What the Bolton Testimony Tells about the Plame Affair

by emptywheel

While we’re all waiting for Fitzgerald to make some indictments, I thought I’d take a detailed look at one source of information relating to the Plame Affair that hasn’t yet (AFAIK) been examined—Bolton’s nomination testimony. Heck, if Bolton is going to visit Judy in jail, he should be “fair game,” shouldn’t he?

I'm looking at the Bolton testimony not because it provides any evidence Bolton was involved (although I think it possible). Rather, the Bolton testimony provides detail about the relationship between CIA and State that goes beyond what we find in other documents (like the SSCI report). The Bolton testimony reveals:

• A bit (not much) more about the intelligence leading up to Iraq
• Structural details about State and (to a lesser degree) CIA which may clarify some of the people named in Plame or SSCI reports
• Some details on the allegiances of the people involved
• Extensive details about the vetting process for intelligence documents that complements the SSCI report
• Descriptions of ways in which Bolton attempted to expand his access to raw intelligence—and possibly, other classified documents

Update, 9/21: Here is an NYT article where, in the context of alleging an extensive Cuban spy article in the US, Reich accuses Armstrong of being "soft" on Cuba. The irony is that they base the claim largely on Ana Montes, the senior Pentagon intelligence officer sentenced as a spy for Cuba. You see, Montes provided some of the intelligence Bolton used to claim Cuba was out after us with its crack BW program. Which is it, you crazy Neocons? Was Montes a spy, or was she giving you good intelligence?

Part One: Anatomy of a Neocon Smear

I’ll try to keep this first installment rather short because I want to highlight one of my favorite exchanges from all the testimony. It's an amusing exchange, but it also shows how the Neocon crowd went about smearing someone else who attempted to report on the Administration's efforts to game intelligence. In addition, it may include an instance of our First Amendment martyr, Judy Miller, outing a source and in the process screwing a whistleblower.

This testimony comes from Stuart Cohen, then acting chair of the National Intelligence Council.
In his testimony, Cohen relates an anecdote about the Otto Reich and John Bolton campaign to have Fulton Armstrong (here referred to as Mr. Smith) reassigned from his position as Chief Intelligence Officer for Latin America.

Ms. O'Connell: You mentioned to us that Mr. Reich left a draft letter with you after his meeting, and that it was a, quote, "classified draft letter." This is obviously not the place to talk about the substance of what the classification was, but what was it? Was it specifics as to things that Otto Reich thought were true? Was it -- do you remember, at all, why you thought it was classified?

Mr. Cohen: I didn't really think that it was classified. I told Reich that it was classified so that he would leave it with me.

Ms. O'Connell: Oh.

Mr. Cohen: I wanted to have a copy of that.

[Laughter.]

Ms. O'Connell: You agency people are real crafty.

Mr. Cohen: Oh, yeah. It comes with the territory.

[Laughter.]

Ms. O'Connell: Okay.

Mr. Cohen: That's because we have to deal with too many policymakers, both in the executive and in the Congress. Keep going.

[Laughter.]

Mr. Cohen: At any rate, I think he said it was wrapped. It was wrapped. And to the best of my recollection, there was no classification stamped on it.

Ms. O'Connell: Okay.

Mr. Cohen: And what it was -- the things that I remember about it, it was largely the -- a draft memo. It certainly wasn't signed. And I -- frankly, I saw, in an article that I think Reich wrote, that he claims he brought me that letter, he delivered that letter. That was not the case. He had no intention of leaving that letter with me, as far as I could tell. Second, he used it as a script. And the other thing that I recall about it is that it buttressed the point that he was making to me, that his concerns about Mr. Smith were not simply his own, but were shared by others. And I think they mentioned -- I think they mentioned Secretary Bolton and certain members of the NSC staff. (Cohen 4-5)

Reich and Bolton wanted Armstrong reassigned for a number of reasons. Doug Jehl provides this general overview:

Within days of Mr. Bolton's delivering a speech in May 2002 that warned of attempts by Cuba to develop biological weapons, Mr. Armstrong has told the committee, the Central Intelligence Agency took the rare step of circulating within the Bush administration a classified assessment that was more cautious than Mr. Bolton's approach.

By July 2002, Mr. Bolton had requested the transfer of both Mr. Armstrong and a second intelligence officer, Christian Westermann of the State Department, with whom he had clashed on the matter.

But there is more to it than that. As CIO of Latin America, Armstrong should have vetted this Heritage speech. Bolton managed to avoid Armstrong’s vetting. But after the speech, someone leaked a wealth of details to the NYT totally refuting Bolton’s speech. Bolton Chief of Staff Fred Fleitz called that leaking “making policy statements”—a real taboo for analysts.

FREDERICK FLEITZ: The Heritage Foundation speech was given on May 6, 2002. Before May 6, 2002, neither Mr. Bolton nor anyone on his staff had ever heard from Mr. Armstrong. He was not someone we even knew about, but after the speech he called, he called me and said the speech had not been IC cleared, I told him it had been IC cleared, it had been cleared by Art [sic] Foley on behalf of the IC, and Alan Foley had spoken with Larry Gershwin, who handled BW weapons in the National Intelligence Council and cleared it on behalf of NIC, it had been extensively cleared with the Intelligence Community, it was a long process, not over the Cuba language, but because it touched on a number of different subjects which Mr. Armstrong claimed it should have been cleared with him, and I said, "I don't know who you are, and I don't know how that could be, when senior Agency officials have cleared it." Mr. Armstrong, during May of 2002, campaigned against the speech, telling people within the policy community, and with Congress, and we believe, in the media, that the speech was not cleared, and misrepresented the Intelligence Community. These statements were false. This caused Mr. Bolton to be concerned that there was an Intelligence Officer that was making statements like this, making policy statements, that a person in an Intelligence Analyst position should not have been making.

BRIAN McKEON: What were the policy statements?

FREDERICK FLEITZ: That the speech was not cleared, and misrepresented the Intelligence Community's position.

BRIAN McKEON: How is that a policy statement? [emphasis mine]

But, as 2003-2005 NIC Chair Robert Hutchings describes, it also comes down to anger about leaking the story to the NYT. The CIA knew that Bolton would be pissed.

Mr. Hutchings: Yeah, just -- I mean, this was leaked to the New York Times, but I don't want to go too far. Let me say that the judgements on Cuba were altered somewhat, on review of the evidence, and came out, sort of, less -- with less confidence than we had, well, portrayed the Cuban programs earlier. So, we knew that that would not go down well in some quarters, because some would read this as our pulling our punches or getting timid. (Hutchings 7)

I'm actually curious what happened with this NYT leak. Bolton's speech is reported by none other than Judy Miller on May 7, 2002. Nothing unusual there. Judy was the WMD reporter, after all. And she even retained some credibility at this point! But I can't find any article that appears to be the result of Armstrong (or anyone else in CIA) leaking the information. The only article refuting Bolton's claims references Jimmy Carter (whose trip to Cuba Bolton had tried to upstage with his Heritage speech) and Colin Powell. Indeed, this article mirrors the approach used for Iraq, where Judy publishes a prominent (A6, in this case) article, Administration officials reference it, and people in State not named Bolton try to back down off those claims.

Secretary Powell, speaking to reporters while traveling to a NATO meeting in Iceland, said that while the administration believes that Cuba has the ability to produce biological weapons, it stops short of claiming that it has actually done so.

''As Undersecretary Bolton said recently, we do believe Cuba has a biological offensive research capability,'' Mr. Powell said. ''We didn't say it actually had some weapons, but it has the capacity and capability to conduct such research.''

[But Condoleezza Rice, the national security advisor, speaking on Monday night on the PBS program ''The News Hour with Jim Lehrer,'' said: ''You can't show someone a biotech lab and be assured they're not creating weapons of mass destruction. That's not how biotech wweaons work. And they're actually very easy to conceal and you need multiple measures to make certain biotech weapons aren't being developed and transferred.''] [brackets original]

No mention, though, of a CIA source. Is it possible that Fleitz and Bolton are so sure that Armstrong leaked the information to the NYT because he leaked to the most obvious reporter----Judy Miller--and she told Bolton who was doing the leaking? Could be another case of Judy, this summer's martyr for protecting sources, outing a source when it served her purposes. But if it is, she is basically screwing a whisteblower by outing him as a source. Armstrong, after all, was trying to correct impressions that Bolton had created by describing the ways in which Botlon's intelligence was faulty. But rather than protecting the whistleblower out of profound respect for the First Amedment (if Judy did in fact squeal on Armstrong), she told the people who could make the most trouble for him.

There is one other detail that may or may not have related to efforts to move Armstrong—or might even be a figment of an old spy’s memory. You see, WINPAC head Alan Foley remembered Fulton Armstrong as having been involved in Niger intelligence, in addition to his portfolio on Latin America.

Mr. Foley: Yeah, but this is later. I think the first time I met the NIO -- the first time I met the NIO LA was in the context of the -- a memo he was writing on the Niger business. So, this would have been early '03, I guess, or somewhere in that time frame. And he had written a memo -- I can't remember what art form it was -- a NIC memo, or something like that -- where, basically, he said, "Look, the from a political analyst's perspective, the notion that the Nigerians [sic] would sell yellow cake to the Iraqis is just crazy." I mean, I'm paraphrasing. He didn't say it – I mean, he said it much more eloquently. And my analyst, I remember, came to me and said, you know, "We're concerned about this memo, because he doesn't even acknowledge other information we have that suggested maybe they did." And so, I remember the NIO coming down to my office, and I think a couple of my analysts were there, and I made the case to him. I said, "Look, you may not agree with this, but I think, analytically, you ought to at least acknowledge that there are these other reports, and, you know, give your reasons why you think they're ridiculous, and then move on." But to just ignore this is a little bit arrogant, because it's, sort of, saying, "Anybody who could fall for this stuff is just totally naive about what goes on in Niger," and it sort of gives an incomplete picture. (Foley 29-30)

This is the first the Senate staffers have heard of possible Armstrong involvement in Niger analysis.

Mr. Levine: Why would the NIO LA be talking about Africa?

Mr. Foley: Wasn't he -- didn't he have Africa in his portfolio? Africa, Latin America?

Mr. Levine: I don't think so.

Mr. Foley: I thought he did, Ed.

Mr. Levine: I won't necessarily rule it out.

Ms. O'Connell: It's news to me. It's news to me.

Mr. Levine: I believe there was a separate NIO for Africa

Mr. Foley: Well, you know, that's interesting. That's my recollection. The first time I met him had to do with this Niger memo. (Foley 30-31)

Now, Foley comes off as a bit of a space cadet. So it may be that he just remembers this incorrectly. But it is also one of those examples where the Senate staffers go off the record to discuss the issue. So it's left unclear whether they resolve the issue of Amstrong's involvement in Niger intelligence.

Mr. Foley: I don't think so. I don't think I met the NIO before the Niger thing.

[Discussion off the record.]

Mr. McKeon: Back on the record. (Foley 32)

There are plenty of other reasons to believe Bolton would have harassed Armstrong (there are mostly off the record allusions to disputes about Venezuelan intelligence, for example). But those vague reasons make this cryptic Deputy Director for Intelligence Jamie Miscik comment ominous.

Mr. Foldi: In your opinion, did the NIO suffer professionally as a result of this? [meaing the Cuba intelligence spat]

Ms. Miscik: No. Not over this, no.

Mr. Foldi: Not over this. Over anything else?

Ms. Miscik: Yeah, I think there are some other issues there that I can't go into. But none of that would be related to the request to have him removed. None of it would be related to that. (Miscik 10)

Now, the staffers usually go off the record when Iraq comes up (the biggest exception is discussions of Rex Ryu’s involvement in Iraqi intelligence before the war). So it’s possible this related to Iraq. Then again, it could just as easily relate to Venezuela.

But whatever the reason, Bolton and Reich had a big grudge against Armstrong and they were going to try their damndest to get him out of the way. Armstrong refuted Bolton’s incendiary claims about Cuba. More seriously, he may have leaked a counter-argument to the NYT (think of the irony here—the BushCo leakers going ballistic over leaks to the NYT!). And there may be more reasons why Bolton and his crowd had it in for Fulton Armstrong.

Which brings us back to the quote I began with, Stuart Cohen’s testimony about getting a memo from Otto Reich on Armstrong. Beyond Cohen’s humor, what I found intriguing about this testimony is the description of the memo.

Mr. Cohen: And what it was -- the things that I remember about it, it was largely the -- a draft memo. It certainly wasn't signed. And I -- frankly, I saw, in an article that I think Reich wrote, that he claims he brought me that letter, he delivered that letter. That was not the case. He had no intention of leaving that letter with me, as far as I could tell. Second, he used it as a script. And the other thing that I recall about it is that it buttressed the point that he was making to me, that his concerns about Mr. Smith were not simply his own, but were shared by others. And I think they mentioned -- I think they mentioned Secretary Bolton and certain members of the NSC staff.

Some of this is not surprising. Basically, the crowd that wants to get rid of Armstrong has drawn up a set of talking points, like good little Rovians. Reich, like a good Neocon automaton, was citing from them verbatim. He had learned his lessons from Rove well. And the memo was clearly the work of a group, a group that included some of the same people (the NSC staffers and Bolton) whose names have come up in the Plame Affair.

As I suggested a million years ago there is a distinct possibility that the famous INR memo that featured on all the front pages of the press this summer is probably not the only document involved in the Plame leak. If this Armstrong smear is any indication, then the Neocons would have drawn up a set of talking points so automatons like Reich (and Novak) could hit all the important details. And even if they didn’t put something so incendiary as Plame’s NOC status into their talking points, they almost certainly would have developed talking points about Wilson earlier in the summer of 2003.

And those talking points would provide a pretty good indication of when it became known that Valerie Plame Wilson worked at the CIA.

If only Fitzgerald had someone as stupid as Reich, fooled into handing over the smoking gun of a conspiracy to get revenge on someone who questioned Neocon intelligence claims.

Comments

[Kagro X]

So, has anybody asked Armstrong whether he talked to Miller? Can we ask him? Can we get someone else to?

And have any of the journos in the spotlight ever been asked whether they ever had any written communications with administration officials? Like, receiving a faxed copy of the talking points? I wonder if anyone's testimony been couched in those terms, as in, "Rove never spoke to me."

[emptywheel]

Gosh, that would be the way to figure out whether Armstrong spoke to Judy, wouldn't it.

FWIW, recall that the SFRC tried to keep Armstrong's name secret throughout these hearings (but then blew it--go figure). I believe he's overseas right now, perhaps under light cover?

Isn't the question of whether one had talking points in hand one of the questions everyone is asking about Judy? Recall she said she didn't receive a document when she spoke to Libby. So perhaps when it involves outing NOCs, they only let you look at the talking points?

[ReddHedd]

Here's the question I am constantly asking myself: we're all sitting around, pissed off about this leak and its implications for national security, slogging through tiny bits and pieces in news articles (or enormous mounds of testimony like emptywheel clearly did on this -- awesome work! Again!), and trying to put all the pieces of this puzzle together. The media articles that I keep reading or hearing from the MSM in print or on tv are surface level crap and insipid at least 3/4ths of the time. Is the real journalism being tamped down by the corporate folks -- or is the real journalism just not being done? The recent WaPo article on Judy's parade of buddies visiting her in the pokey is a classic example. I mean, I live nowhere near DC, I have no contacts "in the know" on this, all I have is my experience as a lawyer in the criminal justice system and as a prosecutor, and it's just become a sort of obsessive hobby for me because whoever leaked the information on Valerie Wilson is scum and a traitor and that pisses me off. But so many of the journalists who have the contacts are doing so much less work than what emptywheel has done in this single blog entry. Does this seriously piss off anyone else, or am I alone in this feeling?

btw, I think Fleitz is a really good call. It just gets more and more interesting, doesn't it?

[Kagro X]

There's something about doing something professionally that makes you want to dog it, if you can, and still get paid. It's the hobbyists who do their work for the love of the sport who do it best.

[ReddHedd]

Excellent point. But I have to say, the best prosecutors I have ever worked with were also the ones who did it because the work needed to be done, and well, for the public good, as their own personal obsession. I have always had the feeling that Fitz was one of those guys, so I am still very, very hopeful that indictments will be handed down. My disappointment, I suppose, is in the lack of real intellectual curiosity in so many of the members of the Fourth Estate regarding a serious breach of national security from someone high in the current Administration -- breaking this story wide open would make a career for a young, ambitious journalist. I keep wondering when that break is going to happen, but I expect it to come from a blogger at this point. Dunno -- I guess I'm just pining for some Watergate-level digging -- thank goodness for blogs, I suppose, or I'd be truly disgusted.

[Kagro X]

Some people are lucky enough to do what they love for a living. It's rare, though.

[Jeff]

Excellent timing. Check this out from Huffington on Fleitz and Bolton and Miller and Plame.

[Meteor Blades]

Ahead of the pack again, emptywheel, multiple kudos. Of course, as ReddHedd notes, there isn't a pack.

There's a lot of laziness and cowardice on the part of top journalists. There's also the reality that any journalist with a beat who wants to take on something like this has to jump through all sorts of hoops to be assigned the job, or must spend her spare time doing the job the way emptywheel has done. And then, unless you find something an editor will buy, you may not even get to run what you've got unless you can nail down every single loose board.

When I was an alternative newspaper journalist ages ago, I often spent 40-50 hours a week in addition to my usual 40 or 50 hours of regular work trying to piece together investigate stories. Sometimes it was me and a colleague putting in these hours. This could go on for months. Of course, that was in the days before you could dredge up testimony on the Internet, but even with the wwwWorld at your fingertips, it's still a huge amount of work with often limited pay-off because most leads arrive at dead-ends, and most editors are freaked out by the possibility that a negative story about high officials will bring brimstone down on her or his head (or publication).

So, they let the prosecutors do their work for them.

[emptywheel]

Here are some more thoughts on Armstrong, in response to Kagro's comment.

Armstrong testified at the Bolton hearings via video. But his testimony was not included among that testimony declassified (or, at least it doesn't appear in Steve Clemons' collection). There was much stink at the hearings about trying to keep Armstrong's name out of it, since was at the time of the hearings overseas under light cover.

But as Attaturk pointed out, the CIA wasn't doing a very good job at keeping him under cover.

I'm going to try to chase down instances of where the WH smeared Armstrong with allegations of a relationship to Castro. I suspect that is what Miscik is referrring to. ANd I suspect they really smeared him over Venezuela intelligence, which BushCo is as we speak gaming in the same way they gamed the Iraq intelligence.

But I wonder if they made the big deal about him being under cover to prevent him from being available for questioning. Let me put it this way. If I wanted to call him to get the question about who leaked to NYT answered, I probably couldn't get that info directly from Armstrong. Because he's undercover (well, in any case, but particularly because he's undercover) some bureaucrat at CIA would get to say what he was allowed to say or not.

[emptypockets]

emptywheel,

ok you got me curious. Especially the leak that never landed.

Is it possible that this:

Mr. Armstrong, during May of 2002, campaigned against the speech, telling people within the policy community, and with Congress, and we believe, in the media, that the speech was not cleared, and misrepresented the Intelligence Community.

corresponds to something like this WaPo article from the same day as the NYT's Carter-Cuba piece (the text of which I couldn't find -- could you?):

A Bush administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Cuba has "a number of projects that are what could be dual-use things, but they're probably not. . . . It's a question more of them exciting suspicions by not being open. I don't know of any tangible stuff that shows yes, they are making anthrax [or anything else]. There is stuff we don't know about."

Did you already run across that anonymous refutation of the Bolton speech?

[emptywheel]

~pockets:

I only looked in the NYT, since Hutchings specified the NYT. That anonymous refutation could be Armstrong. But would they say Bush Administration official, or CIA official? Further, I suspect the jist of Armstrong's refutation (given what else is said in the Bolton testimony) would be that the intelligence community had questions about the veracity of the intelligence.

I got the Carter-Cuba text no problem--except I had to pay to get in the archives, which unfortunately makes me look like a Times Select fan.

[emptypockets]

Yeah, I had the same reservations. On the other hand, there was only one reference to NYT specifically, right?, and the other just to the media. I guess I imagined these guys can be a little sloppy and might say the wrong paper's name... or happen to know that the leak was to both, and forgot which paper actually ran it. Isn't it contrary to the Little Leaker Handbook to only leak to one outlet, rather than spreading the love around?

And I had the same thought that the attribution was fishy. But who knows. Mostly I wanted to draw your attention to that other refutation, if you hadn't already found it, since whoever that anonymous source was -- Armstrong or not -- seems possible to at least be in the same boat as Armstrong.

I get NYTimes at home so I theoretically get TimesSelect for free (in fact I see that even if you just subscribe to only the Book Review, you get TimesSelect free) but I have more chance of unravelling the Bolton-Plame threads than of figuring out how to log in to it. Their site has me going in circles. Anyway... from your link above, I just get to an 87-word summary of the Carter-Cuba article, not the full text -- and can't find the links to purchase or go to archives. Even if I wanted to buy it I don't think I could figure out how to -- way to go, NYT, you really have invented a new business model.

[emptywheel]

Actually, there is at least one more reference, from someone else entirely, to the NYT.

But now that I think of it, if these guys are both saying the NYT, then it was common knowledge (or they're part of the Neocon crowd too). While they're both political appointees, they don't strike me as that partisan.

[DHinMI]

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