Okay so who did send Ambassador Wilson on the fact finding mission to Nige

[Toots]

Joe Wilson says he was sent at the request of Cheney's office. Cheney denies it. Rove says he was sent at the request of Wilson's wife Plame. I think it would be a good thing to find out who actually sent Wilson on the mission. Rove is saying that all he was doing was exposing Wilson's lie that he was sent at the request of Cheney's Office and that Tenet says the Cia did not ask him to go. So who did send Wilson? If it was Plame then the whole issue against Rove may fall apart. If Plame had nothing to do with it then it is more LIES from this Administration. Anyone have any guesses?

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

1. Who is more trustworthy... Cheney, or any random stranger?

[Cocoa]

2. Wilson was right

that's what counts.

Bush lied in his State of the Union address, and started a war based on lies.

I can see why Rove would want to change the subject from Bush to Wilson, but there's no reason anyone should play along.

[KC21304]

3. Plame may have said her husband had the

experience needed for the job, which he did, but she surely had no authority to send him. Someone higher up sent him. What kind of idiot does Rove think we are ?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

4. Rove is playing to the 51% that will believe anything the wh spews.

[Kagemusha]

5. Definitely nailed it on the head there.

Besides, while we're deconstructing Rove's 'I didn't say her name!' line, let's look at what Tenet said. He said the CIA didn't ask him to go. Wilson's name might have come up from the CIA and someone outside the CIA asked him to go. I don't think this is some gigantic issue - what, we're expected to believe Wilson paid out of his own pocket? More likely he went under the auspices of the State Department, likely based on his meritorious service there and his retention of security clearances with that department.

Though, I wish he'd told Saddam in stronger terms the US would give him a bloody nose if he invaded Kuwait. But that's not really *his* fault.

[Ready4Change]

15. Ask Rove what the definition of "Plame" is. nt

[EFerrari]

8. Someone in the CIA who actually wanted to get to the truth

sent Wilson. They hadn't gotten the memo, OR, they were trying to get Cheney to back off. And it blew up in their face. My best guess.

[kittenpants]

6. I love the conflicting RW spin that Plame was just an insignificant

'desk jockey' but was also powerful enough to send her husband on an official fact-finding mission to investigate Bush's basis for war against Iraq. They should really get their stories straight... oh, that's right, there minions don't bother to think about mutually contradictive statements.

[Democrat 4 Ever]

16. Was listening to a debate on reporter's giving up confidential

sources last night on C-Span. Victoria Toensing (she was a deputy asst. attorney general in the Reagan administration) arguing that reporters should give source up while at the same time stating that reporters have always had protection. She was obviously an administration shill because she was making no sense. She was spinning so hard she practically needed a screw driver to get her feet away from behind the podium. (Very "dramatic" - head shaking, over the top gesturing, very "un-debatelike" etc.) And she was always making the statement in the middle of the "debate" like Plame had sent her husband, Wilson, to check out the yellowcake story and "everyone knew he wasn't qualified for the task."

Runs me nuts when the neocons make blanket "everyone knows" statements without a single cite to back up such a contention. Her whole speech wasn't defending or dismissing reporter confidentiality as much as an opportunity to defend Cheney/Rove & Co. for the upcoming onslaught. Made several references to the threshold needed to prosecute - more CYA for Rove. No laws have been broken. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

These are the neocon talking points - probably directly off the cheat sheet provided by Grover Norquist. Expect Wilson's credentials and Plame giving him the job to investigate the yellowcake story to become the focus instead of Rove outing Plame.

*I don't remember the original air date - some time last fall, if I remember correctly.

[goclark]

7. Wouldn't that be a conflict of interest?

I am sure that a wife would not be able to select her husband to go on an assignment of that nature.

I could see that she could suggest but in government procedure, she could not do it that way.

Right?

[kittenpants]

9. yeah, that would be the equivalent of, ooooh, say the VP's former

company getting all the reconstruction contracts for a war the VP started... nothing like that could happen in our gov't! :)

[Kagemusha]

11. The point of suggesting she did do it that way is to discredit the trip

That's Rove's clear intent in talking to Cooper on "deep deep background" in the latest reporting.

[joemurphy]

10. Cheney started it

"Also according to Seymour Hersh, in the fall of 2001, an unsupported allegation by Italian intelligence that Iraq had been attempting to buy uranium from Niger in 1999 was snatched up by Cheney:
Sometime after he first saw it, Cheney brought it up at his regularly scheduled daily briefing from the C.I.A., Martin said. “He asked the briefer a question. The briefer came back a day or two later and said, ‘We do have a report, but there’s a lack of details.’ ” The Vice-President was further told that it was known that Iraq had acquired uranium ore from Niger in the early nineteen-eighties but that that material had been placed in secure storage by the I.A.E.A., which was monitoring it. “End of story,” Martin added. “That’s all we know.” According to a former high-level C.I.A. official, however, Cheney was dissatisfied with the initial response, and asked the agency to review the matter once again. It was the beginning of what turned out to be a year-long tug-of-war between the C.I.A. and the Vice-President’s office

<http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?031027fa_fact>

Cheney was brow-beating the CIA (consistent with the DSM) to come up with more evidence to invade Iraq. The Wilson trip to Niger was a product of this as the CIA decided to send someone to Niger to follow up on the rumors (based largely on forged documents) that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium from Niger.

The CIA has always claimed that its people took responsibility for sending Wilson to Niger. Plame probably recommended her husband for the job, but it was never her final decision as to whether he should go. She didn't have that kind of authority. Wilson was emminently qualified for the task.

<http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2003/intell-030711-cia01.htm>

[kittenpants]

12. nice finds, joemurphy!

[TahitiNut]

13. How To Lie 101 -- Lesson 2: Half-Truths

When Cheney "denies" that Joe Wilson was sent to Niger at his request, it's possible that Cheny is claiming he never named Wilson even though he requested the Niger mission. He may even have included Wilson's name in a list of suggested candidates, but didn't specify a preference for Wilson. Thus, his denial is another non-denial denial - an attempt to mislead by slipping a falsehood in under the cover of a 'technical' truth.

Cheney and Company are liars of the first order - they have no integrity.

[dogday]

14. Here is Wilson's Story

http://www.bookreporter.com/reviews2/078671378X.asp


Joseph Wilson was a retired Ambassador in January 2002 when the Bush administration received a report that Niger had sold uranium to Iraq. Vice President Cheney asked the CIA to determine if there was any truth to the report, and the CIA in turn asked Wilson to go to Niger to investigate. He was certainly an expert on both Africa and the Middle East. During his 22-year career, Wilson had been an Ambassador in Niger, Togo, South Africa, the Congo, Gabon, Sao Tome and Principe. As the Ambassador in Iraq during Desert Storm, he met with Saddam in an attempt to get him to leave Kuwait and protected American hostages. As a political adviser to the Commander in Chief in 1995, Wilson was stationed in Germany and worked with other ambassadors to keep a close eye on the Iraqis' use of their airspace. Called Operation Northern Watch, it continued to function up until the second Gulf War.

In 2002, Wilson went to Africa at the request of the CIA. He knew the officials who would have made the decisions and signed the documents, had a sale taken place, and after speaking with the officials and ambassadors over there, Wilson found no signs of a sale. There was no record of a sale in the Nigerian equivalent of a Federal Register, and even an off-the-books sale would've been documented. Also, American aid had helped prevent starvation in Niger in the '70s and '80s, and the leaders were aware of their dependence on the West and the U.S.

[dweller]

17. all roads lead to cheney

http://www.mikehersh.com/printer_All_Roads_Lead_To_Cheney.shtml

the last time i posted this link, it was deleted. Not sure if it will be again... and not sure why it was before.

dp

[fedupinBushcountry]

18. No guesses here

I will not fall for the Rovian spin, as I see you may have done. From the first moment that Rove started the spin about Plame being the one that said send my husband, Joe Wilson vehemently denied it. I trust what Wilson says 100%. I trust what Rove or Cheney says 0%.

“A senior intelligence officer confirmed that Plame was a Directorate of Operations undercover officer who worked ‘alongside’ the operations officers who asked her husband to travel to Niger.

“But he said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment. ‘They (the officers who did ask Wilson to check the uranium story) were aware of who she was married to, which is not surprising,’ he said. ‘There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason,’ he said. ‘I can’t figure out what it could be.’

“We paid his (Wilson’s) airfare. But to go to Niger is not exactly a benefit. Most people you’d have to pay big bucks to go there,’ the senior intelligence official said. Wilson said. he was reimbursed only for expenses.” (Newsday article Columnist blows CIA Agent’s cover, dated July 22, 2003).

In fact, on July 13 of this year, David Ensor, the CNN correspondent, did call the CIA for a statement of its position and reported that a senior CIA official confirmed my account that Valerie did not propose me for the trip:

“’She did not propose me’, he said--others at the CIA did so. A senior CIA official said that is his understanding too.’http://www.yuricareport.com/Impeachment/WilsonDefendsHimselfInLtrToSenate.html

[damntexdem]

19. It doesn't matter to Rove's defense:

Rove still outed an undercover CIA agent, no matter what the motivation, even to expose a "lie." Of course, it does matter to showing how the Administration was "fixing the data around the policy," but that is a separable issue.

[mzteris]

20. Exactly what Valerie DID do......

". . . The intelligence committee report says, "Some 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 says, 'my husband has good relations with both the PM 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 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."

The report also notes, "On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR , and several individuals from the Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was 'apparently convened by wife who had the idea to dispatch to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue. The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes." . . .


. . . it is certainly imaginable that an INR analyst sitting in a meeting in which there is talk of dispatching a CIA officer's husband to Africa could have received the impression that his wife had initiated the mission. But if that was the case, why did Valerie Wilson attend for only a few minutes? If Valerie Wilson's account of this meeting is not accurate, where are the contradicting accounts from the other participants? Why does the report not quote them on this topic? Since only a week elapsed between the time Valerie Wilson "offered up" her husband and a meeting was held to consider sending him to Niger, it is possible that someone participating in the matter might have thought that Valerie Wilson's original advice – talk to my husband – was related to question of sending an unofficial envoy to Niger to seek out additional information.

When Wilson returned from Niger two CIA officers debriefed him. "The debriefing," the Senate report says, "took place in the former ambassador's home and although his wife was there, according to the reports officer, she acted as a hostess and did not participate in the debrief." If Valerie Wilson had played a key role in sending Joseph Wilson to Niger, would she have skipped out on this debriefing? Perhaps. But this scene reinforces Wilson's claim that she was not deeply involved in his Niger trip. . .

. . . The report notes that the CIA people in charge of investigating the Niger allegation deliberated over what to do and then reached the decision to ask Wilson to perform a pro bono act of public service. And he said yes. He had the experience for the job. His trip was not a boondoggle arranged by his wife for his or their benefit.

http://occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=5973