An Updated Plamegate Timeline

By Larry Johnson
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Tuesday 11 April 2006

The frantic spinning by the White House and its crazy right-wing allies, including Michael Ledeen and Christopher Hitchens (a neo-righty), to explain why George Bush was in the middle of the effort to discredit Ambassador Joe Wilson is failing on the facts. Ledeen and Hitchens insist that the reports that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger are true. Ledeen cites the UK's Butler report as his "proof" and Hitchens relies on mental gymnastics and circumstances rather than evidence for his belief in the "kool aid."

As a public service, I offer the following linked timeline where you can examine the documents for yourself. Once you review this material, there should be no doubt that President Bush is a bald-faced liar and used his office to attack Joe Wilson for trying to ensure the American people were told the truth about Iraq and its alleged efforts to buy uranium in West Africa.

Event One - 13 February 2002. During his CIA morning brief, Vice President Cheney asks the CIA to find out the truth about an item in the Defense Intelligence Agency's National Military Joint Intelligence Center Executive Highlight (Vol. 028-02) that analyzed a recent CIA intelligence report and concluded that "Iraq is probably searching abroad for natural uranium to assist in its nuclear weapons program." No judgment was offered about the credibility of the reporting. (Senate Intelligence Committee Report [SICR], page 38)

Event Two. Senior officials in the CIA's Directorate of Operations' Counter Proliferation Division discussed how to respond to Vice President Cheney's request and decided to ask Ambassador Wilson to travel to Niger. (Senate Intelligence Committee Report, page 39). This part of the report falsely claims, however, that Ambassador Wilson's wife recommended him for the trip. The Republican staff did not accurately represent the CIA's position on what happened. Fortunately, two different sets of journalists got the story right:

Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce reported on July 22, 2003, that:

A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked "alongside" the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger. But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. "They (the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story) were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising," he said. "There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason," he said. "I can't figure out what it could be." "We paid his (Wilson's) airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you'd have to pay big bucks to go there," the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said he was reimbursed only for expenses. (Newsday article "Columnist Blows CIA Agent's Cover," dated July 22, 2003).
One year later (July 13, 2004) David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, called the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed Ambassador Wilson's account that Valerie did not propose him for the trip.

Event Three. In the first of March, 2002, Vice President Cheney asks his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger issue. Around this time, Ambassador Wilson returns from Niger and is debriefed by two CIA officers from the Directorate of Operations. The officers draft an intelligence report based on Wilson's findings. On 8 March 2002, this intelligence report is disseminated. The CIA rated the report as "good," because the information responded to at least some of the outstanding questions in the intelligence community (SICR pp. 43-46). The Senate Intelligence Committee goes to great length to try to impugn Ambassador Wilson, but these facts are clear: Joe Wilson, along with US Ambassador to Niger Barbro Owens-Kirkpatrick and four-star Marine Corps general Carleton Fulford, each separately, reported that there was no substance to the intelligence report claiming Iraq was trying to buy uranium yellowcake. Even the Senate Intelligence Committee reluctantly reaches the same conclusion.

Event Four - 23 July 2002. The head of British foreign intelligence comes away from a meeting with President Bush and his advisors in Washington convinced that war in Iraq is inevitable.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
Event Five - October 2002. The National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction is published. With respect to the question of uranium and West Africa, the intelligence community concluded:

We cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources. Reports suggest Iraq is shifting from domestic mining and milling of uranium to foreign acquisition. Iraq possesses significant phosphate deposits, from which uranium had been chemically extracted before Operation Desert Storm. Intelligence information on whether nuclear-related phosphate mining and/or processing has been reestablished is inconclusive, however.
The events following the publication of the NIE are particularly telling, because the CIA repeatedly informed Congressional and Executive branch officials, including the White House, that they doubted the reports of Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report from 2004 recounts the following incidents:

On Oct. 2, 2002, the Deputy DCI [director of central intelligence] testified before the SSCI [Senate Select Committee on Intelligence]. Sen. Jon Kyl asked the Deputy DCI whether he had read the British White Paper and whether he disagreed with anything in the report. The Deputy DCI testified that "the one thing where I think they stretched a little bit beyond where we would stretch is on the points about Iraq seeking uranium from various African locations." (page 54) [Note: Ambassador Wilson provided the following summary in his letter to the Senate Intelligence committee.]

On Oct. 4, 2002, the NIO for Strategic and Nuclear Programs testified that "there is some information on attempts ... there's a question about those attempts because of the control of the material in those countries ... For us it's more the concern that they [Iraq] have uranium in-country now." (page 54)

On Oct. 5, 2002, the ADDI [associate deputy director for intelligence] said an Iraqi nuclear analyst - he could not remember who - raised concerns about the sourcing and some of the facts of the Niger reporting, specifically that the control of the mines in Niger would have made it very difficult to get yellowcake to Iraq. (page 55)

Based on the analyst's comments, the ADDI faxed a memo to the deputy national security advisor that said, "Remove the sentence because the amount is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from this source. We told Congress that the Brits have exaggerated this issue. Finally, the Iraqis already have 550 metric tons of uranium oxide in their inventory." (page 56)

On Oct. 6, 2002, the DCI called the deputy national security advisor directly to outline the CIA's concerns. The DCI testified to the SSCI on July 16, 2003, that he told the deputy national security advisor that the "President should not be a fact witness on this issue," because his analysts had told him the "reporting was weak." (page 56)

On Oct. 6, 2002, the CIA sent a second fax to the White House that said, "More on why we recommend removing the sentence about procuring uranium oxide from Africa: Three points (1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under the control of the French authorities. (2) The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them this is one of the two issues where we differed with the British." (page 56)
Event Six. Despite the CIA's view that the information was not credible, President Bush and his administration continued to try to use the information. In late December of 2002, the State Department inserted the claim into a fact sheet but then removed it. According to the Washington Post:

After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then constituted the U.S. intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a uranium sale, or not? If they had, the Pentagon would need to reconsider its ties with Niger. The council's reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless and should be laid to rest.
And what did President Bush do? He ignored the intelligence community and told the American people in the State of the Union:

The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
This was a lie. There was no recent information that Saddam was seeking "significant" quantities of uranium. The British information was based on events from 1999. There was no evidence of recent activity on this front.

Despite the lack of supporting intelligence, President Bush intended to start the war in Iraq on 10 March 2003. This, according to the, New York Times is stated in a classifed British Government memo, which reports that:

During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he [Bush] made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.... "The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."
Event Seven - 6 May 2003. Nick Kristof writes in the New York Times, "I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged."

Although Kristof merged his discussion with Ambassador Wilson of the forged documents and the visit to Niger, this revelation set off alarm bells and started the White House preparation for damage control. The White House launched an to deal with Ambassador Wilson. A recent effort filing by Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald responding to an earlier request for information by Scooter Libby's lawyers states that (see p. 26):

Indeed, there exist documents, some of which have been provided to defendant, and there were conversations in which defendant participated, that reveal a strong desire by many, including multiple people in the White House, to repudiate Mr. Wilson before and after July 14, 2003.
Event Eight - 6 July 2003. Ambassador Wilson's op-ed appears in the New York Times. Wilson makes the following key points:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report.

I met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy ... I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq - and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington.... Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A.

Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.
Event Nine. George Bush and Dick Cheney consult on how to respond to Ambassador Wilson's charges and decide to leak the Executive Summary of the October 2002 NIE. Curiously, the Executive Summary says nothing about uranium sales by Niger to Iraq. And it was during the week after Joe Wilson's op-ed appeared that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby, at the behest of Dick Cheney and George Bush, fanned out to trash the Ambassador. In the process they also divulged the name of Joe's wife, Valerie Wilson.

For those who still believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, it is unlikely that the name of Valerie Wilson surfaced during the White House planning to retaliate against Joe Wilson. For those still in touch with reality who recognize the difference between hard facts and wishful fantasies, it is very likely that George Bush and Dick Cheney at least gave tacit approval to go after Valerie Wilson. In fact, the White House spin worked mightily to make her part of the story when, if they really wanted to know the truth, they only needed to ask George Tenet. They did not, and the rest is history.

Until last week, we could assume that George Bush avoided the plan to use leaks and false information to attack Joe Wilson. Now, in light of the revelations from Patrick Fitzgerald, George Bush is implicated directly.

The real point, however, is not the outing of a covert CIA officer. The tragedy is that our President lied to make the case to go to war in Iraq. He manipulated and ignored intelligence. And, when the lie was exposed, he blamed the CIA rather than take responsibility for his own actions. As I have said before, that is a definition of a coward.

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