Pat Roberts: Did He or Didn't He, Will He or Won't He?

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Last year Harry Reid shut down the Senate in frustration over the stonewalling of Pat Roberts, Chairman of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and his refusal to complete the long-overdue Phase II investigation into the way the Administration handled prewar Iraq intelligence. Last week’s publication by the New York Sun of the INR memo that was given to Colin Powell to carry aboard Air Force One when he accompanied George Bush to Africa in July of 2003 seems to challenge the integrity of the Phase I report of the committee’s investigation, and some serious questions need to be answered in light of the new documents.

Critics of the Committee’s Phase I report have long held that it is a highly partisan product that went out of its way to cover for the intelligence failures of the Bush administration, and it is always the document that is cited by critics of Joe Wilson to beef up their arguments against him. But unless there is another version of the analyst’s notes attached to the INR memo, the SSCI report misstates the contents of this document in a way that supports the contention of those involved in the plot to smear Wilson that his wife had a strong hand in sending him to Niger.
Up until now, the only knowledge we’ve had of what was contained in the analyst’s report came from fragments in the SSCI report. The document is quoted on Page 40:

An INR analyst’s notes indicate that the meeting was "apparently convened by (the former ambassador’s) wife who had the idea to dispatch (him) to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue."
But over at The Next Hurrah, commenters Jeff and pollyusa note that this is not the language used in the actual memo itself:

Meeting apparently convened by Valerie Wilson, a CIA WMD managerial typ and the wife of Amb. Joe Wilson, with the idea that the agency and the larger USG could dispatch Joe to Niger to use his contacts there to sort out the Niger/Iraq uranium sale question.
In the actual memo it says that Valerie Wilson had the idea that "the agency and the larger USG could dispatch Joe to Niger." The SSCI version removes the references to the involvement of these entities and distorts the paragraph to make it look like it was all on Valerie Wilson to send her husband on the trip.

more
http://www.firedoglake.com/2006/04/20/pat-roberts-did-he-or-didnt-he-will-he-or-wont-he/

The Next Hurrah
http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/04/the_july_7_inr_.html#comment-16269243