Back of the envelope timeline of Plame-Wilson affair

[BurtWorm]

Late 2001, early 2002: Phony Niger doc suggests Iraq bought or wanted to buy 550 metric tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger in 1999.

Early 2002: Cheney's office makes it known it wants to check the authenticity of the doc.

Feb 2002: Wilson is enlisted by CIA to check out whether Niger officials had any contact with Iraqis.

March 2002: Wilson goes to Niger, meets with US ambassador, who asks him to talk to former officials only as she was talking to current officials. They each find (as does a general doing his own investigation) that it's very unlikely that Iraq procured any yellowcake in 1999 because of a) the sanctions, and b) the fact that France (or a French company?) controlled the mines on behalf of the IAEA. Wilson did learn that an Iraqi delegation visited Niger, but his sources said they got no yellowcake out of the visit. (I'm not clear on whether or not yellowcake was even discussed, but it sounds as though they told Wilson that it was patently obvious to both the Nigeriens and the Iraqis that if they'd come for yellowcake, there was no way they were going to leave with it).

Late March-Early April? 2002: CIA debriefs Wilson on what he knows about the Niger situation. They rate his info "good" (kind of like a C) because though it didn't add much to what they already know, he did give them the info that Iraqis apparently were in Niger.

Early April 2002: According to the second released DSM Blair learns in Crawford that Bush is hot to go to war in Iraq.

Late July 2002: Dearlove reports to Blair that the "facts are to be fixed around the policy" to ensure war happens in Iraq.

August 2002: Cheney throws a huge slice of red meat to hawks at the AmVet conference, setting the stage for "preemption doctrine."

October 2002: Tenet warns Bush not to refer to African yellowcake "evidence" at his Cleveland speech as it's been thoroughly debunked.

January 2003: Bush refers to the African yellowcake evidence in the State of the Union.

February 2003: It becomes known in the media that the African yellowcake docs the admin is touting were shown by textual analysis to be fraudulent. (I'm not clear on when this analysis was done. Does anyone know?)

Early March 2003: Joseph Wilson publicly expresses doubts about the wisdom and legitimacy of going to war.

Mid-March 2003: Bush goes to war, as expected and planned.

June 2003: Wilson tells Washinton Post reporters anonymously that he'd debunked the Niger story, then Bush cited it anyway. The story creates a stir.

July 6, 2003: Wilson's op-ed piece "What I Didn't Find in Africa" appears in NY Times. He says he played a "small role" in debunking the documents, and he gives a modest picture of his work, admitting he'd never seen the docs and didn't write a report. He assumed the VP would have seen the write up of his research, and charges the administration of knowingly lying about African yellowcake to strengthen its flimsy case for war.

July 11, 2003: Rove e-mails Cooper telling him Wilson's wife works at
"the agency" WMD bureau (as if that has any bearing on the veracity of what Wilson wrote :wtf: ).

July 14, 2003: Novak outs Plame. All hell breaks loose.




Now as this rough timeline shows, Wilson was in Niger doing his debunking business before Blair allegedly knew for a firm fact that Bush was hot to go to war in Iraq. The following questions come to mind:

1) Are we supposed to think the Wilsons (and their allies in the CIA) knew Bush was hot to go to war in Iraq before Blair did and that his going to Niger was a partisan attempt to derail the full speed ahead?

2) If that's the case, then how can they deny that they lied and lied and lied when they claimed war was a last resort? What is going to give here? Are they ready to admit they lied us into war only if they're certain it will get themselves out of the mess of abusing their power to try to crush a critic by outing his wife as a CIA operative?

[fob]

1. Novak writes his traitorous column on July 14, not the 22nd.

edit: Great job by the way.

There are also phone calls to/from AF1 on July 6th(?) that Fitzgerald has at least asked for, I don't know if he's received them yet.

[BurtWorm]

2. Thank you.

Corrected.

[shraby]

5. He subpoenaed the AF1 records

a year ago, so he has all the info from them.

[BurtWorm]

3. Feel free to correct or refine the Timeline

[sundancekid]

4. the main point of the KR/Cooper e-mail was to attribute CIA Niger trip

authorization to Joe Wilson's wife, as a CIA operative working on WMD issues, so as to imply that Wilsons (working in tandem) had a political motive to find "no yellowcake" in Niger - pure political assassination play; now, the fukking bastards hand out talking points to repuke operatives to bolster Rove's actions while Snotty McLying tries on new sets of diapers every briefing (no pun intended) to do CYA with CIA disclosure crime

[wiggs]

6. Thanks, looks good. A couple of questions

My increasingly overloaded memory tells me that there was some action between your first two entires. Cheney's office sent Wilson in response to some internal claims and suspicion that the Niger letter may not be authentic.

Second...I hope someone is putting together a similar timeline, only with Bolton's activities thrown in to see if there are any intersections with Plame, with Niger, and with DSM.

Thanks....please continue to update and refine and repost from time to time.

As a separate effort, an overall master timeline is needed, but this is a huge job. All this stuff is inter related and timelines help flesh out the story. Could also add tons of other stuff like the August PDB, Pitt's WMD quotes, other DSM memos, Iraq bombing increases, IWR authorization, Paul ONeill's book information, Clarke's information, energy task force meetings, unauthorized transfer of 700 million, Sibel Edmonds FBI tenure and ultimate gagging, UN resolutions (what they do and do not say), creation of Office of Special Plans, Kwiatkowski information, 2002 elections, Halliburton contracts, Shinseki and Zinn cautions, Ritter and Blix statements, etc etc etc.....it would be a sad compilation of incompetenece and scandal.

[BurtWorm]

7. Cheney's office did not send Wilson.

Wilson never said they did. But the people at CIA who sent Wilson did so because they knew Cheney wanted to verify the authenticity of the documents that later proved phony.

There could be a Website like the one that connects names of players, with page after page of timelines like this my rough one for the Plame case.

[bj2110]

8. Re: Master Timeline

I agree. This is definitely a requirement to show relation of the various events around the Plame affair & DSM, including 9/11, WMD statements, the case for War, etc... the timeline should revolve around getting us to the current situation with the Plame affair and tying in the above.

And, yes, that's a huge task...perhaps we can use this thread and maybe piece it together?

[Hamlette]

9. I love the fact that when Powell spoke to the UN he didn't mention

the yellowcake. I think he said it was because the evidence was bad, or not good enough. That speech was sometime after the SOTU and before the invasion.

So, Bush's Sec. of State thought it was bunk.

Of course, my very favorite part of the whole story was the obvious parsing by Bush. He said "British intelligence has learned". That is very passive speech which allows a trap door. If you know it to be true you say "Saddam bought yellowcake."

Bush did try to say early on that he only said that British intelligence thought the intell was correct. That defense didn't go very far but might be used again.

[BurtWorm]

10. Weird: Wilson on the Iraqi delegation that visited Niger...

According to a Post article cited by the dailyhowler.com today:

<<Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq—which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."

<<According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.>>

[BurtWorm]

11. More dates need to be added at the front end

I get these from The Senate Report on Intelligence on Niger, which is available at Yuricareport.com.


Ocotber 12, 2001: The Yellowcake document surfaces. It would later prove to be a forgery. CIA, DIA the DOE were open to its being accurate, according to the Senate Report. State was skeptical. But it was understood that it was not a complete document and needed to be verified.

October 18, 2001: CIA produces the only Intel report on the document to that date, and it's just an initial assessment.

February 8, 2002: CIA produces another report citing another source alleging to give more details of an agreement between Iraq and Niger for 500 tons of uranium a year beginning in 2000.


Feb. 12, 2002: DIA produces a report that catches Cheney's attention finally. The VP asks if CIA can verify the info.