John Bolton, Downing Street, Mohamed ElBaradei, and Valerie Plame

[shraby]

This is definitely one interesting post at dailykos..a must read..don't miss it.

<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/19/204617/845>

One of the nagging questions of the Valerie Plame case has always been who in the White House would have even known who Valerie Plame, covert CIA operative, actually was. The identity of covert agents is strictly compartmentalized information; even in high-level briefings on the actions or intelligence gathered by those agents, the agents themselves are identified by alias or code, not by name. The reasons for this practice are obvious.
And, in the case of the White House, there was hardly a pressing need to know the identity of one Ms. Valerie Plame. It is middlingly possible that members of the Bush Administration knew Mrs. Valerie Wilson as wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. It is less possible that more than a tight handful of persons -- if that -- would have known Valerie Plame, covert CIA operative. The highest crime in the Wilson/Plame case likely does not revolve principally around who, precisely, shopped the information about Plame's covert status to Novak and other D.C. journalists: instead, it rests with who told that political operative -- the one with a full rolodex and the skill to select presumed-friendly leak points -- that Plame was a CIA operative in the first place, and worthy of attack. Among the White House political staff, there was precisely zero need to know this information -- and if classified intelligence procedures were being followed, no opportunities to find out.

It is undisputed among all parties that Plame's covert work involved principally the gathering of intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction, which put her at an important nexus of operations in the runup to the Iraq War. At another nexus point across town, during the same period, was John Bolton.

While Plame and other covert operatives acted as the raw sources of WMD intelligence, Bolton was one of the significant administration officials guiding the acceptance and use of that intelligence. It might not be putting too fine a point on it to say that news reports have painted Bolton as a counterintelligence agent for the White House; a figure charged not only gathering with the "correct" intelligence to support the administration position, but with retaliation against sources of information or analysis contrary to the Bush Administration's desired pre-Iraq-War interpretations in order to refute, stifle, or punish those sources. Some of these counterintelligence operations -- and given the targets of Bolton's wrath, that would appear to be an accurate, if inflammatory, term to use -- appear to have taken place on Bolton's own initiative, such as his efforts to remove State Department employees who advanced WMD analyses different from endorsed Bush Administration views.

<http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/6/19/204617/845>

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

1. I have long thought...

That there was a real potential for Bolton's fingerprints to be on l'affaire Plame. It just seems like the sort of thing he would do, and with his areas of operation and with his NSA intercepts, he could well have been the one.

[AllyCat]

2. This makes more sense than any other theories I have heard

Releasing the documents that link him to Plame would be damning enough to the whole Administration that they would want to be sure it didn't get out.

Good clip. Thanks.

[leveymg]

3. If Bolton were the Source, he'd have been indicted

by Fitzgerald's grand jury. It was someone higher in the food chain.

Bolton may have been in a position to know, and was certainly an enforcer within his own department, but it is hard to believe he would have shopped Valerie Plame's identity around to Novak, Judith Miller and the rest WITHOUT AUTHORIZATION.

No, if Bolton were the culprit in some sort of one-man rogue operation, he'd be in FBI custody along with Lawrence Franklin.

More likely, the Plame outing was Scooter working with Cheney's go-ahead.

This is intriguing, but I don't think it's solid enough to have been brought to print, not with that lead. Article should have been framed as a "this is speculation, but read it anyway" sort of piece. That's my $.02 worth, anyway. - Mark

[shraby]

4. Did you read the whole article at dailykos?

[leveymg]

7. Yes, quickly - what did I miss. I did see his this is speculation

disclaimer, but it was near the bottom of the article. That's my beef - it's okay to mull out loud, so long as you're clear about what you're doing.

[shraby]

8. A lot of what is written on this

board and dailykos is speculation because we aren't privy to any inside information. I don't feel it's necessary to put a disclaimer at the top as long as it's there. When I read an article that is well written or not, I assume it's speculation unless it's stated specifically that it's not.

[leveymg]

10. I try to abide by the (forgotten) rules of journalistic ethics - if the

info is solid, in my opinion, I'll state it as fact. But, if I'm tossing something out for the first time, I'll try to clearly designate that.

I'm not perfect either, but the conclusion here -- that Bolton was the Source -- is pretty radically at odds with other critical commentators and investigators. It doesn't really seem to fit the circumstances. Bolton was in a position to obtain information on Wilson when he was in Niger, but some higher authority (like the VP's office) would have had to clear the outing of Plame.

Maybe Bolton was seen as expendible, but I still think Scooter was the mouth piece.

[Just Me]

11. Did Cheney's trips to the CIA occur during the same time frame,...

,...of Plame's outing? I'd wager,...yep!

[leveymg]

12. That's an interesting question. Cheney made several visits to Langley

during that general period, I believe - I don't think I've ever seen a real chronology of Cheney's activities. Does someone have one?

At the end of June, 2003, serious doubts started to be raised in the US major media about the veracity of the Administrations's Iraq WMD information. Wilson published his NYT Op-ed July 6, and it was reported in the Times on the 8th that the WH was publicly recanting much of its Iraq uranium WMD story. Novak published Plame's name on July 14. Here are some articles:


•
Bush Claim on Iraq Had Flawed Origin, White House Says (New York Times 7/8/03)

•
US Withheld Uranium Intelligence from UN (Financial Times 7/9/03)

•
The Toll on American Innocence By David Ignatius (Washington Post 7/1/03)

•
When Intelligence Reports Become Political Tools (Washington Post 6/29/03)


One can draw an inference that Cheney might have become aware of Plame's relationship to Wilson from someone at CIA. But, beware that it has been said that Plame's identity as a CIA operator was pretty widely known in some circles in DC. The pair were minor celebrities, of a sort. I'm sure Cheney has many sources he can call on all over town if he wants information or something done at arm's length.

[napi21]

5. Hmmmm. that sure is a reason the WH would HAVE to hide

the names in those documents. If this anaqlysis is true, we'll probably NEVER know though.

[peacetalksforall]

6. Well done. It is obvious that the usual list of war, will, and kill

inhibitors and roadlblocks standing in the way of PNAC and the cabal are:

Congress
United Nations
Courts
Constitution
Real Votes
Real News
Right to speak
Right to privacy
Access to Records

It is very obviouse that they are working on destroying all of the their inhibitors and roadblocks.

[Jack Rabbit]

9. This is speculation

Wilson has said there aren't that many people who could have outed Ms. Plame. He has suggested Rove, Cheney. Libby and some others close to Cheney; I don't think he's ever mentioned Bolton.

This is a little beyond Bolton's modus operandi. Bolton is known to have bullied intelligence analysts in an attempt to get them to say what he wanted to hear rather than what the known facts justified saying. Cheney and Libby are believed to have done the same thing, specifically about intelligence concerning Iraq's weapons capabilities. The problem with this defense of Bolton is that the Plame outing is unique and not in the usual modus operandi of Cheney, Libby or anybody else, either.

Bolton's only known connection with manipulation of pre-war facts and intelligence is his successful effort to fire Jose Bustani, the head of a global arms-control agency in 2002. Bustani wanted to put weapons inspectors in Iraq to verify whether or not Saddam possessed banned weapons. This, as Bolton and other high-level regime officials almost certainly knew, would have undercut the false case war that they were making. Indeed, when Saddam allowed inspectors back into Iraq in late 2002 and proceeded to find nothing, the case for war lost, at least temporarily, significant diplomatic support. Bush eventually went to war without a proper enabling resolution from the UN Security Council.

This is enough to get Bolton charged with war crimes, but it isn't related to the Plame case.