Joe Wilson’s Lies
As a rule, bullies are insecure cowards deep down inside. Their cowardice drives them to substitute bravado for caution. Their arrogant insecurity makes them temperamental, belligerent, and easily ambushed or trapped. In combat they are prone to getting themselves and others wounded or killed. Which explains how Don Myers got himself in the position of defending the lies of former ambassador, Joe Wilson. Shooting fish in a barrel with a 12 gauge shotgun shouldn’t be this easy.
Wilson’s premier appearance on the national stage was a New York Times OpEd on July 6, 2003, titled “What I Didn’t Find In Africa.”
Wilson’s story was that he was sent to Niger by CIA in response to an inquiry by Vice President Cheney about an intelligence report that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase uranium “yellowcake” from Niger.
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. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990’s. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president’s office.
I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country’s uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place…
In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a “white paper” asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq’s attempts to purchase uranium from an African country.
Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa…
The report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which refutes much of Wilson’s fabrications, is here.
Wilson’s most egregious lie was the manner in which he suggests that there was nothing to the Iraqi attempts to secure more yellowcake uranium, because that is NOT what he told the CIA upon his return.
Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999 a (redacted) businessman approached him and insisted he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq. …Mayaki interpreted (this) to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. (SCCI Page 43)
As noted by Christopher Hitchens, that Iraqi delegation was headed by Saddam’s only western-based diplomat, Iraq’s former IAEA Representative and former head of the pre-1991 Iraqi nuclear weapons program, Wissam al-Zahawie. Clearly he was not there to discuss trade in onions, cowpeas, or goatmeat.
Hitchens in turn quotes Sweden’s former UN Ambassador, co-founder of the Stockholm International Peace Institute, and former UNSCOM Head Inspector, Rolf Ekeus (who was once offered a $2.5 million bribe by Tariq Aziz, and who took part in the Kamel brothers’ debriefing,
One of my colleagues remembers Zahawie as Iraq’s delegate to the IAEA General Conference during the years 1982-84. One item on the agenda was the diplomatic and political fall-out of Israel’s destruction of the Osirak reactor (a centerpiece of Iraq’s nuclear weapons ambitions). . . . He was the under-secretary of the foreign ministry selected by Baghdad to represent Iraq on the most sensitive issue, the question of Iraq’s nuclear weapons ambitions. His participation as leader of the Iraqi delegation to the 1995 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference merely confirms his standing as Iraq’s top negotiator on nuclear weapons issues.
Again from the SSCI report:
He (the CIA Officer) said he judged that the most important fact in the report (on Wilson’s trip) was that the Nigerien officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation has traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerien Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting. (SSCI Page 46)
In an interview with Committee staff, the former ambassador was able to provide more information about the meeting between former Prime Minister Mayaki and the Iraqi delegation. The former ambassador said that Mayaki did meet with the Iraqi delegation but never discussed what was meant by ‘expanding commercial relations.’ (SSCI Page 44)
Wilson’s lie is a subtle one, but key nonetheless. Wilson claims that his trip to Niger disproves the President’s “16 words” in the SOTU speech that Iraq had attempted to purchase more uranium yellowcake, but the reality is that his trip actually confirmed what the President said. The President did not say that the forged contract documents were valid, or that there had actually been a sale to Iraq by Niger and subsequent delivery. He merely stated that Saddam had attempted to acquire more uranium in Africa, which he had, as Wilson had in fact reported to CIA.
The next lie of Joe Wilson is his insistence that his wife Valerie “had nothing to do with” his selection for the trip to Niger. Actually, according to the SCCI Report, this was Wilson’s second CIA –sponsored trip to Niger regarding the uranium trade, and in both cases, the person instigating his appointment as a clandestine source was his wife, Valerie.
The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife “offered up[ hi name” and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from the former ambassador’s wife says, “my husband has good relations with both the PM (Prime Minister) and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possible shed light on this sort of activity…
The former ambassador had traveled previously to Niger on the CIA’s behalf (redacted). The former ambassador was selected for the 1999 trip after his wife mentioned to her supervisors that her husband was planning a business trip to Niger in the near future and might be willing to use his contacts in the region.(SSCI Page39)
And,
On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, analysts from both the CIA and INR, and several individuals from the DO’s Africa and CPD divisions… an INR analyst’s notes indicate that the meeting was “apparently convened by (the former ambassador’s) wife who had the idea to dispatch him to use his contacts… (SSCI Page 40)
The next lie of Joe Wilson was his reason for going to Niger in the first place. In his NYT OpEd above and in his book, public speeches and interviews, Wilson has insisted that his trip was made at the behest of Vice President Dick Cheney, who questioned a report about Iraqi attempts to acquire Niger yellowcake based on the forged contract documents peddled by Italian/French spy Rocco Martino.
But the forgeries didn’t show up until some 8 months AFTER Wilson’s Niger trip, in October of 2002, so they could not have been the basis for Cheney’s inquiry or Wilson’s trip.
Furthermore, it now turns out, thanks to the Libby trial, that Valerie Plame Wilson suggested sending her husband to Niger BEFORE the VP’s inquiry. As Byron York notes
The story is contained in two (defense) exhibits, known in court as DX 66.2 and DX 66.3, entered into evidence by Libby’s defense team. The first is a CIA document headlined,
“Briefer’s Tasking for Richard Cheney on 02/13/2002.”
It begins:
Briefer: David D. Terry Briefing Date: 02/13/2002
Principal: Richard CheneyTasking:
The VP was shown an assessment (he thought from [the Defense Intelligence Agency]) that Iraq is purchasing uranium from Africa. He would like our assessment of that transaction and its implications for Iraq’s nuclear program. A memo for tomorrow’s brief would be great.
Note the date, February 13, 2002. This is the day following memo from Valerie Plame suggesting her husband, Joe Wilson, for the trip to Niger. The Wilson trip was in the works before Cheney was briefed and raised his question about African sales of yellowcake to Iraq. As York notes succinctly,
Dick Cheney was the last guy to request more information, not the first; the notion that his request started the whole affair seems wrong.
The second document cited by York is a memo from CIA to the Vice President, dated February 14, 2002, which reads,
We have tasked our clandestine source[s] with ties to the Nigerien Government and consortium officials…
Neither of these documents were made available to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, so that group missed the significance of the dates.
Wilson’s trip to Niger was orchestrated before the VP’s inquiry and before the February 19, 2002 meeting Wilson cites in his book.
And clearly, the forged contract documents were not the impetus for his trip as he has claimed. He could hardly have debunked a forgery which was not yet in the hands of US intelligence at the time he visited Niger… again.
As Clarice Feldman has written,
Plame recommended her husband for this trip before the vice president even asked about the report; (and) the SSCI never knew this because the CIA never turned over her memorandum of recommendation to the committee.
There are certainly other questions that Joe Wilson should be made to answer… in public. He could start by explaining how he came to know anything at all about the forged Martino contract documents he spoke of the following year to Nick Kristoff and Walter Pincus, or how he knew that the signatures, dates, and Nigerien seal were phony.
After all, Wilson was retired from government service, and certainly should not have had access to classified documents or the all important need to know. Not 8 months after his Niger trip and CIA debriefing.
Perhaps Ed Morrisey best sums up Joe Wilson,
He has misrepresented his own findings for political purposes, a conclusion that this (Libby) trial has reinforced. Now it looks like he has lied about the nature of his assignment from the beginning. It did not come from a request by Cheney, but apparently as an independent initiative of his wife in reaction to intelligence developed outside of her discipline—which calls into question the motives of both parties from the beginning…
Otherwise, it looks more like Wilson has repeatedly lied and deceived the press and the American public about his report to the CIA, and has done so for highly partisan purposes. That anyone could take him seriously as a source only shows the desperation of the Left in finding some way to discredit the Bush administration.
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