Connect some 'dots': framework for understanding the Plame case

[G_j]

http://www.alternet.org/story/23790/

The Media's Roving Eye

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com. Posted July 29, 2005.


Connect some recent media 'dots' to a few forgotten ones and you have framework for understanding the Plame case. Tools

Oh what a tangled web we weave
When we first practice to deceive?

<snip>
What an action-packed week for the White House and its operatives. The Pincus/VandeHei piece in the Post focused on the fact that Plame was identified by name in the secret State Department memo Powell had with him on Air Force One. They wrote that the memo "contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked ?(S)' for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials." The rest of the piece went on to discuss who knew what about Plame -- with the exception of a single paragraph which indicated that Plame was the least of what the memo was about:


"Almost all of the memo is devoted to describing why State Department intelligence experts did not believe claims that Saddam Hussein had in the recent past sought to purchase uranium from Niger. Only two sentences in the seven-sentence paragraph mention Wilson's wife."

"Why State Department intelligence experts did not believe the claims"? So on Air Force One that July 7 was clear and present evidence not just about Valerie Plame's identity, but that one set of government intelligence experts was ready and willing to debunk the President's sixteen-word claim of the previous January (and so implicitly undermine the administration's whole case for a Saddamist nuclear arsenal in the making). It's worth reminding ourselves that they were hardly the first experts to do so. In the pre-war months, when the documents which supposedly supported the Niger uranium claim first surfaced, they proved so crudely and poorly forged that it took experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency only an afternoon, and nothing more complicated than Google.com, to utterly discredit them. The Director-General of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, would inform the UN on March 7, 2003 that they were frauds (though being a foreigner, representing an international agency that seemed to stand in the administration's path to a much-wanted war, he was thoroughly disparaged and ignored).

Democratic Congressman Henry Waxman, the ranking minority member of the Committee on Government Reform, denounced the crude forgeries in an open letter to the President on that March 17, just days before the invasion of Iraq was launched, though his letter was totally ignored by the administration and the media. ("In the last ten days, however, it has become incontrovertibly clear," he wrote, "that a key piece of evidence you and other Administration officials have cited regarding Iraq's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons is a hoax. What's more, the Central Intelligence Agency questioned the veracity of the evidence at the same time you and other Administration officials were citing it in public statements. This is a breach of the highest order, and the American people are entitled to know how it happened.")

To back up even further, Vice President Cheney started the administration's atomic drumbeat to war in Iraq with a series of speeches on Saddam's supposed nuclear capabilities and desires beginning in August of 2002. (The crucial role of Cheney, whose eye was first caught by a Defense Intelligence Agency report on the Niger uranium documents back in February 2002, in the events that would become the Plame case, has been poorly covered. The exception to this being the work of former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, who returned to the subject in a piece, Iraq-Niger: Cheney and the Forgery, just this week.) In October, the men and woman around the President tried to slip Saddam's supposed search for uranium in Niger into a speech George was planning to give in Cincinnati and CIA Director Tenet -- as reported at the time by Walter Pincus of the Washington Post (who did fine pre-war work on the subject) -- went to the mat with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's deputy Stephen Hadley (a hardliner, known to be close to the Vice President, and now National Security Adviser himself) and managed to have the passage cut out of the speech.

..more..

[Dhalgren]

1. Would love to read the whole piece, but link doesn't work.

[G_j]

2. try again

it should be working :-)

[Just Me]

3. All to defraud Congress and the American people.

*shakes head* Traitors have no honor!

[peacetalksforall]

4. I recommend. THis article is meaty. It is something that every

news service should study. The perspective is something every worthwhile editor and commentator and program director should consider.

It will become more difficult for fools to pimp for the administration when perspective and additions as in this article come out.

Have we thanked Henry Waxman recently?

Thanks Henry. Thanks Ray McGovern. True patriots.

[G_j]

5. I thought so too: meaty

lots here

[G_j]

6. kick

[hang a left]

7. I don't know how I missed that part in the Post piece

""Almost all of the memo is devoted to describing why State Department intelligence experts did not believe claims that Saddam Hussein had in the recent past sought to purchase uranium from Niger. Only two sentences in the seven-sentence paragraph mention Wilson's wife."

snip>

I thought the memo was a "work-up" on Wilson. Very interesting indeed.

And the next paragraph:

"Why State Department intelligence experts did not believe the claims"? So on Air Force One that July 7 was clear and present evidence not just about Valerie Plame's identity, but that one set of government intelligence experts was ready and willing to debunk the President's sixteen-word claim of the previous January (and so implicitly undermine the administration's whole case for a Saddamist nuclear arsenal in the making).

snip>

So there were intel people that were gonna back up Wilson's Op-Ed. The sweet smell of mutiny.

And my absolute favorite sentence:

"Here are the 16 words that could someday (farfetched as it may seem now) bring down an administration: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

snip>

Thanks GJ recommended and a hearty kick for ya.

[hang a left]

8. Here is another interesting article that Mr. Englehardt links to

Iraq-Niger: Cheney and the Forgery
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2005-07-25 13:42. Evidence
July 25, 2005
By Ray McGovern

By now it should be clear that the White House assault on former ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife had much less to do with personalities than with the “particular lie” that Wilson exposed. I believe this helps to explain the highly unusual role Vice President Dick Cheney played regarding the forged “intelligence” about Iraq seeking to acquire uranium from Niger—the source of that particular lie.

Our Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) writings provide contemporaneous insight into the major flap that hit the White House two years ago, when it was discovered that the “intelligence” was based on a forgery. It was clear at that time that the first item on the White House list of talking points was: “It wasn’t Dick.”

Plus ça change. Investigative journalist Robert Parry, writing yesterday in consortiumnews.com, has noted that atop the Republican National Committee’s current list of “Joe Wilson’s Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies and Misstatements” sits this priority item: “Wilson insisted that the Vice President’s office sent him to Niger.”

This is a deliberate distortion of what Wilson has said, but if we were to address all such distortions we would be here all day. Besides, the RNC would very much like us to focus on the distortions, and our media have allowed themselves to be led by the nose. So let’s leave this one aside for the moment. What strikes me more and more is the rather transparent two-year-old campaign to dissociate Cheney from L’Affaire Iraq-Niger.

snip>



http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/1026

[G_j]

10. two-year-old campaign to dissociate Cheney from L’Affaire Iraq-Niger.

innocent people don't behave this way, transparent is right.

[Al-CIAda]

9. .

[Lecky]

11. Good stuff, very interesting

I've never heard of that site either...thanks for posting this.

[G_j]

12. ==