The A1 Cut-Out Strikes Again

by emptywheel

I hate to harp on Judy Miller. Or perhaps I should say I hate to have so many opportunities to harp on her. But it's kind of my shtick, so when I see articles reporting on a team debunking the Mobile Weapons Lab myth, I feel obliged. Joby Warrick reports:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

Why does this oblige me to harp on Judy again? Well, because she seems to have been involved in an effort to first pre-empt this study ... and then counteract it.

To understand what I mean, let's review timing. One of the last things Judy did before leaving Iraq (just before she published a breathless article about finding a known cache of uranium) was to publish a May 11 article announcing the find of the "Mobile Weapons Labs."

A team of experts searching for evidence of biological and chemical weapons in Iraq has concluded that a trailer found near Mosul in northern Iraq in April is a mobile biological weapons laboratory, the three team members said today.

Describing their four-day examination of the lab for the first time and on the condition of anonymity, the members of the Chemical Biological Intelligence Support Team-Charlie, or Team Charlie, said they had based their conclusion on a thorough examination of the gray-green trailer, with the help of British experts and a few American soldiers.

The members acknowledged that some experts were still uncertain whether the trailer was intended to produce biological agents. But they said they were persuaded that it was a mobile lab for biological production.

Then, writing from the US ten days later, Judy leaked the contents of a White Paper confirming the find:

United States intelligence agencies have concluded that two mysterious trailers found in Iraq were mobile units to produce germs for weapons, but they have found neither biological agents nor evidence that the equipment was used to make such arms, according to senior administration officials.

The officials said intelligence analysts in Washington and Baghdad reached their conclusion about the trailers after analyzing, and rejecting, alternative theories of how they could have been used. Their consensus was in a paper presented to the White House late Monday.

[snip]

The six-page white paper, entitled Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Production Plants, contains a description of the three trailer units found so far in Iraq and dismisses at least three alternative explanations for their use, an official said yesterday.

Curiously, Judy mentions international experts who will be invited to examine the mobile units--at about the same time as the team Warrick reported on would have been leaving to conduct their investigation (they assembled in Kuwait on May 25).

Yesterday in Baghdad a military official said that American forces would invite international experts to examine the mobile units, The Associated Press reported.

And then, as Warrick details, the team conducts its investigation and submits a report debunking the mobile weapon lab claims just six days later. A day after the debunking team submitted its report on May 27, the CIA published the White Paper Judy had leaked a week earlier. From Warrick:

The technical team's findings had no apparent impact on the intelligence agencies' public statements on the trailers. A day after the team's report was transmitted to Washington -- May 28, 2003 -- the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its Washington analysts. That white paper, which also bore the DIA seal, contended that U.S. officials were "confident" that the trailers were used for "mobile biological weapons production."

Just like the Plame/CIA Joe Wilson Report/NIE leaks, someone leaked a then-classified document to Judy, then published it a week or so later, presumably because Judy's leaking didn't do the trick.

But it didn't stop there. As the recent Vanity Fair puff piece explains, Judy returned to Baghdad in early June, just after Bush had reported on the Mobile Weapons Labs, to find out "why there were doubts" about the Mobile Weapons Labs.

"I told Judy that she could not go back," Roger Cohen, the foreign editor of the Times, told me recently. "There were concerns about her sources and her sourcing. . . . We talked about it in my office for an hour." Miller was able to prevail, however, and she returned briefly to Iraq, she later said, "to try to report on why the W.M.D. had not been found." She concentrated on one crucial aspect: why there were doubts about the mobile labs. "I wanted to find out how the intelligence services had gotten this so wrong," she said. "There was a tremendous divide over it."

The article she reported (with William Broad) after returning to Baghdad a second time seems to be a response to this debunking team.

American and British intelligence analysts with direct access to the evidence are disputing claims that the mysterious trailers found in Iraq were for making deadly germs. In interviews over the last week, they said the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.

''Everyone has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion,'' said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers and, like some others, spoke on condition that he not be identified. He added, ''I am very upset with the process.''

As part of her services to counter the debunkers, Judy portrays the White Paper as "nuanced" and "carefully qualified."

Experts described the debate as intense despite the American intelligence agencies' release last week of the nuanced, carefully qualified white paper concluding that the mobile units were most likely part of Iraq's biowarfare program. It was posted May 28 on the Internet at www.cia.gov.

''We are in full agreement on it,'' an official said of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency at a briefing on the white paper.

The six-page report, ''Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants,'' called discovery of the trailers ''the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.''

She even publishes an SAO's denial of pressure that no one publicly was yet alleging:

A senior administration official said the White House had not put pressure on the intelligence community in any way on the content of its white paper, or on the timing of its release.

Uh huh. What do you say now, Scooter Libby Mr. SAO, now that we all know the White Paper was designed to pre-empt the findings of the experts?

In the end, Judy gives voice to an SAO rejecting the findings of the expert team.

A senior official said ''we've considered these objections'' and dismissed them as having no bearing on the overall conclusions of the white paper. He added that Iraq, which declared several classes of mobile vehicles to the United Nations, never said anything about hydrogen factories.

Very interesting. And there's one more interesting bit. The expert team came home just after they submitted their report on May 27. But Judy apparently returned to Baghdad to figure out what went wrong, rather than heading to DC (though either Judy or Broad interviewed the experts for their article). What was Judy doing in Baghdad, if the experts who could answer her question were already back in DC and the UK?

No matter. When she returned to Baghdad, no one wanted to talk to her.

After months of enjoying "embedded" status (and then some), Miller unexpectedly returned to Baghdad via Kuwait in the middle of the night in early June, military officials and journalists told me, but was denied permission to rejoin the weapons-hunting teams and was put on the next plane out.

According to a public affairs officer (PAO) on the scene, she sought an embed arrangement different from the "terms of accreditation to report" which she had originally signed. Most of her contacts had been replaced by new people from David Kay's Iraqi Survey Group (ISG). Col. Richard McPhee, commander of the 75th Exploitation Task Force in Iraq, whose teams had been looking for evidence of WMDs in the spring, refused an interview with her.

Perhaps Richard McPhee had tired of helping Judy stage WMD finds?

So in the end, they apparently succeeded in largely burying the counter-evidence to the dodgy claims. But they weren't successful in carrying out whatever project Judy had been sent to accomplish, either.

Comments

[emptywheel]

Thanks to Quicksilver for alerting me to Warrick's article.

[Steve]

On another blog I had posted a timeline, based on the WaPo story, that I think helps in keeping the bioweapons lab story straight. So I'll repeat it.

2/5/03 – Colin Powell tells the U.N. Security Council, “We have firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.” His statement is based on diagrams generated by now-discredited informant Curveball.

3/20/03 – Invasion of Iraq begins.

April 2003 – Two trailers matching Curveball’s descriptions are found in separate locations in Iraq. “Both were painted military green and outfitted with a suspicious array of gear: large metal tanks, motors, compressors, pipes and valves.”

A debate ensues as to whether the trailers are really bioweapons facilities. “Two teams of military experts who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery concluded that the facilities were weapons labs.”

A CIA analyst in Washington prepares a draft white paper that will ultimately become the official CIA view. The draft refers to the trailers as “the strongest evidence to date that Iraq was hiding a biological warfare program.”

5/25/03 – A team of nine volunteers, each with at least a decade of experience in one of the essential technical skills needed for bioweapons production, arrives in Iraq at the behest of the Defense Intelligence Agency. “Within the first four hours,” one of them relates, “it was clear to everyone that these were not biological labs.”

5/26/03 – Rumors of the technical team’s observations travel across the Atlantic. “A stream of anxious e-mails and phone calls from Washington pressed for details and clarifications.”

5/27/03 – The technical team’s preliminary report, reflecting its conclusion that the trailers were not bioweapons facilities, is transmitted to Washington.

5/28/03 – The CIA publishes its white paper, “Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants,” on its Web site. The white paper bears the DIA seal.

5/29/03 – President Bush declares, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.” He identifies the two trailers as mobile “biological laboratories.”

June 2003 – The technical team, now back in Washington, works on its final (still-classified) report. Many outsiders want to know if the team can soften its conclusions to leave open the possibility that the trailers were, in fact, bioweapons labs. “In the end, the final report—19 pages plus a 103-page appendix—remained unequivocal in declaring the trailers unsuitable for weapons production.”

6/26/03 – Secretary of State Powell tells reporters that the “confidence level is increasing” that the trailers were intended for biowarfare.

9/14/03 – Vice President Cheney on “Meet the Press”: “We’ve, since the war, found two of them. They’re in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack.”

10/2/03 – David Kay, leader of the Iraq Survey Group, tells Congress that he was “unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs.” It turns out he was not apprised of the technical team’s findings until late 2003. “If I had known that we had such a team in Iraq,” says Kay, “I would certainly have given their findings more weight.”

2/5/04 – CIA Director George Tenet continues to assert that the bioweapons lab theory remains plausible. Although there was “no consensus” among intelligence officials, the trailers “could be made to work” as weapons labs, he said in a speech.

September 2004 – The Iraq Survey Group’s final report to Congress finds that the trailers were “impractical for biological agent production,” lacking 11 components that would be crucial for making bioweapons. Instead, the trailers were “almost certainly designed and built for the generation of hydrogen.”

[lemondloulou54]

EW, You're brilliant.

[Lisa]

The White Paper on the mobile labs is yet another example of 'instant declassification' to Judy in an effort to mislead and lie to the public. Have you been able to document exactly how many of these there were in the run-up to the war, during the invasion, and after the invasion? Serial Leaker-in-Chief indeed.

[&y]

What a surprise. Another declassified white paper written before facts had been gathered the classified version. And there's Judy in the middle of it all.

(P.S. You may be interested in today's gaggle, via JMM.)

[Lisa]

Interesting that the SAO told Judy that no pressure was exerted on the intelligence community to produce a certain outcome for the White Paper at exactly the same time that the technical team was receiving pressure to soften its results. What an obvious CYA tactic. Let's hope that Warrick got one of the technical team members to spill the beans on who exactly the outsiders were that wanted them to soften the reports conclusions to leave open the possibility that the trailers were, in fact, bioweapons labs.

[Mary]

Nice job on the timeline and the post. The fact that the technical report disputing the findings remains undistributed is one of the key points.

Here it is, years after the report and a long ways past the Iraq Survey Group open report on the same subject to Congress.

What is the reason for it staying unreleased, not even a release with redacts, except for the coverup of the false statements being made while the report was in house?

[Jeff]

I tend not to believe the worst things said about Miller here and elsewhere (she was an actual member of WHIG and so on), but it is just extraordinary to see her show up in all the controversies the way she does. That said, while it is impossible just by reading to disentangle the contributions of the two writers and of the editor(s?) to the June 7, 2003 article (though there are some safe guesses), the overall tilt of it, especially given how it starts off, is toward the skeptics. Miller almost certainly got the pushback from the other side. But unlike, say, her coauthored September 13, 2003 piece on the aluminum tubes skeptics, this one is not an actual hitjob on the skeptics. As a finished product of the Times, this one actually seems like something that deserves praise.

[Mimikatz]

Seen this on Fitzgerald's correction?

[Ron Brynaert]

EW,

Respectfully disagree with much of this post.

The white paper was "carefully qualified." The word probably and unlikely appear over and over again (as noted in Miller's May 21, articl which was also written with Broad). I think you completely miscategorize this article which most people i f they read in full would think that the trailers were bogus. You're picking a few parts out instead of viewing the thrust of the article.

"the White Paper was designed to pre-empt the findings of the experts?"

actually....it seems like it was designed to attack back at the new york times. It criticized a May 13, 2003 editorial.

It seems to me that Miller might've had trouble getting access with the military in June partly cause the Administration went to war on them.

There's a lot the Post missed.

These experts seem to have been sent by the British Gov't as well where they reported to Blair...as the Guardian reported in July of 2003 (links at my blog).

I really think that this new Wash Post story along with the last Miller story show a different picture than what we've all been painting the last year or so.

The Bush Administration's main enemy in June of 2003 was the new york times...not necessarily Wilson. And Miller wasn't the same friend of the Administration in June of 2003 as she most definitely was earlier. Whether she changed (and she's given countless interviews which said as much the last year) just because of the criticism against her is anyone's guess.

I sure hope the British Press take this up. Because I'm curious if the Brits fought the Bush Admin to release the report.

[mamayaga]

"What was Judy doing in Baghdad, if the experts who could answer her question were already back in DC and the UK?"

But guess which bioweapons expert was in Kuwait and Iraq June 5-11? None other than Dr. David Kelly, who was later confirmed as the expert source for an article in the Observer June 15, 2003, casting doubt on the "mobile bioweapons lab" story. And of course, he and our Judy were buds from way back.

[emptywheel]

mamayaga

Hmm, now that's very interesting. Very interesting.

Jeff

Yes, you're right, we don't know what Broad did and what Judy did. For the NYT, at least, this was an attempt to make Judy put some balance in her writing (and was cited as proof taht Judy was always balanced). I'm particularly fascinated by the structure of it, which does start by highlighting the skeptics, but then sides with the shills, particularly in this paragraph:

The depth of dissent is hard to gauge. Even if it turns out to be a minority view, which seems likely, the skepticism is significant given the image of consensus that Washington has projected and the political reliance the administration has come to place on the mobile units. At the recent summit meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, President Bush cited the trailers as evidence of illegal Iraqi arms.

It gives balance and a fair assessment of both sides. But then says it is "likely" that the dissent will remain the minority view. That's a rather odd observation to make in such a balanced story.

Ron

I'm confused (but interested) in your disagreement. Are you saying that Judy's June article, or her May one, was balanced? The White Paper may well have been caveated. But her May article was not, by any means. Which would be a pre-peat of what we now know was supposed to go on with the NIE and the Wilson report--Judy reports a skewed view of a classified document, framing it before it is declassified.

Further, we know the leak to Judy/Broad was regarded within the IC as problematic, because when it came to release Kay's preliminary report in September, the IC made sure it wouldn't get leaked early, specifically referencing this May leak. That is, in September, the sane members of the IC took special care to make sure that Kay couldn't leak his conclusions to Judy (or anyone else) early to spin them as having found WMDs and not--as was the case--come up with nothing.

That later concern, added to the curious timing here, makes it particularly suspect. I agree that the June article is more balanced (and that's largely the NYT's attempt to recover it's own reputation). But the early leak doesn't seem to be.

[fireback]

Sorry to get off the subject some here, but is there a reason no one is commenting on Jason's Leopold's article the other day? Is there something I don't know about this guy? From his article:

"According to four attorneys who over the past two days have read a transcript of the President Bush's interview with investigators, Bush did not disclose to either investigators or the special counsel that he had authorized Cheney or any other administration official to leak portions of the NIE to Woodward and Miller or any other reporter. Rather, these people said the president said he frowned upon "selective leaks.""

Here's the link http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040606Y.shtml

[fireback]

By the way, EW, please come home soon. Your work is absolutely amazing.

[John Casper]

ew, hope you are doing well. Jeralyn has Libby's latest filing and some comments about it. Thanks for the post.
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/014547.html

[Jeff]

But then says it is "likely" that the dissent will remain the minority view. That's a rather odd observation to make in such a balanced story.

Yes, that is odd. But then the very same sentence goes on to make the point that even if it remains a minority view, the dissent remains significant because the claim about mobile labs had become important, and crucial to that claim was that it was uncontroversial, so the fact that there was real dissent undercut the public claims the administration was making about the evidence. It is a fascinating sentence, that telescopes all the tensions in the article as a whole. And it is worth noting that the substantive point remains the most impossible-to-answer for rightwingers. See, for example, Captainquarters' or whatever today and then Kevin Drum's response, which essentially makes exactly the point contained in the Times sentence.

[William Ockham]

It's interesting that this episode happened at the same time as Plamegate blew up. Maybe one of Joe Wilson's sins (in the eyes of the Administration) is that he helped push this great (fake) discovery of WMD's off the front page. Makes this part of Judy's testimony all the more interesting:

Although I was interested primarily in my area of expertise - chemical and biological weapons - my notes show that Mr. Libby consistently steered our conversation back to the administration's nuclear claims.

Libby just couldn't let go.

[emptywheel]

William

One way of reading that Judy comment, in this context, is that Judy really was discovering, with the Mobile Weapons Labs, how shoddy the intell was. That she wasn't really as interested in that.

Of course, she certainly played the nuclear card several times in Baghdad.

Anyway, that's been my point all along, with Judy. She has been intimately involved in teh effort to protect the WMD claims. And Joe Wilson was just a part of that. Ergo, it was barely a hop to get from Judy to Wilson.

[Jim E.]

While awaiting a comment thread to open up to discuss Libby's latest filing, I do have a comment about it.

On pages 26-27, Libby's lawyers write: "A key component of Mr. Libby’s defense is that he had no motive to lie to either the FBI or the grand jury because he had no reason to believe, before July 14, 2003, that Ms. Wilson’s employment status was classified."

It would seem that by the time Libby was interviewed by the FBI, and later, when he testified in front of the GJ, he had every reason to believe Plame's status was classified. This particular motive argument seems laughable, considering that Libby had reason to worry he could subsequently be charged with knowingly outing a covert agent. When he testified (which seems the moment that actually matters), Libby certainly had motive to distance himself from anything to do with any disclosure related to Plame.

[Jim E.]

And Footnote 6 ("We emphasize that, consistent with his grand jury testimony, Mr. Libby does not contend that he was instructed to make any disclosures concerning Ms. Wilson by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, or anyone else") seems gratuitous. Unless, that is, he wanted to send a signal that he's never going to flip on the central point of the initial investigation.

[William Ockham]

emptywheel,

Have you read the latest Team Libby filing? Jeralyn Merritt has it posted over at TalkLeft. I have no opinion about its legal quality, but it is positively fascinating from a narrative point of view. In an effort to get an expansive discovery, they make a series of assertions that they know will be disproved. For example, they say that because that Libby testified that he didn't remember discussing Wilson's wife with Grossman, they are entitled to investigate whether or not the alleged conversation ever took place. That's pretty funny since Grossman's involvement started from a phone call that Libby made (and for which there is almost certainly documentary evidence) and ended in a report prepared by the INR which specifically mentions Wilson's wife.

Team Libby then moves on to claim that the government injected the NIE disclosure into the case. Hello, your client is the one who spun up the rather ridiculous story about the NIE in the first place. They also stick with the theory that anything that got printed in the press gives them cause for discovery. They are also arguing that Plame's status might not be classifed (again because Libby claims he didn't know that) and, therefore, they get discovery to settle that matter. They have to know that her status was classified, therefore they really must be after something else.

All in all, it seems pretty clear that neither the prosecution or defense is really arguing the perjury and obstruction charges, but they're fighting the larger (and as yet uncharged) conspiracy case.

Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn't point out this little footnote:

Further reasons why documents pertaining to Mr. Fleischer are material to the defense are set forth in the sealed Declaration of Theodore V. Wells, Jr., dated April 12, 2006.

[emptywheel]

Folks

Sorry, I'm not going to get to the Libby filing until I get on a plane at midnight Bombay time tomorrow night--and then I've got 20 hours of flying to do, with no blogging layover. So I won't be posting on it until next week sometime. But feel free to discuss among yourselves while I try to cram on a work project.

[JohnLopresti]

A neat way of framing the cutout theory without a lot of specifics developed at TNH here, is readable at a fairly staid law faculty site April 13 in a thread of a professor who is a little to the left of Volokh, slightly. The commenter writes one long paragraph that sounds like the Best of EW there.

[squeaky]

EW- You put it together brilliantly.
The Miller June 7th piece expresses ambiguity, yes, but, it's this passage that reveals her point of view. She uses simple math to make the argument.

In all, at least three teams of Western experts have now examined the trailers and evidence from them. While the first two groups to see the trailers were largely convinced that the vehicles were intended for the purpose of making germ agents, the third group of more senior analysts divided sharply over the function of the trailers, with several members expressing strong skepticism, some of the dissenters said.

One sixth of the experts were skeptical

She ends the article with this less than comforting reminder of 9/11

"It's not built and designed as a standard fermenter," he said of the central tank.

"Certainly, if you modify it enough you could use it. But that's true of any tin can."

Wonder if she had Libby's July 8, NIE breakfast meeting penciled in yet. Too bad she never published that article. It would be an interesting read.

[squeaky]

ISorry this was trom squeaky
EW- You put it together brilliantly.
The Miller June 7th piece expresses ambiguity, yes, but, it's this passage that reveals her point of view. She uses simple math to make the argument.

In all, at least three teams of Western experts have now examined the trailers and evidence from them. While the first two groups to see the trailers were largely convinced that the vehicles were intended for the purpose of making germ agents, the third group of more senior analysts divided sharply over the function of the trailers, with several members expressing strong skepticism, some of the dissenters said.

One sixth of the experts were skeptical

She ends the article with this less than comforting reminder of 9/11

"It's not built and designed as a standard fermenter," he said of the central tank.

"Certainly, if you modify it enough you could use it. But that's true of any tin can."

Wonder if she had Libby's July 8, NIE breakfast meeting penciled in yet. Too bad she never published that article. It would be an interesting read.