Waxman demanded “a full accounting of what you knew about the reliability of the evidence linking Iraq to uranium in Africa, when you knew this, and why you and senior officials in the Administration presented the evidence to the UN Security Council, the Congress, and the American people without disclosing the doubts of the CIA.”
Bush didn’t respond to Waxman. Two days later – on March 19, 2003 – Bush ordered U.S. military forces to invade Iraq.
Now, more than five years later, it appears internal White House e-mails that could shed light on what Bush and his circle knew about the unreliability of their evidence on Iraq’s WMD may have been lost in an electronic black hole.
The black hole also may have swallowed internal e-mail traffic relating to the then-escalating conflict with former Ambassador Wilson as he edged toward going public with his inside knowledge about the unreliability of the Niger suspicions.
The Early Plame-gate Affair
On May 6, 2003, a New York Times column http://www.cnncom/2003/US/05/06/nyt.kristof/ by Nicholas Kristoff used Wilson as an anonymous source to report that the administration may have knowingly used the phony Niger documents to win support for the war.
“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,” Kristoff wrote.
“In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the CIA and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged. The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted – except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway.”
Two months later, on July 6, 2003, Wilson attached his name to his Niger accusations in a New York Times op-ed. By then, the White House was working aggressively behind the scenes to cast doubt on Wilson’s credibility, including the suggestion that his CIA wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, had arranged Wilson’s trip to Niger as a junket.
When Novak blew Plame’s cover 10 days later, CIA officials were outraged, leading to their demand for the leak investigation which began in September 2003. That, in turn, prompted misleading White House statements about the non-involvement of key figures, such as Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney’s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby.
However, the leak investigation took a surprise turn in December 2003 when Attorney General Ashcroft recused himself over a conflict of interest and Deputy Attorney General James Comey named U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald as a special prosecutor.
Fitzgerald approached the investigation more aggressively and eventually secured the indictment and conviction of Libby on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. In the aftermath, Bush commuted Libby’s prison sentence, sparing him from 30 months in jail.
Since then, the Plame-gate affair has faded from public attention, but it now appears that historians, too, will be denied anything approaching a full record of the scandal.
Payton, the White House chief information officer, said any further attempt by U.S. Magistrate John M. Facciola to force the administration to retain all e-mails on the White House network would "yield marginal benefits at best, while imposing substantial burdens and disruptions."
But David Gewirtz, an expert on e-mail, and the author of the book Where Have All the Emails Gone? believes the loss of e-mails covering the March to May 2003 period is suspicious.
“Sadly, neither elected nor appointed officials in Washington are making the situation any better,” Gewirtz wrote in a technical column click here about the issue. “In fact, it's getting worse. I've reached the conclusion that it's time to call for a special prosecutor. We now have official White House statements that federal laws are being broken, and I don't see any way for this to be resolved without escalation.”
Jason Leopold is editor of the online investigative news magazine The Public Record, http://www.pubrecord.org, and the author of the National Bestseller, "News Junkie," a memoir. Visit www.newsjunkiebook.com for a preview. He is also a two-time winner of the Project Censored award, most recently, in 2007, for an investigative story related to Halliburton's work in Iran. He was recently named the recipient of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's Thomas Jefferson Award for a series of stories he wrote that exposed how soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan have been pressured to accept fundamentalist Christianity.
First, I can't buy this "Lotus" to Outlook conversion. Hellooee, Lotus is a 30yo program that is, for the most part, obsolete. How can the American public buy into that? Unless you pull the motherboard, how can anything EVER be completely deleted? It all goes on your hard drive. I guess a sledge hammer deletes fairly well.
Speaking of a black hole, somehow my OEN isn't getting through the queue to my inbox and twice this week(today, for one), I didn't get it. I know it isn't OEN's fault. It's AOL, the corporate FILTER that "allows" me to have WHAT they want me to read and discards what they don't like me to read. Just like they blocked my Truthout newsletters (and thousands of others on 9/07). Speaking of TO, that comes to me NOW in one of those AOL envelopes and what's up with their newspaper selection? Ash must be getting rightie on us? Maybe just a slow liberal day, eh?
I once got FDA notices straight from FDA. I Signed up when the dog food was coming up poisoned. Then they suddenly stopped, and then months later, started up again, but they came in one of those AOL envelopes. That to me, is repressing. I feel like they are proof reading my material. Hello, Adolph. Hello fascism.
This lost email excuse is hardly better than "the dog ate my homework" excuse. I certainly hope the IT ppl out there aren't buying this. Lotus, the Whitehouse is on Lotus? Unbelievable!! The money we all send to DC and they are still using Lotus? Oh puleaze. Do they have microwaves? Color TV? How about running water? Do they have running water in the Whitehouse?
OMG. I guess that's why I finally stopped watching MSM except Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert. LOL.
by
shirley reese (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 206 comments)
on Friday, May 9, 2008 at 8:19:13 PM
Get another ISP. Check out Olbermann and Abrams sometime. They still must obey their masters when the whip is snapped. But a remarkable amount of good work comes through. And don't forget PBS on Friday evenings. Moyers, NOW and Gwen Ifill continue to keep the journalist faith.
by
Pat Williams (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 82 comments)
on Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 11:03:38 AM
Hey Pat, I can't download another ISP. I'm short on memory. So, until I get a new computer or more memory, I'm stuck for now. I voice in a whine, but I'm patient, it too will pass and I will be changing ISP when the computer is changed. AOL takes a lot of space with their programs and add more all the time. I like the tech support, online chat help. It's the best thing about them. Meanwhile, I put up and I should shut up, but...
I do watch Olbermann sometimes and Abrams(watched him religiously when he was on Court TV back then). However, with all this camp "pain"ing stuff, I just can't stand MSM. I watch Moyers regularly. I'm into CSPAN.
I have several online news sources and I am a peace activist so I get plenty of war news emails.
In regard to this email missing in action crap, we know they are lying, they know they are lying, we know they know that we know they are lying. However, we just sit by and wait for the earth to shake and out comes James Madison and slaps the books at them. LOL! Really, Journalists are coming alive, whistleblowers are meeting together, Attorneys are concentrating pressure on their state Bar Associations, and we, the ppl(some of us) are ready to become the real patriots this country has been starving for.
What's one thing that Bush could do that would simplemindedly wake the sheeple up? (Something that disappoints millions)
I have an idea of what that could be. T'ain't no terrorist attack. Think about it. Almost hate to say it online. I think I will keep it a secret...seems to work for Dick Cheney.
by
shirley reese (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 206 comments)
on Saturday, May 10, 2008 at 8:19:00 PM
