The rightists made a massive stink out of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report which, according to the Washington Post summary, painted JoesephWilson as a liar. The Coultergeist was particularly obnoxious especially when she (falsely) referred to Valerie Plame as a CIA "benchwarmer." How many benchwarmers operate under Non-Official Cover?
Turns out the Post story got it wrong. From a response published in Salon:
The Washington Post story, meanwhile, took the disputed Senate report conclusions even further. It stated in its lead that Wilson was "specifically recommended for the mission by his wife ... contrary to what he has said publicly." In the interview, Wilson argued that the Post story failed to make clear that only the intelligence panel's Republicans, and not its Democrats, came to that conclusion. He said he has written a letter of protest to the Post.
The Post article also contained one acknowledged error: In trying to build a case that Wilson's Niger trip had actually bolstered the administration's claims, Schmidt wrote that Wilson had told the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from Niger in 1998. In fact, it was Iran that Wilson said had tried to make the purchase, as the Senate report states. The Post ran a correction.
The only serious dispute tending to impugn Wilson's version of events concerns the question of whether his wife suggested him for the job. I fail to see the importance of this issue, or how it can be used to justify Bush's infamous 16-word exercise in deception.
Wilson has persuasively defended his position against the blatherings of the Senate Republicans:
The conclusion is apparently based on one anodyne quote from a memo Valerie Plame, my wife, sent to her superiors that says, "My husband has good relations with the PM [prime minister] 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." There is no suggestion or recommendation in that statement that I be sent on the trip. Indeed it is little more than a recitation of my contacts and bona fides. The conclusion is reinforced by comments in the body of the report that a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] reports officer stated that "the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name'" (page 39) and a State Department intelligence and research officer stated 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."
In fact, Valerie was not in the meeting at which the subject of my trip was raised. Neither was the CPD reports officer. After having escorted me into the room, she [Valerie] departed the meeting to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. It was at that meeting where the question of my traveling to Niger was broached with me for the first time and came only after a thorough discussion of what the participants did and did not know about the subject.
Needless to say, conservative "journalists" refused to wait to hear this side of the story before pronouncing Wilson a liar.
Other rightists have tried to defend those 16 words by pointing to the U.K.'s Butler report. That report was damningly harsh on the deceptive intelligence leading up to the war (a side of the story ignored by G.O.P. propagandists), but it did claim that Britain had agents-in-place within Iraq whose information tended to buttress the Niger story.
The Los Angeles Times and other news outlets have called into question the reliability of this data -- data which persuaded neither the CIA nor any other non-British intelligence agency. We have no independent way of knowing who these "inside" individuals were or what position they hoped to gain in post-war Iraq. They may well have presumed (not at all unreasonably) that Chalabi would be running the place. Many believe that Chalabi's INC, which was running a fake document shop, put together the Niger forgeries in the first place.
Defectors and agents-in-place have a long history of telling their secret paymasters what they think the paymasters want to hear. Doubt it? Do some Google research. Start by typing in the names "Angleton"and "Golitsyn."
There are three major reasons for presuming that the whole "yellowcake" tale was never anything but a scam:
1. Bush distanced himself from the story and had DCI Tenet fall on his sword, even though Tenet was not really responsible. If those 16 words were verifiably true, why would Bush act embarrassed by them? Why not embrace them?
2. Niger's uranium is controlled by an international cartel. Any alleged discussion between Saddam Hussein's representatives and a Nigerian official simply would not have mattered.
3. If the story was something other than disinformation, why was it "proven" by demonstrably forged documentation? A factual allegation does not require forged evidence.
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