutor has to hang somebody for something, so I guess Libby is as good a scapegoat as anyone.
It’s such a pleasure watching the machinations of our injustice system.
Do you suppose the Democrats will now be satisfied that they finally got to retaliate for that other Kafkaesque absurdity, the Clinton impeachment? I wouldn’t bet on it.
(Of course that was payback for Iran-contra.)
Jeff Kocsis, Littleton
In my reading of the 9/11 Commision report, no reference to Ambassador Wilson or his trip to Niger,can be found. They did find however, there was no involvement by Iraq in the 9/11 attacks on our country. If this is wrong, please give me a page number(s) to look up.
Posted by Rod Lane on March 19, 2007 09:03 AMRob,
You should really read closer. Here is the entire article that describes Niger (in the table of contents it is titled II. Niger). For security reasons (because at the time official names were still classified) the names of those involved have been blacked out.
We do however know for a FACT that this was Mr. Wilson who filled out the report.
Enjoy reading
From his letter we can assume Jeff believes Iran-Contra was cool.
A group of executive branch officials decided to finance a foreign policy initiative (arming the Contras) directly forbidden by US law by selling weapons to our sworn enemy (Iran.)
How can you trust anyone pushing this line of reasoning?
Posted by on March 19, 2007 11:29 AM"From his letter we can assume Jeff believes Iran-Contra was cool."
We can? Where did he imply that?
Posted by Mike on March 19, 2007 11:40 AMHe says Whitewater was payback for Iran Contra, and implies that all three scandals were nothing more than partisan witch hunts.
If Iran-Contra needed a "payback" it implies that there was no wrongdoing.
Does getting rid of Micheal Brown at FEMA require "payback"? Of course not, it was warranted by his incompetence.
Whitewater can only be seen as payback for IC if you think there was no meat to that scandal.
Posted by on March 19, 2007 11:47 AMI presume the word "charade" came from the editors at the RMN. But it is clear from the statement by the 9/11 Commission that Jeff Kocsis' statement "the 9/11 commission’s findings in early 2004 that debunked Joe Wilson’s self-serving and partisan claim that there were no dealings between Saddam Hussein and the Nigerian government to buy uranium" has no basis in fact.
From the 9/11 Commission's statement:
"On June 17,2003, nearly five months after the President delivered the State of the Union address, the CIA produced a memorandum for the DCI which said, “since learning that the Iraq-Niger uranium deal was based on false documents earlier this spring, we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad.”
"On January 13,2003, the lNR Iraq nuclear analyst sent an e-mail to several IC analysts outlining his reasoning why, “the uranium purchase agreement probably is a hoax.” He indicated that one of the documents that purported to be an agreement for a joint military campaign, including both Iraq and Iran, was so ridiculous that it was “clearly a forgery."
"UNTIL OCTOBER 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for the analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa".
"State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believe that the [Wilson] report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to see uranium to Niger."
11:47-
He didn't imply that all 3 scandals were partisan witch hunts. He said that Clinton's impeachment and the Libby trial were "Kafkaesque". He said that the Clinton impeachment was payback for Iran/Contra, but he never gave his opinion about Iran/Contra; whether he thought it was "cool", or not.
You can infer all you want, but he never implied anything.
Posted by Mike on March 19, 2007 12:10 PM11:54
If you would read the last full paragraph on page 39 and the following on pages 40 and 41, that deals directly with the report issued by Mr. Wilson. I was refuting Rob's previous comment that "In my reading of the 9/11 Commision report, no reference to Ambassador Wilson or his trip to Niger,can be found." which is 100% false.
Posted by Dan2 on March 19, 2007 12:50 PMDan2
I do not know who Rob is, but Rod said he found no reference to Niger or Ambassador Wilson in his copy of the Authorized Edition of the 9/11 Commision Report. The heavily redacted copy of something, but I still can't find this commision report. Please get your facts strait Dan2
Bogus link Dan2.
No government agency website begins http://a257.g.akamaitech.net
This is a false flag operation designed to deflect attention away from the fact that Wilson accurately reported the Iraq/Niger story was a hoax in 2002 prior to the 2003 SOTU speech.
The right wing radicals can't accept the Dulfer report either that there were no WMD at the time of the invasion.
Posted by Wes on March 19, 2007 01:21 PMROD (my bad)
You are indeed correct. The published "9/11 Report" does not discuss Mr. Wilson. That was conducted by The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Assessments on Iraq and was intended to provide the Senate and the American public with a substantial record of the facts underlying the conclusions of the Committee regarding the intelligence community's prewar assessments of Iraq's programs for weapons of mass destruction and its ties to terrorism. You are 100% correct and I apologize for calling you out.
And straight is usually spelled with a "ght" in this use of the word.
Posted by Dan2 on March 19, 2007 01:36 PMWes,
As this was a link to the GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE (gpo.gov) and then broken into text as the full file is rather large. If you would care to view the full text, here is the link:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/iraq.html
But keep up the conspiracy theory. I enjoy fiction too.
Posted by Dan2 on March 19, 2007 01:41 PMThe Niger documents "proving" Saddam's involvement were proven to be forgeries, at least 4 years ago--people like Jeff Kocsis just can't accept that this current administration lies, cheats, steals, and murders and then outs covert agents and their companies - so add treason to the whole unholy mix.
Posted by Mandark on March 19, 2007 01:54 PMAs has been stated, the report that Dan2 originally thought was the 9/11 report was in fact the July 2004 bipartisan report by the Republican controlled Senate entitled: "REPORT ON THE U.S. INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY'S PREWAR INTELLIGENCE ASSESSMENTS ON IRAQ."
But I'm not understanding why Wes says:
"This is a false flag operation designed to deflect attention away from the fact that Wilson accurately reported the Iraq/Niger story was a hoax in 2002 prior to the 2003 SOTU speech."
The Senate report does contain the quotes above at 11:54 AM. These quotes show that the CIA ultimately concluded that "the Iraq-Niger uranium deal was based on false documents", and that the CIA "no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad.”
The Senate report also reflects that the "State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believe that the [Wilson] report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to see uranium to Niger."
Rather than deflecting attention, the Senate report brings attention to the validity and correctness of the Wilson report.
Since the 9/11 report apparently does not mention the Wilson report, it seems clear that the writer of the original letter, Jeff Kocsis, simply was making a completely unfounded statement when he falsely claims that the 9/11 report "debunked" the Wilson report.
Kocsis says: "Do you suppose the Democrats will now be satisfied that they finally got to retaliate for that other Kafkaesque absurdity, the Clinton impeachment?"
I understand from George Will, the lover of words that only he knows the meaning of, that Kafkaesque means "Marked by surreal distortion and often a sense of impending danger". Does that remind you of the Wilson report, the conclusion of which the CIA finally agree with and which the State Department considered helpful, or does it remind you of the statements emanating from the Bush Administration both before and after the invasion and continuing up to the present time?
Posted by JFL on March 19, 2007 02:15 PMJFL,
There are conspiracy theorists on both sides of the spectrum here. I was mistaken when I used the Senate's report as the 9/11 Report.
However, I find it interesting that Conclusionn 26 in the now "infamous Senate Report" (my quotes germaine to this discussion) reads:
"To date, the Intelligence Community has not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa as stated in the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Likewise, neither the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) nor the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), which both published assessments on possible Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium, have ever published assessments outside of their agencies which correct their previous positions."
I don't know if that means Mr. Wilson's report is accurate or not, but the Wilson's sure are milking this for all it is worth.
Posted by Dan2 on March 19, 2007 02:28 PMHer career was ruined, and he was slandered as a partisan hack, so wouldn't you be pissed if your work was destroyed and misused to support a trillion dollar boondoggle that endangered national security?
Posted by on March 19, 2007 02:41 PMDan2,
So if I get your meaning correctly, the report does mention Wilson and Niger, but DOES NOT support Jeff's contention that Wilson was wrong to claim there were no contacts between Niger and Iraq (There were and Wilson made no such claim.)
Posted by on March 19, 2007 02:46 PMFor the third time:
"(U) On June 17, 2003, nearly five months after the President delivered the State of the Union address, the CIA produced a memorandum for the DCI which said, "since learning that the Iraq-Niger uranium deal was based on false documents earlier this spring, we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." This memorandum was not distributed outside the CIA and the Committee has not been provided with any intelligence products in which the CIA published its corrected assessment on Iraq's pursuit of uranium from Niger outside of the agency."
I presume that the reason Conclusion 26 did not mention the above is that the above was not published whereas Conclusion 26 was dealing with published matters. But the language clearly reaches the same conclusion as did Wilson.
No surprise that the Wilsons are trying to make hay with all this. They'd be fools not to. I am sure that they have faults, probably major ones, but Valerie Plame's loss of her career was real, apparently devastating, and set a dangerous precedent. Likewise, whatever Wilson's faults, most people would be quite angered at being called a liar, and even a traitor, so often and so wrongly.
Plame testified that she was covert at the time she was revealed. I have seen nothing from the CIA contradicting this, though may have missed something. My understanding is that revealing the identity of a covert agent is against the law. I am unaware of an exception that says that if someone else has already revealed the identity, it's ok to ignore that law. I don't know why Fitzgerald did not charge anyone with the crime.
Beyond that, whether or not the grand jury voted to indict for a crime committed before it was formed, it was specifically empowered to indict anyone committing perjury before it. Fitzgerald was charged with investigating to see if a crime was committed, and he was specifically empowered to bring changes against anyone obstructing his investigation by perjury or otherwise. It is ridiculous to say that it's okay to obstruct an investigation if in the end the only crime the investigation discovers is the perjury committed with a view to obstructing the investigation. If the police bring someone in for questioning because they might, for example, know something about the identity of a child molester, and they give false testimony to the police, they obviously cannot exonerate themselves by saying that it turns out that the suspect didn't commit the crime after all. The grand jury is not charged with the duty to bring an indictment; it is charged with the duty to see if an indictment is justified, and it can't properly do that if people are free to perjure themselves and gamble on a no bill by the grand jury.
Allowing people to perjure themselves before a grand jury with impunity strikes at the heart of our whole justice system.
Posted by jfl on March 19, 2007 03:03 PMMr. Kocsis is obviously a neo-con beleiver of the first water and will swallow ANY lie told to him by the ultra right wing echo machine. Joe Wilson was RIGHT that Saddam did NOT seek uranium from Niger and that the Bush administration lied. Then Cheney & Co. spearheaded a war against Wilson and his CIA wife Valerie Plame to attempt to cover up their lies. Mr. Kocsis and people like him are why this country is being led by the worst, most corrupt administartion in the country's history.
Posted by Exhoosier24 on March 19, 2007 03:28 PM2:41,
Her career track was ruined not her career. She had already transfered into personnel and was no longer a NOC, which is why no one was charged with leaking a covert operative's identity. She ruined the rest of her career and her comments state that she had "intended to return to covert operations after bumping up a rung or two in personnel."
2:46,
I have no idea, as I do not posses classified material and from the Senate's inquiry too much is blocked out to be of relevant use to this topic. My contention was in error to begin with as I sourced from the affore mentioned report and not from the 9/11 Report. I do not know what Mr. Wilson wrote in his official report (none of us do as it is clasified). All we can source from is his letter to the editor and his testimony to the special counsel and to the grand jury.
jfl,
I couldn't agree more with your final paragraph. However, in both interviews, her press release for her upcoming novel and information released now by Special Counsel Fitzgerald, she was not a convert operative but transferred into personnel with the "intent " to return to over-seas operations. "Valerie Wilson was in the process of changing her clandestine status from NOC to official cover, as she prepared for a new job in personnel management. Her aim, she told colleagues, was to put in time as an administrator — to rise up a notch or two — and then return to secret operations. But with her cover blown, she could never be undercover again."
She could have stayed within the CIA. She chooses not to and has since filed a lawsuit and an ammended lawsuit. She is free to do whatever she wants to do, and I will not sit in judgement of her. However, I do not circumseed to her "whoa is me" mentality. She put her career on the line when she married an ambassador and further when she "put her husband's name on the list" if you will, to go to Niger.
Posted by Dan2 on March 19, 2007 03:34 PMI will not sit in judgement of her. However, I do not circumseed to her "whoa is me" mentality. She put her career on the line when she married an ambassador and further when she "put her husband's name on the list" if you will, to go to Niger.
Posted by Dan2 on March 19, 2007 03:34 PM
You're not judging her? Talk about a mealy mouthed lie.
She did her job until the political hacks in the Republican Party decided that they needed to discredit her husband the same way they decided to fire prosecutors who were investigating Republican corruption. This was a political hack job that holds party above country and it is continued by mealy mouthed hacks who take snippets of information and attempt to spin conspiracy theories regarding the Wilsons.
Posted by on March 19, 2007 03:50 PMDan2, I question your statements indicating that Valerie Plame said she was not covert.
Actually, you do not say that she said she was not covert. Instead, you say, in an incomplete sentence, that:
"her press release for her upcoming novel and information released now by Special Counsel Fitzgerald, she was not a convert operative".
I googled to find a press release by Plame of any kind and found none. Since the book has not been approved for publication by the CIA, I doubt she would issue a press release. I wonder why you called the book a novel, which it of course is not.
In June of last year, the New York Times reported that her initial contract with Crown Publishing fell through and she signed up with Simon and Shuster.
I googled to find where Plame told Fitzgerald that she was not a covert agent and found none. I don't think she made any such statement as you allege.
I did find the following which I consider to rebut your statement that she said she was not covert:
"[T]he 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act . . . makes it a crime to knowingly disclose the name of a covert agent" (italics added).[18] When asked if he could ascertain whether or not Libby had revealed Plame's covert status "knowingly," Special Counsel Fitzgerald responded:
'Let me say two things. Number one, I am not speaking to whether or not Valerie Wilson was covert. And anything I say is not intended to say anything beyond this: that she was a CIA officer from January 1st, 2002, forward. I will confirm that her association with the CIA was classified at that time through July 2003. And all I'll say is that, look, we have not made any allegation that Mr. Libby knowingly, intentionally outed a covert agent. We have not charged that. And so I'm not making that assertion.'"
The interview with Fitzpatrick apparently was in October of 2005.
Part of Fitzgerald's argument to the jury:
"Fitzgerald said Libby and Cheney were incensed at Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who publicly accused the Bush administration of manipulating intelligence to win support for a US led invasion against Iraq. Fitzgerald said Cheney was "obsessed" with Wilson and had taken the former ambassador's attacks against the administration personally. "Cheney," Fitzgerald told jurors, "enlisted Libby to act as his surrogate and personally respond to reporters' queries about the veracity of Wilson's allegations by authorizing his chief of staff to leak classified information to journalists. The classified information that was leaked may have included Plame's covert status," Fitzgerald said, "in retaliation for her husband's stinging rebukes of the administration's Iraq policies."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/022107A.shtml
My reading of the situation is that Fitzgerald did not indict anyone for "outing" Plame because he could not prove, as the law requires, that they did it knowingly. If I'm not mistaken, as I often am, no one specifically said she was a covert agent. But identifying her as an agent was sufficient to blow her cover.
The CIA asked the Justice Department to investigate who leaked the name of an agent. It obviously considered that to be a serious matter.
You say she could continue working at the CIA. I'm sure you didn't get that from the CIA, so what is your source? Even if she could continue working there, as what? A filing clerk?
Plame stated under oath that she was a covert agent at the time her identity was revealed. She is now suing. I doubt that she would have perjured herself prior to a trial of that suit; I doubt she would have said that if she could not back it up if need be. I doubt you will hear of the CIA contradicting what she said under oath.
There continues to be considerable controversy about whether she was covert, all by people who are not in a position to know.
You join others who want to deflect the fact that a CIA agents identity was revealed by trying to make a case of some sort, I am not sure what your point is, against Plame and her husband. I have no idea what your motive is.
Dan2: "She ruined the rest of her career and her comments state that she had "intended to return to covert operations after bumping up a rung or two in personnel."
You're hearing voices again, right, Dan?
Posted by make do on March 19, 2007 07:08 PMDan2 continues the grand old tradition of smearing anyone who served their country but didn't fall in line with the Bush spin machine. The ideologues who invented the Swift Boat Liars continue to ply their trade hoping that no one notices the web of deceit that they try to pass off as reality.
Valarie Plame served her country in a difficult capacity. Joe Wilson personally confronted Saddam Hussien during Gulf War I with literally a noose around his neck. These people love their country and did their jobs. Joe Wilson had the diplomatic credentials to go to Africa and his assessment of the uranium hoax turned out to be correct. The Dan2's of the world will continue to judge these people as unpatriotic all the while looking the other way as this administration engages in unwarranted wire tapping and the suspension of habeas corpus. Makes you wonder who the real traitors are to this country and it's sacred ideals of liberty and justice.
Posted by Wes on March 19, 2007 08:42 PMWhen Dan2 is caught lying, he vamooses to another thread. But since he is good Christian, I guess that gives him license to lie.
Posted by greg on March 20, 2007 07:57 AMEveryone continues to assert that the Libby was the one who outed [not-so] covert [lack-of]intelligence officer Valerie Plame, despite the fact that it is known and documented that Richard Armitage was the one who first "leaked" her name to the press.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek/
Posted by Jordan on June 5, 2007 12:33 PMEveryone continues to assert that the Libby was the one who outed [not-so] covert [lack-of]intelligence officer Valerie Plame, despite the fact that it is known and documented that Richard Armitage was the one who first "leaked" her name to the press.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14533384/site/newsweek/
Posted by Jordan on June 5, 2007 12:34 PM