Joe Wilson Lies! Debunkable?

[Club_33]

A lot of the conservative sites are making much of this story…

Click here

I’ve seen threads pop up on other message boards about it but haven’t seen anything here yet. I’m curious as to what you all have to say about it. The right is claiming that it proves that Joe Wilson was a liar but there are usually two sides to the story. I’ve noticed that it would appear that the mainstream press isn’t paying much attention to it. I couldn’t find the story on CNN or NY Times, for example.

I look forward to hearing your opinions.

[tomndebb]

Well, according to the linked story, Wilson knew (and reported) about earlier contacts that had resulted in no purchases of uranium. In addition, according to the story, the Niger contact “assumed” that Iraq was looking for uranium, despite the fact that the Iraqis did not actually mention uranium in their discussions. (I will not claim the Iraqis did not want uranium, but an unspoken request that was denied does not go very far toward feeding Iraqi reactors.)

However, the actual transaction that Wilson was sent to investigate actually was a forgery–a point that has not changed.

The phrase “grasping at straws” comes to mind.

[elucidator]

http://www.nationalreview.com/may/may200407121105.asp

Clifford May makes the rightist argument most succinctly, at the National Review Online (“Unfair, Unbalanced, Fuck You!”). He outlines every known fact on the matter and squeezes every drop of innuendo from those facts. It makes rather weak tea.

He starts off assaulting the most important single aspect of all this, whether or not Mr. Wilson’s wife recommended him for the investigatory trip. He casts some entirely reasonable doubt on Mr. Wilson’s accuracy on this piddling issue.

He reaches his full display of inductive speculation masquerading as thought with the following:

“…Another former government official told Wilson that Iran had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998. That’s the same year that Saddam forced the weapons inspectors to leave Iraq. Could the former official have meant Iraq rather than Iran? If someone were to try to connect those dots, what picture might emerge?..”

He might have meant Iraq, but said Iran? This passes for evidence on the planet Mr. May calls home.

First off, it is known that the uranium output of Niger is controlled either entirely or almost entirely by French consortiums, and the output of those mines are already spoken for. “Yellowcake” to be processed is sold by the ton, this isn’t a kilo of coke slipped over the border in somebody’s dress. A covert transfer would be difficult, if not impossible.

More to the point, perhaps, is our certain knowledge that even if genies would whisk 500 tons of yellowcake to Saddam’s front door, he wouldn’t have been able to do anything with it. He did not have, could not fabricate, and could not covertly purchase the equipment needed. To the best of our knowledge, he didn’t even try.

So what would it have gained Saddam to risk covertly buying material he could not process?

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

I’m not sure where in the linked article there are assertions of Joe Wilson lying to be debunked.

I would suggest checking out Talking Points Memo for discussion over the past several days and weeks about this issue.

One bit of information that appears to contradict an assertion from the linked article is that of the weight of the concerns reportedly voiced by the French. Apparently (if this is the same point as raised by Josh Marshall at TPM) the concerns of the French were based on the same forged document as were the concerns raised by the British, and we knew it. The fact that two other countries were concerned means nothing if their concern was in regards to the same source.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

Sorry, that should be Talking Points Memo.

[Equipoise]

@elucidator

First off, it is known that the uranium output of Niger is controlled either entirely or almost entirely by French consortiums, and the output of those mines are already spoken for. “Yellowcake” to be processed is sold by the ton, this isn’t a kilo of coke slipped over the border in somebody’s dress. A covert transfer would be difficult, if not impossible.

You’re right. I’m reading Wilson’s book right now, and I’ve taken the liberty to type in the relevant portion. Any typos are mine.

Niger’s uranium is extracted from two mines, both located in the center of the country in the Sahara Desert, a day and a half’s drive from the capital along the road to Algeria. The mines are owned by a consortium, comprising foreign companies, along with the Niger government through a state-owned corporation. The day-to-day management of the mines is in the hands of a French mining company, COGEMA. German, Spanish, and Japanese companies are partners, but only COGEMA has actual possession of the ore from the time it is in the ground until it arrives at its destination.

In the 1980s, when large Canadian deposits of uranium began to be exploited at a much lower cost than the mineral could be mined for in Niger, it coincided with the general decline of the worldwide nuclear power industry. This meant that Niger’s two mines were soon producing yellowcake at a loss. The mines are kept open in order to ensure a dedicated supply of product for the nuclear power industries in the consortium countries. In fact, the Nigerien government has sold no uranium outside the consortium for two decades.

Uranium production schedules are established annually at a meeting of the consortium partners and are set to meet their current needs. They are reviewed every couple of months to take into account possible changes within those narrow parameters. In order to accommodate some hypothetical extraordinary demand by the Nigerien government for an extra supply of the product, the partners would have had to adjust everything from the volume of production to the size of the workforce, as well as ramping up transportation and security. The volume of the alleged sale–five hundred tons–would have represented close to a 40 percent increase. There is no doubt that such a significant shift from historic production schedules would have been absolutely impossible to hide from the other partners, and most certainly from the managing partner, COGEMA. Everyone involved would have known about it.

A government decision authorizing the sale of five hundred tons of uranium to Iraq would have required several decisions, each of which would have been fully documented. Because the conduit for Niger’s participation in the uranium consortium was via a state-owned corporation, the government ministry in charge of the corporation, the ministry of mines, would have had to be informed and to concur in the decision to make the sale. The alleged transaction was between two sovereign countries, so the foreign ministry would also have had to agree to the sale, taking into consideration such niceties as international law, at a time when Iraq was subject to international sanctions. The sale would also have been subject to a Council of Ministers decision representing the interests of the government as a whole, In short, any documentation covering the sale would have to carry the signatures, at a minimum, of the prime minister, the foreign minister, and the minister of mines. If any documents did not contain the valid signatures of those officials, then they could not be authentic.

Furthermore, a government decision authorizing such a sale would have automatically been published in the Nigerien equivalent of the Federal Register, and it would have had tax and revenue implications that would quickly have become known to the bureaucracy, which would be salivating at the prospect of such a windfall. In a country chronically short of cash, an unexpected infusion of money would have been eagerly anticipated and much talked about. A five-hundred-ton sale would have had to be negotiated at a premium of above-market prices, both to cover the costs of production and to ensure a reasonable profit. Even with uranium prices down 80 percent from their mid-1979s peak of over fifty dollars a pound, the premium on five hundred tons might still have yielded up to tens of millions of dollars, quite a sum to sweep under the rug in a poor country.

But what about an off-the-books transaction? Theoretically, this was a possibility, given that a military junta had been in power at the time of the alleged sale. Neither the Mainassara regime, nor the short-lived Wanke regime, had been responsible to any other authority in the land. But the transfer of five hundred tons of uranium yellowcake would have been impossible to conceal. Even an illegitimate transaction would have led to the acquisition of thousands of barrels, adjustment of shipping schedules with bills of lading and other documentation to cover the lightly refined ore’s movement out of the country. There would have been records somewhere reflecting this significant increase in production. It simply could not have happened without a great many people knowing about it, and secrets widely known do not remain hidden for long. And again, COGEMA, as the managing partner, would have had to know and be complicit.

Finally, the American response to the droughts of the 1970s and 1980s had prevented mass starvation in the country, Mainassara and Wanke, who were in power respectively in 1999-2000 at the time of the alleged sale, were career officers of an age to recall the American response to the country’s humanitarian crises. Though unschooled in many areas of leadership, Mainassara nonetheless was acutely aware of his dependence on the West, and the U.S. in particular. (Personal anecdote not typed) … He clearly understood where the threats to Niger came from–Libya–and where he would have to turn for help: The United States of America. And getting involved in a secret transaction with Iraq was certainly not going to help him win America’s favor.

Valerie Plame wouldn’t have had to suggest her husband to the CIA. Wilson had been a diplomat for 23 years and had often met with the CIA to share his knowledge of the countries he worked in. He had been a junior diplomatic officer in Niger in the 70s. He’d also been the highest-ranking diplomat in Baghdad during the Gulf War. The senior diplomat, April Glaspie, had left on a routine trip right before the surprise invasion of Kuwait, and so wasn’t allowed back in Iraq. Wilson was the face of American diplomacy in Iraq right up until a few days before America started bombing, when he and his skeleton staff were whisked out of the country.

They’re playing semantics. According to Wilson in the book:

Apart from being the conduit of a message from a colleague in her office asking if I would be willing to have a conversation about Niger’s uranium industry, Valerie had had nothing to do with the matter. Though she worked on weapons of mass destruction issues, she was not at the meeting I attended where the subject of Niger’s uranium was discussed, when the possibility of my actually traveling to the country was broached. She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.

And anyway, even if she did, 1) she was a covert agent. Maybe she COULDN’T tell him that she did, and 2) WHO CARES?? She was still outed by someone in the administration, and all the slime in the world poured on Wilson won’t change that fact.

[Sam_Stone]

We’re being a little selective in what we’re debunking here, going after the easy stuff. Let’s try some more substantive criticisms:

1. Wilson said that his wife had absolutely nothing to do with the decision to send him to Niger. In fact, this is a fairly big deal because Robert Novak originally reported her name because administration officials used it in an offhand way because they said she was the one who recommended him. Wilson has said that essentially they were lying, because she had nothing to do with it. “Valerie had nothing to do with the matter,” Wilson says in his book. “She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.”

In fact, she did exactly that.

2. Wilson lied, flat-out lied about the CIA report.

the panel found that, “Wilson provided misleading information to the Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on a document that had clearly been forged because ‘the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.’”

The problem is Wilson “had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports,” the Senate panel discovered. Schmidt notes: “The documents — purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq — were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.”

Wilson lied. Plain and simple. He claimed to have knowledge about names and dates on a document he had never seen.

3. Wilson claims that Bush was lying when he said, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” In fact, Bush was not lying, and the British government has just completed an investigation into that intelligence which confirms it. Wilson had no grounds for making the claim that Bush lied, since he had not seen the British intelligence. Not only that, but British intelligence also received information from the French Intelligence service showing that Saddam had tried to buy yellowcake from Niger.
   Here’s what The Washington Post reported yesterday:

Wilson’s assertions – both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information – were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

**The panel found that Wilson’s report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. **

And this is what they say about Valerie Plame’s role:

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame “offered up” Wilson’s name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations saying her 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 possibly shed light on this sort of activity.” The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.

“Valerie had nothing to do with the matter,” Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. “She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip.”

A flat-out lie.

But the most damning thing is that Wilson’s public statements seem to contradict his own report:

Wilson’s reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.
…
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.

If you guys are going to be fair in your skepticism, you have to admit that this all looks pretty bad for Wilson. If a Bush administration official had been publically slapped this hard by a Senate commission, and had been caught in flat-out lies about intelligence, you guys would be calling for his head on a pike. But Wilson? Nothing to see here… Move along.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Sam Stone

But the most damning thing is that Wilson’s public statements seem to contradict his own report:

Quote:

Wilson’s reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.
…
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.

If you guys are going to be fair in your skepticism, you have to admit that this all looks pretty bad for Wilson. If a Bush administration official had been publically slapped this hard by a Senate commission, and had been caught in flat-out lies about intelligence, you guys would be calling for his head on a pike. But Wilson? Nothing to see here… Move along.

I’m glad that you regard this as the most damning.

Sam, if you’d only followed my advice, you wouldn’t make such an embarrasing slip-up. Talking Points Memo already took on what you consider to be the most damning bit.

@From Talking Points Memo

Finally, down toward the end of Schmidt’s article she writes that: “According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.”

I read the report’s discussion of the whole Niger business. And I didn’t see that reference. However, on page 44 there is a reference to Wilson reporting to the CIA that “an Iranian delegation was interested in purchasing 400 tons of yellowcake from Niger in 1998 [but that] no contract was ever signed with Iran.” (emphasis added).

Perhaps I missed the reference that Schmidt is noting. But it seems awfully similar to the one the report notes about Iran – same date, same tonnage. Presumably in this case, Schmidt innocently confused the two neighboring and similar-sounding countries, though it’s a goof you’d think an editor would have caught.

Iraq/Iran… what’s the difference, eh Sam?

If you are going to be fair in your assessment, when your most damning point is found to be shite, you will acknowledge that it looks pretty bad for your argument. Maybe someday you will stop relying on your regular sources of information, or the smiles of administration officials.

[Club_33]

@Hentor the Barbarian

I’m not sure where in the linked article there are assertions of Joe Wilson lying to be debunked.

I should have worded my post better. I didn’t mean to suggest that those assertions were in the article. Rather, that a lot of conservatives are claiming that this story is proof of his lying. See Sam Stone’s post for an example.

[Sam_Stone]

If you are going to be fair in your assessment, when your most damning point is found to be shite, you will acknowledge that it looks pretty bad for your argument. Maybe someday you will stop relying on your regular sources of information, or the smiles of administration officials.

IF Marshall is right, then that offers a possible answer to one of the charges. That one aside, it would appear that Wilson clearly lied to the media on several occasions. He claimed that his wife had nothing to do with recommending him for the trip. That was a lie. He specifically claimed to have knowledge of dates and places on a report which didn’t even come into CIA hands until 8 months after Wilson made the claim. Another lie.

Got any answers for those?

There is a much larger point here. The point is that Bush was savaged in the media over his claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. Much of the savaging came courtesy of the claims of Joe Wilson, who wasn’t just skeptical but who was making the rounds of the media calling Bush an outright liar and claiming that there was absolutely no evidence for the claim.

Well, now it turns out that Bush was on solid ground. He had not just evidence from the British government, but the British government had given him its sources, one of which turned out to be French intelligence. And Wilson’s own report showed that Niger had in fact been approached by Iraq about yellowcake.

Furthermore it turns out that some of Wilson’s claims were flat-out lies. If it can be fully corroborated that Wilson was lying, then his behavior is contemptible. If he consciously lied in order to undermine his own government for partisan purposes, then he is despicable.

I hope the legal case against whoever leaked Plame’s name continues, for two reasons: One, because no matter how obnoxious Wilson is, it’s still wrong to ‘out’ a CIA operative, and if someone intentionally did that, they should be punished. But also, it would put Joseph Wilson on the witness stand where he would have to either maintain the lie that his wife had ‘nothing to do’ with his being chosen to go to Niger, or admit that he lied about a very serious matter.

[Squink]

@Sam Stone

Well, now it turns out that Bush was on solid ground.

Show us the Uranium Sam. Then tell us how Bush was on solid ground.

[elucidator]

Sam, you’re trying to bust Wilson five times for the same thing. The question of whether or not Ms. Plame ever spoke her husbands name in the context of the Niger investigation is puny. What dark designs do you see in this?

Now this:

the panel found that, “Wilson provided misleading information to the Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on a document that had clearly been forged because ‘the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.’”

The problem is Wilson “had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports,” the Senate panel discovered. Schmidt notes: “The documents — purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq — were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.”

Unless I’m very much mistaken, wasn’t the suspicious nature of the Niger documents pretty much common knowledge at that point? That the merest hint of research would have shown them to be laughable? Would not any reasonably sentient planaria be able to conclude, entirely independent of any CIA reports, that the document in question was the bunk?

…Well, now it turns out that Bush was on solid ground…

It does? Since when? Did you by any chance notice friend Equipoise’s post above, outlining some of the rather daunting obstacles to a covert sale of 400 tons of contraband? If British Intelligence were to report that Saddam had Invisible Anthrax Unicorns of Death, would Bush then be “on solid ground” if he parrots such nonsense?

Can you explain to us what possible use Saddam could have made of any yellowcake purchase? What was he going to do with it, Sam? Are you aware of some massive laboratory and production complex that has eluded the rest of the world? Mr. Baredi didn’t find one, neither did Mr. Blix, nor even the enthusiastic Mr. Kay (You remember, don’t you, Sam? The charmingly boyish enthusiasm with which you looked forward to his “surprises”?)

So far as I can tell, the only “evidence” offered is hearsay, offered at least one remove. Mr. Clark told the CIA that someone told him something. That’s it. That’s all you got? Anything else?

[Atticus_Finch]

@Sam Stone

IF Marshall is right, then that offers a possible answer to one of the charges. That one aside, it would appear that Wilson clearly lied to the media on several occasions. He claimed that his wife had nothing to do with recommending him for the trip. That was a lie. He specifically claimed to have knowledge of dates and places on a report which didn’t even come into CIA hands until 8 months after Wilson made the claim. Another lie.

I don’t get it - the names and dates were wrong anyway, correct? So if he was just making up names and dates, how’d he know they were wrong? Was it just a lucky guess?

[minty_green]

@Sam Stone

3. Wilson claims that Bush was lying when he said, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” In fact, Bush was not lying, and the British government has just completed an investigation into that intelligence which confirms it. Wilson had no grounds for making the claim that Bush lied, since he had not seen the British intelligence. Not only that, but British intelligence also received information from the French Intelligence service showing that Saddam had tried to buy yellowcake from Niger.

All based on . . .

Wait for it . . .

THE SAME FORGED DOCUMENTS, AND NOTHING MORE THAN THE SAME FORGED DOCUMENTS.
One simply cannot restore the credibility of the Niger story by citing additional instances of the exact same Niger story.

[Sam_Stone]

How do you know that? The Butler commission in the U.K. looked into the Niger evidence, and has concluded that there was solid intelligence.

[Squink]

@Sam Stone

How do you know that? The Butler commission in the U.K. looked into the Niger evidence, and has concluded that there was solid intelligence.

Rock Solid:

From our examination of the intelligence and other material on Iraqi
attempts to buy uranium from Africa, we have concluded that:
a. It is accepted by all parties that Iraqi of•cials visited Niger in
1999.
b. The British Government had intelligence from several different
sources indicating that this visit was for the purpose of acquiring
uranium. Since uranium constitutes almost three-quarters of
Niger’s exports, the intelligence was credible.
c. The evidence was not conclusive that Iraq actually purchased, as
opposed to having sought, uranium and the British Government
did not claim this.
d. The forged documents were not available to the British
Government at the time its assessment was made, and so the fact
of the forgery does not undermine it.

In early 1999, Iraqi of•cials visited a number of African countries, including Niger. The
visit2 was detected by intelligence, and some details were subsequently confirrmed by
Iraq. The purpose of the visit was not immediately known. But uranium ore accounts for almost three-quarters of Niger’s exports. Putting this together with past Iraqi purchases of uranium ore from Niger, the limitations faced by the Iraq regime on access to indigenous uranium ore and other evidence of Iraq seeking to restart its nuclear programme, the JIC judged that Iraqi purchase of uranium ore could have been the subject of discussions and noted in an assessment in December 2000 that:
. . . unconfirmed intelligence indicates Iraqi interest in acquiring uranium.

Butler report.

[minty_green]

It appears that I was mixing up the French intelligence (which was clearly based on the forged documents) with the British intelligence (which allegedly was not based on the forged documents, though I would bet money that it was indirectly based on them even if they “were not available to the British Government at the time its assessment was made”).

The Butler Report, so far as I can tell, does not actually state what the British assessment was based on, apart from the speculation that Iraqi officials must have been trying to buy uranium there since that’s, like, a big part of Niger’s exports. Nevermind that Iraq had no capability of doing anything whatsoever with the unprocessed ore that was the only kind of uranium they would have been able to buy without going through the French government, which controls all the active mines in the country. Iraqi officials were seen in a country where there’s uranium, so that sealed the deal.

Feh. Double feh.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Sam Stone

IF Marshall is right, then that offers a possible answer to one of the charges. That one aside,

One of the charges? You mean, in your estimation, the “most damning of all.” This one revealed to be a fairly stupid confusion of Iraq and Iran by a reporter, yet you blithely forage ahead, apparently drawing increased conviction for your point of view by the refutation of your most damning point. Isn’t it safe to say that your reasoning on this one is conclusion-specific? Isn’t it safe to say that you want to believe “Bush was on solid ground,” so you shape and fudge things to arrive there, despite the verity of the support for your assertions? No? Okay, let’s go on…

it would appear that Wilson clearly lied to the media on several occasions. He claimed that his wife had nothing to do with recommending him for the trip. That was a lie.

Is it? Do you know that he did not know his wife had recommended him, thus making it a lie? But much, much more importantly, why is this so crucial? What is the result of his wife recommending him? What point of yours is supported should it be true that the reasons for his selection resulted from efforts of his wife? Please close the loop on this part for us.

He specifically claimed to have knowledge of dates and places on a report which didn’t even come into CIA hands until 8 months after Wilson made the claim. Another lie.

Yes, this is another lie. Apparently of yours, unfortunately, or your source (I’ll choose to be generous here and allow for the latter, your zealous, wide-eyed conviction of its truth notwithstanding). How in heaven’s name could it be true that the report didn’t come into the CIA’s hands before Wilson claimed any knowledge of it? The whole reason for his involvement arose because of the report! The report precedes Wilson’s role. I know it is a huge PDF file, but if you read the SSCI report, this will be painfully obvious. To wit:

@SSCI Report

“Reporting on a possible uranium yellowcake5 sales agreement between Niger and Iraq first came to the attention of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) on October 15, 2001 (page 36)”.

Reporting on the uranium transaction did not surface again until February 5, 2002 when the CIA’s DO issued a second intelligence report […] which again cited the source as a “[foreign] government service.” Although not identified in the report, this source was also from the foreign service (page 37).

Based on information from the CIA report from the foreign service, on February 12, 2002, the DIA wrote a finished intelligence product […] After reading the DIA report, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for the CIA’s analysis of the issue. In response, the [DCI (WINPAC)] published […] an intelligence assessment with limited distribution, which said, “information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated.” […] (page 38).

Officials from the CIA’s DO … told Committee staff that in response to questions from the Vice President’s Office and the Departments of State and Defense on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal, CPD officials discussed ways to obtain additional information. [Portion redacted] who could make immediate inquiries into the reporting, CPD decided to contact a former ambassador to Gabon who had a posting early in his career in Niger.

Some CPD officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former
ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador’s wife “offered up his 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 possibly shed light on this sort of activity (Page 39).”

The former ambassador’s wife told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA and told him “there’s this crazy report” on a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq (Page 39) The former ambassador left for Niger on February 21, 2002 (page 41).

@Sam Stone

There is a much larger point here. The point is that Bush was savaged in the media over his claim that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. Much of the savaging came courtesy of the claims of Joe Wilson, who wasn’t just skeptical but who was making the rounds of the media calling Bush an outright liar and claiming that there was absolutely no evidence for the claim.

And there wasn’t. From the report: “Conclusion 12. Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.” Even given that this is being generous to the information and reporting, it suggests that Bush’s statements were crap.

Well, now it turns out that Bush was on solid ground. He had not just evidence from the British government, but the British government had given him its sources, one of which turned out to be French intelligence. And Wilson’s own report showed that Niger had in fact been approached by Iraq about yellowcake.

It did? Could you provide a cite, because this is all the SSCI report has to say on the matter:

The intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999, [Portion redacted] businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted “expanding commercial relations” to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that “although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq.” Page 43

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.” The former ambassador said that because Mayaki was wary of discussing any trade issues with a country under United Nations (UN) sanctions, he made a successful effort to steer the conversation away from a discussion of trade with the Iraqi delegation (page 44).

So the available evidence is that there was a meeting regarding trade that never discussed yellowcake.

Furthermore it turns out that some of Wilson’s claims were flat-out lies.

So far, it is not clear that any of them are. At most, he may have lied about how his name came up as the person to check this out, but whether this was a lie or not is far from clear. He lied or misspoke about having seen false names on the report. After reading the SSCI, I am willing to believe that he based this on information from the CIA, perhaps even from his wife. Maybe this was the reason the administration outed Valerie Plame?

If it can be fully corroborated that Wilson was lying, then his behavior is contemptible. If he consciously lied in order to undermine his own government for partisan purposes, then he is despicable.

Sure. Got any evidence of that? What IF it could be corroborated that you brought this false and misleading material here to undermine our discussion for purely partisan purposes?

[minty_green]

@Sam Stone

3. Wilson claims that Bush was lying when he said, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Perhaps you should peruse the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report on the matter, issued just last week. The Committte’s recounting of the Niger story is very detailed, making it clear that a “foreign government service” (clearly the Brits) had informed the U.S. about the alleged Niger uranium purchase in October 2001. (Report, p. 36) The CIA report in response noted that “There is no corroboration from other sources that such an agreement was reached,” and that “Iraq has no known facilities for processing or enriching the material.” (p. 37)

The Brits updated their report in February 2002, this time including what was said to be a “verbatim text” of the Iraq-Niger agreement. (p. 37) The American intelligence folks were more impressed with this report, and responded with a February 12, 2002 DIA report titled “Niamey signed an agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Baghdad.” (p. 38) The Vice President read this DIA report and asked for follow-up. (p. 38) The follow-up report stated that “information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report which lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and determine whether it can be corroborated.” (p. 38) The follow-up report also stated that the British report was contradicted by reports from the U.S. embassy in Niger and that the French consortium had complete control over Niger’s yellowcake industry. (pp. 38-39)

On February 18, 2002, the U.S. embassy in Niger pointed out that Niger only produces 3,000 tons of yellowcake per year, even though the Brits were claiming that Niger had agreed to sell Iraq 4,000 tons per year. (p. 40) On March 1, 2002, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (“INR”) published an intelligence assessment titled “Niger: Sale of Uranium to Iraq Is Unlikely.” (p. 42) The report was written in response to the Vice President’s interest in the alleged Niger-Iraq uranium deal. (p. 42) The report was distributed through the usual channels to the White House situation room. (p. 42)

On March 8, 2002, the CIA published a report on the investigation performed by “a former ambassador.” (p. 43) The report stated that Niger officials, including the former prime minister, were unaware of any contracts between Niger and Iraq. (pp. 43-44) The former prime minister reported that a businessman had approached him in 1999 with “an Iraqi delegation to discuss ‘expanding business relations’ between Iraq and Niger,” which the prime minister interpreted as meaning they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales; the prime minister met with the delegation, but let the matter drop. (p. 43) The CIA report also reiterated that the French consortium keeps tight control over the country’s uranium mining and transport. (p. 44) Because the CIA did not believe that the former ambassador’s report added anything particularly new to the matter (despite the Nigeriens’ admission that they had been approached by the Iraqi delegation in 1999), the CIA’s briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report. (p. 46)

On March 25, 2002, the “foreign government service” provided its third and final report on the Niger-Iraq uranium story. (p. 47) This time, the report claimed that Niger had agreed in 2000 to provide Iraq with 500 tons per year. (p. 47) The report included the names of two Niger officials who were not the individuals in the positions ascribed to them, although those persons “do not appear to be names or positions with which intelligence analysts would have been familiar” and nobody appears to have done any verification on the names. (p. 47)

On September 24, 2002, the British government published a “White Paper” claiming that “there is intelligence that Iraq has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” (p. 50, hidden amongst a shitload of blacked-out text that presumably describes Britain’s super-secret sources for that claim) At about the same time, the Senate Intelligence Committee was preparing a National Intelligence Estimate that repeated the “foreign government service” claim that Iraq and Niger were negotiating for the sale of up to 500 tons of yellowcake, although “We do not know the status of this arrangement.” (p. 52) The INR dissented from the NIE claim regarding the uranium, stating that “the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR’s assessment, highly dubious.” (p. 53)

On October 4, 2002, the National Security Council sent a draft of a speech the president was to deliver to the CIA. (p. 55) The draft included the line that Iraq “has been caught attempting to puchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from Africa.” (p. 55) The CIA nixed the line and wrote a memo to the NSC stating as follows (pp. 55-56):

(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. [Note: This was the yellowcake that was sealed and annually inspected by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and which the U.S. left unguarded for a significant period of time after the invasion.] And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them that the Africa story is overblown and telling them that this is one of the two issues where we disagree with the British.

Although additional memos continued to circulate until the time of the State of the Union, no new intelligence reports emerged regarding the alleged uranium sale to Iraq. Nevertheless, the President used the State of the Nation to tell the nation, and the world, that “the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
Given the hugely conflicting information available at the time of the January 28, 2003 State of the Union, and particularly given the huge doubts that had been cast on the veracity of the British intelligence reports and communicated to the White House on multiple occasions, it was either tremendously stupid, reckless, or mendacious to claim that the Niger story was something “the British government has learned.”

[Nonsuch]

Christopher Hitchen’s carries the administration’s water yet again with his customary vigor. While much of what he says is covered here, this was intriguing:

Originally Posted by Christopher Hitchens
Now turn to the front page of the June 28 Financial Times for a report from the paper’s national security correspondent, Mark Huband. He describes a strong consensus among European intelligence services that between 1999 and 2001 Niger was engaged in illicit negotiations over the export of its “yellow cake” uranium ore with North Korea, Libya, Iraq, Iran, and China. The British intelligence report on this matter, once cited by President Bush, has never been disowned or withdrawn by its authors. The bogus document produced by an Italian con man in October 2002, which has caused such embarrassment, was therefore more like a forgery than a fake: It was a fabricated version of a true bill.