The Outing of Joe Wilson

by emptywheel

We've been thinking for over two years that the Plame Affair is about the outing of a CIA NOC, Valerie Plame Wilson. With Judy Miller's acknowledgement that she met with Libby in June 2003 to talk about Wilson, the most important details become how and when the White House learned of Joe Wilson's identity and what they did with it. The outing of Wilson, not Plame. If this thing will be traced back to Cheney, as rumors suggest, it will be through the way he outed Joe Wilson.

Let's start with the story the Bush Administration would have us believe.They acknowledge Dick Cheney asked CIA for more information on Niger, a request we know led to Wilson's trip to Niger. But they say they never learned of the results of his trip. On June 8 2003, Condi told Tim Russert no one had known about Wilson's (and other) investigations into Niger. "Maybe somebody in the bowels of the Agency knew something about this, but nobody in my circles." A month later, Condi would say that taht Russert question was the first she had heard of Wilson's trip.

[DR.RICE} But I will tell you that, for instance, on Ambassador Wilson's going out to Niger, I learned of that when I was sitting on whatever TV show it was, because that mission was not known to anybody in the White House.  And you should ask the Agency at what level it was known in the Agency.

Q When was that TV show, when you learned about it?

DR. RICE:  A month ago, about a month ago.

Then after Wilson's op-ed appeared--the story goes--because it was so odd that someone who worked in the Clinton White House would have been sent on this trip, a number of journalists called Rove and Libby to inquire about the backstory to Wilson's trip. Only then did Rove and Libby admit they had heard about Plame's purported involvement in Wilson's trip.

Already, we know this story to be inoperative, since we've got Judy testifying before the grand jury today that she met with Scooter Libby on June 25 2003 about Joe Wilson. We don't know yet whether Judy will say she told Libby or he told Judy about Wilson. But according to Murray Waas, we do know they were talking about Plame, not just Wilson.

a crucial conversation that he had with New York Times reporter Judith Miller in June 2003 about the operative, Valerie Plame, [emphasis original]

The earlier conversation--aside from getting Libby into serious perjury and obstruction jeopardy--negates three aspects of of their operative story:

• It proves they knew that Wilson was the envoy to Niger and that Plame was his wife in June, not July as they had said.
• It shows they were actively working this story with journalists, rather than hearing about it acceidentally as they had said.
• It proves their conversations about Wilson were not simply a response to Wilson's July 6 op-ed, as they had suggested, but were a more active and sustained campaign.

Beyond invalidating the bulk of Rove's and Libby's operative story, however, the June 25 meeting raises the question of when the Bush Administration first paid attention to Wilson and how they found out he was the Ambassador who took the trip to Niger in February 2002.

Wilson, undoubtedly, had made it pretty clear he was the envoy well before his July 6 column. If we suspend disbelief for a second and pretend no one in the Bush Administration had heard of him before Kristof's first column, this is what they would have learned.

I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.

They would have known the guy refuting their lies was a former ambassador to Africa. Not a whole lot of those, true, but still, this doesn't name him definitively.

The following month, Kristof's follow-up column provided little more detail.

The agency chose a former ambassador to Africa to undertake the mission, and that person flew to Niamey, Niger, in the last week of February 2002. This envoy spent one week in Niger, staying at the Sofitel and discussing his findings with the U.S. ambassador to Niger, and then flew back to Washington via Paris.

Walter Pincus writes an article at the same time that describes Wilson the same way, "a retired U.S. ambassador." These articles could have at least sparked the Administration to start looking for the reports on the trip. But they don't include any big tip-off such as "a former ambassador once called 'a true American hero' by Poppy Bush for his role in pre-Gulf War Iraq." Not even "former Senior Director for African Affairs in Clinton's NSC" Nothing obvious or anything.

But it wouldn't take too much to put two and two together to guess that the guy running around criticizing the rush to war--who happened to be a former ambassador to Africa--was the same guy who had been sent to Niger. Wilson had spoken publicly about Iraq as far back as May 2002 (on a panel with Richard Perle, as luck would have it). He wrote a column on how best to disarm Saddam for the San Jose Merc News in October 2002--a copy of which Brent Scowcroft personally showed to some people (presumably Condi) in the White House and about which Poppy Bush admitted, in a letter to Wilson, he "agreed with almost everything [Wilson] had written." Wilson appeared in lefty websites and righty TV shows. Thus far, though, Wilson's criticisms were based on his experience dealing with Saddam. They didn't touch on his trip to Niger.

That changed a few days after the State Department claimed they "fell for" the Niger forgeries. On CNN, David Ensor prompted the newscaster to ask about Wilson the claim.

I replied that if the U.S. government checked its files, it would, I believed, discover that it knew more about the case than the spokesman was letting on. I then added that either the spokesman was being disingenuous, or he was ill-informed.(Politics of Truth 326)

This was the first time Wilson had accused the Bush Administration of deliberately ignoring evidence. And it was the first time he said anything that might tip them off he had been the envoy to Niger.

Except that, they now claim they didn't know anything about the envoy to Niger at this time.

Whether or not they knew about Wilson (I'll return to that in a bit), this is, according to Wilson's sources, when the whole attack on Wilson started.

After my appearance on CNN in early March 2003, when I first asserted that the U.S. government knew more about the Niger uranium matter than it was letting on, I am told by a source close to the House Judiciary Committee that the Office of the Vice President -- either the vice president himself or, more likely, his chief of staff, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby -- chaired a meeting at which a decision was made to do a "workup" on me. As I understand it, this meant they were going to take a close look at who I was and what my agenda might be.

And this story comes not just from someone with ties to the House Judiciary Committee. In his book, Wilson describes a similar story coming from "a respected reporter close to the subsequent inquiry into the later disclosure of Valerie's status." (326)

Let me clear. This was in March 2003. Not May, not June, but March. Four months before Valerie Plame was outed by Robert Novak.

It is this four month period, I believe, that Judy's testimony links to the eventual leak (and possibly, links to Cheney). It is this four month period that may yield the kind of exciting story that WSJ and Bloomberg seem to be hunting down.

There are signs that prosecutors now are looking into contacts between administration officials and journalists that took place much earlier than previously thought. Earlier conversations are potentially significant, because that suggests the special prosecutor leading the investigation is exploring whether there was an effort within the administration at an early stage to develop and disseminate confidential information to the press that could undercut former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Central Intelligence Agency official Valerie Plame.

And here's why it matters. March is four months before Wilson wrote his op-ed. It's still three months earlier than it became clear in the news (and to blogger manyoso) that the critic Wilson was the same guy as the envoy who had gone to Niger to investigate. It's still two months before Kristof first publicly revealed there had been an envoy to Niger. So the question becomes, did the Bush Administration learn of Wilson's trip to Niger from news reports. Or did they learn it from some other source.

There are ways they could find out about Wilson's trip to Niger before he revealed it. The SSCI indicates the Bush Adminsitration could not have just gone to the CIA report on the trip to find out who Wilson was.

The report did not identify the former ambassador by name or as a former ambassador, but described him as "a contact with excellent access who does not have an established reporting record." (43)

But Wilson's name does appearin the INR analyst's notes of the Feburary 19 2002 meeting with him.

An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was "apparently convened by [the former ambassador's] wife who had the idea to dispatch [him] to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue. (40; brackets in the SSCI; I assume the original used Wilson's name)

The White House, presumably wouldn't have had these notes, they would have had to go get them. But there's the famous INR memo, originally dated June 10, which definitely referred to Wilson by name. Or, perhaps they asked the people who attended the February 19 2002 meeting, maybe the skeptical WINPAC analyst who seemed to distrust Wilson from the start.

"it appears that the results from this source will be suspect at best and not believable under most scenarios." (SSCI 41)

That guy seems like he was trying to prevent Wilson from being sent. And he certainly seems like the kind of guy who would be happy to foster distrust of Wilson in others.

So it is clear that they could have found out about Wilson and his trip. Either they stumbled upon it, when doing the work-up on Wilson. Or Bolton just happened to notice Wilson's name when he was vetting the INR memo. Both of these scenarios--particularly any ones not involving Bolton--seem like they would have to have gotten awfully lucky while looking for a needle in a haystack. If they didn't know about Wilson's trip, it is incredibly amazing they found details on it (at least before May, when Kristof mentioned the trip), unless Bolton is even more of a hand's-on guy than he's reputed to be.

Which is one reason I don't buy their claim that they had never heard of Wilson or his trip.

There are two more reasons why I don't believe that claim. First, if they hadn't heard of Wilson's trip, then you have to assume they would treat Wilson like any other critic of the Administration. And there were plenty of critics. Consider Rand Beers, a guy who went from the Bush Administration to Kerry's campaign in a matter of days, who openly criticized the war. They attacked Beers as a partisan. But they didn't go so far as to reveal his classified secrets. Which, considering the career he has had, must be legion. Similarly, they don't seem to have outed the identity of any of the critics quoted in a March 22 2003 article questioning the intelligence behind the Iraq war.

"I have seen all the stuff. I certainly have doubts," said a senior administration official with access to the latest intelligence. Based on the material he has reviewed, the official said, the United States will "face significant problems in trying to find" such weapons. "It will be very difficult."

According to several officials, decisions about what information to declassify and use to make the administration's public case have been made by a small group that includes top CIA and National Security Council officials. "The policy guys make decisions about things like this," said one official, referring to the uranium evidence. When the State Department "fact sheet" was issued, the official said, "people winced and thought, 'Why are you repeating this trash?'"

Presumably some of these same sources are the same people intelligence officials who referred to a report from Italy (which doesn't show up in the SSCI) which discredits the Niger documents in September, before they even arrive in the US.

The source of their information, and their doubts, officials said, was a written summary provided more than six months ago by the Italian intelligence service, which first obtained the documents.

But the White House apparently didn't go after these guys. Perhaps they went after Wilson as a warning to all these critics to shut up. But why did they choose Wilson, as opposed to all the others who presumably have secrets they'd like to keep.

There's one more reason to think they knew about Wilson earlier than they've let on. From Kristof's second column:

Officials now claim that the C.I.A. inexplicably did not report back to the White House with this envoy's findings and reasoning, or with an assessment of its own that the information was false. I hear something different. My understanding is that while Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet may not have told Mr. Bush that the Niger documents were forged, lower C.I.A. officials did tell both the vice president's office and National Security Council staff members.

Kristof has at least one source who attests to people in Cheney's office and the NSC learning of Wilson's trip. And why wouldn't they have? Cheney specifically asked about Niger. After he asked a second time, WINPAC sent analysis indicating they were debriefing Wilson (named only as a source) that very same day. (SSCI 43) After Wilson was debriefed, DO alerted WINPAC analysts of the report, because they knew the "high priority of the issue." Clearly, there is a lot of evidence to suggest Cheney did know of Wilson's trip when it happened.

Which would mean Cheney's office either buried evidence they had been briefed on the trip in February 2002. Or they buried that evidence by the time they testified to the SSCI.

This is what I think Fitzgerald may be closing in on. True, he might just have Cheney going after Wilson in response to his Meet the Press statements, and stumbling on the INR memo. That would already require enough of a conspiracy to communicate to John Bolton (or whoever discovered the information on the trip from the INR memo) that they were looking for information on Wilson.

But as news reports indicate Fitzgerald is closing in on Cheney and as more news of Cheney's apparent estrangement from this Administration appears, I think it's bigger than that. I think Fitzgerald may be piecing together evidence that Cheney deliberately ignored the results of Wilson's trip ... and then buried evidence he had done so.

I have no idea whether that means he's also getting close to solving the Niger forgery mystery. But if Cheney knew of Wilson and ignored his intelligence--then lashed out precisely because Wilson could prove that he deliberately ignored intelligence that proved the case for war was fraudulent, it would be damning enough.

Comments

[Pachacutec]

Okay, silly questions:

How far afield can Fitzgerald go on this stuff? Is he limited as to the scope of his inquiries by his original definiation of task, or can he search out anything he thinks might be a crime? Will he need to empanel a new grand jury if his investigations take him further afield?

Also, as he turns the screws on more players (cough, Rove, cough), do these players gain leverage by potentially proffering other information of interest to the Justice Department, such as information material to the Abramoff investigation?

If it's true that Fitgerald did not know of the June conversations between Libby and Miller, and if therefore he has a whole lot of new questions to ask a bunch of people, wouldn't it therefore be likely that he will take more time before winding up his investigation? Could we simply be entering a new phase of this process, allowing it to take a few more months before any indictments (if any) are forthcoming?

[Mimikatz]

It seems to me that we are finally getting to the big picture. This has always been about burying the evidence that Bush, or at least Cheney, knew that the evidence on which they war with Iraq was sold was bogus. The real reason Wilson was dangerous was that he knew that the uranium evidence--one of the two key pieces behind the "mushroom cloud, the other being the tubes--was bogus. And he knew that they knew before the war that it was bogus.

Of course some word of the results of Wilson's trip got back to the VP or at least his office. Libby was at the end of a very big stovepipe, and he clearly had allies at the CIA--and he went over there frequently in the months before the war.

One reason Wilson was very dangerous was that he was in a position to discredit the Niger forgeries. That, of course, would lead right back to Libby and Cheney's circle of crazy neonons. The other reason Wilson was dangerous was his ties to Scowcroft and Poppy Bush. Cheney and his group must have feared that Poppa Bush, who was known to harbor doubts about the war, might dissuade Junior from taking the final, fatal step. These two things are what make Wilson more dangerous than, say, Rand Beers, or even Richard Clarke.

So the WHIG folks tried to get info that the could use to discredit Wilson both in the press and perhaps with Junior if they needed it. This would make Valerie's outing perhaps collateral damage, but still wrong and illegal.

I do hope that Fitz is going after the whole effort to manufacture evidence and hype dubious evidence that got us into the war. The lost lives, lost treasure, squandered prestige and military strength and damage to the US in incalculable other ways are what make this a very important story and not just gossip. Thanks once again Emptywheel for advancing it a few paces more.

[KdmFromPhila]

Great post, as usual. I have 2 questions about this. 1. If Fitz is looking at Cheney and his deceptions before Plame was outed, what could he charge the VP with? (and wouldn't it take a long time to develop that case?); 2 The WSJ, via Raw Story is reporting that Fitzgerald is examining "the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group" which was formed in August 2002. Is that date significant? Is it that the month in which someone on the British cabinet wrote that the US was "fixing its intelligence"?

[emptywheel]

Pachacutec

When Comey named Fitz, he told him to go where the evidence led. In general, I don't think that'd include the Abramoff case. But we know Fitz intervened into the Richard Perle case in Chicago. If he did so for this case, he is looking at a really wide scope. In any case, there are about 5 places where this could overlap with the Niger forgeries, so that's more likely.

Kdm,

The Downing Street Memo was dated July 24, IIRC, so they were actually already fixing the intelligence before August. But by looking at WHIG, Fitz may be looking at the overall manufacturing of information to get us into war (potentially including the aluminum tubes, which were a September 2002 invention).

I'm not sure how seriously I take WHIG as a target. Not that each and every one of them isn't a target. Although it might be the reconstituted WHIG they brought back to deal with Plame. I just think WHIG is the core of what Fitz has information on, both through Libby's notes (if they haven't been doctored), and probably from someone who flipped (I tend to think Matalin).

[praktike]

I think the reason those other folks didn't get attacked is that their identities were less obvious and/or because they were State Dept. folks and hence protected on some level by the Powell-Armitage axis.

[orchid314]

Excellent, excellent post, emptywheel. In your view, do you see Fitzgerald asking for an extension of the GJ to deal with all of this, or do you think, based on the material and the witnesses he has subpoenaed so far, that he may be wrapping things up?

[windansea]

I still don't understand how Wilson's speech at EPIC on June 14, 2003 fits into all this....basically he outed himself as the "former ambassador who went to Niger"

"“Let me just start out by saying, as a preface to what I really want to talk about, to those of you who are going out and lobbying tomorrow, I just want to assure you that that American ambassador who has been cited in reports in the New York Times and in the Washington Post, and now in the Guardian over in London, who actually went over to Niger on behalf of the government-not of the CIA but of the government-and came back in February of 2002 and told the government that there was nothing to this story, later called the government after the British white paper was published and said you all need to do some fact-checking and make sure the Brits aren’t using bad information in the publication of the white paper, and who called both the CIA and the State Department after the President’s State of the Union and said to them you need to worry about the political manipulation of intelligence if, in fact, the President is talking about Niger when he mentions Africa. That person was told by the State Department that, well, you know, there’s four countries that export uranium. That person had served in three of those countries, so he knew a little bit about what he was talking about when he said you really need to worry about this. But I can assure you that that retired American ambassador to Africa, as Nick Kristof called him in his article, is also pissed off, and has every intention of ensuring that this story has legs. And I think it does have legs. It may not have legs over the next two or three months, but when you see American casualties moving from one to five or to ten per day, and you see Tony Blair’s government fall because in the U.K. it is a big story, there will be some ramifications, I think, here in the United States, so I hope that you will do everything you can to keep the pressure on. Because it is absolutely bogus for us to have gone to war the way we did.”

the EPIC website has the audio and also states he is varied to the former Valerie Plame

http://www.epic-usa.org/Default.aspx?tabid=68&showlogin=1

[danielg]

Great writing, emptywheel.

One of the facts taken at face value is that Valerie Plame suggested that Joe Wilson go check out the claims. Has anyone investigated whether or not that is a cover story for getting Valerie Plame into the area? That she was the one who checked it out, and that it was her contacts that got burned by the revelation of her status?

[aiko]

I read somewhere, I thought it was in the SSCI or in testimony on the Hill, that CIA analysts testified that Wilson's Niger report was forwarded to Cheney's office.

Now am I getting confused between all the what if's in the blogoshere and what's fact????

[crone]

thanks emptywheel for your ceaseless efforts to bring clarity on this to all of us... excellent analysis, as usual...

as for some of the questions from posters about Fitz 'adding' Whig to his scope - I think Whig has been there from the beginning. He subpoenaed documents from the group early on in the investigation, and most of its members have testified before the GJ or at least talked to Fitz. I don't for what minute think the contents of the 'notebook' come as a late surprise... perhaps just a piece of hard evidence - dropped by whom? That is the question. Lots of long knives coming out. This is a wicked bunch of folks.

[scott]

In one of the comments above, the question was asked "...how far can Fitgerald go..." in this investigation? Fundamentally he is guided by a simple rule; he is legally bound to either investigate or report for further investigation anything of a potentially criminal nature that may be discovered during the course of the current investigation. If it is something of relevance to the current investigation he can included it as part of his evidence. If it is more appropriate that a seperate investigation ensue, then he can call for a new grand jury.

Considering how Ken Starr started out looking at realestate deals in "Whitewater" and ended up investigating the President's lying about how certain incriminating stains got on a certain blue dress, I think it would be very difficult for the Republicans to carp about Fitgerald going beyond his "charter."

[Pachacutec]

Thanks for your response, emptywheel. Great work as usual.

I guess I was imagining the following hypothetical scenario:

1. Witness/target gets lots of night sweats and looks to make a deal

2. Witness is eyeball deep in trouble and likely to be indicted

3. Witness has goods of interest to the Abramoff investigation

4. Witness has his attorney flirt with Fitzgerald to see if DOJ might be interested in Abramoff related information in exchange for a favorable plea

5. Fitzgerald gets a sense of what might be offered and shares it with colleagues on the Abramoff investigation

6. Abramoff investigators find that such testimony might be of interest

7. Attorneys work out a deal and send a proffer letter to witnesses attorney, woking out the framework of a deal that offers a more favorable plea arrangement to the witness in exchange for this information.

I was imagining, not that Fitgerald would move into Abramoff related investigation, but that he might act as a broker on behalf of DOJ interests if a witness had something to offer and was scrambling to gain leverage against future indictment.

I'm not an attorney, so maybe I'm out of line with this speculation. But as a hypothetical, is this possible?

If it's true that Rove is getting dumped by WH folks, it's possible he or others could play this card. Pure speculation, of course, but how unrealistic is this?

[windansea]

Posted by: danielg | October 12, 2005 at 12:19

I read somewhere, I thought it was in the SSCI or in testimony on the Hill, that CIA analysts testified that Wilson's Niger report was forwarded to Cheney's office.

Now am I getting confused between all the what if's in the blogoshere and what's fact????

read this WAPO story on SSCI....Wilson got caught in a lot of lies and "mispeak"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html

excerpts

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.

"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."

The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

[al-Fubar]

Well, after all, why WOULDN'T they know, or want to find out, who Wilson was?

Imagine for a moment an alternate universe in which an Administration is worried about Saddam, and predisposed to think he's ramping up on WMD, but is fundamentally honest and honorable.

They get word back that the CIA sent a guy, a retired ambassador with experience in the region, and he reported back that there's nada to the Niger story. It's not unreasonable for the national security team to wonder who they sent and whether he might have been some old codger who could have the wool pulled over his eyes.

To that point they're still on reasonable ground. It's what they did with the information that was dishonorable, and soon crossed the line into criminal.

On another note, have there been any hints whatsoever that Fitz might end up having to extend the grand jury? The buzz for the last few weeks has been all that he was wrapping up. But now it looks as if new doors are opening up, what with Rove dropping by for another chat, and Judy, golly gee whiz, finding notes she'd forgotten all about.

Maybe Fitz was pushing on these doors all along, and now that he's got the key he knows exactly what he'll find behind them. But it sure looks like a lot of new stuff is turning up.

-- Rick

[kim]

This would fit the early efforts by Rice, and Fleicher I believe, to claim that Cheney didn't know of Wilson's trip. Rice's comment that she first heard about it on a TV show, which you mention above, wasn't believable at all to me - and surely doesn't fit with an earlier WHIG meeting about Wilson.

[CaseyL]

That SSCI report - rather, the addendum to it, which is where jmost of your quotes comes from - has been repeatedly debunked as a partisan add-on to the main report.

[pontificator]

Great analysis Emptywheel.

One thing that confuses me about this purported expansion into WHIG and whether Dick Cheney saw Joe Wilson's Niger report and didn't tell anyone is how it relates to a commission of a crime. Fitzgerald is not a Congressional Investigative Committee. He is a prosecutor who investigates crimes. Even if Dick Cheney saw Wilson's report, and then pretended he hadn;t, how is that a crime? Why would that make him a target of a criminal investigation?

There are some pieces missing here in the reporting. Most specifically, is Fitz looking into any other criminal acts OTHER than the outing of Valerie Plame's status as a CIA asset (and other than perjury, obstruction of justice, etc. in response to the investigation).

[Kagro X]

Pontificator: Conspiracy charges make it possible to criminalize behavior that by itself would not draw a prosecutor's notice. The acts committed don't necessarily have to be criminal, just committed in furtherance of some criminal purpose.

With so many people wondering how far Fitzgerald intends to go, perhaps it's an opportune time to ask my "big lie" question again:

Is the administration covering up the lengths to which it went to prevent the exposure of its mistaken reliance on bad intelligence? Or is the administration covering up the lengths to which it went to promote intelligence developed by its own, parallel intelligence structure, a plan which required the simultaneous undermining and the destruction of the credibility of the country's established (read: authorized and legitimate) intelligence structure, which refused to give them what they wanted?

The answer to that question is the difference between "just politics," and "we're not kidding when we whisper the word 'treason.'"

Someone posed the question on Daily Kos yesterday, how is it that these schemers let someone as dogged as Fitzgerald get this key appointment? As I said there, I think they thought this could all be dismissed as "just politics."

I don't think they were prepared for Fitzgerald, because his greatest achievement has not been investigative, but imaginative. They thought they were involved in "politics as usual." Hardball, to be sure, but just politics as usual. A paradigm in which the "administration" is given a wide berth to redirect policy and reorient intelligence programs. So what if they took a few shortcuts? Surely people would understand their "decisiveness" in fighting the "global war on terror." And enemies are enemies, whether foreign or domestic.

I don't think they thought they had done anything wrong. I think they thought they were entitled to do these things. I think they thought that the level at which they were pulling these stunts entitled them to protection -- that their policy decisions (and that's how I think they regarded the Plame outing) were beyond the reach of the courts and the law. Not because they "owned" them, but because what they were doing was "political" and not justiciable.

You can be sure that like DeLay, the Bush "administration" will be complaining that the prosecutor is trying to "criminalize politics."

[emptywheel]

Actually, Rick, there is a bit of a problem with trying to figure out who Wilson was. (And this may address the question of how outing Wilson is a crime.) His identity was deliberately concealed and there was an asymmetrical confidentiality attached to Wilson's trip:

DO officials told Committee staff that they promised the former ambassador that they would keep his relationship with the CIA confidential, but did not ask the former ambassador to do the same and did not ask him to sign a confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement. (SSCI 41)

In other words, CIA was bound to keep Wilson's trip secret, but Wilson wasn't bound himself.

While I have no doubt that anyone in Cheney's office has a high enough clearance to get access to Wilson's trip, that doesn't give them access to talk about it. If they were using documents on Wilson to pull together their work-up--and shared it with people who didn't have clearance--than it was a violation of security agreements.

Other than that, I wonder if any of this falls under lying to congress or anyone else. There's the SOTU, where they deliberately kept Africa in, an earlier report to Congress (where WH bypassed State on the drafting process) that kept Niger in, and probably a ton more. That'd be a harder case to make, but it might be possible.

[DemFromCT]

To Kagro's point about imagination, check this column today on Miers:

With conservative unrest toward Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court showing no signs of abating, I wondered why we haven't seen any of the Republican senators mentioned as 2008 presidential candidates come out against her, a move that would win them plaudits among the party's ideological right -- not to mention scads of press coverage.

I made several phone calls to Republican consultants and advisers to try and find answers. The overwhelming consensus was that even though President Bush's approval ratings are not stellar currently, none of the potential '08 candidates is willing to risk his wrath by making the political gambit of publicly opposing Miers.

"Nobody wants to take a sharp stick and poke it in the eye of the president no matter what his approval rating is," said Glen Bolger, a Republican pollster with the firm Public Opinion Strategies. "He is too strong with Republican primary voters and three years from now he will remember anyone who votes against his nominee."

This is 2005 with his polling numbers in the toilet. Imagine saying no in 2003 to Bush or Cheney. And imagine reporters in 2005 willing to think that Bush and Cheney might have been responsible bor 'the big lie' and be willing to say so in print. if/when indictments come, watch how "all of a sudden" imaginitive the press gets.

[emptywheel]

Two more comments.

First, re: the big lie and stovepiping intelligence. Anyone notice how none of the people with indictments hanging over their head are from Defense? The closest would be Wolfie's buddy Libby, but still. It astounds me that Defense, which was really the department tactically going after State and (the real) CIA, will avoid any penalty here.

Also, wrt picking Fitzgerald. I think it was NHL who said on these threads the other day that Ashcroft, once he realized ROve was a subject, risked obstruction charges himself. If Ashcroft were worried about obstruction charges, I can imagine he'd want to stay away from influencing what prosecutor got picked.

[Tom Maguire]

I will second emptywheel's point that the obvious crime to nail everyone would be, conspiracy to reveal information about a classified CIA trip.

As best I can tell, Wilson's trip was classified, so leaking about *that* is illegal, regardless of whether his wife is mentioned or not.

Now, one might note that Tenet declassified the trip by talking about it on July 11, but that does not (necessarily) excuse behavior in June.

As to the idea that Fitzgerald will indict Cheney for misleading this nation into war and having bad hair - quote me some reasonable oddds, and I may bet against you.

Now, nitpicky stuff:

But according to Murray Waas, we do know they were talking about Plame, not just Wilson.

a crucial conversation that he had with New York Times reporter Judith Miller in June 2003 about the operative, Valerie Plame, [emphasis original]

Let's continue that excerpt:

...did not disclose a crucial conversation that he had with New York Times reporter Judith Miller in June 2003 about the operative, Valerie Plame, according to sources with firsthand knowledge of his sworn testimony.

OK, tell me - how did people familiar with Libby's testimony know what he said about testimony he never gave?

Either Waas hopelessly mischaracterized his sources, or he leapt to a conclusion, and meant to say "a conversation about Wilson".

Every Times story on this says the same thing - the notebook refers to a talk about Joe Wilson.

[emptywheel]

After reading this Digby post I wonder if there is a way to bring in the prohibition against directing propaganda at the American people. There has been no way to get someone to be held responsible for all the other dollar-shills, even while the GAO admits using them was breaking the law. Now that we have a prosecutor already, can he address that statute? It'd be tough to make it the centerpiece. But it is a restriction the legislative branch has placed on the executive branch. Just like the Boland Amendment. And I guarantee you the attempts to avoid the restriction on disinformation resembled the attempts to get around the Bolan Amendment. Hell, they even brought back two of the experts!!

Tom

Yeah, I think Waas MAY have been sloppy there, as he was further on when referring to Miller-Libby's July 8 conversation.

Although if he knows how Libby knew of Wilson, then he may have reason to know that Plame was involved. That is, if he knows Fitz has Miller receiving the INR memo in June, then he would feel justified in saying Plame.

It should come as no surprise that I find the NYT untrustworthy on this story. They themselves may be in legal jeopardy and may be adapting their stories accordingly. At the very least they're trying to regain some shred of respectibility out of this.

[Sara]

I think it important to remember there are two Wilson reports on the Niger trip involved here. Wilson makes it clear in his narrative that as soon as he was asked by CIA to undertake a mission, he consulted with the Department of State, (Assistant Sec. of State for African Affairs -- Walter Kansteiner) essentially asking for concurrence that he should undertake the CIA mission. He also made clear he would not travel to Niger without the approval of the then Ambassador, Owens-Kirkpatrick. Both of them approved his trip.

On his return, Wilson met with the Reports Officer on the State Department Africa Desk -- and dictated his trip notes for the State Department files.

Wilson's report was not the only State Department source. They had also requested that Owens-Kirkpatrick investigate and report on the intelligence that Iraq had attempted to acquire Yellow Cake from Niger -- and in addition, NATO sent a 4 Star Marine General, Carleton Fulford to examine the issue through the Niger Military. All three reports concurred that there was no evidence a Yellow Cake transaction had occurred. If State's reporting was cut out of the policy process it may well be because they had covered all bases, and nixed the intelligence based on the forged documents that apparently was the basis of the intelligence behind Cheney's office interest.

Fitzgerald may well have had another route through which to explore all this. He has talked with -- and perhaps called to the GJ, Greg Thielman, who retired from State in the fall of 2002, in part over the "fixing" of intelligence issue, and specifically over the Niger-Uranium caper. Thielman was a lead anaylist in State's Research and Analysis Division -- and in the winter of 2003, as a recent retiree, he took the lead in criticizing Colin Powell's UN speech. Through Thielman Fitzgerald would have a quite independent line into the whole Niger issue, and how reporting into Cheney's operation transpired. He's probably had that since shortly after he began his investigation. It could well be that Bolton's operation served to keep I & R's reports out of the materials sent to Cheney's office, Reports that would have offered grave doubt regarding the intelligence they were "fixing" so as to support the invasion decision.

Now -- if as many of us suspect, Fitzgerald is looking at a Conspiracy Charge -- evidence as to how the normal flow of intelligence and analysis was preverted would be critical at trial. Essentially the same pattern of cutting off sources of critical doubt applies to both CIA and State. Those who actively supported this cut off could well be named as parties to the conspiracy. And if as it appears, Colin Powell may will be a straight up witness -- this is a very significant and powerfuul case.

[Meteor Blades]

Investigative journalism done superbly, I.F. Stone-style, all of it from the publicly available record with a hefty dose, of creative speculation. Obviously, Fitzgerald isn't the only one who applies an imaginative approach to this task. Kudos, once again, emptywheel.

windansea, if we're going to quote WaPo stories making claims about Wilson, let's allow Wilson to reply, shall we?

From his July 17, 2004 letter to the WaPo editor about the story you cite:

For the second time in a year, your paper has published an article [news story, July 10] falsely suggesting that my wife, Valerie Plame, was responsible for the trip I took to Niger on behalf of the U.S. government to look into allegations that Iraq had sought to purchase several hundred tons of yellowcake uranium from that West African country. Last July 14, Robert Novak, claiming two senior sources, exposed Valerie as an "agency operative [who] suggested sending him to Niger." Novak went ahead with his column despite the fact that the CIA had urged him not to disclose her identity. That leak to Novak may well have been a federal crime and is under investigation. Click here!

In the year since the betrayal of Valerie's covert status, it has been widely understood that she is irrelevant to the unpaid mission I undertook or the conclusions I reached. But your paper's recent article acted as a funnel for this scurrilous and extraneous charge, uncritically citing the Republican-written Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report.

The decision to send me to Niger was not made, and could not be made, by Valerie. At the conclusion of a meeting that she did not attend, I was asked by CIA officials whether I would be willing to travel to Niger. While a CIA reports officer and a State Department analyst, both cited in the report, speculate about what happened, neither of them was in the chain of command that made the decision to send me. Reams of documents were given over to the Senate committee, but the only quotation attributed to my wife on this subject was the anodyne "my husband has good relations with both the PM (Prime Minister) and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." In fact, with 2-year-old twins at home, Valerie did not relish my absence for a two-week period. But she acquiesced because, in the zeal to be responsive to the legitimate concerns raised by the vice president, officials of her agency turned to a known functionary who had previously checked out uranium-related questions for them.

But that is not the only inaccurate assertion or conclusion in the Senate report uncritically parroted in the article. Other inaccuracies and distortions include the suggestion that my findings "bolstered" the case that Niger was engaged in illegal sales of uranium to Iraq. In fact, the Senate report is clear that the intelligence community attempted to keep the claim out of presidential documents because of the weakness of the evidence.

The facts surrounding my trip remain the same. I traveled to Niger and found it unlikely that Iraq had attempted to purchase several hundred tons of yellowcake uranium. In his 2003 State of the Union address, President Bush referred to Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium "from Africa." Between March 2003 and July 2003, the administration refused to acknowledge that it had known for more than a year that the claim on uranium sales from Niger had been discredited, until the day after my article in the New York Times. The next day the White House issued a statement that "the sixteen words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address." Those facts are amply supported in the Senate report.

-- Joseph C. Wilson IV