| Democrats Salivate Over Wilson Leak |
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September 29, 2003 |
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You must read former New York Times foreign correspondent Clifford D. May's piece in National Review Online. The media, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and others are salivating over the manufactured story about the supposed leaking of former ambassador Joe Wilson's wife's name by the White House. Yet Wilson is not objective. He's an anti-Bush member of the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute, which wanted to end the no-fly zones allowing Saddam to slaughter the Kurds and Shiites - and it was known his wife worked for the CIA!
 Wilson had no credentials as an investigator. May: "As Mr. Wilson himself acknowledged, his so-called investigation was nothing more than 'eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people.'" So when the New York Times gave Wilson a job investigating whether Saddam tried to buy uranium in Africa, the question of him getting that job based on his wife's connections became newsworthy. To illustrate Wilson's lack of knowledge, May points out that Wilson today claims he opposed the end of Saddam's regime because he didn't think he had WMD. Yet prior to the liberation he darkly warned ABC that he feared Saddam could "use a biological weapon in a battle."
Wilson wrote the Times op-ed saying that the claim, which Bush never made, that Saddam bought yellowcake from Niger was "highly unlikely." That isn't the same as saying it never happened or that Saddam didn't try, which was the charge. If a maniac like him took a shot at getting uranium, it's a major red flag. There was no reason to apologize for the 16 words in which President Bush said UK intelligence (which the Brits stand by to this day) showed that Saddam had "tried to buy uranium from Africa." Appeasing the left by apologizing has helped turn this molehill into a mountain with Democrats calling for an independent council.
Whatever the left says about Bob Novak, they never question his journalistic integrity so they're all over this. Note two things: Novak put this information in print way back on July 14th, and he opposed the liberation of Iraq. Despite the previously manufactured charge that this White House is "secretive," nothing in this administration's performance indicates it hides anything. (That Cheney task force/GAO lawsuit? It violated separation of powers and never had a chance.) In short, the Democrats know they can't beat Bush on issues at the ballot box, so they're going to try to manufacture a scandal among his aides. The key difference to Clinton - as EIB Legal Advisor F. Lee Levin points out in his own NRO column - is that nobody is alleging any wrongdoing on the part of President Bush in this matter. With Clinton, all the wrongdoing pointed straight to the top. |
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Read the Articles... |
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Headline: Spy Games
Subheadline: Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA?
Date: September 29, 2003
Source: National Review
By: Cliffoprd D. May
It's the top story in the Washington Post this morning as well as in many other media outlets. Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?
What also might be worth asking: "Who didn't know?"
I believe I was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson, a retired diplomat sent to Niger to look into reports that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium for his nuclear-weapons program.
On July 6, Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he said: "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat."
On July 11, I wrote a piece for NRO arguing that Mr. Wilson had no basis for that conclusion — and that his political leanings and associations (not disclosed by the Times and others journalists interviewing him) cast serious doubt on his objectivity.
On July 14, Robert Novak wrote a column in the Post and other newspapers naming Mr. Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative.
That wasn't news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.
I chose not to include it (I wrote a second NRO piece on this issue on July 18) because it didn't seem particularly relevant to the question of whether or not Mr. Wilson should be regarded as a disinterested professional who had done a thorough investigation into Saddam's alleged attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.
What did appear relevant could easily be found in what the CIA would call "open sources." For example, Mr. Wilson had long been a bitter critic of the current administration, writing in such left-wing publications as The Nation that under President Bush, "America has entered one of it periods of historical madness" and had "imperial ambitions."
What's more, he was affiliated with the pro-Saudi Middle East Institute and he had recently been the keynote speaker for the Education for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-Left group that opposed not only the U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions and the no-fly zones that protected Iraqi Kurds and Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.
Mr. Wilson is now saying (on C-SPAN this morning, for example) that he opposed military action in Iraq because he didn't believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and he foresaw the possibility of a difficult occupation. In fact, prior to the U.S. invasion, Mr. Wilson told ABC's Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For example, if we're taking Baghdad or we're trying to take, in ground-to-ground, hand-to-hand combat."
Equally, important and also overlooked: Mr. Wilson had no apparent background or skill as an investigator. As Mr. Wilson himself acknowledged, his so-called investigation was nothing more than "eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people" at the U.S. embassy in Niger. Based on those conversations, he concluded that "it was highly doubtful that any [sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq] had ever taken place."
That's hardly the same as disproving what British intelligence believed — and continues to believe: that Saddam Hussein was actively attempting to purchase uranium from somewhere in Africa. (Whether Saddam succeeded or not isn't the point; were Saddam attempting to make such purchases it would suggest that his nuclear-weapons-development program was active and ongoing.)
For some reason, this background and these questions have been consistently omitted in the Establishment media's reporting on Mr. Wilson and his charges.
There also remains this intriguing question: Was it primarily due to the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the CIA that he received the Niger assignment?
Mr. Wilson has said that his mission came about following a request from Vice President Cheney. But it appears that if Mr. Cheney made the request at all, he made it of the CIA and did not know Mr. Wilson and certainly did not specify that he wanted Mr. Wilson put on the case.
It has to be seen as puzzling that the agency would deal with an inquiry from the White House on a sensitive national-security matter by sending a retired, Bush-bashing diplomat with no investigative experience. Or didn't the CIA bother to look into Mr. Wilson's background?
If that's what passes for tradecraft in Langley, we're in more trouble than any of us have realized.
(Clifford D. May, a former New York Times foreign correspondent, is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.)
Headline: 16 Words to the Wife
Subheadline: Joe Wilson is back.
By: Mark R. Levin
Date: September 29, 2003
Source: National Review
This Joseph Wilson case is getting more bizarre by the moment. We learned yesterday that George Tenet, the CIA director, has apparently asked the Justice Department to conduct an investigation into a reported leak revealing the identity of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, and her occupation as a CIA operative.
When I first heard about Wilson's wife, my immediate thought was: Wilson created the very circumstance he now complains about. He voluntarily drew attention to himself and, by extension, his family. He interjected himself into an intense international policy dispute regarding the war with Iraq. And it was his op-ed in the New York Times that caused the so-called "16-word controversy" in which President Bush was criticized for relying on British intelligence when he declared that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger.
Wilson was a much sought-after guest and either appeared on news programs, or was cited as an authoritative source. And Wilson clearly relished every second of his 15 minutes of fame.
This raises another question: Why would the CIA choose Wilson as the administration's fact-finder on the Niger uranium issue knowing that his wife's activities might become exposed? Well, in the same Robert Novak column that reveals the identity of Wilson's wife, Novak reports that it was Plame herself who recommended her husband for the job!
Shouldn't it have occurred to someone in CIA management that sending the husband of an agency operative on a highly sensitive, high-profile mission could jeopardize that operative's activities?
While I'm all in favor of investigating national-security-related leaks, we'll never know if foreign-intelligence agencies, among others, had already learned of Plame's position thanks to the attention her husband drew to himself by taking the Niger fact-finding assignment in the first place. Like it or not, Wilson bears some responsibility for his wife's predicament.
Headline: Bush Aides Promise to Cooperate With Justice Inquiry
Subheadline: White House Spokesman Denies Rove Involvement
Date: Monday, September 29, 2003
By: Mike Allen
Source: Washington Post
President Bush's aides promised yesterday to cooperate with a Justice Department inquiry into an administration leak that exposed the identity of a CIA operative, but Democrats charged that the administration cannot credibly investigate itself and called for an independent probe.
White House officials said they would turn over phone logs if the Justice Department asked them to. But the aides said Bush has no plans to ask his staff members whether they played a role in revealing the name of an undercover officer who is married to former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, one of the most visible critics of Bush's handling of intelligence about Iraq.
An administration official told The Washington Post on Saturday that two White House officials leaked the information to selected journalists to discredit Wilson. The leak could constitute a federal crime, and intelligence officials said it might have endangered confidential sources who had aided the operative throughout her career. CIA Director George J. Tenet has asked the Justice Department to investigate how the leak occurred.
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