Who sent Wilson to Niger? Cheney, or the CIA, and why does it matter?

Joseph Wilson:
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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/06WILS.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd


Ari Fleischer:

Ambassador Wilson, other than the fact that now people know his name, has said all this before. But the fact of the matter is in his statements about the Vice President -- the Vice President's office did not request the mission to Niger. The Vice President's office was not informed of his mission and he was not aware of Mr. Wilson's mission until recent press accounts -- press reports accounted for it.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/july0301.html#0707031206pm

To show you the way they're trying to parse it: David Gergen said this today on Hardball

"the agency was the one who requested this report, not the VPs office, directly"......then "it came from the vp's office to the agency,"

Jay Rockefeller said, in no uncertain terms that there's NO question it was CHENEY's office that ordered this report.

so why does it matter?

because cheney's TOAST, don't you think, if he knew about this.

they can only rely on gross, incompetent negligence as their only defense, which is close to what they're doing now.

I think this is CRUCIAL to the junta, from the standpoint that it's a gigantic lie being told, and it might open the floodgates.

it could emBOLDEN the wimpy dems, who were still deferential to that slimemold Rumsfeld today.

Nightline mentioned their pusillanimiy on their show tonight.

just imagine if this red meat had been thrown to the fascist party during WJC's term

Nobody gives a rat's ass about this here, either?

well......?

Cheney's office had questions about the report........they KNEW about it, according to Wilson.

can they deny they even knew. who's lying then, WH, CIA, or Wilson?

Fleischer says they did not request the mission to Niger.

Who told the CIA to do it, then?

do they do stuff like that on their own?

did Wilson ask/care who requested the trip, or did he just assume he was going under Cheney's aegis?

so they plead ignorance as their last out?

what?

They just want you to think it is all about uranium and those mean ole WMD:

http://campaignforlaborrights.org/index/may03/5-6.htm

Watch The Birdie ~

The CIA has become nearly meaningless as a bastion of intelligence gathering and analysis or so the headlines would indicate.

I do give a rat's ass (a huge ass, as a matter of fact) but I'm old enough to remember Iran/Contra and hardly dare hope that anything come of all the LIES that are being exposed. The Wilkinson thing threw me into a little fit of despair there for a minute, but I'm back to my old cynical self now. But I still find it mind-boggling that they are walking around, free men.

"If anyone seemed to get off message today, it was the president himself. All this week his aides have been saying, 'look, the specific information about Saddam Hussein and Niger--it was wrong....'"

"..... a mistake.......but let's move on"


"But when the president was asked about it, as you reported earlier, he simply reFUSED to answer the question, and seemed to get, uh, rather ANgry about it."

nobody else that I saw today said a WORD about his peevish reaction.

at least that's a start

...he said he couldn't understand why Bush muttered about rewriting history, when Bush's proper response would be outrage that someone had given him bad info.

Gergen and Tweety were quite mystified why the WH wasn't furious and looking for heads to roll over this.

somebody got him a copy of Wilson's NYT oped.

he put his glasses on and READ the salient part quoted in the header

"the agency was the one who requested this report, not the VPs office, directly"......then "it came from the vp's office to the agency,"
actually, the order is reversed on those, quotes, but they're word for word.

and he was carefully making sure to put that "directly" in there.

doesn't anybody think this is going to be as important as it seems?

when Tweet goes after it like he did, something's up.

Cheney will resign because of his heart! :bounce:

but it was VP Agnew

who'll be the president if Cheney starts illin'?

n/t

who will they pick?

DeLay?

ha

it's looking more and more like that every day.

they're going out of their way to make it seem like Cheney's office had nothing to do with this, though they're going to have lots of trouble explaining why he went to Langley so many times, unPRECEDENTED, according to Ray McGovern.

but, can he be trusted?

Will?


Cheney got into the operational side of intelligence as well. Reports in late 2001 that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger stirred such intense interest that his office let it be known he wanted them checked out. So, with the CIA as facilitator, a retired U.S. ambassador was dispatched to Niger in February 2002 to investigate. He found nothing to substantiate the report and lots to call it into question. There the matter rested – until last summer, after the Bush administration made the decision for war in Iraq.

Cheney, in a speech on Aug. 26, 2002, claimed that Saddam Hussein had "resumed his effort to acquire nuclear weapons."

At the time, CIA analysts were involved in a knockdown, drag-out argument with the Pentagon on this very point. Most of the nuclear engineers at the CIA, and virtually all scientists at U.S. government laboratories and the International Atomic Energy Agency, found no reliable evidence that Iraq had restarted its nuclear weapons program.

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=6e9d5502599dc6a2

In sum, the evidence presented in last September's intelligence estimate fell far short of what was required to support Cheney's claim that Iraq was on the road to a nuclear weapon. Something scarier had to be produced, and quickly, if Congress was to be persuaded to authorize war. And so the decision was made to dust off the uranium-from-Niger canard.

The White House calculated – correctly – that before anyone would make an issue of the fact that this key piece of "intelligence" was based on a forgery, Congress would vote yes. The war could then be waged and won.

this is what he said on the radio, and it's SO obvious that's what happened.

why didn't ABC talk about any of that?

when are ANY of the Achordate Party factotums going to pick up on this?

http://www.madison.com/captimes/opinion/column/nichols/52530.php

What is most significant about Wilson's revelation is his assertion that his conclusions regarding the dubious nature of the Iraq-Niger "connection" were communicated to high-level officials in the Bush administration long before the president ordered the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that the country posed an imminent threat.

How high up in the Bush administration are the officials in question?

Referring to inquiries regarding a possible Iraq-Niger link, Wilson says, "The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked, and that response was based upon my trip out there."

There is no reason to doubt Wilson, an experienced and respected diplomat who served in the 1990s as director of Africa policy for the National Security Council. Yet long after Wilson indicated to top policy makers that there was little evidence of an Iraq-Niger connection, President Bush used his 2003 State of the Union address to assert that Saddam was seeking to obtain uranium from an African state.

Nichols was inexplicably allowed on Lehrer last week, in a roundtable with three other editors, and really nailed the lying liars in the junta, saying, among other things, that his newspaper didn't print ANY assertion of said junta without checking it FIRST!!!!

he went on to say that almost every (maybe EVERY single) one they were able to check turned out to be FALSE.

what a concept........not simply serving as a PR outlet for the government media

And have been saying so for a while.

Clearly, if the VP office requested the trip, it would have been informed of the outcome. Since it was Cheney who took the uranium thing to congress to get the war resolution, he would be toast, unless (as you say), he falls back on extreme incompetence as a defense.

The CIA has already said it informed the White House of the information before the SOTU as well. Therefore, two options arise:

1) Cheney knew the info was false but used it anyway.
2) Cheney didn't know it was false and despite making multiple visits to the CIA did not even ask whether the info was in any doubt before he took it to congress.

Neither options look good. If Wilson is right, there should be a paper trail in both scenarios too. The most important of those would be cables between the State Dept --> White House and CIA --> Office of the VP.

VP and DCIA are both standing members of that group, and there have got to be minutes of the meetings

how could this NOT have been discussed?

they told us to beware of MUSHroom clouds!!!!!!!!


you don't think they talked about where Saddam was getting his nukular fuel?