For those tracking the long train of abuses and usurpations of a modern-day George who would be King and his eminence grise behind the throne, July 14 has a resonance far beyond the fireworks of Bastille Day. Four loosely related events on that same day four years ago throw revealing light on key ingredients of the debacle in Iraq.
First, on July 14, 2003 the Washington Post and other papers carried a column by Robert Novak titled “Mission to Niger,” in which he set out to do the White House’s bidding by disparaging former ambassador Joseph Wilson and punishing him by making it impossible for his wife, Valerie Plame, to continue working in her chosen (covert) profession. The White House offensive against Wilson had been in the planning stage for several months. Novak’s column was, in effect, the first shot in a sustained, rapid-fire volley aimed at neutralizing Wilson and deterring other potential truth-tellers who might be tempted to follow his example.
The former ambassador had spent several days in the African country of Niger at the CIA’s behest to investigate a dubious report in which Vice President Dick Cheney had taken inordinate interest—a strange story that Iraq was seeking to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger. For substantive reasons, serious intelligence analysts had judged the report false on its face, well before they learned it was based on forged documents.
But the vice president had taken quite a shine to it. As a result, in February 2002 four-star Marine General Carlton Fulford, Jr. (then deputy commander of the United States European Command with purview over most of Africa) and Ambassador Wilson made separate journeys to Niger to investigate the report. They both found it spurious. Hence, they and U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick, were amazed when President George W. Bush used the same cockamamie report in his state-of-the union address on January 28, 2003 to help build a case for attacking Iraq.
After confirming that Bush was using the same dubious “evidence” and after attempting in vain to get the White House to correct the record, Wilson went public on July 6, 2002 with an op-ed in The New York Times titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” This brought White House wrath down on him. Cheney and his then-chief of staff, Irv Lewis “Scooter” Libby, went on the offensive, throwing friendly journalists like Novak into the fray. Novak’s July 14 column reflected Cheney’s neuralgic reaction not only to Wilson’s New York Times piece, but also to his July 6 remark to the Washington Post that the administration’s use of that bogus report “begs the question regarding what else they are lying about.” So un-ambassadorial. But Wilson was angry—and with good reason.
Lying the Country Into War
Reflecting the concern driving the White House counteroffensive, Novak wrote that the administration’s “mistake” in using the Iraq-Niger report “led the Democrats ever closer to saying the president lied the country into war.” That concern, coupled with the priority need to protect the vice president, showed through in the defensive tone of Novak’s protestation that it was “not just Vice President Dick Cheney” who had asked the CIA to look into the report.
Wilson’s op-ed forced the White House to acknowledge that the spurious Iraq-Niger report should have found no place in Bush’s state-of-the-union address. Then-White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, while packing his bags to leave that post, took time to memorize the main talking point for use with reporters. Without even being asked about Cheney’s role, Fleischer was quick to offer instant, gratuitous insistence that the vice president was not guilty of anything. At the same time, then-CIA director George Tenet did his awkward best to absolve Cheney of any responsibility for giving the Iraq-Niger story more legs and credence than, by any objective measure, it deserved.
That this was a matter of protesting too much can be seen in Libby’s Herculean effort earlier in the year to crank the Iraq-Niger story—as well as a host of other far-fetched charges against Iraq—into then-secretary of state Colin Powell’s embarrassing speech at the UN on February 5, 2003. While Powell let himself be browbeaten into using much of the spurious material urged on him by Libby, the Iraq-Niger fairy tale had long since taken on an acrid smell. Besides, Powell’s own intelligence analysts had branded the report “highly dubious” and, for once, he listened.
In the end, Powell decided to throw virtually everything but the kitchen sink into his UN speech condemning Saddam Hussein. The kitchen sink was the Iraq-Niger report. When asked why he did not include that story, when President Bush had featured it with such solemnity just a week before in his state-of-the-union address, Powell damned it with faint praise, publicly describing the report as “not totally outrageous.”
White House officials calculated correctly that a four-star Marine general, even a retired one, could be counted on to keep his mouth shut rather than expose his former commander-in-chief in a bald-faced lie. But they “misunderestimated” Joseph Wilson, who turned out to be a man of substantial integrity and courage. Wilson saw the Iraq-Niger report as a consequential lie—a monstrous one, in that it greased the skids for launching a war of aggression, condemned at the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal as the “supreme international crime.” And rather than grouse about it with knowing smirk, cigar, and sherry in Georgetown drawing rooms, as is the more familiar practice among retired ambassadors, Wilson went public.
Swords Drawn
And so on July 14, 2003, Robert Novak slipped into his familiar role as “conservative” pundit and launched the White House counteroffensive. As for friends Cheney and Libby, the best idea they could come up with to divert the focus from themselves was to spread the word that Wilson’s wife, a CIA employee, had sent him to Niger on some kind of boondoggle. (I know; I know. Please stop laughing, those of you who have been in Niger. And Wilson performed his investigation gratis).
House pundits and other co-travelers then eked almost four years of mileage out of the next White House diversion; namely, the claim that Valerie Plame was not really under cover. Under strong White House pressure to delay, top CIA functionaries were in no hurry to set that record straight and avoided doing so until March 14, 2007, when the patience of Henry Waxman (D-California), Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, ran out. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed to Waxman that Plame had been under cover until Robert Novak blew that cover; that Plame had been a covert employee, whose status with the CIA was classified information. Waxman has made that public. But (surprise, surprise) this has not stopped “neo-conservative” drummers from continuing to beat drums of doubt.
The Vice President’s Man
Cheney’s chief of staff, “Scooter” Libby, agreed to take the hit and was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice. In his closing argument, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald made it clear that the role of Vice President Dick Cheney in blowing Valerie Plame’s cover remains the key mystery, and that Libby’s lies ensured that Cheney’s role would remain a mystery. Fitzgerald could hardly have made this key finding clearer:
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his 27-years as a CIA analyst, he chaired NIEs: he is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Where's the inside intelligence and integrity? Again Mr. McGovern gets my nod.
Why is it we seem to have most of the intelligent, honest and incorruptible agents outside the Agencies? I realize that it's only those that are free from the pledges and restraints that are able to talk relatively freely, but it also seems that most of the "intelligence" has left the Intelligence Agencies, and all we have left are the, I can't think of a kinder word other than what they are, traitors to our Constitution left.
I would like to believe that there are at least a few more good ones than bad, but now I wonder if there are any? And if there are, why aren't they figuring out a way to expose the truth and stop this ripping apart of the country? There has to be an American version of the Downing Street Memos, or hard evidence of Election Fraud, illegal wire-tapping, or even Gannon/Gerkert, for Christ sake, (a gay male prosititute roams the WH and no one sees this odd (?)) something that would finally stop this shit!? If they're holding any bullets back, STOP, let them fly! Surely you can see we've wasted too much time already.
Where's our Wilkie? Not that the members of VIPS aren't significant, (far from it, to me they're the best of the best) but we wouldn't be in this illegal occupation if the likes of Tenet or Powell would have resigned instead of going over to the Dark Side.
by
Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 12 diaries, 1403 comments)
on Sunday, July 15, 2007 at 4:27:23 PM
The Corporate Media continues to air unchallenged the claim that, by conspiring to smear Joe Wilson in reaction to his exposure of the Niger canard, the administration - specifically the VP's office - committed no underlying crime and that the prosecution of Lewis Libby was a case built on nothing. An underlying incompetent forgery originating in Italy, ultimately did more to undermine the administration's claim than to bolster it, but provides a valuable clue to the methods that were used to build the bogus case in the first place. It needs a full investigation and to be traced back to its source. Answering the question "who benefits", with regard to the forgery fingers only one group - those who would have us believe the claims of Weapons of Mass Destruction case. The VP's dispatch of his squad of flying monkeys who, uncannily "let it slip" that a covert NOC agent was married to Joe Wilson at almost the same time is among the greatest marvels of the modern age, since, a) that knowledge had to be pretty limited, b) it was shortly before revealed in a message received on Air Force 1 and perused by staff in-flight, and c) resulted in broadcast planting of seeds by various of these monkeys, some of which fell on fallow ground, and some of which took root with Novak. That is some amazing sequence of inadvertant revelation. To us untutored and unwashed, but not unaware subjects of King George, it is difficult to understand why charges of treason and conspiracy to commit treason were not filed against Cheney and his chief of staff, along with Richard Armitage and Karl Rove.
That it became a partisan issue instead of a bipartisan tsunami of outrage at the outing of the agent and the resulting exposure of the front company is just an indicator of the degraded state of American political discourse, and provides a valuable clue as to why we no longer have an effective method for translating the will of the people into governmental action, and why they operate as agents for hidden and sinister forces seeking their own ends.
SFL
Salisbury, MD
by
Maturin42 (5 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 18 comments)
on Tuesday, July 17, 2007 at 12:55:51 PM
2 comments
How would you rate this?
You must be logged in (if signed up) to do ratings.
It's free to signup! And easy. And takes just a minute or two....
Must Read (
Well Said (
News (
Touching (
Funny (
Supported (
Interesting (
Inspiring (
Valuable (
