@@ A CIA cover blown, a White House exposed - How JEW screws America @@
Arash
August 25, 2005
A CIA Cover Blown, a White House Exposed
By Tom Hamburger & Sonni Efron
Washington — Toward the end of a steamy summer week in 2003, reporters were peppering
the White House with phone calls and e-mails, looking for someone to defend the
administration's claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
About to emerge as a key critic was Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_C._Wilson), a former diplomat who asserted that
the administration had manipulated intelligence to justify the Iraq invasion
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcake_forgery).
At the White House, there wasn't much interest in responding to critics like Wilson
that Fourth of July weekend. The communications staff faced more pressing concerns —
the president's imminent trip to Africa, growing questions about the war and
declining ratings in public opinion polls.
Ambassador Wilson's accusations were based on an investigation he undertook for the
CIA. But he was seen inside the White House as a "showboater" whose stature didn't
warrant a high-level administration response. "Let him spout off solo on a holiday
weekend", one White House official recalled saying. "Few will listen".
In fact, millions were riveted that Sunday as Wilson — on NBC's "Meet the Press" and
in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post — accused the
administration of ignoring intelligence that didn't support its rationale for war.
Underestimating the impact of Wilson's allegations was one in a series of
misjudgments by White House officials.
In the days that followed, they would cast doubt on Ambassador Wilson's CIA mission
to Africa by suggesting to reporters that his wife was responsible for his trip. In
the process, her identity as a covert CIA agent was divulged — possibly illegally
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame).
For the last 20 months, a tough-minded special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Fitzgerald), has been looking into how the
media learned that Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA
operative (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plame_affair).
Top administration officials, along with several influential journalists, have been
questioned by prosecutors.
Beyond the whodunit, the affair raises questions about the credibility of the Bush
White House, the tactics it employs against political opponents and the justification
it used for going to war.
What motivated Bush's political strategist, Karl Rove
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Rove); Vice President Cheney's top aide, [JEW]
Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Libby); and others
to counter Wilson so aggressively? How did their roles remain secret until after the
president was reelected? Have they fully cooperated with the investigation?
The answers remain elusive. As special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's team has moved
ahead, few witnesses have been willing to speak publicly.
White House officials declined to comment for this article, citing the ongoing
inquiry.
But a close examination of events inside the White House two summers ago, and
interviews with administration officials, offer new insights into the White House
response, the people who shaped it, the deep disdain Cheney and other administration
officials felt for the CIA, and the far-reaching consequences of the effort to manage
the crisis.
July 6, 2003
Ten weeks after Bush landed aboard an aircraft carrier in front of a banner that
proclaimed "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq
(http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1030-06.htm), Ambassador Wilson created his
own media moment by questioning one of the central reasons for going to war.
He told how he was dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate the claim
that Iraq had sought large quantities of uranium from the African nation of Niger
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowcakegate). Ambassador Wilson told "Meet the
Press" that he and others had "effectively debunked" the claim — only to see it show
up nearly a year later in the president's 2003 State of the Union speech
(http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1841).
Ambassador Wilson appeared to be an eyewitness to administration dishonesty in the
march to war.
The State of the Union speech
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html) had been a pillar
of the administration's case for war, and Ambassador Wilson was raising questions
about one of its key elements: the claim that Iraq was a nuclear threat.
At the time of Ambassador Wilson's disclosure, U.S. and United Nations officials had
yet to turn up evidence of biological, chemical or nuclear weapons. A ragtag Iraqi
insurgency had begun to strike back.
In public, the White House was predicting that weapons of mass destruction would be
found. But behind the scenes, officials were worried about the failure to find those
weapons and the possibility that the CIA would blame the White House for prewar
intelligence failures.
Ambassador Wilson seemed a credible critic: His diplomatic leadership as charge
d'affaires in the U.S. Embassy in Iraq just before the 1991 bombing of Baghdad had
earned him letters of praise from President George H.W. Bush.
That made him dangerous to the administration.
July 7, 2003
Within 24 hours, the White House reversed its view of the damage Ambassador Wilson
could do. He began to receive the attention of Karl Rove, a man with a reputation for
discrediting critics and disciplining political enemies, and of [JEW] Irving Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, a longtime Cheney advisor and CIA critic.
There were grounds to challenge the former diplomat on the substance of his uranium
findings: Wilson had no special training for that kind of mission; his conclusions
about Niger were not definitive and were based on a few days of informal interviews;
and they differed from the conclusions of British intelligence.
But it appears Karl Rove was more focused on Ambassador Wilson's background, politics
and claims he ostensibly had made that his mission was initiated at the request of
the vice president.
Karl Rove mentioned to reporters that Ambassador Wilson's wife had suggested or
arranged the trip. The idea apparently was to undermine its import by suggesting that
the mission was really "a boondoggle set up by his wife", as an administration
official described the trip to a reporter, according to an account in the Washington
Post.
This approach depended largely on a falsehood: that Ambassador Wilson had claimed
Cheney sent him to Niger. Ambassador Wilson never made such a claim.
[JEW] Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby reportedly told prosecutors that he did not know
Valerie Plame Wilson's identity until a journalist told him. His lawyer did not
return calls for comment.
Karl Rove's lawyer has said his client did not know Valerie Plame Wilson's name or
her undercover status when he first talked with reporters after Ambassador Wilson's
public statements.
"The one thing that's absolutely clear is that Karl Rove was not the source for the
leak and there's no basis for any additional speculation", attorney Robert Luskin
said, adding that he was told Karl Rove was not a target of the inquiry.
A Karl Rove ally has said it was necessary for Rove to counter Ambassador Wilson's
exaggerated claims about the import of his mission.
However, some of Rove's colleagues say that he and others used poor judgment in
talking about Ambassador Wilson's wife.
"With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear our focus should have been on Ambassador
Wilson's facts, not his conclusions or his wife or his politics", said one official
who was helping with White House strategy at the time.
In one White House conversation, investigators have learned, Karl Rove was asked why
he was focused so intently on discrediting the former diplomat.
"He's a Democrat", Karl Rove said, citing Ambassador Wilson's campaign contributions.
By that time, Ambassador Wilson had begun advising Senator John F. Kerry's
presidential campaign.
Ambassador Wilson's Mission
Joe Wilson's mission was launched in early 2002, after the Italian government came
into possession of documents — later believed to have been forged — suggesting Iraq
was trying to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger (http://cryptome.org/niger-docs.htm).
[The forgery was in fact the work of Masonic Lodge P2 (Propaganda Due) Michael Ledeen
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/ledeen/ledeen.php) and his Gladio network
comrades (http://www.copi.com/articles/guyatt/gladio.html) at the Italian military
intelligence, SISMI (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare), the
Italian domestic intelligence, SISDE (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza
Democratica), SID (Servizio Informazioni Difesa), SIFAR (Servizio Informazioni Forze
ARmate) and SIM (Servizio Informazioni Militare)].
Dick Cheney had been briefed about this, a Senate Intelligence Committee report said,
and had asked for more information.
At CIA headquarters, agency officials cast about for ways to respond to the vice
president's interest. An official recommended sending Wilson to Niger because of his
experience there, including a previous mission for the CIA.
What role Valerie Plame Wilson played in securing the mission for her husband has
become a noisy sideshow to the substantive questions his trip raised about prewar
intelligence. It is not clear why Plame's role would have been relevant to Wilson's
uranium findings. But it was very important in the campaign to discredit him.
Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper wrote that when he first asked Karl Rove about
Ambassador Wilson on July 11, the presidential advisor told him Wilson's wife was
"responsible" for her husband's trip.
Valerie Plame Wilson was then working in Washington under "nonofficial cover",
meaning she posed as a nongovernment employee [NGO]!
A review of official documents shows that she had mentioned her husband as a possible
investigator, emphasizing his familiarity with Niger and later writing a note to the
chief of the CIA's counterproliferation division.
"My husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former
Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could
possibly shed light on this sort of activity", she wrote.
Ambassador Wilson says his wife wrote that note at the request of her boss after he
was suggested by others. There are contradictory accounts of Valerie Plame Wilson's
role, but CIA officials have said she was not responsible for sending Wilson.
Ambassador Wilson was not an intelligence officer or investigator, but his resume
suggested he was a logical candidate. He had served as ambassador to Gabon and in
U.S. embassies in Congo and Burundi; he had experience with the trade of strategic
minerals; and he was senior director for Africa on the National Security Council in
the Clinton administration.
On his trip, he interviewed Niger officials and citizens and talked with French mine
managers. He also spoke with the U.S. ambassador to Niger, Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick,
who recently had examined the Iraq uranium claim herself — as had a four-star
general, Carlton W. Fulford Jr., deputy commander of the U.S. European Command.
Like Fulford and the ambassador, Wilson said, he concluded that there was little
reason to believe Iraq had tried to purchase yellowcake from Niger. He did learn,
however, that Iraqi officials had previously met with counterparts from Niger.
Back in the U.S., Ambassador Wilson presented his report orally to CIA officers. They
wrote up his findings, gave him a middling "good" rating for his performance and, on
March 9, routinely sent a copy to other agencies — including the White House —
without marking it for the attention of senior officials.
Ambassador Wilson would write later that his trip led him to believe that the
administration had lied about the reasons for going to war. But in reading his
report, some analysts thought that evidence of previous Iraqi visits to Niger was a
sign of interest in that country's most valuable export, uranium. Others thought
Ambassador Wilson's report put to rest a dubious claim. The Senate Intelligence
Committee and top CIA officials said his report was inconclusive.
Cheney, Libby and the CIA
At the Pentagon and in Cheney's office, a profound skepticism of the CIA produced
what one State Department veteran termed an ongoing "food fight" over prewar
intelligence.
The atmosphere prevailed even though the CIA joined the White House and Pentagon in
concluding, incorrectly, that Saddam was making progress developing weapons of mass
destruction.
An ingrained antipathy toward the CIA may help explain the hostile reaction to
Ambassador Wilson's public claim that he and others had debunked the reported Iraqi
interest in uranium from Niger.
That skepticism was validated for Cheney and [JEW] Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby by
more than a decade of CIA blunders they had observed from their days at the Pentagon.
"It's part of the warp and woof and fabric of Department of Defense (DOD) not to like
the intelligence community", said Larry Wilkerson, a 31-year military veteran who was
former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff.
When Saddam invaded Kuwait in August 1990, Cheney was secretary of Defense and [JEW]
Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby was a deputy to [JEW] Paul D. Wolfowitz, then
undersecretary of Defense for policy.
After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, U.N. inspectors discovered that Saddam had far
greater capabilities in chemical, biological and nuclear weapons than the CIA had
estimated.
For Cheney and Libby, this experience shaped their skepticism about the CIA and
carried over to preparations for the war in Iraq, said a person who spoke with Libby
about it years later.
"Libby's basic view of the world is that the CIA has blown it over and over again",
said the source, who declined to be identified because he had spoken with Libby on a
confidential basis. "Libby and Cheney were [angry] that we had not been prepared for
the potential in the second Persian Gulf War [1991]".
In the view of these officials, who would go on to form Bush's war cabinet, the CIA
had stumbled through the 1990s, starting with the failure to predict the breakup of
the Soviet Union in 1991. In 1995, Hussein's son-in-law defected and led U.N.
inspectors to an previously unknown biological weapons cache. In 1998, the agency
failed to anticipate a nuclear weapon test by India.
Later that year Rumsfeld — then a corporate chief executive who served on
defense-related boards and commissions — wrote what [Israeli front org] Brookings
Institution scholar Ivo H. Daalder (http://www.brook.edu/scholars/idaalder.htm)
called "one of the most critical reports in the history of intelligence", arguing
that the ability for enemies to strike the United States with ballistic missiles had
been grossly underestimated.
On the eve of the Iraq war, with Rumsfeld as Defense secretary, these men were
fighting yet another battle with the CIA, this time over the credibility of Iraqi
exile leader Ahmad Chalabi.
Rumsfeld, Libby and Wolfowitz were longtime supporters of Ahmad Chalabi, the Iraqi
National Congress leader who was a key source of the now-discredited intelligence
that Hussein had hidden huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. The CIA
viewed Chalabi as a "fake", said Ivo Daalder, a former Security Council staffer.
Rumsfeld's Pentagon established an independent intelligence operation, the Office of
Special Plans (OSP) [JEW Lie Factory], which essentially provided the Defense
Department and White House with an alternative to CIA and State Department
intelligence. The competing operations would create confusion in preparations for the
invasion of Iraq.
When the disclosure of Ambassador Wilson's CIA mission to Niger put the White House
on the defensive, one administration official said it reminded a tightknit group of
Bush neoconservatives of their longtime battles with the agency and underlined their
determination to fight.
Many of those officials also were members of the White House Iraq Group
(http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=White_House_Iraq_Group), established to
coordinate and promote administration policy. It included the most influential
players who would represent two elements of the current scandal: a hardball approach
to political critics and long-standing disdain for CIA views on intelligence matters.
The group consisted of Rove, Libby, White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/government/card-bio.html), then-national security advisor
Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley
(http://rightweb.irc-online.org/ind/hadley/hadley.php), and Mary Matalin
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Matalin), Cheney's media advisor. All are believed
to have been questioned in the leak case; papers and e-mails about the group were
subpoenaed.
Before the war, this Iraq group promoted the view that Saddam had weapons of mass
destruction and was seeking more. In September 2002, the White House embraced a
British report asserting that "Iraq has sought significant quantities of uranium from
Africa" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_Street_memo).
But the CIA was skeptical. When White House speechwriters showed the CIA a draft of a
presidential speech in October that made reference to Iraqi uranium acquisition,
then-CIA Director George J. Tenet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Tenet) asked
that the reference be removed. The White House pulled it.
While George Tenet expressed skepticism, the national intelligence estimate he
ordered up to assess Iraq's weapons programs before the war seemed to embrace a
different view — perhaps because of a mistake in assembling the document.
The national intelligence estimate on "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass
Destruction", released in October 2002, was meant to reflect a consensus of the
nation's intelligence-gathering agencies. It included the consensus view that Iraq
sought weapons of mass destruction and a description of Britain's account of the
Niger deal.
The British information went unchallenged in that chapter of the intelligence
estimate. But the State Department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and
Research, disagreed with much of the nuclear section of the estimate and decided to
convey its views in text boxes to highlight the dissent.
However, the text box on the African uranium claim was "inadvertently separated" and
moved into another chapter of the intelligence estimate, where it could be
overlooked, the Senate Intelligence Committee said.
A couple of months later, a White House speechwriter consulted the estimate while
preparing the State of the Union speech, according to one source familiar with the
process.
The Speech
As the January 28, 2003, speech — and the invasion of Iraq — drew near, CIA officials
decided the uranium allegation was "overblown" and not backed by U.S. intelligence;
they notified the White House. But the decision was made to leave it in the address,
attributed to the British.
Ambassador Wilson was at a Canadian television network's Washington studio that
night, providing commentary on the speech and preparations for war. He remembers
being puzzled on hearing the now-famous 16 words: "The British government has learned
that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa".
At first, Ambassador Wilson thought, "Either they are wrong, or I'm wrong and there
is some additional evidence I don't know about from some other country in Africa".
When he learned later that the speech was based on the claims about Niger, his
puzzlement turned to resolve to make the government correct the record. "The
allegation was false but the U.S. went to war anyway after President Bush first
deceived the nation and the world", he would later write in a book.
In coming months, he would talk to reporters and others to get the word out about his
mission to Niger.
Powell at the U.N.
Two weeks later, on February 5, Colin Powell appeared before the U.N. and made the
case for war. Although his much-anticipated speech was tough, he did not mention the
British intelligence on African uranium. He did say, generally, that Iraq had sought
weapons of mass destruction.
The original outline of the speech, given to Colin Powell by [JEW] Irving Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, had been much stronger.
The competing intelligence estimates created a nightmare for Powell's top aide,
Wilkerson. His job was to make sure Colin Powell got his facts right.
A week before the speech, Colin Powell had walked into Wilkerson's office with the
48-page document provided by Libby that laid out the intelligence on the Iraqi
weapons program.
Most of it was rejected because its facts could not be verified. Wilkerson believes
that draft was based at least in part on data provided to Cheney by Rumsfeld's
intelligence group.
"Where else did they get this 48-page document that came jam-packed with information
that probably came first from the [Iraqi National Congress], Ahmad Chalabi and other
lousy sources?" Wilkerson asked.
To sort out the conflicting intelligence, Wilkerson convened a three-day meeting at
CIA headquarters. Its rotating cast included the administration's major foreign
policy players: Libby, Hadley, Powell, Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage,
Tenet, Deputy CIA Director John E. McLaughlin and Rice.
Wilkerson was told that Libby had said the 48-page document was designed to offer
Powell "a Chinese menu" of intelligence highlights to draw from for his speech.
Powell and his team were skeptical of most of it. Rice, Tenet and Hadley were trying
to reinsert bits of intelligence they personally favored but that could not be
corroborated. Hadley offered an unsubstantiated report of alleged meetings between
Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague shortly
before the attacks.
"The whole time, people were trying to reinsert their favorite … pet rocks back into
the presentation, when their pet rocks weren't backed up by anything but hearsay, or
Chalabi or the INC or both," Wilkerson said.
In the end, Powell agreed with Tenet to rely mainly on the national intelligence
estimate on Iraq, which had been vetted by the CIA. Wilkerson came to believe that
the Pentagon officials, and their allies in the White House, doubted what the
intelligence community said because "it didn't fit their script" for going to war.
The day of Powell's speech, U.S. officials provided the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog arm,
the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with documents supporting the
assertion that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium ore from Niger. Within weeks, the
agency determined the documents were clumsy fakes. The episode has never been
explained.
"It was very clear from our analysis that they were forgeries", Melissa Fleming, a
spokeswoman for the atomic energy agency, said in an interview. "We found 20 to 30
anomalies within a day".
But the British have stood by their claim that Hussein sought uranium from an unnamed
African country as late as 2002.
Two weeks after the atomic energy agency report, Bush issued a statement saying Iraq
continued "to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Two days after that, on March 20, he sent troops into Iraq.
Wilson Goes Public
At first, Ambassador Wilson worked behind the scenes to press his case.
He says he spoke to Walter Pincus of the Washington Post and to New York Times
columnist Nicholas D. Kristof on a not-for-attribution basis, telling both about his
mission and questioning why the administration would continue to cite the Niger
connection.
As news reports proliferated about the CIA fact-finding trip to Niger, more people in
the administration became familiar with Ambassador Wilson as the unnamed source for
these accounts.
By summer 2003, the stories were creating a problem for a White House trying to cope
with the failure to find weapons of mass destruction. Bush's poll ratings were
beginning to take a hit. The Republican nominating convention was a year away, and
the basis for the president's principal first-term act — going to war — was being
undermined.
After a June 12 Washington Post story made reference to the Niger uranium inquiry,
Armitage asked intelligence officers in the State Department for more information. He
was forwarded a copy of a memo classified "Secret" that included a description of
Wilson's trip for the CIA, his findings, a brief description of the origin of the
trip and a reference to "Wilson's wife".
The memo was kept in a safe at the State Department along with notes from an analyst
who attended the CIA meeting at which Wilson was suggested for the Niger assignment.
Those with top security clearance at State, like their counterparts in the White
House, had been trained in the rules about classified information. They could not be
shared with anyone who did not have the same clearance.
Less than a month later, Wilson went public with his charges.
The next day, July 7, this memo and the notes were removed from the safe and
forwarded to Powell via a secure fax line to Air Force One. Powell was on the way to
Africa with the president, and his aides knew the secretary would be getting
questions.
Fitzgerald has become interested in this memo, the earliest known document seen by
administration officials revealing that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. Powell told
prosecutors that he circulated the memo among those traveling with him in the front
section of Air Force One. It is believed that all officials in that part of the
aircraft had high-level security clearance.
At first, White House personnel responding to Wilson's New York Times op-ed article
July 6 made no reference to Wilson's wife. Then-Press Secretary [JEW] Ari Fleischer
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ari_Fleischer) told reporters the next day that the
former diplomat's article contained nothing new — "zero, nada, nothing" — and that
the vice president knew nothing about Wilson's trip to Africa. But Fleischer
acknowledged that the president's State of the Union statement on African uranium may
have relied on bad information.
That evening, as Air Force One streaked toward Africa, officials decided that to
defuse the pressure, they would issue a formal acknowledgment to selected journalists
that, as the New York Times reported the next morning, the White House "no longer
stood behind Mr. Bush's statement about the uranium — the first such official
concession on the sensitive issue of the intelligence that led to the war".
But that only fueled interest in Ambassador Wilson's charges and the broader concern
about the reliability of pre-war intelligence. Soon, however, the public's attention
would turn away from Wilson's charges and toward him and his wife.
Enter Bob Novak
Early that week, someone in the administration told syndicated newspaper columnist
[JEW] Robert Novak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Novak) that Wilson's CIA
operative wife had instigated his trip to Niger. "I didn't dig it out; it was given
to me", Novak said later about the leak. "They thought it was significant".
On July 9, according to a source close to Rove, Novak told Rove what he had heard.
"I heard that too", or words to that effect, Rove replied, according to the source.
Rove said Novak told him Valerie Plame Wilson's name, the first time Rove had heard
it, the person said.
The Blame Game
The delegation to Africa was distracted daily by reporters pressing Bush for his
reply to Wilson's allegations and the mistake in the State of the Union address.
On July 11, the traveling White House launched a coordinated effort to end the
controversy.
First, Rice told Tenet that she and the president planned to tell the media that
Bush's speech "was cleared by intelligence services," as the president said that day
in Uganda.
Hours later, Tenet — traveling in Idaho — released his own statement that at first
appeared helpful to the White House. It took responsibility for allowing the uranium
claim into the State of the Union.
"This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for
presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed," Tenet said.
He also described Wilson's trip as inconclusive, and said it was authorized by
lower-level CIA officials and was never flagged for review by top officials.
But Tenet added that the CIA had earlier provided cautions about using the Niger
evidence to conclude Iraq had obtained uranium. In effect, he was pointing a finger
at the White House for failing to heed previous warnings.
"We're screwed", said one White House official, reading the statement on his
Blackberry. Blame-shifting intensified amid media speculation about how the words got
into the speech.
That same day, Rove took the call from TIME magazine's Matthew Cooper
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Cooper) and, in response to a question, told
him that Wilson's wife was in the CIA and was responsible for her husband's mission.
Cooper says that Karl Rove did not use her name.
Afterward, Rove e-mailed Hadley to tell him he had the conversation and had "waved
Cooper off" Wilson's Niger claims.
The next day, a Saturday, Libby, responding to a question, told Cooper that he had
heard the same thing about Valerie Plame Wilson. Another official, whose identity is
not publicly known, mentioned Wilson's wife in passing to Pincus, telling him that
she had arranged the trip.
The message: Contrary to the image the White House said Wilson promoted, he was not a
well-qualified analyst who was sent to Niger by the vice president. He went to Niger
on a boondoggle arranged by his wife.
On Monday, July 14, Wilson was at his breakfast table in Georgetown when he saw
Novak's column, which said in part: "Ambassador Wilson never worked for the CIA, but
his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass
destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested
sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its
counterproliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him".
Ambassador Wilson later recalled that Valerie Plame Wilson suppressed her anger by
compiling a list of the things she had to do to protect information and two decades'
worth of contacts overseas. An entire career, she told her husband, had gone down the
tubes, "and for no purpose".
Ambassador Wilson says there was a purpose: to smear him, intimidate critics and
distract the public from charges that prewar intelligence had been manipulated.
Novak's disclosure touched off a flood of questions about prewar intelligence, the
State of the Union speech and the release of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity. The
following week, Bush spokesman Scott McClellan denied any White House role in leaking
Valerie Plame Wilson's name. "I'm telling you, flatly, that that is not the way this
White House operates".
Later, he qualified the statement to deny any role in "illegally" leaking
information. Months later, Bush said "yes" when asked whether he would fire whoever
was responsible for the leak. He would also qualify this later to say he would take
such action "if someone committed a crime".
But on July 21, according to Wilson, NBC's Chris Matthews said that Rove had told him
Valerie Plame Wilson was "fair game". McClellan later called suggestions of Rove's
involvement "ridiculous".
On July 30, the CIA notified the Justice Department that federal law might have been
breached with the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson's identity. By the end of
December 2003, Attorney General John Ashcroft
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashcroft), a former client of Rove's, recused
himself from the matter; the department named Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney for Chicago,
as a special prosecutor.
Those who knew Fitzgerald predicted he would charge hard and range far. Nonetheless,
his investigative sweep startled the White House. He asked immediately for White
House telephone logs, call sheets, attendance lists for meetings of the Iraq group,
party invitation lists and even phone logs from Air Force One.
Fitzgerald also asked for something unusual: a generic waiver of confidentiality
agreements from all White House employees for the journalists with whom they spoke
during the period in dispute.
When most reporters made it clear that the generic waiver was unacceptable because it
was viewed as coercive, the prosecutor worked with individual sources, reporters and
their lawyers to get their testimony.
Pincus testified after being assured that he would not have to name his source, even
though Fitzgerald knew who it was. Washington Post reporter [JEW] Glenn Kessler
(http://www.cjrdaily.org/archives/000921.asp) and NBC's Tim Russert
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Russert) also testified after getting assurances
from Libby.
After reading about their testimony, Cooper approached Libby about a waiver for
himself.
Without a personal waiver, Matthew Cooper and his editors believed they could not
reveal the source — which meant that the news organization would join the New York
Times in a losing court battle.
Matthew Cooper did not ask Karl Rove for a waiver, in part because his lawyer advised
against it. In addition, TIME editors were concerned about becoming part of such an
explosive story in an election year.
Rove's attorney, meantime, took the view that contacting Cooper would have amounted
to interfering with the ongoing court battle between reporter and prosecutor.
Although Fitzgerald said Cooper's testimony was necessary to conclude his
investigation, he did not ask Rove to give the reporter a waiver, according to Rove's
attorney, Luskin.
The result was that Cooper's testimony was delayed nearly a year, well after Bush's
reelection. "The reason this resolution was delayed had nothing to do with anything
Karl Rove did or failed to do", he said.
Karl Rove granted the waiver this summer after Cooper's attorney called Luskin hours
before Cooper was to be sent to jail; the reporter testified on July 13. Reporter
Judith Miller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller_%28journalist%29) of the
New York Times, meanwhile, was jailed for refusing to testify.
Matthew Cooper wrote afterward that he told the jury he had called Karl Rove in July
2003 and that, in response to his query about Wilson and his claims, Rove informed
him that Ambassador Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and "she was responsible for
sending Ambassador Wilson".
Individuals close to the case say that Fitzgerald is likely to wrap up his inquiry
this fall.
* Times staff writers Douglas Frantz & Richard B. Schmitt contributed to this report.
Chronology
Events surrounding the White House's role in the leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's
identity as a CIA agent:
2002
February: Vice President Dick Cheney asks whether Iraq sought uranium from Niger.
Feb. 12: The CIA sends Joseph Wilson to Niger.
March 9: Ambassador Wilson says he finds little evidence for such claims, but notes
a prior visit to Niger by Iraqi officials.
Aug. 26: Cheney says: "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire
nuclear weapons".
Oct. 5-6: CIA Director George Tenet persuades the White House to remove the uranium
claim from a Bush speech.
2003
Jan. 28: President Bush's State of the Union cites a British report that Iraq sought
uranium.
March 7: A U.N. nuclear agency finds uranium documents are "not authentic".
March 20: The U.S. invades Iraq.
July 6: Ambassador Wilson goes public on his Niger trip and findings.
July 7-8: Administration sources tell columnist Robert Novak about Wilson's CIA wife.
July 7: The White House admits to a mistake in citing the uranium claim.
July 11: Karl Rove tells Time's Matthew Cooper that Wilson's wife arranged the Niger
trip.
July 14: A Novak column unmasks Valerie Plame Wilson.
July 30: The CIA asks the Justice Department to investigate the leak of the agent's
identity.
Sept. 16: The White House says suggesting Rove leaked her identity is "ridiculous".
Sept. 29: A White House spokesman says the leaker will be fired.
Sept. 30: Ambassador Wilson endorses John Kerry for president.
Dec. 30: Patrick Fitzgerald is named special prosecutor.
2004
Jan. 23: Weapons inspector David Kay says there are no weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq.
July 10: A Senate panel faults prewar intelligence and calls Ambassador Wilson's
report inconclusive.
Nov. 2: Bush is reelected.
2005
Feb. 15: A court orders journalists Judith Miller and Cooper to cooperate with a
grand jury.
July 6: Miller refuses to testify and is jailed; Cooper agrees to testify after
getting express permission from his source, Rove.
July 18: Bush says the leaker will be fired if a crime was committed.
Sources: Times reporting, media reports, White House and Senate documents
http://news.yahoo.com/s/latimests/20050825/ts_latimes/aciacoverblownawhitehouseexposed