They Were Talking about Wilson’s Wife before Wilson’s Article Came Out

[BR_Parkway]

Finally, some coverage of the fact that the (mis)Administration was trying to derail the WMD investigations and used retaliating against Wilson as a cover up.

http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2007/031207BURNS.shtml

Every major news outlet reporting on the CIA leak and the Libby trial has taken the line that CIA analyst Valerie Plame was outed in retaliation for a column by her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, published on July 6, 2003. But unrefuted testimony and documents in the trial of I. Lewis Libby, formerly Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, reveal that administration discussion of Mrs. Wilson, her CIA status and Wilson’s trip began several weeks before Wilson’s column appeared.

If Wilson’s New York Times op-ed column, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” had set off the chain of events that resulted in exposing Plame, those events would have begun on July 6 of that year.

Instead the perjury and obstruction trial of Libby, convicted on four of five counts, has demonstrated that tense colloquies about Mrs. Wilson took place in the administration substantially before Wilson’s column came out:

• May 29, 2003 – Libby calls then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, according to Grossman’s testimony, asking how and why Joe Wilson was sent on a trip to Niger about uranium.
  
  
• “late May and early June, 2003” -- Grossman gives oral interim reports to Libby that Wilson was the ambassador who went to Niger (mentioned but not named in a May 6 New York Times piece by Nicholas Kristof, “Missing in Action: Truth”).
  
  
• June 9, 2003 -- Grossman has a conversation with Wilson, who is “upset” that Condoleezza Rice had claimed on "Meet the Press" that the White House was unaware of doubts about the Niger uranium story. (In his book, Wilson says this conversation “elicited the suggestion that I might have to write the story myself”; he got in touch with the New York Times the same day. p.332.)
  
  
• June 9, 2003 – classified documents from CIA are faxed to the Office of the Vice President to Libby and colleague John Hannah, mentioning the Wilson trip but not naming Wilson.
  
  
• June 10, 2003 – a classified State Department memo written by State’s Bureau of Intelligence & Research (INR) gives Grossman the background on Wilson’s Niger trip, names Valerie Wilson as Wilson’s wife and as “a CIA WMD manager.” The memo, like previous memos, also debunks the Niger uranium story.
  
  
• June 11, 2003 – Robert L. Grenier, longtime CIA official and “Iraq mission manager” and “point person for Iraq” in 2002 and 2003, receives a phone call from Libby, then Libby summons him from a meeting with the CIA Director to follow up about Wilson; Grenier tells Libby that Wilson’s wife is in CIA. (Grenier now works for Kroll Associates.)
  
  
• June 11/12, 2003 – Marc Grossman has a “30-second discussion” about Mrs. Wilson with Libby, according to Grossman’s testimony.
  
  
• June 12, 2003 – Libby is informed by Cheney in a phone call that Wilson’s wife is in CIA (handwritten note: “CP: his wife works in that div”). Walter Pincus' Washington Post article that day mentions the trip but not Wilson by name.
  
  
• June 12, 2003 – David Addington, Cheney’s government lawyer, receives the same notes from Libby’s office mentioning that Wilson’s wife worked in the Counter-Proliferation Division (typed copy).
  
  
• June 13, 2003 – Richard L. Armitage, then Deputy Secretary of State and formerly a PNAC signatory boosting war with Iraq, tells Bob Woodward in a taped interview, with expletives, that Mrs. Wilson works for CIA. Bogus macho-man duet suggests that Mrs. Wilson sent Wilson on the Niger trip.
  
  
• June 14, 2003 – CIA daily briefer Craig Schmall briefs Libby at Libby’s home; notes question about Wilson (“ex-amb”) and the Niger trip; notes Wilson and Valerie Wilson by name.
  
  
• June 23, 2003 – Libby has a discussion with Judith Miller, mentions Wilson’s wife at CIA. (Miller had returned to the U.S. from Iraq on June 8.)
  
  
• July 6, 2003 – Joseph Wilson’s op-ed criticizing the Niger story appears in the New York Times.

Going into the trial, I too thought of the CIA leak as retaliation for Wilson’s column and took the same line in previous postings, like most other writers. Joseph Wilson’s book, The Politics of Truth, takes the same tack. But Wilson did not have access to the behind-the-scenes discussions about his wife now revealed publicly. Retaliation there was, in spades, but retaliation cannot have been the whole story. Theorists who believe the aim was partly to disable the Counter-Proliferation Division in CIA where Valerie Plame worked may be right.

[luckyleftyme2]

1. is it time?

is it time to purge some of these intel organizations? is it the old v.s the new? territorial rights? or just plain back stabbing to get ahead? they must have the same
problems in the work force like we all do. I mean after all they are human! there must be peer groups,clicks and the ever present my daddy,my family,my house,wrong side of the tracks etc. we all deal with.

[leveymg]

2. The revenge against Wilson thing was a cover-story. They didn't want the public

to know that this was part of a larger program to effectively destroy the CIA. One of the first things the Bush-Cheney Administration did when they came into office was to shut down the largest program being run by CIA Counter-Proliferation Division. They did that by outing A.Q. Khan in June 2001, and then outed Plame in July 2003. See, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/7/112015/2282

OUTING THE CIA (Pt. 2): Cheney Attempted to Destroy CIA Counter-Proliferation
by leveymg
Wed Feb 07, 2007 at 09:11:44 AM PDT
Ambassador Wilson wasn’t the only target of the outing of Valerie Plame. Plame’s employer was. Virtually from the day it took power, Bush-Cheney dismantled the CIA’s weapons control regime and counter-proliferation programs that had targeted countries purchasing nuclear technologies from Pakistan.

The real effect of the Bush-Cheney Administration's actions was the destruction of the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD), where Valerie Plame worked in the Iran and Iraq units.

The intentional exposure of Valerie Plame on July 14, 2003 wasn’t just a personal vendetta or attempt to silence critics, it was the culmination of a program to undermine the work of a U.S. intelligence program that had been tracking a global nuclear proliferation network centered in Pakistan, run by A.Q. Khan, and financed by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Countries.

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You must enter an Intro for your Diary Entry between 300 and 1150 characters long.
Ambassador Wilson wasn’t the only target of the outing of Valerie Plame. Plame’s employer was. Virtually from the day it took power, Bush-Cheney dismantled the CIA’s weapons control regime and counter-proliferation programs that had targeted countries purchasing nuclear technologies from Pakistan.

The real effect of the Bush-Cheney Administration's actions was the destruction of the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division (CPD), where Valerie Plame worked in the Iran and Iraq units.

The intentional exposure of Valerie Plame on July 14, 2003 wasn’t just a personal vendetta or attempt to silence critics, it was the culmination of a program to undermine the work of a U.S. intelligence program that had been tracking a global nuclear proliferation network centered in Pakistan, run by A.Q. Khan, and financed by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Countries.

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[papau]

3. The prior 5/30 story in the NY Times that didn't name the source gave away Wilson by

its details - http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/05/30/nyt.kristof/index.html

It was Wilson they wanted to hurt - and having a wife in the stopping WMD spreading to Iran unit might screw up the planned next adventure by exposing the lies to be said about Iran.

It was a twofer - making it a "no-brainer" for fratboy Bush.

[Old and In the Way]

4. We know the crime was committed...what was the motive?

Iran certainly could be part of it. It was on Libby's mind in July of 2003.....


“You went into jail in the summer. It is fall now. You will have stories to cover—Iraqi elections and suicide bombers, biological threats and the Iranian nuclear program. Out West, where you vacation, the aspens will already be turning. They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them. Come back to work—and life. Until then, you will remain in my thoughts and prayers. With admiration, Scooter Libby.”

This was right after Mission Accomplished and before the next marketing rollout...I wonder if they would have waited until the summer of 2004 to really roll that one out?

[BR_Parkway]

5. Great catch, I've read that note so many times before and never

emphasized the Iranian connection