July 2003: Week Two: This Far and No Further

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9/11 commission work hindered by administration officials

July 8: The federal 9/11 Commission says that its work is being hindered by the failure of executive branch agencies, especially the Pentagon and the Justice Department, to respond quickly to requests for documents and testimony. Co-chairman Thomas Kean characterizes the presence of Justice Department "minders" who accompany witnesses during their testimony as a form of intimidation. Kean and co-chair Lee Hamilton note that the Pentagon has not responded to a series of requests for evidence from several Defense Department agencies, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which is responsible for guarding American airspace from terrorist attack. (New York Times)

Bush administration admits knowing intelligence about Iraq's supposed uranium purchase was faulty well before State of Union address

July 8: The Bush administration acknowledges that it was aware the intelligence information about Iraq's supposed purchase of uranium from Niger was faulty 10 months before Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, in which he aired the allegation as if it were an established fact, and acknowledges that the allegation should not have been made during the speech. The administration continues, however, to insist that Bush himself knew nothing of the allegation's falsity. Before Bush delivered the address, officials checked with the CIA on the validity of the allegation. The CIA warned them that the intelligence was not strong enough to make such a statement; Bush and his aides decided that, since they could attribute the statement to British intelligence, that they would go ahead and make the accusation. As CBS writes, "The statement was technically correct, since it accurately reflected the British paper. But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true." Secretary of State Colin Powell acknowledges that in his speech to the UN eight days later, he chose not to mention the allegation because the intelligence wasn't strong enough. A British Parliamentary commission report said it was unclear why the Americans would make such a "bald claim" knowing that the intelligence was weak. Bush and Condoleezza Rice place the blame on the CIA for vetting the claim before the address as administration officials scramble for someone to take the fall; Rice says disingenuously, and falsely, that "no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery." On July 11, CIA director George Tenet accepts the blame, saying, "These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president." Republicans in Congress were quick to point fingers at Tenet, while some Democrats insist that the CIA cannot be held totally responsible for the lie: Democratic Senator Carl Levin says, "Everyone is trying to evade responsibility. There is to me very disturbing evidence of deception somewhere. Where the deception is we don't know, but there is an inquiry going on."
Conservative commentators and media pundits have tried to defuse the issue -- one example being Robert Novak's contention that the questions of the non-existent WMDs and the forged uranium documents are "little elitist issues that don't bother most of the people," a contention helped by White House press secretary Ari Fleischer's insinuation that Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who is publicly decrying the Iraq-Niger uranium contention, is merely trying to get his name in the press. But today a senior White House official admits to a Washington Post reporter that, "Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union address." Bush will change his phrasing from accusing Iraq of having actual weapons to having what he calls "weapons programs." (BBC, CBS, Washington Post, CBS/AP, Boston Herald, AP/Buzzflash, Frank Rich pp.98-100)

"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been in the State of the Union speech." -- an unnamed senior White House official, July 8, published in the Washington Post and quoted by Frank Rich [PDF file]

July 8: As press reports of the White House's concession over the Iraq-Niger claims are hitting the newsstands and the airwaves, Lewis "Scooter" Libby meets with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. As with Libby's June 27 meeting with Bob Woodward, Libby is authorized to reveal selected portions of the October 2002 NIE to Miller. The idea is twofold -- to shore up the administration's credibility on the justification for the Iraq war, and to smear Joseph Wilson's credibility. Cheney's chief counsel David Addington, the most unrelenting proponent of unbridled executive power, has already told Cheney what he wants to hear: that if Bush has authorized the leaking of the NIE, then that automatically means the NIE has been declassified. But Addington adds that Cheney is under no obligation to reveal anything more from the NIE than he wishes -- in other words, he is free to use selected portions of the NIE to mislead the public while keeping other, less politically advantageous portions secret. Libby is now in the process of feeding sensitive information to the reporter whose misleading and misinforming reporting played such a key role in shaping public opinion towards supporting the Iraq invasion. One senior administration official calls it "Scooter's black op."
Miller notes that the mere mention of Wilson's op-ed "agitates" Libby, who rails about the inaccuracy of the editorial. But before he goes on, he insists that he be identified in any articles by Miller, not as the usual "senior administration official," but the misleading and disingenuous "former Hill staffer" appellation. Technically, Libby is indeed a former Hill staffer, but he hasn't worked in Congress since the late 1990s. Libby wants no White House fingerprints on the smear. Miller doesn't hesitate to accept the unusual conditions, though it is doubtful that any reputable journalist would have made the same agreement. (Later, Miller testifies, even more tellingly, that she intended to turn the tables on Libby and at the end of the interview tell him that the appellation "wouldn't fly." She tells the startled interviewer that "it is often done in Washington," a questionable claim.)
After the ground rules are set, Libby begins laying into both Wilson and the CIA. He calls Wilson's charges of exaggeration and deception part of the CIA's attempt to backpedal on the Iraqi WMD claims, a serious exaggeration on its own. He cites classified information from 2002 to support the Niger charge, without providing the information itself. He claims that the debriefing of Wilson after his trip to Niger "barely made it out of the bowels of the CIA." He claims, falsely, that Wilson had actually come back with information showing that Iraq was interested in purchasing uranium from Niger as far back as 1999. And he says that the CIA's George Tenet had never heard of Wilson. Libby won't allow Miller to change the subject to her more immediate interest, Hussein's biochemical weapons, but continues to rant against Wilson and the CIA. He claims, falsely, that the October 2002 NIE cites even stronger evidence than the CIA's slick, deliberately misleading "white paper" from the same time period of the Iraq-Niger claim, failing to inform Miller about the NIE's numerous dissents and caveats over the claim.
Libby also brings up the subject of Valerie Plame Wilson. "Wife works at Winpac," Miller notes, referring to the CIA's Counterproliferation Division (CPD). Interestingly, Miller misspells the name as "Valerie Flame," and later, under oath, Miller will tell the astonishing lie that she doesn't believe the "Valerie Flame" reference came from Libby, but from another source, whom she conveniently forgot.
After the Miller interview, Libby encounters Addington in the hall and asks him to find out what paperwork would have been filed for Wilson's trip -- another attempt to find a connection between Wilson and his wife concerning the Niger trip. The smear strategy is already taking shape. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich [PDF file])
July 8: Conservative columnist Robert Novak is awaiting an interview with Karl Rove about Frances Fragos Townsend, the White House's new counterterrorism chief. Novak intends to write about dissension and backstabbing within the White House centering around Townsend, who is being accused by aides of Attorney General John Ashcroft of possibly being a closet Democrat sympathizer. Rove is usually a reliable Novak source, but this morning Rove doesn't want to take Novak's calls. Instead, Novak calls Adam Levine, the White House press aide and Rove protege; when Novak asks him as a side note what he thinks of "the Wilson thing," Levine refers him to either Rove or Lewis Libby. Novak recalls Levine saying of Wilson, "He's a Democrat; he's giving money to John Kerry." (Wilson had donated $1,000 to Kerry, but in 1999 he donated money to George W. Bush.)
Instead, Novak goes to the State Department for a scheduled interview with Rove's close friend, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage. Along with Washington insider Ken Duberstein, Colin Powell, Armitage's boss and confidante, has arranged for the meeting between Armitage and Novak. Novak immediately asks about the Wilson trip, and Armitage says the same thing as Rove -- he can't figure why the CIA would send Wilson to Niger. To answer the question, Armitage drops a dime on Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. Plame is a clandestine CIA agent, Armitage tells Novak, working on weapons of mass destruction, and he knows for a fact (erroneously) that Plame arranged to have Wilson go to Niger. (Three months later, Novak will describe Armitage as a source who is "no partisan gunslinger," though he will not name Armitage.) Armitage has already told Bob Woodward about Plame, but Woodward didn't write about Plame. Novak will.
Armitage does not admit to being Novak's source until his 2005 grand jury testimony. Afterwards, he tells the INR's Carl Ford, "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing." He tells Ford he "slipped up," leading Ford to recall that Armitage was "mad at himself." Ford, like others, blames Armitage's fondness for gossip on the leak of Plame's name, but another, more ominous scenario advanced by Robert Parry and other investigative journalists has Armitage deliberately leaking Plame's name at the behest of his friend and colleague Karl Rove. The theory of Armitage as inadvertent, gossipy leaker, presented by reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn, is, in the opinion of the editor of this Web site, thin at best, considering the orchestrated nature of the smear campaign against Wilson.
Interestingly, a friend of both Novak and Wilson encounters Novak in the street shortly after the interview with Armitage, and Novak freely bandies about the information about Plame's covert assignment as a CIA official, telling the friend that Plame sent her husband to Niger. Novak also calls Wilson an "*sshole" -- so much for objective journalism. The friend informs Wilson of Novak's loose lip, and Wilson complains to CNN news chief Eason Jordan that Novak is irresponsibly spreading rumors and details around Washington about his wife.
In a phone call later that day, Rove confirms for Novak that Plame is a CIA agent -- "I've heard that," he carefully tells Novak. "You know that, too." Rove himself most likely learned of Plame's identity from Libby. Novak now has two senior administration sources for his next column about Wilson, and about Wilson's wife. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich [PDF file])
July 8: As for Libby, he is becoming more and more irate over the spreading firestorm of criticism triggered by the Wilson revelations. He is especially upset over the commentaries of MSNBC's Chris Matthews, host of Hardball, who is tearing into the White House, and going after both Cheney and Libby by name. Matthews goes so far as to wonder if Libby himself isn't the source of the infamous "sixteen words" from Bush's January State of the Union address, and says a Congressional investigation of the Iraq-Niger charge is warranted. Libby orders White House press aide Adam Levine and Cheney's chief press secretary, Catherine Martin, to review everything Matthews is saying about Wilson and Iraq-Niger, with an eye towards Matthews's mistakes.
Libby has an interesting angle of attack against Matthews: Matthews's commentaries are receiving some airplay in the Arab world, and Libby says Matthews's diatribes are fueling anti-Semitic rhetoric in those communities. Libby himself is Jewish, though he doesn't practice or observe the canons. Libby's complaints of criticism as anti-Semitism are common among the administration's neoconservatives. Libby talks of US intelligence picking up "chatter" about potential threats against him, and says he has been forced to take precautions to ensure the safety of himself and his family. Libby blames Matthews for all of this. Matthews "was his bete noire," recalls a close friend. Libby finally has Levine call Matthews to complain about the coverage. Levine is a former senior producer for Hardball, and presumably has some pull with Matthews. But instead the conversation quickly becomes a shouting match, with Levine accusing Matthews of fomenting anti-Semitism and Matthews making it clear he wasn't about to pull back on his criticisms. Since Matthews is uncooperative, Libby decides to take the matter up with Matthews's boss, NBC's Washington bureau chief, Tim Russert. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
July 8: Bush begins a brief visit to Africa with a tour of the Slave House at Goree Island in Senegal. He says after his tour, "I had the opportunity to go out to Goree Island and talk about what slavery meant to America. It's very interesting when you think about it, the slaves who left here to go to America, because of their steadfast and their religion and their belief in freedom, helped change America. America is what it is today because of what went on in the past." It is plain that Bush misses the entire point of the museum, and of slavery in general. He seems to forget that the African slaves who came through Goree Island did so against their will; he even seems to be suggesting, says Mark Crispin Miller, "that those Africans dispersed because they were enslaved in Africa, and so 'left here to go to America' where they'd be free." He seems to claim, too, that they brought their own belief in freedom and their religion with them; certainly the latter point is ridiculous, since virtually no African-American descendents of slaves practice any sort of African-based animism. Miller writes, "It is remarkable that any US president would know so little about slavery in America, and it is astonishing that Bush could make so blithe a statement on the subject right after having toured a slavery museum. That establishment's whole point is to commemorate the fate of millions of West Africans who were kept warehoused there, and thence shipped off to the Americas for sale, each one passing through a 'Door of No Return,' which makes it very clear that they would never see their homes again. Unless he had his eyes closed, Bush must simply have refused to take the lesson in, such education striking him as pointless, all wrong, unacceptable." (Miller also notes that, in a visit to the Nazi concentration camp museum at Auschwitz months before, Bush's main question was, "Do people challenge the accuracy of what you present?," likely a reference to the pernicious "Holocaust revisionism" in much favor among many Bush supporters.)
Bush also seems unaware of, or is oblivious to, the fact that in preparation for his visit, the Senegal police under the direction of the Secret Service has locked up without charge over a thousand Senegalese citizens, "known lawbreakers" who might somehow cause a disruption or embarrass either Bush or his Senegalese hosts -- an ironic counterpoint to the original function of Slave House. The entire population of Goree Island, over 1000 souls, are hauled off to a soccer field as far away from the Bush entourage as possible, where they will stay penned up, without food, for most of the day. "We were shut up like sheep," recalls one 15-year old resident. One father says, "It's slavery all over again. It's humiliating. The island was deserted." The European press reports on the entire ugly series of incidents, and draws the obvious conclusions; the American press stands mute.
Days later, something even worse happens in Nigeria, Bush's next stop. Nigerian police tear down an entire neighborhood of "illegally build homes" in a neighborhood in the capital city of Abuja in preparation for Bush's visit, by order of Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo who wants the city "cleaned up" in time for Bush's visit. Hundreds of residents are forced into the streets as their homes, mostly wooden shanties, are bulldozed. "They didn't give us any warning," cries one man, a tailor who loses virtually his entire business to the bulldozers. Again, media expert Mark Crispin Miller notes the adjunct to the story: that the American media, so quick to crucify Bill Clinton for imagined transgressions, refuses to utter a disparaging word about the current president.
UNESCO maintains a virtual tour of the Goree Island museum at the following Web site. (Cape Times/AFP/Mark Crispin Miller)

Senate Intelligence Committee releases first part of report on prewar intelligence

July 9: The Senate Intelligence Committee releases the first part of its report on the failures of prewar intelligence that led to the debacle in Iraq. Predictably, they pin the bulk of the blame on the CIA, and withhold judgment on the White House officials who massaged, cherrypicked, and fabricated evidence. (Part of the reason is that the Bush administration steered evidence of the CIA's failings towards the committee, and withheld thousands of documents and materials that would implicate its officials in any wrongdoing, so the committee has to base its report on insufficient and skewed information. Another part of the problem is that the Republican leadership of the committee carries out the White House's instructions to ensure that the blame is carried by the CIA and not administration officials: in the words of journalist David Corn, "make the CIA the fall guy.") The entire intelligence community, not just the CIA, is found to have "overstated" and "mischaracterized" the intelligence on Iraq's WMDs. The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which charged that Iraq possessed large caches of chemical and biological weapons, and was well on its way to building nuclear weapons, was found to have been hastily and haphazardly put together, and used dubious and misleading evidence on which to base its claims.
The report fails to deal with how the White House used, misused, misrepresented, and lied about the evidence presented to it by the CIA and other intelligence sources. Chairman Pat Roberts has intentionally delayed that second portion of the investigation until at least after the November elections and perhaps further. The one area where the report even indirectly chastizes the Bush administration is in its repeated claims of a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda, connections which have long since been proven nonexistent. Corn writes, "Even without the Senate intelligence committee doing a single stitch of work regarding Bush's use of the intelligence, this report demonstrates that Bush hyped the threat to get his war. And weeks ago, when the independent, bipartisan 9/11 commission declared it had not found evidence of 'collaborative relationship' between Hussein and al-Qaeda, Bush and Cheney insisted that there had been a 'relationship.' The Senate intelligence committee report is yet another reason to dismiss anything Bush and Cheney have to say on this subject."
The ranking Democrats of the committee -- vice-chairman Jay Rockefeller, Dick Durbin, and Carl Levin -- sign a separate statement disavowing the central findings of the report, a statement highly critical of the committee's failure to investigate the administration's misuse of intelligence, yet they all signed the report itself, giving credence to the claim that the report is bipartisan and unanimous. "Why didn't the Democrats take a stronger stand?" asks journalist Seymour Hersh. "How much influence did the White House exert on the Republican members of the committee? Why didn't the press go beyond the immediate facts? The inner workings of the committee were in many ways a more important story than its findings." Meanwhile, the tremendous financial expenditures and the horrific death toll among Americans, Iraqis, and British continue to mount. (MSNBC [full text of the report's conclusions], Nation, Seymour Hersh)
July 9: Former intelligence official Greg Thielmann believes that the Bush administration gave an inaccurate picture of Iraq's military threat before the war, and says that intelligence reports showed that Baghdad posed no imminent threat. "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq," said Thielmann. "some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community, but most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided. ...As of March 2003, when we began military operations, Iraq posed no imminent threat to either its neighbors or to the United States." (Reuters)
July 9: The White House's admission of "error" regarding the sale of uranium to Iraq draws heavy fire from Democrats, who are pushing for independent investigation of the facts behind the administration's rationale for war. Senate minority leader Tom Daschle says, "This is a very important admission. It's a recognition that we were provided faulty information. And I think it's all the more reason why a full investigation of all of the facts surrounding this situation be undertaken." Senator Carl Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, says, "The reported White House statements only reinforce the importance of an inquiry into why the information about the bogus uranium sales didn't reach the policy-makers during 2002 and why, as late as the president's State of the Union address in January 2003, our policy-makers were still using information which the intelligence community knew was almost certainly false." Representative Janice Schakowsky called for an independent, non-congressional inquiry: "Did the Bush administration knowingly deceive us and manufacture intelligence in order to build public support for the invasion of Iraq? Did Iraq really pose an imminent threat to our nation?" And Senator Bob Graham says, "George Bush's credibility is increasingly in doubt." (Boston Herald)
July 9: In the Judicial Watch/Sierra Club lawsuit attempting to force exposure of the Cheney Energy Task Force, a US district court judge refuses to issue a writ blocking release of key documents connected with the task force. The lawsuit alleges that private executives and lobbyists were participants in the group's deliberations -- it names Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute; lobbyist Marc Racicot, chairman of the Republican National Committee; Haley Barbour, a former Bush campaign advisor and a lobbyist for Southern Company; and Kenneth Lay, former chairman of Enron, among others -- and therefore the group should have its deliberations and decisions made public. Cheney has continued to refuse any access to any of the group's proceedings. The court invites the administration to attempt a claim of "executive privilege" to keep the task force's materials secret, a claim that the administration has so far been reluctant to invoke. (Forbes)
July 9: On MSNBC's Hardball, Democratic senator Jay Rockefeller says, "[The uranium from Africa claim in the President's State of the Union Address] was a fraud. People knew it. They went ahead with it. It had to be put in, I think, for the purpose of -- I say this just from my personal point of view -- of manipulating public opinion, and that's very dangerous." (See the June 8 item for Lewis Libby's reaction to Hardball's commentaries on Iraq-Niger.) (MSNBC/Buzzflash)
July 9: Respected columnist Nicholas Kristof writes that the controversy over the Iraqi war is likely to doom Tony Blair's career as Prime Minister. "Everywhere I go in Britain, people dismiss Blair as President Bush's poodle," Kristof writes. "Blair's Labor Party has fallen behind the Conservatives in the latest poll, for only the second time in 11 years." He quotes British columnist William Rees-Mogg as writing, "The Iraq critics think that the prime minister has betrayed his country to a Texas gunslinger." (Seattle Post-Intelligencer)

July 10: Senior British intelligence officials now believe that WMDs will never be found inside Iraq. They believe that while the weapons may have existed before the war, they were either hidden or destroyed before the invasion began. Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook says that UN weapons inspectors should have been allowed to complete their search: "We would now know what we're being told, that Saddam did not have those weapons...and we'd have found out without a war in which thousands were killed." PM Tony Blair insists that weapons "programs" will be found. Former PM John Major adds his voice to the call for an independent investigation of the basis for the invasion. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld admits that the US had no new intelligence about Iraqi WMDs, but looked at the existing intelligence in a "new light" after the 9/11 attacks. (BBC)
July 10: When a reporter asks Colin Powell about the significance of the White House's grudging disavowal of its claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger, Powell dismisses the entire farrago as "overwrought and overblown and overdrawn.... You get the information, you analyze it. Sometimes it holds up, sometimes it does not hold up. Interestingly, he continues to assert that the trailers found in Iraq were bioweapons labs, a charge that his own INR has already discredited. Powell is still trying to defend his February 2003 UN address. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
July 10: An angry Lewis Libby calls NBC's Washington bureau chief, Tim Russert, to complain about MSNBC talk show host Chris Matthews (see the July 8 item above). Libby insists that Matthews, in talking so harshly about the Iraq-Niger claims and about the Iraq WMD claims, is being indirectly anti-Semitic: "It's always Libby and Wolfowitz and Perle," he complains. Russert is taken aback by the charge and recommends that Libby contact Neal Shapiro, the president of NBC. Russert himself alerts Shapiro to Libby's complaint, who promises to see if he can get Matthews to back down a bit. (Russert gets Libby's implied threat: that if Matthews doesn't back down, NBC will find it difficult to book future White House guests.)
Months later, when Libby recalls the conversation with Russert for his grand jury testimony about his part in outing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent, he will characterize the conversation very differently -- and say that Russert himself is the source of his knowledge that Plame is a CIA agent. As many earlier items will show, Libby lies to the grand jury. He will be charged with perjury and obstruction of justice partially as a result of his testimony. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
July 10: Wesley Clark, former Supreme Commander of NATO, discusses the possibility of a Democratic presidential bid with Newsweek. He says of the Bush administration, "I saw it starting to go wrong before the [2000] election. I met with Condi Rice. She told me she believed that American troops shouldn't be keeping the peace —- they were the only ones who could kill people and conquer countries, and that's what they should be focused on doing. What she was telling me [was] that she, as a potential Republican national-security adviser, didn't support our engagement in Europe." (MSNBC)
July 10: In a hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Donald Rumsfeld continues to claim that the administration knew nothing of the falsity of the Iraq-Niger uranium claims until "recent days, since the information started becoming available." Note that a year before, former ambassador Joseph Wilson had cast serious doubt on the claim, and the IAEA completely debunked the claim in March. Rumsfeld and many other administration officials were well aware of the debunkings months prior to today's testimony; the IAEA debunked the claims in February. Later in the week, Rumsfeld changes his story twice, first to "recent weeks" and then to March 2003. Rumsfeld and White House officials try to sidestep the issue by claiming the State of the Union claim was "technically accurate," since Bush was merely repeating an assertion by the British. (Editor's note: This is the rhetorical equivalent of a schoolchild braying out in the middle of class, "Miss Smith, Johnny called you a b*tch," and expecting Miss Smith to turn her wrath on Johnny and not the child who actually bellowed out the claim.) (Frank Rich [PDF file], Slate, WorldNet Daily, Frank Rich pp.98-100)
July 10: Bush finally admits there is a security problem in Iraq, and confirms that US troops will have to remain in Iraq far longer than originally stated. (Washington Post)

Bush blames CIA for faulty Iraqi intelligence

July 11: President Bush and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice place the blame for the false uranium claim directly on CIA Director George Tenet, who accepts the blame. "I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services," Bush states. Rice states bluntly, "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety." If the CIA director had concerns about the information, "these doubts were not communicated to the president," Rice says. "Knowing what we know now, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the president's speech -- but that's knowing what we know now. ...If the director of central intelligence had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone without question." Senior administration officials familiar with the writing of the speech claim, accurately, that Tenet never read the draft section that dealt with the uranium before Bush delivered the speech; however, Tenet personally spoke with Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security advisor, in early October to warn against having Bush declare, in a speech about the Iraqi threat, that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy 550 tons of uranium ore in the African nation of Niger. The reference was omitted when Bush gave the speech in Cincinnati on October 7. A week later, Ari Fleischer will claim that the new reference "was different" from the one removed in Cincinnati -— it was a general claim that Hussein had "sought" uranium in Africa, not that he had obtained any. Bush, continuing his inability to admit to error, will say days later, "When I gave the speech, the line was relevant."
Veteran White House press corps members are astonished at the public hanging of Tenet. For years, Tenet and Bush have been as close, or closer, than any CIA director and president in history. "They were like fraternity brothers," one White House official remarks. Tenet has repeatedly breached the standards of his office to protect Bush, even refusing to release classified documents that might embarrass Bush. "George gave his heart and soul to the president," says Buzzy Krongard, the CIA's executive director and a Tenet confidante. But the blame has to fall somewhere, and the White House won't take it. As Time's bureau chief Michael Duffy writes in an internal e-mail, "they've dimed out Tenet."
As noted in the July 5 item above, Tenet, feeling betrayed by Rice, who should have shared the blame with the National Security Council (and by implication herself) instead of planting it directly on Tenet and the CIA, decides to publicly fall on his sword. He releases a statement that reads in part, "First, the CIA approved the president's State of the Union address before it was delivered. [Tenet had failed to review the final draft; it was approved by Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley.] Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. And third, the president has every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the test written for the president." While publicly groveling, Tenet is privately furious. He has the CIA search its records to see what had been given in writing to the White House. The CIA finds two memos sent to the White House just before the October 2002 speech, which had originally contained the same reference but had been excised by Tenet. Both memos cast serious doubt on the validity of the uranium claims. But, "the president has moved on," says Fleischer.
As noted in the July 5 item above, Tenet, feeling betrayed by Rice, who should have shared the blame with the National Security Council (and by implication herself) instead of planting it directly on Tenet and the CIA, still decides to publicly fall on his sword. He releases a statement that reads in part, "First, the CIA approved the president's State of the Union address before it was delivered. [As noted above, Tenet had failed to review the final draft; it was approved by Rice's deputy, Stephen Hadley.] Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. And third, the president has every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the test written for the president."
Tenet visits White House chief of staff Andrew Card with the memos, essentially turning the accusations about on Rice. Card says ominously, "I was not told the truth." Card directs the White House to conduct an internal investigation. The war between the White House and the CIA was now in full bloom. Eleven days later, Hadley makes his own mea culpa, shouldering his own responsibility for allowing the claim to pass muster. But like Bush and other officials, Hadley and White House communications director continue to assert that the claim is technically accurate because the speech attributed it to the British. Hadley makes a clever redirect: "The real failing is that we've had a national discussion on 16 words, and it's taken away from the fact that the intelligence case supporting concerns about WMD in Iraq was overwhelming...as strong a case as you get in these matters. ...These 16 words affect not one whit the decision he made which was based on the intelligence case." Colin Powell's deputy, Richard Armitage, sees Hadley as taking a bullet not so much for Bush as for Cheney, who has always been the loudest voice claiming Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program. Tenet privately tells Armitage later that he thinks Hadley is a Cheney-Rumsfeld "sleeper agent," an intelligence term for an undercover agent who lurks dormant without a mission for years but who can be called upon to do the bidding of his handlers. Hyperbole, Tenet admits, but probably accurate, and reflective of the growing animus between the CIA and the NSC.
While Fleischer claims that Bush and the White House have "moved on," White House officials remain obsessed with smearing and debunking Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who is publicly flaying the administration over its specious claims. Ironically, outside the Beltway, few know of Wilson, but inside the Washington power structure, he is a focus of concern -- and within Dick Cheney's office, at least, a true obsession. (Boston Herald, New York Times, New York Times, Frank Rich [PDF file], David Corn, Bob Woodward, Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich pp.98-100)
July 11: Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, a Republican, says that the CIA is to blame for the Iraq-Niger imbroglio.
Iraq-Niger scandal
"So far, I am very disturbed by what appears to be extremely sloppy handling of the issue from the outset by the CIA," he remarks. "What now concerns me most is what appears to be a campaign of press leaks by the CIA in an effort to discredit the president." Roberts is the administration's point man in the Senate for trying to deflect the blame for the Iraq-Niger scandal, and more largely for the failure of prewar intelligence concerning Iraq, onto the CIA and the Democrats, and away from the White House and the Pentagon. (Raw Story)
July 11: A Washington Post report by Walter Pincus asserts that unnamed CIA officials attempted to dissuade British intelligence officials from claiming that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger in its September 2002 "sexed-up" dossier. Lewis Libby and other White House officials seize on the report as further evidence that the CIA is trying to distance itself from the Iraq-Niger imbroglio, leading to the decision to have Bush and Condoleezza Rice blame CIA director George Tenet for the claim (see the item above).
The CIA is drafting a statement for the press that has Tenet taking the entire blame for the Iraq-Niger claim. Tenet, having gotten yelled at on the phone by Rice, is considering resigning, according to CIA European Division chief Tyler Drumheller. The CIA's veteran press spokesman, Bill Harlow, writes draft after draft of the admission statement, trying to balance the acceptance of blame with the notation that the CIA had never completely accepted the Iraq-Niger claim. Agency executive director Buzzy Krongard later notes that Harlow and Tenet "wanted to make clear that we weren't a bunch of clods." The statement of admission as released to the press is full of hedges and prevarications, and though it has Tenet taking direct responsibility for the error of the claim, leaves the distinct impression that the CIA continues to blame the White House for making the claim in the first place.
In the process, Harlow hears from conservative columnist Robert Novak, who calls wanting verification of Valerie Plame Wilson's status as a CIA agent for his upcoming attack on Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson. Harlow tries to wave off Novak from the story, telling Novak accurately that Plame "had not authorized the mission" for her husband. Harlow says later that he tried to tell Novak that Plame hadn't arranged the mission and had only been asked by her colleagues to ask her husband if he would be willing to make the trip. He tells Novak that while he is unsure of Plame's exact status, since she works in the Directorate of Operations, she is probably a clandestine operative, and that revealing her identity could create serious problems. He tells Novak, "I would ask that you not use her name." Novak wants to know why; Harlow, trying to dance on the razor's edge, says that outing Plame would make it impossible for her to operate overseas or conduct further business for the agency. Harlow cannot directly acknowledge that Plame is a covert agent; if he does so, he breaks the law. Most experienced journalists would have taken the hint, but Novak, doing the bidding of his conservative masters, won't back off. Novak later testifies that he believed if outing Plame was such a big deal, then Tenet or another high-level CIA official would have called him and warned him off. Novak confirmed by consulting Who's Who in America that Wilson's wife is indeed Plame. Instead of worrying about protecting a covert CIA agent's identity, he finishes his column. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
July 11: Karl Rove has a brief hallway chat with Lewis Libby in the White House. Rove informs Libby that he'd spoken with Robert Novak and that Novak will write a column savaging Joseph Wilson and mentioning Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
July 11: Press secretary Ari Fleischer, in Uganda with Bush, launches into a sharp attack on Joseph Wilson to a startled John Dickerson, a reporter for Time. Fleischer makes it clear he cannot be identified by name, then hammers Wilson's reports about the Iraq-Niger claim as sloppy and contradictory. Wilson's trip had never been approved by George Tenet or any other senior CIA official, Fleischer says. And Fleischer, who had been told days before about the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, tells Dickerson that he should find out who sent Wilson to Niger -- an indirect lead towards Plame, who the White House is insisting arranged for Wilson's trip. An hour later, Dickerson gets the same message from Dan Bartlett, the director of White House communications. Dickerson is intrigued, but senses that there is a concerted White House effort to smear Wilson.
Interestingly, Rove, who is leaving the White House for a vacation, drops an e-mail to NSC deputy Stephen Hadley that merely notes he spoke with Cooper, and merely warned Cooper not to "get TIME far out in front on this." Rove fails to mention his outing of Plame to Hadley, nor does he mention Wilson, or his allegations that new evidence will prove the Iraq-Niger claim. This note to Hadley may be one of the biggest reasons why Rove will never be charged with a crime in outing Plame. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
July 11: Time's Matthew Cooper, a veteran reporter and amateur comic, calls Karl Rove for information about Joseph Wilson. Rove, speaking on what he calls "deep background," meaning that he cannot be identified even as a White House official, briefs Cooper, then says meaningfully, and intriguingly, "I've already said too much," and hangs up. Cooper's notes indicate that Rove is speaking on what Cooper calls sardonically "double super secret background," and that Rove warns Cooper not to get "too far out on Wilson." Like Fleischer with Cooper's colleague John Dickerson, Rove tells Cooper that George Tenet did not authorize Wilson's trip to Niger and that Wilson's wife, whom Rove does not name, arranged for the trip. Rove implies that the genesis of the trip and Wilson's report are both suspect. Rove says there is still plenty of evidence for an Iraq-Niger connection, and that Cooper should wait for newly declassified information to confirm the charge. Now Cooper knows that Plame, whose name is easily available, is a CIA agent and he believes he knows that Plame arranged for Wilson to travel to Niger. He contacts Dickerson to discuss Rove's tale. Dickerson's suspicions about an orchestrated White House attack against Wilson are deepened by Cooper's story, and Dickerson draws the desired conclusion -- Plame's supposed involvement undercuts Wilson's credibility. They both agree to contact their editors with the story, including the angle of a White House attack against Wilson. Both find the fact that Rove is sharing classified information with Cooper for what are apparently political purposes fascinating, and disturbing.
The next day, Cooper is disappointed that Time isn't using all of the Rove material in a proposed piece, in particular shying away from any discussion of White House infighting. In a follow-up interview with Lewis Libby, Libby for the first time confirms that Cheney is the one whose questioning spurred the CIA to send Wilson to Niger, but Libby continues to insist that Cheney himself knew nothing of Wilson's trip until it became public. Libby is speaking off the record. He confirms that he, too, has heard that Plame is the one who arranged for Wilson's trip (Libby will tell a significantly different version of this conversation to the grand jury). (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich [PDF file])
July 11: Terry McAuliffe, the head of the Democratic National Committee, says, "This may be the first time in recent history that a president knowingly misled the American people during the State of the Union address. This was not a mistake. It was no oversight and it was no error." (Bartcop)
July 11: Robin Cook, ex-Foreign Minister under Tony Blair, says that Blair's justification for war has begun to appear "palpably absurd. "We were assured that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and he had some ready for use in the next 45 minutes. ...If we are told that those assurances are now...inoperative, then the need for urgency crumbles and the case for war that was built upon it collapses. No weapons of mass destruction, no justification for war." He continued, "I predict that we will soon see determined efforts to shift the justification for war to regime change rather than disarmament. ...This was a war made in Washington, pushed by a handful of neo-conservatives and pursued for reasons of US foreign strategy and domestic politics." (Sydney Morning Herald)

July 12: The Pentagon confirms that its planners failed to develop detailed plans for postwar Iraq because they were convinced Iraqis would welcome US troops and that a hand-picked exile leader would replace Saddam Hussein and impose order. Civilian planners at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans hoped to transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the oil trade in the region and encircle Iran with US friends and allies. Officials also describe efforts by the OSP to sideline and disregard other US government departments' planning for a postwar Iraq. Putting Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi in power in Baghdad was a key to the entire scenarion. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, the head of the OSP, denies the plan to install Chalabi, but Pentagon advisor Richard Perle confirms it: "The Department of Defense proposed a plan that would have resulted in a substantial number of Iraqis available to assist in the immediate postwar period," Perle says. Once it became clear that Chalabi had no real support inside Iraq, there were no other plans to fall back upon. Other plans submitted by other agencies were ignored. Postwar planning documents from the State Department and the CIA were "disappearing down the black hole" at the Pentagon, a former US official says. One example is the "Future of Iraq" project, an eight-month effort by the State Department involving 17 agencies and dozens of exiled Iraqi professionals. Officials in the Pentagon's Near East/South Asia bureau, which houses the Office of Special Plans, were told to ignore State Department views, according to Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who retired from the bureau July 1. "We almost disemboweled State," she says. (Agence France-Press/Truthout)
July 12: Bush considers the matter of Iraq's supposed uranium purchase from Niger closed. "The President has moved on," says spokesman Ari Fleischer. It is worth noting again that other statements in the State of the Union address -- the claims that Iraq possessed tons of various biological and chemical toxins, the claims of unmanned aerial vehicles loaded with these toxins, the claim that Hussein's regime was closely affiliated with al-Qaeda, and the claims that the aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were for nuclear weapons production, are also either lies or baseless claims.
A former CIA official says that CIA director George Tenet allowed the most inexperienced, ideologically biased analysts to give their reports directly to him without the usual vetting by more experienced veteran analysts, as long as the information supported the claims about Iraq's WMDs. The official later recalls, "I was in a meeting chaired by Tenet where you had kids from WINPAC," the CIA's bureau handling WMD issues. When CIA deputy director John McLaughlin brought up the fact that many CIA analysts were skeptical of the aluminum tubes' use for nuclear weapons production, the official recalls, "[T]his young analyst from WINPAC, who didn't look older than twenty-five, says, no, that's bullsh*t, there is only one use for them. And Tenet says, 'Yeah? Great.' So you had people sprinkled throughout the organization who felt like they could go right to the top, and no one was there to contradict them."
While the White House may claim that it has "moved on" from the Iraq-Niger claim, Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, has not. On Air Force Two, Libby discusses with Cheney and Cheney's communications director, Catherine Martin, how to handle the press over the Iraq-Niger debacle and the related issue of Joseph Wilson. Cheney, according to Libby's later grand jury testimony, selects Libby -- not Martin -- to deal with the press, providing a raft of "on the record," "off the record," and "deep background" comments. Both Cheney and Libby are fully behind a no-holds-barred counterattack against Wilson. (AP/ABC, Buzzflash, James Risen, Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
July 12: Two former Bush administration intelligence officials say the evidence linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda was never more than sketchy at best. "There was no significant pattern of cooperation between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist operation," former State Department intelligence official Greg Thielmann says. He goes on to say that US intelligence agencies agreed on the "lack of a meaningful connection to al-Qaeda," and said so to the White House and Congress. Another former Bush administration intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed there was no clear link between Saddam and al-Qaeda: "The relationships that were plotted were episodic, not continuous." A UN terrorism committee says it has no evidence other than Secretary of State Colin Powell's assertions in his Feb. 5 U.N. speech of any ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, and US officials say American forces searching in Iraq have found no significant evidence tying Saddam's regime with Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. "One of the things that concerns me is the continued reference to the war in Iraq as part of the war on terrorism. There's not much evidence to support that linkage," says Senator Bob Graham, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a presidential candidate. The administration's key evidence of a link was an operative named Abu Musab Zarqawi, who received medical care in Baghdad in May 2002 after being wounded in Afghanistan. In his February 5 presentation to the United Nations, Powell called Zarqawi "an associate and collaborator of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda lieutenants." US intelligence now say Zarqawi's links to al-Qaeda are more tenuous than first believed. And while Zarqawi spent time in Iraq, it's unclear whether Saddam's regime simply allowed him to be there or actively tried to work with him. "There was scant evidence there had been any other contacts between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden," Graham points out. (AP/Boston Globe)
July 12: Lewis Libby has another conversation with New York Times reporter Judith Miller about Joseph Wilson and Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson. Miller, who later acknowledges that she has probably discussed the matter with others by this point, is told by Libby that Wilson probably didn't even speak with the right people when he went to Niger. And again, Miller makes a note about Wilson's wife, this time misspelling her name as "Victoria Wilson." This is at least the third time Libby has spoken with Miller about Plame. (Libby also tells Miller that the "16 words" in the State of the Union speech were nothing more than "simple miscommunication" between the White House and the CIA.) In addition, Libby speeks with Time's Matthew Cooper; when Cooper asks Libby whether Wilson's wife sent him off on the Niger mission, Libby responds, "Yeah, I've heard that too."
At the same time, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus is discussing the fact that George Tenet personally intervened to keep the Iraq-Niger uranium claim out of the 2002 Cincinnati speech when his source suddenly veers off subject and begins blasting Wilson's trip to Niger as a "boondoggle." Pincus doesn't trust the claim and doesn't write about it.
To sum up: in one week, from July 6-12, Karl Rove has discussed Plame with two reporters, Matthew Cooper and Robert Novak. Libby has discussed Plame with Cooper and Judith Miller. Richard Armitage has revealed Plame's identity to Novak and Bob Woodward. Ari Fleischer has tried to steer Jim Dickerson towards finding Plame, and may have discussed Plame with Novak. And another White House source has discussed Plame with Walter Pincus. Five different reporters -- six if you include Dickerson -- have had Plame discussed with them by Bush administration officials. It is worth noting again that Plame's identity as a CIA agent is covert, and revealing her name and status to anyone is a federal crime. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich [PDF file])
July 12: Two PR analysts writing for the Guardian explain how the Iraq war was marketed to the American public: "A key component has been fear: fear of terrorism and fear of attack." They quote Nazi Hermann Goering as saying during the Nuremburg trials, "But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. ...That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." The marketing strategy is not limited to selling the war itself: "A striking recent use of fear psychology in marketing occurred following Operation Desert Storm in 1991. During the war, television coverage of armoured Humvees sweeping across the desert helped to launch the Hummer, a consumer version of a vehicle originally designed exclusively for military use. The initial idea to make a consumer version came from the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wanted a tough-looking, road-warrior vehicle for himself. At his prodding, AM General (what was left of the old American Motors) began making civilian Hummers in 1992, with the first vehicle off the assembly line going to Schwarzenegger himself. In addition to the Hummer, the war helped to launch a broader sports utility vehicle (SUV) craze. Psychiatrist Clotaire Rapaille, a consultant to the automobile industry, conducted studies of postwar consumer psyches for Chrysler and reported that Americans wanted 'aggressive' cars. In interviews with Keith Bradsher, the former Detroit bureau chief for the New York Times, Rapaille discussed the results of his research. SUVs, he said, were 'weapons' - 'armored cars for the battlefield' - that appealed to Americans' deepest fears of violence and crime. ...Deliberately marketed as 'urban assault luxury vehicles,' SUVs exploit fear while doing nothing to make people safer. They make their owners feel safe, not by protecting them, but by feeding their aggressive impulses."
As for current marketing strategies, "[o]ther products and causes have also exploited fear-based marketing following September 11. 'The trick in 2002, say public affairs and budget experts, will be to redefine your pet issue or product as a matter of homeland security,' wrote PR Week. 'If you can convince Congress that your company's widget will strengthen America's borders, or that funding your client's pet project will make America less dependent on foreign resources, you just might be able to get what you're looking for.' Alaska senator Frank Murkowski used fear of terrorism to press for federal approval of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, telling his colleagues that US purchases of foreign oil helped to subsidise Saddam Hussein and Palestinian suicide bombers. The nuclear power industry lobbied for approval of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as a repository for high-level radioactive waste by claiming that shipping the waste there would keep nuclear weapons material from falling into the hands of terrorists. Of course, they didn't propose shutting down nuclear power plants, which themselves are prime targets for terrorists. The National Drug Council retooled the war on drugs with TV ads telling people that smoking marijuana helped to fund terrorism." In a comparison with World War II, "During the second world war, Americans conserved resources as never before. Rationing was imposed on petrol, tyres and even food. People collected waste such as paper and household cooking scraps so that it could be recycled and used for the war effort. Compare that with the headline that ran in O'Dwyer's PR Daily on September 24, less than two weeks after the terrorist attack: 'PR Needed To Keep Consumers Spending.' President Bush himself appeared in TV commercials, urging Americans to 'live their lives' by going ahead with plans for vacations and other consumer purchases. 'The president of the US is encouraging us to buy,' wrote marketer Chuck Kelly in an editorial for the Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune, which argued that America was 'embarking on a journey of spiritual patriotism' that 'is about pride, loyalty, caring and believing' - and, of course, selling. 'As marketers, we have the responsibility to keep the economy rolling,' wrote Kelly. 'Our job is to create customers during one of the more difficult times in our history.'"
And as for Bush's popularity: "Fear also provided the basis for much of the Bush administration's surging popularity following September 11. In the week immediately prior to the terrorist attacks, Bush's standing in opinion polls was at its lowest point ever, with only 50% of respondents giving him a positive rating. Within two days of the attack, that number shot up to 82%. Since then, whenever the public's attention has begun to shift away from topics such as war and terrorism, Bush has seen his domestic popularity ratings slip downward, spiking up again when war talk fills the airwaves. By March 13-14 2003, his popularity had fallen to 53% - essentially where he stood with the public prior to 9/11. On March 18, Bush declared war with Iraq, and the ratings shot up again to 68% - even when, briefly, it appeared that the war might be going badly."
The tactics work equally well in combating Bush's political opponents: "On October 7 2001, the Washington Times printed an editorial calling for 'war against eco-terrorists,' calling them 'an eco-al-Qaeda' with 'a fanatical ideology and a twisted morality.' Conservatives sometimes used the war on terrorism to demonise Democrats. The then Democratic Senate majority leader Tom Daschle was targeted by American Renewal, the lobbying wing of the Family Research Council, a conservative thinktank that spends most of its time promoting prayer in public schools and opposing gay rights. In newspaper ads, American Renewal attempted to paint Daschle and Saddam Hussein as 'strange bedfellows.' 'What do Saddam Hussein and Senate majority leader Tom Daschle have in common?' stated a news release announcing the ad campaign. 'Neither man wants America to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.' ...Washington Times reporter Ellen Sorokin used terrorist-baiting to attack the National Education Association, America's largest teachers' union and a frequent opponent of Republican educational policies. The NEA's crime was to create a 'Remember September 11' website for use as a teaching aid on the first anniversary of the attack. The NEA site had a red, white and blue motif, with links to the CIA and to Homeland Security websites, and it featured three speeches by Bush, whom it described as a 'great American.' In order to make the case that the NEA was somehow anti-American, Sorokin hunted about on the site and found a link to an essay preaching tolerance towards Arab- and Muslim-Americans. 'Everyone wants the terrorists punished,' the essay said, but 'we must not act like [the terrorists] by lashing out at innocent people around us, or 'hating' them because of their origins. ...Groups of people should not be judged by the actions of a few. It is wrong to condemn an entire group of people by association with religion, race, homeland, or even proximity.' In a stunning display of intellectual dishonesty, Sorokin took a single phrase -- 'Do not suggest any group is responsible' (referring to Arab-Americans in general) -- and quoted it out of context to suggest that the NEA opposed holding the terrorists responsible for their deeds. Headlined 'NEA delivers history lesson: Tells teachers not to cast 9/11 blame,' her story went on to claim that the NEA simultaneously 'takes a decidedly blame-America approach.' This, in turn, became the basis for a withering barrage of attacks as the rightwing media echo chamber, including TV, newspapers, talk radio and websites, amplified the accusation, complaining of 'terrorism in the classroom' as 'educators blame America and embrace Islam.' In the Washington Post, George Will wrote that the NEA website 'is as frightening, in its way, as any foreign threat.'" (Guardian)

July 13: Both Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's national security adviser, assert the United States and Britain have intelligence that supports the contention that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa for nuclear weapons, even though they both admit that the intelligence fails to meet the standards necessary for a presidential address. Both claim that, in spite of evidence to the contrary, no one on Bush's staff was aware that the intelligence had been challenged before the State of the Union address. Senator Bob Graham counters the have-it-both-ways contention, saying that the suggestion that no one in the White House was aware of the weakness of the intelligence claim before the State of the Union speech "stretches belief." Rice claims that the British have "other sources" documenting the attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium from Niger. A Western diplomat says of this so-called evidence, "As far as I know, the only other evidence Britain has about the Niger connection is based on intelligence coming from other western countries which saw the same forgeries. Blair's claim that he has other evidence is nonsense. These foreign intelligence agencies are basing their claims on the same forgeries as the Brits." Another intelligence official says, "It was based on the same crap the British used." (New York Times, Sunday Herald)
July 13: The CIA successfully persuaded Bush administration officials to drop references to Iraq's putative purchase of uranium from an October 2002 speech by Bush, according to top officials. Three months later Bush worked the reference into his State of the Union address, shocking and galvanizing the American public into supporting the Iraqi invasion. Director George Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged. Bush's chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson, claims not to remember who wrote the reference. (Washington Post)
July 13: Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller says that CIA Director George Tenet is being unfairly singled out for responsibility for the mention of the Iraq-Niger uranium connection in Bush's State of the Union address. He also says that National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice "had to have known" a year the address that intelligence claiming Iraqi agents were attempting to purchase uranium from African officials was bogus. Referring to recent White House and CIA statements meant to defuse the controversy, Rockefeller says, "I think it raises more questions than it settles, and I think it's far from over. I cannot believe that Condi Rice...pointed the finger at George Tenet, when she had known -- had to have known -- a year before the State of the Union. ...The entire intelligence community has been very skeptical about this from the very beginning. And she has her own director of intelligence, she has her own Iraq and Africa specialists, and it's just beyond me that she didn't know about this, and that she has decided to make George Tenet the fall person. I think it's dishonorable." Rice tells a television interviewer earlier in the day, "Had there even been a peep that the agency did not want that sentence in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence...it would have been gone." Rice's statement is, of course, a lie. (NPR)

July 14: Bush defends the intelligence he's received on Iraq, calling it "darn good." He also makes the amazing claim that he decided to go to war after he gave Saddam Hussein "a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in. And, therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region." The contention that Hussein wouldn't let UN inspectors inside Iraq is an astoundingly brazen lie. Joe Conason notes, "Evidently, he's forgotten the elaborate diplomatic charade leading up to his own April 2003 speech warning UN inspectors out before the bombing began." He is also ignoring the fact that Hussein did, however grudgingly, allow UN inspectors back into Iraq in the months before the invasion. In another effort to deflect criticism of the administration, US intelligence sources blame France for not giving Britain evidence supposedly in its possession of potential efforts by Iraq to buy uranium from Niger. British intelligence sources dispute the claim.
In an attempt to clarify Bush's statement, new press secretary Scott McClellan will try to rewrite the statement a day or so later: "What he was referring to was the fact that Saddam Hussein was not complying with 1441, that he continued his past pattern and refused to comply with Resolution 1441 of the United Nations Security Council, which was his final opportunity to comply. And the fact that he was trying to thwart the inspectors every step of the way, and keep them from doing their job. So that's what he's referring to in that statement." When a reporter said, "But that isn't what he said," McClellan refuses to respond. The context of Bush's lie is the equally fatuous lie that his administration has been circulating for over a year, that in 1998 the UNSCOM inspectors were thrown out by Hussein. In reality, the US government ordered the inspectors out so they could commence Operation Desert Fox, though Republicans such as Donald Rumsfeld, Ari Fleischer, pundit Ann Coulter, and representative Mike Pence, among many others, will repeat the lie time and again in the US media without being challenged. (An Al-Jazeera journalist challenged Defense Department undersecretary Douglas Feith on the point during a January 2003 interview in Bahrain, and Feith was reduced to shouting the journalist down. And credit where credit is due: journalist Joe Conason did challenge Coulter on the lie in an October 2003 CNN interview.) (Washington Post, Washington Times, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, Buzzflash, Slate, David Corn, Mark Crispin Miller)
Once again, the media rolls over and accepts Bush's astonishing lie about "giving Saddam a chance" The Washington Post merely notes that Bush's statement "appears to contradict the events leading up to war." The New York Times prints a piece headlined, "Bush May Have Exaggerated, But Did He Lie?" -- the piece dissects a number of the more bald-faced lies told by Bush during his presidency, yet exonerates him anyway, declaring that "a review of the president's public statements found little that could lead to a conclusion that the president actually lied." Paul Waldman notes, "Why knowingly making factually inaccurate statements did not constitute 'actually' lying they did not say." (Paul Waldman)
July 14: During a joint press conference on the occupation of Iraq with British prime minister Tony Blair, Bush tells reporters, "I strongly believe [Hussein] was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program." Bush fails to acknowledge that there is no proof whatsoever of any Iraqi nuclear program since before the Persian Gulf War. When such claims are later disproven, Bush will deny that he or any of his officials ever made any of these claims. (Bush on Iraq)
July 14: Dick Cheney, like other Bush officials, take to the Sunday talk show circuit to hype the "connection" between Iraq and al-Qaeda. He asks the audience to imagine that, on 9/11, al-Qaeda had "had a nuclear weapon and detonated it in the middle of one of our cities, or if they had unleashed...biological weapons of some kind, smallpox or anthrax." Cheney ties evidence found in Afghanistan, including that al-Qaeda leaders "have done everything they could to acquire those capabilities over the years," to unfounded allegations that Iraq, and not merely al-Qaeda or the Taliban, is involved in such planning. On CBS, Condoleezza Rice adds, "There clearly are contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq that can be documented," an assertion that writer Arianna Huffington responds to by asking, "Why not document them?" (MSNBC/Eric Alterman and Mark Green)
July 14: On CBS's Face the Nation, Condoleezza Rice says that any belief that Bush took the US to war "because he was concerned with one sentence about whether Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa is purely ludicrous...." She then indulges in her own "revisionist history," to use the president's words: "The president took the nation to war to depose a bloody tyrant who had defied the world for 12 years, who was building a weapons of mass destruction program and had weapons of mass destruction, which he had used in the past, who was a threat to American interest in the Middle East and who, now that he is removed, is giving us an opportunity for a Middle East that might finally be at peace and that will not create an atmosphere in which you have ideologies of hatred spawning people who slam airplanes into the World Trade Center. So we do have to put this in perspective. The president's State of the Union said something that was accurate. This is what the British government said in its reporting. The British, I might note, still stand by that statement. It was not based, they say, on a single source but on other sources. The statement about Saddam Hussein seeking uranium in Africa is also in the national intelligence estimate." The number of lies and the amount of spin in that short statement is astonishing. Bush did not take the US to war to protect "American interest[s] in the Middle East," he bluntly and repeatedly asserted that Iraq was a direct threat to the United States. He did not talk about WMD programs, he said repeatedly that Iraq had such weapons in large amounts, cocked and ready to fire. As for the State of the Union claim that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger, the claim has long since been debunked. The British do not stand by that statement. The other sources she cites have never been revealed; no one in the CIA knows who they might be. And the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that she cites is full of caveats and warnings not to take allegations of nuclear weaponry as established fact. (Rice's use of the NIE to bolster the administration's case for war is weakened when, shortly after eight pages from the NIE are released, it is confirmed that neither Bush nor Rice ever bothered to read it.) (CBS, David Corn)

Robert Novak outs CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in an administration act of vengeance towards husband Joseph Wilson

July 14: The Bush administration exposes a secret CIA operative in a stunning, probably criminal, and possibly treasonous, act of political revenge. Conservative columnist Robert Novak writes in a syndicated column (originally received by the Washington Post and other newspapers on July 12, but slated to run on Monday, the 14th) that he has been informed by several administration officials that Valerie Plame Wilson, the wife of Joseph Wilson, is an Agency operative whose area of expertise is weapons of mass destruction, and, falsely, is responsible for sending Wilson to Niger. It is later revealed that Plame is the operational manager of the CIA's secret Joint Task Force on Iraq, a unit that tried and failed to find evidence of Iraqi WMDs. She has also worked with the CIA's bureau on Iran's nuclear program. Current CIA agents say in 2006 that Novak's outings of Plame and her front company resulted in "severe" damage to her team and significantly hampered the CIA's ability to monitor nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. Intelligence officials estimate that it may take the agency up to "ten years" to recover from the damage that spread from Plame's outing.
Wilson, who was sent to Niger by the CIA to discover the truth about the so-called sale of uranium to Iraq, and exposed the sale as a lie to the press, refused to discuss his wife with Novak, but administration officials weren't so reticent. "This is not about me and less so about my wife," he says. "It has always been about the facts underpinning the president's statement in the State of the Union speech." Without verifying her status, Wilson says, "Naming her this way would have compromised every operation, every relationship, every network with which she had been associated in her entire career. This is the stuff of Kim Philby and Aldrich Ames." Exposing Plame is a breach of national security and a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, punishable by a fine of up to $50,000 and 10 years in prison. Wilson continues, "Stories like this are not intended to intimidate me, since I've already told my story. But it's pretty clear it is intended to intimidate others who might come forward. You need only look at the stories of intelligence analysts who say they have been pressured. They may have kids in college, they may be vulnerable to these types of smears." (See numerous items above.)
In a 2005 interview, Wilson elaborates on the damage that could have been caused by his wife's outing. "Just as [a] general proposition, you have to assume that every project or program she was ever involved in has been rolled up. Whether there are casualties is something I don’t know. The other thing you can assume that even if 150 people read the Novak article when it appeared, 148 of them would have been the heads of intelligence sections at embassies here in Washington and by noon that day they would have faxing her name or telexing her name back to their home offices and running checks on her: whether she had ever been in the country, who she may have been in contact with, etc."
Within days, Novak runs a second column that again outs Plame, and this time outs the CIA front company that Plame used for her cover, and falsely connects the front company to a campaign donation. Wilson says in 2005, "Actually, that indicates a pattern of disclosure there."
Of his trip to Niger, Wilson says simply, "I was invited out to meet with a group of people at the CIA who were interested in this subject. None I knew more than casually. They asked me about my understanding of the uranium business and my familiarity with the people in the Niger government at the time. And they asked, 'What would you do?' We gamed it out -- what I would be looking for. Nothing was concluded at that time. I told them if they wanted me to go to Niger, I would clear my schedule. Then they got back to me and said, 'Yes, we want you to go.'" He notes that at the time of his trip, his twins were two years old, and it would not have been in his family's best interests for him to leave for nearly two weeks to go to Africa.
Both Wilson and retired CIA Near East Division head Frank Anderson say that blowing Plame's cover is probably illegal and certainly damaging. Anderson says, "When it gets to the point of an administration official acting to do career damage, and possibly actually endanger someone, that's mean, that's petty, it's irresponsible, and it ought to be sanctioned." Another intelligence official still with the agency says that blowing the cover of an undercover officer could affect the officer's future assignments and put them and everyone they dealt with overseas in the past at risk. Wilson later remarks, "If what the two senior administration officials said is true, they will have compromised an entire career of networks, relationships and operations. ...[T]his White House has taken an asset out of the" weapons of mass destruction fight, "not to mention putting at risk any contacts she might have had where the services are hostile." One of Plame's supervisors, Mike Sulick, says, "For somebody at the White House to be outing somebody at the agency like this -- it's like giving away the name of a platoon leader in wartime. And especially coming from an administration that waves the flag and supports the troops -- well, we're part of the troops." The naming of Plame in Novak's article is designed to suggest that Wilson was selected to go to Niger simply because of nepotism, a suggestion easily and quickly disproven.
Outing Plame may be a violation of the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, an esoteric and rather arcanely worded law that makes it a crime for a government official with access to classified information to "intentionally" disclose any information that identifies a "covert agent" of the US government. To be convicted, a government official must be proven to have known that their victim is, or was, a covert agent and know that the government is working to conceal that agent's clandestine status. The law covers only covert officers working abroad or those who have "within the last five years served outside the United States." The penalties are steep -- ten years in prison and $50,000 in fines -- but the burden of proof is high. Journalists can't be prosecuted unless it can be proven they have engaged in a "pattern" of naming intelligence officers with the intent of impairing US intelligence activities. While it is difficult to see how Novak has broken the law, a case can possibly be made against Novak's sources (later identified as Richard Armitage and Karl Rove -- see below).
In the summer of 2006, the original leaker's identity is revealed to be Richard Armitage, the Deputy Secretary of State. But, according to the August 2006 book Hubris by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, even as Armitage, a close friend of Karl Rove, was disclosing information to Novak, Rove, Scooter Libby and other top White House aides have engaged in a fierce campaign to discredit Joseph Wilson. Rove even tells MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews that the Wilsons "were trying to screw the White House so the White House was going to screw them back." Rove, the second leaker, has insisted that he only confirmed what Novak already knew. According to Isikoff and Corn, Armitage, who harbors deep doubts about the Iraq war, revealed Plame's name to Novak as "a slip-up" by someone whom his closest colleagues call "an inverterate gossip," and played directly into the hands of the White House's efforts to undermine Wilson. Others, including investigative journalist Robert Parry, believe Armitage is working hand-in-glove with his close friend Rove as part of the White House smear campaign (see later items).
Plame is horrified at reading her name in Novak's column. She knows Novak has been in contact with her husband about the Iraq-Niger claims, but figured that someone at the CIA would have told Novak to back off on naming her. (See above -- CIA spokesman Bill Harlow tried to do just that, but Novak refused to take the warning.) No one outside her office, and her husband, knew of her covert status as a CIA agent, but instead thought she was a private energy analyst. Novak has changed everything. Her career as a covert CIA agent is destroyed. Her assets and sources, whom she had recruited for twenty years, are threatened. Her CIA "cover" firm, Brewster Jennings & Associates, is exposed, and everyone connected with it is compromised. She assumes that intelligence services around the globe are running her name through their records and looking for connections with their own people. And her safety, and the safety of her family, is now in jeopardy. Because her husband had dared challenge the credibility of the White House, Bush officials, in complicity with Novak, had retaliated by outing her secret CIA identity. Before the leak, Plame had begun working to change her status from nonofficial cover to official cover, and was preparing to leave the JTFI to assume a personnel management position within the CIA. Though she had been advised to further her career by going into management, she wants to retain her operational status; she no longer needs the deep-cover NOC status. But she never envisioned having no cover whatsoever.
Isikoff and Corn write, "[T]he Plame affair, fueled by White House deceptions, was a window into a much bigger scandal: the Bush administration's use of faulty intelligence and its fervent desire (after the invasion) to defend its prewar sales pitch. ...It would come to represent the disturbing and intrigue-ridden story of how the Bush administration -- full of we-know-best, gung ho officials keen for a war that they virtually assumed would go well -- presented a case for war that turned out to be, in virtually every aspect, fraudulent. ...What happened to Valerie Wilson was part of this larger story: how flawed intelligence was misused by the president and his top aides to take the nation to war."
The New York Times columnist and author Frank Rich adds his own observations in his 2006 book The Greatest Story Ever Sold: "[T]his scandal didn't begin, as Watergate had, simply with dirty tricks and spying on the political opposition. It began with the sending of American men and women to war in Iraq on false pretenses. The administration knew how guilty it was. That's why it so quickly trashed any insiders who contradicted its story line about how America got to Iraq, starting with former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke. The disproportionality and pettiness of the White House's retribution against Wilson -- who was a minor courtier, a Rosencrantz or Guildenstern, compared with the previous insiders who spoke up -- revealed just how much he threatened the administration. Uranium had been the sexiest card that Bush and Cheney played in the run-up to the war, and by calling attention to how they overstated the certainty of the nuclear threat, Wilson undermined the legitimacy of the war on which the Bush presidency was staked." (The Nation, Newsday, FindLaw, Booman Tribune, Washington Post/TownHall [the original Novak column], Raw Story, Raw Story, Michael Isikoff and David Corn, Frank Rich pp.181-2)
July 14: At the same time that the Novak column is hitting the stands, Time's cover story, titled "Untruth and Consequences: How Flawed Was the Case For Going to War Against Saddam?" is also coming out. Citing the White House's retreat on the Iraq-Niger claim, the article asks, "Where else did the US stretch evidence to generate public support for the war? ...[T]he controversy over those 16 words would not have erupted with such force were they not emblematic of larger concerns about Bush's reasoning for going to war in the first place." Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis Libby, is irate over the article. The article presents Joseph Wilson in a sympathetic light, calling Wilson a "wise choice for the [Niger] mission." It fails to use the entirety of a lengthy quote from Libby that falsely distances Cheney from the Wilson trip. And it fails to mention Plame whatsoever, even though Libby had dropped Plame's name to Time reporter Matthew Cooper. Cooper tells a complaining Libby that he isn't done with the Wilson story, particularly his angle on the White House infighting over the Iraq-Niger claim. Cooper decides that Time's Web site is a possible venue for his new story. (Michael Isikoff and David Corn)
July 14: Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter says, "The entire case the Bush administration made against Iraq is a lie." Speaking to reporters at UN headquarters, Ritter says, "The inspectors went in, got good cooperation, got immediate access to the sites they needed to get to, and they found nothing -- nothing related to weapons of mass destruction programs. And yet, we heard over and over again that 'The president knows that these weapons exist, the president knows that this is a threat that can only be responded to by the United States acting unilaterally,' because the United Nations was unable or unwilling to complete the (disarmament) task mandated by the Security Council." (Reuters)
July 14: Some administration officials are privately arguing for George Tenet's resignation as CIA director, and for his replacement to be someone "who will be unquestioningly loyal to the White House as committees demand documents and call witnesses." (New York Times)
July 14: Michael Kinsley continues to analyze the Bush administration's pattern of deception on lying about Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium: "The case for the defense is a classic illustration of what lawyers call 'arguing in the alternative.' The Bushies say: 1) It wasn't really a lie; 2) someone else told the lie; and 3) the lie doesn't matter. All these defenses are invalid. 1) Bushies fanned out to the weekend talk shows to note, as if with one voice, that what Bush said was technically accurate. But it was not accurate, even technically. The words in question were: 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.' Bush didn't say it was true, you see —- he just said the Brits said it. This is a contemptible argument in any event. But to descend to the administration's level of nitpickery, the argument simply doesn't work. Bush didn't say that the Brits 'said' this Africa business -— he said they 'learned' it. The difference between 'said' and 'learned' is that 'learned' clearly means there is some pre-existing basis for believing whatever it is, apart from the fact that someone said it. Is it theoretically possible to 'learn' something that is not true? I'm not sure (as Donald Rumsfeld would say).
However, it certainly is not possible to say that someone has 'learned' a piece of information without clearly intending to imply that you, the speaker, wish the listener to accept it as true. Bush expressed no skepticism or doubt, even though the Brits qualification was only added as protection because doubts had been expressed internally. 2) The Bush argument blaming the CIA for failing to remove this falsehood from the president's speech is based on the logic of 'stop me before I lie again.' Bush spoke the words, his staff wrote them, those involved carefully overlooked reasons for skepticism. It would have been nice if the CIA had caught this falsehood, but its failure to do so hardly exonerates others. Furthermore, the CIA is part of the executive branch, as is the White House staff. If the president -— especially this president —- can disown anything he says that he didn't actually find out or think up and write down all by himself, he is more or less beyond criticism. Which seems to be the idea here. ...3) The final argument: It was only 16 words! What's the big deal? The bulk of the case for war remains intact. Logically, of course, this argument will work for any single thread of the pro-war argument. Perhaps the president will tell us which particular points among those he and his administration have made are the ones we are supposed to take seriously. Or how many gimmes he feels entitled to take in the course of this game. Is it a matter of word count? When he hits 100 words, say, are we entitled to assume that he cares whether the words are true?"
C.M. Newman writes, "In other words, this [referring to 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.'] is clearly a weasel phrase. It suggests that there is knowledge out there we can rely on, but simultaneously distances the speaker from vouching directly for that purported knowledge. It is clearly intended to make listeners believe X to be true, yet preserve the ability to say, 'Hey, I never claimed X was true.' Kind of like saying 'we never had sex' but reserving the right to say, 'well, I did come on her dress, but she didn't get any pleasure so I didn't consider it really sex.'" And Joe Conason observes, "That would arguably make Bush's statement true in precisely the way Bill Clinton's denial of 'sexual relations' with Monica Lewinsky was true, i. e. literally factual, but calculated to deceive." (Slate, C.M. Newman, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)
July 14: Former Defense Secretary William Perry warns that the US and North Korea are "drifting towards war." Perry warns that "[t]he nuclear program now underway in North Korea poses an imminent danger of nuclear weapons being detonated in American cities." The Bush administration refuses to engage in direct talks with North Korea, or even to categorize the country and its nuclear program as a threat to America. (Washington Post/Robert C. Byrd)

Back to July 2003 | On to July 2003: Week Three

THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER

A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy

Written and Compiled by Black Max

July 2003

Week Two

9/11 commission work hindered by administration officials

Bush administration admits knowing intelligence about Iraq's supposed uranium purchase was faulty well before State of Union address

Senate Intelligence Committee releases first part of report on prewar intelligence

Bush blames CIA for faulty Iraqi intelligence

Robert Novak outs CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson in an administration act of vengeance towards husband Joseph Wilson

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