The Wilson SSCI Part Two: Or, Kneecapping Waxman

by emptywheel

In my first post in what appears to be turning into a series, I explained the background for the SSCI Other Views on the Wilsons. This is about doing damage control on recent revelations about the Wilsons--most particularly the news that Valerie was covert--and to put the process of analyzing two documents in the hands of three (out of seven, a minority of the minority) Republicans rather than in the hands of a bipartisan committee run by Henry Waxman. In this post I'm going to look at how three Republicans presented the materials Waxman and Tom Davis were seeking, and compare how those same materials might have come out had Waxman received the documents from the CIA. Here's what Government Reform was seeking:

Ranking Minority Member Tom Davis sent you a letter requesting the declassification of a February 12, 2002, memorandum from Ms. Wilson to the Deputy Chief of the Counterterrorism Policy Division (CPD) in which Ms. Wilson described the qualifications of her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for a fact-finding mission to Niger relating... to Iraq's purported attempt to obtain uranium.

[snip]

According to Ms. Wilson's testimony, information provided to the Senate by this CPD reports officer was "twisted and distorted" to support the inaccurate claim that Ms. Wilson had suggested her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for the mission." Ms. told the Committee that the CPD reports officer drafted a memo to correct the record, but the CIA did not allow him to send it. ... Chairman Waxman requested the CPD reports officer's memorandum and any other records concerning Ms. Wilson's role in Ambassador Wilson's trip.

The Additional Views on the Wilsons deal with precisely those documents--though in particular ways.

Valerie's Memo

The minority of the minority include Valerie's entire memo to her supervisor. And while the memo disproves many many things the wingnuts have said over the years (for example, it makes it crystal clear the issue was whether or not Iraq had signed a contract to buy uranium, not whether Iraq was seeking uranium, the claim BushCo retreated to when their original claims fell apart), the memo itself introduces new questions into the chronology surrounding Valerie's involvement. The memo starts,

The report forwarded below has prompted me to send this on to you and request your comments and opinion.

[snip]

So, where do I fit in? As you may recall [redacted] of CP/[office 2] recently [2001] approached my husband to use his contacts in Niger to investigate [redacted]. After many fits and starts, [redacted] finally advised that the Station wished to pursue this with liaison. My husband is willing to help if it makes sense, but no problem if not. End of story.

Now, with this report, it is clear that the IC is still wondering what is going on... my husband has good relationships with the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sorty of activity. To be frank with you, I was somewhat embarrassed by the Agency's sloppy work last go around and I am hesitant to suggest anything again. However, [my husband] may be in a position to assist. Therefore, request your thoughts on what, if anything to pursue here. Thank you for your time on this.

The Additional Views go on to do some completely decontextualized mumbo jumbo on the timing of this memo (February 12) as compared to the initial DIA report (February 5) and Cheney's request of CIA (February 13), but never addresses the underlying question: When was Cheney originally briefed on the DIA report, by whom, and what did Cheney instruct them to do on that briefing. I will return to this in a later post, but absent that knowledge, all of the SSCI claims that Valerie's suggestion to send Joe preceded OVP's interest are baseless, since they obviously don't deal with Cheney's first knowledge of the DIA report, and therefore can say nothing about whether Cheney made requests earlier than February 13. I will deal with these timing issues in a separate post, but one of the chief reasons they include the memo is to bolster their claims that Cheney's request couldn't have been the impetus for Joe's trip, since his CIA request post-dated her recommendation. True, given the limited data they offer, but logically flawed given the limits on the data they introduce.

But that is not the purported reason they introduce Valerie's memo, which is, instead, to prove that Valerie "suggested" the plan to send Joe to Niger.

Curiously, they never come back and make this case given the grammar of the memo. There is evidence here, after all, that Valerie was initiating the memo, not responding to a request for information, so the memo should bolster their case. Then again, the report never provides any context for this memo. Did the Deputy Chief of CT at CPD request this? Or did someone else request that Valerie send it to him or her? Did Valerie send it of her own accord, suggesting Joe as the best solution to the problem of verifying the report on Niger (the initial sentence would support this reading)? Or was this a memo sent such that Valerie could duck out of all discussions of sending Joe (much of the other evidence released in the report would support this)?

We simply don't know. And curiously, the guys who do know, the minority of the minority, don't tell us. Absent an affirmative statement that this was the first suggestion of sending Joe, that Valerie sent this memo to the eventual decision-maker, and that based on this memo, that decision-maker decided to send Joe, then all the claims made about this memo simply fall flat. This is certainly evidence that Valerie suggested Joe to someone--but not that that suggestion was the first or most important step that led to "the plan" being implemented. So, sure, the Orrin Hatches of the world can use this to prove that, at one point in the chain of the decision, Valerie made a suggestion relating to Joe. But this is in no way evidence that her suggestion was the key to the decision.

Furthermore, given the good deal of reluctance on Valerie's part (which accords with the evidence shown in the INR memo), all the claims that Valerie dreamed up a boondoggle for Joe look more and more absurd.

The Reports Officer's Memo

That is the sum of the logical argument discernable from reading the entirety of Valerie's memo, published as it is with no context. It's impossible to make the same kind of assessment regarding the second document Waxman's Committee requested, because the minority of the minority don't include that memo in their Additional Views.

In recent public testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Mrs. Wilson has also claimed that a report "absolutely" contradicts the report, that he sought to be reinterviewed by the Committee, and that his words has [sic] been "twisted and distorted" by the Committee. None of these claims are true.

Committee staff had the opportunity to review the reports officers' "memorandum" (actually a letter addressed to Mrs. Wilson but apparently never sent) which says only that the reports officer's remarks about Ambassador Wilson's trip were "truncated" in the Committee's report. He cited two specific issues that the Committee did not include: his comments that he believed Mrs. Wilson had acted appropriately and that the reports officer "pushed the trip" himself. The reports officer's letter does not say that the Committee twisted or distorted his words, does not contracit the Committee's findings that Mrs. Wilson is the one who suggested her husband, does not retract his comments to the Committee that she "offered up" her husband's name, and does not state that he would like to be reinterviewed by the Committee. Based on information and documentation available to the Committee, we have no reason to believe that the reports officer sought to be re-interviewed or that CIA prevented him from being re-interviewed.

There are several things going on here, beyond the minority of the minority's decision not to publish the reports officer's memo after they published Valerie's own memo.

First, we're back playing Orrin Hatch semantics again. Given the context here, it appears the reports officer is saying that Valerie "offered up" Joe's name, but that the reports officer is the one who pushed the trip. Again, the critical issue here is who exerted the decisive pressure that led to Joe's being sent, and the reports officer appears to claim he did himself. But by equating "offering up" Joe's name with birthing the entire trip, the minority of the minority sustain a claim that, it appears, the reports officer's memo disputes.

Then, remarkably, the minority of the minority makes two claims that they apparently make no effort to confirm. They note this letter was never sent. Well, Valerie testified that "the CIA did not allow him to send" the letter. Yet the minority of the minority apparently didn't pursue the reason why the letter was not sent.

Ditto the question of whether the CIA prevented the reports officer from re-testifying. "Based on information and documentation available to the Committee," they have no knowledge of the CIA preventing the reports officer from re-testifying. Did they try to re-interview the reports officer to find out if Valerie's allegations are true? Because, according to the CIA, SSCI is the CIA's oversight committee. And if that interview is going to happen, then SSCI is going to have to do it. Yet it appears the minority of the minority made no effort to do so. That is, it appears the minority of the minority is not interested in fulfilling is job of oversight and actually providing evidence to support their claims, rather than passively inventing conclusions from the evidence already collected.

The treatment of the reports officer's memo does lead to one significant retreat from the minority of the minority's earlier claims (and those of wingnuttia--though I should note that Burr was not in the minority of the majority when they first made these claims, Pat Roberts was). The minority of the minority effectively admits that they truncated the reports officer's testimony, and they provide what they claim is the totality of his testimony on these issues:

Let me speak to what I know of where she is substantitvely involved. She offered up his name as a possibility, because we were -- we didn't have much in the way of other resources to try and get at this problem, to the best of my knowledge. And so whenever she offered up his name it seemed like a logical thing to do. I didn't make the decision to send him, but I certainly agreed with it, I recommended he should go.

[snip]

I'd like to state emphatically that, from what I've seen, Val Wilson has been the consummate professional through all this. From the very start, whenever she mentioned to me and some others that her husband had experience and was willing to travel but that she would have to step away from the operation because she couldn't be involved in the decisionmaking to send him, in [his] debriefing, [in] dissem[inating] the report and those kinds of things, because it could appear as a conflict of interest.

Now, the minority of the minority claims they never claimed Valerie did anything improper when she "offered up" Joe's name for the trip.

The Committee report never stated or implied that Mrs. Wilson's suggestion to her colleagues that her husband may be able to look into the Iraq-Niger uranium matter was inappropriate in any way, obviating the need to include the reports officer's comments that her role was "professional." In fact, a conclusion on page 25 of the Phase I report noted that "the Committee does not fault the CIA for exploiting the access enjoyed by the spouse of a CIA employee traveling to Niger."

Um, right. The whole question of whether Valerie "suggested" Joe for the trip was never used to suggest that it was proper for the Vice President to order Libby to leak her identity. Uh huh. And no one associated with Kit Bond or Orrin Hatch ever made that suggestion either. (Contest: who can find the most incriminating Hatch or Bond or Roberts statement suggesting that Valerie's role was improper?) Uh huh.

And they pull the same trick that got us into the war in the first place. That conclusion, stating (without identifying the reference) that the Wilsons and the CIA did nothing improper in sending Joe? It appears in the "Weapons of Mass Destruction Capabilities" section of the report, not the Niger section of the report. As they did with the footnote objecting to the aluminum tubes claims, they've moved this conclusion many pages--57 pages--away from the relevant discussion.

But if anyone is still interested, the minority of the minority now agrees, publicly, with the rest of the country that sending Joe Wilson to Niger, gratis, to look into intelligence claims, was no kind of boondoggle or junket. In fact, as they only now reveal to us, they suppressed evidence that Valerie went to some pains to make sure she remained free of any conflict on this issue. So all of the justifications wingnuttia have offered justifying the outing of Valerie Plame? They're no longer operative.

That might have been a nice concession to make three years ago.

So consider what the minority of the minority has succeeded in doing. They prevented Waxman and Davis from getting these documents, then published one, but not the other. They reiterated some of their stale conclusions about Valerie's involvement, without doing the most basic follow-up to pursue the story of the reports officer. And now, forced to reveal evidence that Valerie acted properly throughout this affair, they pretend they've been saying that for three years.

Nice work, minority of the minority.

Comments

[Jodi]

Well Marcy you might have been a lawyer.

Minority of the minority!!

This subject is so convoluted and twisted and torn by the various parties that have been at each others throat (CIA, WH, State, Politicians) that it would take Alexander the Great's sword to cut through the tangled knot.

[William Ockham]

I think they will find that Waxman is a more cunning opponent than Rockefeller. It will take more than last year's wingnut stew to derail him.

[ding7777]

The context of Memo's date is from Plame's testimony to Rep. Lynch

MS. PLAME WILSON: In February of 2002, a young junior officer who worked for me -- came to me very upset. She had just received a telephone call on her desk from someone -- I don't know who -- in the office of the vice- president asking about this report of this alleged sale of yellow cake uranium from Niger to Iraq. She came to me, and as she was telling me this -- what had just happened, someone passed by -- another officer heard this. He knew that Joe had already -- my husband -- had already gone on some CIA mission previously do deal with other nuclear matters. And he suggested, "Well why don't we send Joe?" He knew that Joe had many years of experience on the African continent. He also knew that he had served -- and served well and heroically in the Baghdad Embassy -- our embassy in Baghdad during the first Gulf War. And I will be honest. I had -- was somewhat ambivalent at the time. We had 2-year-old twins as home, and all I could envision was me by myself at bedtime with a couple of 2-year-olds. So I wasn't overjoyed with this idea. Nevertheless --

REP. LYNCH: I get it

MS. PLAME WILSON: We went to my branch chief, or supervisor. My colleague suggested this idea, and my supervisor turned to me and said, "Well, when you go home this evening, would you be willing to speak to your husband, ask him to come into headquarters next week and we'll discuss the options? See if this -- what we could do" Of course. And as I was leaving, he asked me to draft a quick e-mail to the chief of our Counterproliferation Division, letting him know that this was -- might happen. I said, "Of course," and it was that e- mail, Congressman, that was taken out of context and -- a portion of which you see in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Report of July 2004 that makes it seem as though I had suggested or recommended him.

[zhiv]

It all makes sense, and you lay out the effects clearly as always. But what is the current status of the committees? and how this is being currently divided between them, that's the part that I don't know. Is Waxman done? What's the likelihood that Rockefeller might be moved aside as head of the committee? And didn't you have some kind of Feingold question about all of this?

Also, do you have any thoughts on why the SSCI report was released on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend? I think somewhere it was suggested that this may have been part of the deal with your "minority of the minority."

[Outahere]

OT: Interesting front page article re Sen. Ted Stevens and related AK Leg/VECO scandal. Just FYI.

http://www.adn.com/news/politics/story/8928969p-8829178c.html

[looseheadprop]

I hope Waxman does not back down. CIA does not get to pick which committees do oversight.

The Committees pick.

[KLynn]

To the minority of the monority...

On July 18th, 2001 Representative Christopher Shays (R-CN) stated as Chair of the Subcommittee on National Security & Veteran's Affairs:

"The CIA's position that congressional oversight jurisdiction is limited to the Select Intelligence Committee is NOT (caps mine) supported by the law, is not supported by House Rules, is not supported by sound public policy. National security will be enhanced, not undermined by the full exercise of congressional oversight authority"

Henry, go get your copies and oversight away. Republicans agree too! It's in the congressional record!

[Mimikatz]

Hard to imagine Waxman backing down.

[mk]

ding7777 --
Thanks for the extended quote. It certainly explains why the memo is entitled "Iraq Related Nuclear Report Makes a Splash" -- which doesn't make sense if Plame is initiating the idea. It's not hard to intuit how and where that splash was -- it was just the sort of thing that would stovepipe well right into the Veep's office. And it's a nice slightly snarky title to boot, reflecting what must have been some impatience with the endless end runs she (and the whole CIA) surely had to deal with.

[Jeff]

When was Cheney originally briefed on the DIA report, by whom, and what did Cheney instruct them to do on that briefing.

I've had a long-running argument with Cecil Turner over this issue, and when the 2-13-02 briefer's tasking was disclosed, I thought I had lost the argument. But then I looked at it more closely, and I'm not so sure (and when I raised these new doubts, I don't think I got a response from Cecil).

The DIA assessment was produced on February 12, 2002, it seems (see SSCI p. 38), so the only two options for when Cheney was shown it are February 12 or February 13 (assuming Cheney was right and it was the DIA assessment that he was shown). Initially, the widespread assumption was that the briefing from the 13th indicated that Cheney had seen the DIA assessment that day. However, read correctly, the February 13 briefer's tasking makes it perfectly clear that it was not during that briefer's briefing of Cheney on that day that Cheney saw the DIA assessment. ("The VP was shown an assessment (he thought from DIA) . . .") So it becomes important to know whether David Terry, the briefer, was Cheney's morning briefer. If he was, and this tasking reflects that briefing, then it almost certainly means that Cheney saw the DIA assessment the day before, the day it was produced, February 12 - the very day that Plame has testified one of her subordinates was called by someone in OVP. If, however, Terry was briefing Cheney later in the day, then it is possible that Cheney saw the DIA assessment earlier that day. (It's also possible, I suppose, that Cheney saw the material before his morning briefing that day, though I sort of doubt it.)

Uhp, whaddya know. Just noticed this in SSCI p. 38:

After reading the DIA report, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for the CIA's analysis of the issue.

That would appear to mean that either Cheney read the DIA report right before his briefing, and couldn't remember where he'd read it, and didn't have it ready to hand; or he'd read it the day before. i think I'm winning here.

A couple of other related things of note in Bond's new views. 1)It turns out CIA originally told the Committee that it was a question from the Vice President that prompted CIA's CPD to discuss ways to obtain additional information about the reporting. That's interesting because it certainly supports the notion that Wilson was relaying that information in good faith, having been told that by CIA (just as the INR person who produced their assessment that there was nothing to the Niger story was told that it was in response to interest from OVP).

2)It looks to me like the interest from DoD and from State that contributed to CPD coming up with the mission - which the first SSCI report noted; and which Grenier indicated to Libby, who took it as an important talking point - was all within the IC, assuming that the reference on p. 208 of Bond's views is the same: "The [February5 2002] report was forwarded in an e-mail from a CIA reports officer to Mrs. Wilson and a number of other recipients which said that the DO had received a number of calls from the Intelligence Community about the Iraq-Niger uranium report, citing the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and SOCOM, specifically."

[Canuck Stuck in Muck]

Hi, EW. Forgive me for being pedantic, but I think I've detected a persistent spelling error in this piece: it's "moronity," not "minority." Even a bear of little brain can pick up such an easy transposition!

[priscianus jr]

Isn't this all based on the premise that there is something fishy about sending the former ambassador to Niger to investigate something related to the government of Niger.
You know what? It doesn't even make sense that Cheney outed Valerie Plame primarily to "get back at" Wilson for writing the op-ed piece. That's a cover story which for different reasons seems to suit both sides. The reasonable picture is that they outed Plame deliberately to bust up her anti-proliferation covert Brewster Jennings operation.
"Intelligence sources would not identify the specifics of Plame's work. They did, however, tell RAW STORY that her outing resulted in "severe" damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation."
http://www.rawstory.com/news/2005/Outed_CIA_officer_was_working_on_0213.html

"While it's well known that the war party's fateful "outing" of CIA agent Valerie Plame was partly revenge against her husband, Joseph Wilson, for his 2003 New York Times article, it may have also been motivated by a desire to neutralize Plame's investigations into rogue nuclear trafficking."
http://www.antiwar.com/deliso/?articleid=8091

[pseudonymous in nc]

Isn't this all based on the premise that there is something fishy about sending the former ambassador to Niger to investigate something related to the government of Niger.

He wasn't ambassador to Niger: he was simultaneously ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé & Principe. But the general point holds: diplomatic posts in that unfashionable part of west Africa are dumped on career officers, and the big regional issues (instability plus uranium mining) cross borders.

Regardless of what the bouffanted one might say, the memo suggests that Valerie Wilson was weary of the CIA's reliance upon her husband's contacts and experience. Admittedly -- and this has long been my retort to the 'boondoggle' brigade -- the list of people with experience in both Iraq and francophone Africa among government workers is likely to be small. But there's a definite 'oh no, not again?' tone to that memo that fleshes things out.

Still, the main point holds: it's up to the SSCI minority minority to keep the zombie lies going.

[Canuck Stuck in Muck]

OK, OK! I'll try to be serious. It's not that hard considering who's sitting in the Oval Office. I think it may well be as priscianus jr says at 16:13, that Agent Plame Wilson was the target all along. However, the way in which they chose to script the affair is straight-down-the-line Bush & Co. The administration's emphasis on the presumptive junket/boondoggle aspect of this whole affair is right in line with the ethos these people illustrate with their every act. And I'm fairly certain that, from its roots on up to its topmost branch tip, it's the product of a bunch of people who evince unexamined, unconscious homophobia. I know it's been said before, but Bush, Cheney, Rove and their cronies are nothing less than schoolyard bullies. And, like those bullies whose greatest satisfaction comes from painting their victims as emasculated, they aim to humiliate and marginalize them by holding their sexuality up to question.

Sadly, this has been a most potent weapon for disempowering their perceived domestic "enemies." Rove could care less whether or not Agent Plame Wilson was acting unethically in sending Ambassador Wilson to Niger--conflict of interest was the last thing on his mind when he concocted this "push-back" for the 7/6/03 op-ed. Instead, their attempt to discredit Amb. Wilson was purely and simply an effort to bring down upon him the scorn of their base--white, male, Christian Supremacists and the women who've swallowed the Christianist extremist ideology. And the easiest way for the White House to achieve that aim was to call Wilson's sexuality into question, just as they have done prominently in recent days with "pretty" John Edwards and the overpriced haircut (or, for that matter, Barack Obama--who's just too pale to be the sexual threat that "black men" usually present to phallically challenged white males, and by that logic not a "real" man, at all). By suggesting that Agent Plame Wilson sent her husband on this mission, they clearly hoped to imply that he was unable to make it on his own, and needed his CIA "mommy" to get him a job. She not only "wore the pants" in that relationship, she worked for the uber-manliest outfit of all, the CIA. Her husband, on the other hand, was unemployed, and under-qualified, even for the job his wife arranged for him.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit to learn that nobody in the WH even knew Agent Plame Wilson was under cover. And here's why. In their world, women, especially women "with a desk in Langley," are not secret agents. Instead, they are stenographers, or human resources specialists, or convenient fodder for illicit adulterous relationships, but they certainly aren't capable of male-worthy work. Nor should we let them play rough, either, lest we risk having them be set-upon by enemy rapists. I truly wonder if it ever occurred to them that she could have risked her life daily for her country.

I think I'll leave you all with that thought.
Keep fighting the good fight.

[mamayaga]

Canuck--
Interesting how that played out -- they probably knew nothing more about Valerie than what she did for the CIA and who she was married to when they outed her, but the sexual inadequacy calculation probably came back to bite them when it turned out that she was not only a secret agent, but blonde, glamorous and beautiful. By my reckoning that makes Joe Wilson James Bond.

[Elliott]

mamayaga
I'd say Valerie Plame was James Bond, making Joe Wilson Honey Ryder.

[rege]

Thanks, EW!

[Canuck Stuck in Muck]

Elliot-
Or Pussy Galore?