Valerie Plame, a covert CIA agent, learns from contacts that at least one of the items the Bush administration is pushing as WMD justification is a lie. Plame’s current role in the CIA is “an agency operative assigned to investigate Weapons of Mass Destruction”. Bush said in a State of the Union address that Saddam was “seeking significant quantities of Uranium in Africa”. This claim had long been debunked in intelligence circles and rested on a piece of documentation that was such a poor forgery that anyone with even a modicum of savvy could recognize it as such. An official at the CIA senior to Plame made the request of her husband to go to Africa to investigate the claim without Plame’s involvement and in February of 2002, 13 months before the Iraq war, and 11 months before the State of the Union address where Bush would make the accusation, Wilson went to Niger to investigate the possibility that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy uranium yellowcake. Wilson met with the current Ambassador, Owens-Kirkpatrick, at the embassy, and was informed that she had already debunked that story. Everyone who has seen the documents surrounding the allegation quickly came to the same conclusion.
5. January 28, 2003 – President Bush delivers his State of the Union address where he makes the accusation that Saddam Hussein has sought significant quantities of Uranium from Africa.
6. March 6, 2003 - In a report dated 2 weeks BEFORE THE START OF THE IRAQ WAR, The UN Weapons Inspectors indicate they have not found Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq after 4 months of on the ground Inspections
7. March 19, 2003 – The Iraq war Begins
8. July 6, 2003 Wilson exposes the administration lies in a NY Times Article
Joseph Wilson’s article "What I Didn't Find in Africa," appeared in the July 6, 2003 edition of the New York Times and directly accused the administration of lying to justify the Iraq war.
9. In the week following Wilson's article, the Bush Administration leaks Plame’s status as a covert CIA Agent to hurt her and her husband as retaliation for his article
Eight days after Wilson’s article, Robert Novak issues a response where he identified Mrs. Wilson, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, as "an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction" named "Valerie Plame." Novak is one of three reporters that get the information from administration officials in the previous week. Novak received his information from Richard Armitage, whereas Judith Miller and Time reporter Matthew Cooper admitted to having received that information from Libby. It is illegal, and a felony to reveal the name and/or status of a covert CIA agent. There was some initial controversy about Plame’s status (mostly put out by the conservative right in order to confuse the issue), but this was put to rest on March 16, 2007 when then CIA director General Michael Hayden testified the following to congress via a written statement:
On March 16, 2007, at these hearings about the disclosure, Chairman Henry Waxman read a statement about Plame's CIA career that had been cleared by CIA director Gen. Michael V. Hayden and the CIA:
- During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was under cover.
- Her employment status with the CIA was classified information prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958.
- At the time of the publication of Robert Novak's column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson's CIA employment status was covert.
- This was classified information.
- Ms. Wilson served in senior management positions at the CIA, in which she oversaw the work of other CIA employees, and she attained the level of GS-14, step 6 under the federal pay scale.
- Ms. Wilson worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA.
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