How did it really start?
To explain my concern, let us first flash back to Watergate.
In the early 1970s, Democrats and lefties were so grateful for the prospect of ending the detested Nixon presidency that they (for the most part) neglected to ask some difficult questions. Why did "former" CIA man McCord leave a second piece of tape on the door, thereby blowing the break-in? Why did he write the letter which transformed the burglary into a national scandal? Why did Alexander Butterfield (a man many Nixon staffers considered "spooky") voluntarily disclose the existence of the tapes?
At that time, and for some years afterward, neither right nor left explored such problems. Neither side wanted to contemplate the notion that Nixon was being undone by enemies within the intelligence community.
Now flash forward to 2003, and ask yourself a couple of questions:
Why did Cheney's office ask the CIA to send someone to Niger to "check out" the forged documents? And who chose Joseph Wilson for that job?
Cheney, I am convinced, was "in on the joke" from the beginning. That is, he must have known that the yellowcake documents were forgeries. (Hell, I would not be utterly surprised to learn that he gave the order to have them forged.)
And even if he didn't know, his first move should have been to knock on the door of an expert in questioned documents.
For our present purposes, let us presume (and this is no unfair presumption) that Dick already knew the Niger yellowcake allegation to be nonsense. Let us further presume (again, this is not an outlandish idea) that a well-connected neocon cabal created those documents.
What, then, would be the purpose of Wilson's safari? How could anyone at the White House expect any CIA-chosen asset in Africa to "confirm" a hoax?
As you know, right-wing propagandists are pomoting the lie that Wilson claimed that Cheney personally chose him for this mission. In response, Democrats and other truth-tellers have noted Wilson's actual words, as revealed in this interview with Wolf Blitzer:
WILSON: Well, look, it's absolutely true that neither the vice president nor Dr. Rice nor even George Tenet knew that I was traveling to Niger.Again: If (and I strongly suspect this to be the case) Cheney knew that the documents were bogus, what would be the point of this exercise?
What they did, what the office of the vice president did, and, in fact, I believe now from Mr. Libby's statement, it was probably the vice president himself...
BLITZER: Scooter Libby is the chief of staff for the vice president.
WILSON: Scooter Libby.
They asked essentially that we follow up on this report -- that the agency follow up on the report. So it was a question that went to the CIA briefer from the Office of the Vice President. The CIA, at the operational level, made a determination that the best way to answer this serious question was to send somebody out there who knew something about both the uranium business and those Niger officials that were in office at the time these reported documents were executed.
We come now to the question of who chose Wilson. The rightists have always claimed, falsely, that he was chosen by his wife. Wilson says only that the choice was made by someone at the "operational level."
Who might that be? It wasn't Valerie Plame/Wilson. So who?
Earlier today, a guest on Al Franken's show made a wry comment about this situation. Just which audience was Novak playing to when he outed Valerie Wilson as CIA -- the people who listen to Pacifica radio? I mean, what other crowd would consider that revelation shocking and damning?
Answer: The neocons.
They now vilify the CIA -- or rather, they despise the large anti-neocon sector of the CIA. (The intelligence community is not ideologically monolithic.) That's why the neocons started their own spy shop in the Pentagon.
A fair amount of the current anti-Wilson spew is actually anti-Agency spew. Listen closely and you'll hear it. Neoconservatives are pissed off at the Company, and many a Company man feels a similar antipathy.
Now let's proceed to a third question: Just when did that cabal of White House insiders order a "work-up" on Joseph Wilson? The "work up" included the information about Valerie Plame, and apparently listed her by that name, not as "Valerie Wilson."
The circumstances surrounding the choice of Joseph Wilson are the subject of this important Daily Kos post, which focuses on a June 10, 2003 State Department memo centering on Wilson and his wife. The memo is now a matter of no small concern to prosecutor Fitzgerald.
The date is important. Wilson did not publish his op-ed article until four weeks later -- July 6, 2003.
Today's Los Angeles Times claims that Rove and his comrades became semi-obsessed with Wilson after the July 6 piece hit ink. But the circulation of the afore-cited memo (and other evidence) indicates that White House neocons ordered a "work up" on Wilson well before he made his contribution to the New York Times.
Why?
Obviously, they weren't peeved by what he wrote, since (at that time) he had not written anything. They found him annoying for some other reason.
I do not yet have a fully-formed theory. But here are a few ideas:
1. I suspect that the person who chose Wilson may have been then-DCI George Tenet or his second in command, John McLaughlin, both of whom were later "axed" to leave by a sorely displeased George Bush. In a long-ago post, I asserted my belief that Bush's actions (or inactions) in the run-up to 9/11 angered McLaughlin.
We can feel certain that neither he nor Tenet appreciated the administration's attempts to blame the CIA (and only the CIA) for the torrents of bogus pre-war intelligence. And we can only imagine Tenet's reaction after Bush studiously ignored all pre-9/11 warnings issued by the intelligence community.
Even so, Tenet did whatever he could to remain within Bush' good grace for as long as possible. Biding his time, as it were.
2. The neocons seem to have expected Tenet to chose someone pliable for the Niger trip -- someone who would go along with a carefully prepared disinformation scheme. This scheme may have been far more elaborate than we can now guess.
I believe that the CIA man visiting Africa was supposed to perform some specific action that would have credibilized the yellowcake fraud. In other words: He was supposed to perform a covert op.
What sort of op? Well, one can only imagine. Perhaps the neocons expected Wilson to plant evidence during his Niger excursion?
Yes, I am speculating. But this speculative scenario makes a lot more sense to me than does the "official" story. According to the Accepted Scenario, the CIA's man in Africa was supposed to do some Sherlock Holmesing in Niger to "confirm" a document which the neocons back in D.C. surely had to know was a fraud.
3. Joseph Wilson either was not in on the plan -- or he was in the know, but refused to perform as requested.
Incidentally, I think we can fairly say that Wilson was, is, a CIA asset. He may or may not have received the spook training his wife underwent. Even so, conventional wisdom holds that half the people in the diplomatic corps are really working for the intelligence community. Given what we now know about Wilson, would you categorize him as a "spooky" diplomat or a "non-spooky" diplomat?
The point is this: Whatever the hell it was that he was supposed to do in Niger, Wilson didn't do it. He followed a different agenda.
Which may well mean that the CIA followed a different agenda.
Now go back to the beginning of this post and re-read the paragraph about Watergate.
14 comments:
That's some interesting hypothesizing. Here's a variation.
First, remember that Bush got inspectors into Iraq and then said the inspections never happened, yet got away with it. Now let's try my variation.
Cheney knows it's all a hoax, but to please whomever, he needs to send someone to investigate. So he sends someone and then the regime immediately prepares to slime that someone. They know Wilson will find 'nothing', but it doesn't matter, because he can be slimed.
It would have worked, if the CIA had not been brought into the deal.
Joe,
Here is the link to your piece about McLaughlin: “New Man at CIA”
quite fascinating, joe.
it has certainly smelled of something just shy of a sting - from both sides - for quite a while.
like you, given cheney's connections to such artists, i believe he knew the niger document was a forgery, and may well have ordered it, and of course he was pressuring the cia to produce supporting data. they balked at taking the doc at face value, cheney insisted, and maybe this little trip was the compromise. i don't know that it's necessary to impose a VP scheme to plant anything there (or even a company plan to bring them down), just have the diplomat be as eager as they were to read everything into anything that could be found (or made). the cia, being a bit more reality based, would have likely been ok with the choice, as they likely knew wilson well enough to know he'd do a reality report. the WH freaks, of course, are swimming in the kool-aid, so they just believe everyone voting red will agree with them.
i suspect that dick et al. originally felt wilson was perfect, though they would never admit to that now. he was, after all, praised to the skies by 41. but wilson himself has noted that he was making semi-private complaints about those 16 words in the sotu soon after W sputtered them, so it makes sense that the WH would be pissed enough to pre-emptively do a work-up on him. wilson, that is. already prepped for his op-ed.
i'm just not sure that even the CIA would be ballsy enough to orchestrate such a demise given the climate two years ago. nixon was in some pr trouble during his second campaign, which was why CREP felt the need to do the dirty tricks in the first place. two years ago, W was flyin' high, mission accomplished, all that rubbish, so i kinda question if the cia would go that far out on a limb.
what i think is more likely is that wilson simply misread his mission, failed to catch the 'wink-wink' attached to the directive to get to the bottom of that letter. whoever worded the mission must have known (a) that even by word of mouth the real intention could not be specified, and (b) surely this republican hero who hated hussein and was loved by the chimp in chief's father would be as deluded as they were in believing whatever served their purposes. these guys would have never dreamed someone might actually go for the truth; what a concept! i just really feel that whole cabal is that deluded; they're that pathological. integrity never occurs to them, for their own actions or those of others.
so wilson doesn't read the script, and the cabal gets collectively pissed, and when he writes his op-ed, they're ready.
and i think this is where it gets pretty interesting. they probably believed the company set them up by suggesting wilson, like they'd know he'd turn on them, given how paranoid they are and how much resistance to the fact-fixing the cia put up. one also must wonder just how much plame's voice emerged in this matter. the wmd thang, after all, was her beat. and she likely was not producing what they wanted to hear likely even before her husband refused to sing their tune.
in any case, novak's retaliation piece has always been way too curious to me. i agree that it just does not make enough sense for them to go to such lengths just to get back at wilson, or even to warn off other whistleblowers. this move also destroyed an NOC agent, not to mention a highly sensitive and important front company. though because all this was top secret, no one can talk about any of it, even now (though larry johnson has a piece out today setting plame's record straight). the novak piece was, seems to me, the shot across the bow. actually, joe, though i don't necessarily feel the cia had a plan in place to do these buggers in, i do think you're on to something in noting that novak's piece was worded not for the public so much as for the neocons AND the cia. from the way you've framed it, it now sounds more like a declaration of war, war against the company, and dudes on our side, take note. therefore it was not just rove's vengence that got in their way (and will hopefully do them in); it was the entire stinkin' lot of 'em.
at that point, though, i think the cia was aware of just what a rotten mess the WH was creating in every direction, but especially with this little turd blossom, and made a very clear decision to, well, how should we put this? not get in their way? these folks are, after all, so full of their own crap it won't take much for them to be swimmin' in it.
no doubt the company has been more than happy, though, to shovel more on whenever they had the chance.
and, just a last note, i doubt very seriously that wilson is in any way an 'agent'; he has just been way too vocal, which is not the way they operate.
this is so fun; like playing clue, which reminds me: billmon has a little contest going. folks should check that out.
You're pursuing a perspective I have pushed (and been ignored on, which is that there is a secret war going on in D.C., with subtly-shifting allegiances. The war is basically between those who want Bushco out, and those who still support him. The intelligence community (FBI, CIA, etc.) is increasingly disenchanted with Bushco, and the anti-Bush forces within it are being joined by corporate/political powers that feel Bush has to go. That is why the MSM has magically joined "our" side. Not because they finally heard our voices.
The tide has turned. Once these powerful and wealthy forces turn against anyone, even a President, he is doomed. Doesn't matter how many Bible Belt fundamentalists wave anti-abortion placards. The forces I'm talking about represent power/wealth beyond imagination. And they aren't going to let it be blown to hell by a figurehead lunatic who blithely anticipates Armageddon and the Rapture.
...Unfortunately for us, it is too late to avoid economic Armageddon. Sell your overpriced real estate, and your overvalued collectibles. Get down to your local coin shop, and purchase all the bullion gold and silver coins you can lay hands on. And you might want to stop at the gun store on the way home.
After Bush, the deluge.
Joe,
I'm still wondering if Gannon/Guckert played a "role" in any of this and if so, what it was. He interviewed Wilson and mentioned the memo (which he COULD have read about in the newspaper). Any ideas?
Very interesting analysis. I also suspect career CIA people are sore about being blamed for BOTH 9/11 intelligence failures (which actually was Bush's studiedly ignoring intelligence while "cutting brush" on the pig farm all August) and then being blamed for bad intelligence on Iraq, when Cheney was pressuring them to provide false intelligence and then circumventing CIA intel analysis entirely through stovepiping and the Pentagon Office of Special Plans.
One insight I would suggest: If you ever have worked for any organization as a staffer or consultant (and I have), if you write a memo that the organization thinks is wrong, they ask you to write another draft. It is therefore inconceiveable to me that the CIA was "forced" to accept Wilson's conclusions. If they disagreed, they would have just told him to re-write it, or the memo would have disappeared into the circular file.
We can safely conclude that whoever sent Wilson thoroughly agreed with his conclusions.
On the other hand, Sy Hersh's excellent reporting, including reporting on the forged Niger documents, shows that the likely origins of those docs was British Intel, MI6, which was entirely on board in producing faked intel on Iraq at the request of the Americans. This is one import of the Downing Street Memo, as well.
And the CIA knew at the time of Wilson's trip what the White House wanted; Cheney was pressuring the Company already for stovepiped or bad intel.
So this all bolsters your conclusions that there was a conflict within the CIA between those who were working with the Brits to "sex up" the Iraq intel, and some faction that was "reality based." Identifying the "reality based community" at the CIA, which is probably the majority of careerists, will be important.
One other nugget, which links to your Nixon comparison. The people who are alleged to have brought down Nixon were Plans directorate guys -- ie black ops types, who purposely ran a spectacularly (ie purposely) incompetent black op that culminated in Watergate. The black ops guys in the CIA today, or what's left of that part of it, is basically staring at complete extinction, because neo-con Rumsfeld, wants to consolidate all black ops within the Pentagon as part of his vaunted reorganization. (Hence the kidnapping, torture, rendition, mostly carried out by the military, while the CIA and FBI stand by and write legalistic memos telling their people to STAY OUT OF THE ROOM while their military counterparts systematically extort bad intel and f**k up any legal basis for prosecution of detainees) There are probably a lot of black ops guys who absolutely hate the neocon cabal. I even once heard an Air America interview with Wilson in which it was speculated that the Niger forgeries were created in Europe by retired CIA black ops guys just to embarass the neo-cons, showing they would fall for such amatuerish forgeries that the Int. Atomic Energy Comm. was ablso to show they were forgeries in a couple of hours.
Between the battering of analysis by neo-con intelligence bastardization and the final destruction of black ops, I would guess there are a lot of CIA types who want to bring down the bush regime.
I think Joe Wilson was set up as a foil from the get-go. His Wife, or, more likely, her former associates were the target.
When Bob Novak outed her, he used her maiden name. Why? To communicate her identity to people who knew her when she worked overseas in the 80's and 90's, as opposed to those who know her as Mrs. Wilson, working at Langley.
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Although Colin Powell will always be on my shit list for his performance at the UN when he told the partyline White House lies to promote the US war in Iraq.
Still...Colin Powell refused to use the false info about Iraq seeking yellowcake in Niger in his UN speech. And it was widely reported that when he read the speech that was written for him, he said "This is bullshit" regarding the yellowcake in Niger part.
He knew the allegations were false. What else did Colin Powell know? And when did he know it? He is a huge cog in this GOP cover-up.
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I highly recommend "The Yankee And Cowboy War: Conspiracies From Dallas To Watergate and Beyond" by Carl Oglesby. I have the Berkley Medallion Book edition, published in 1976. Oglesby, who also was involved in a group in Boston investigating JFK's murder, frames American history and current events as a struggle between the "Old Money" of the eastern seaboard and "New Millionaires", or "Cowboys", of the west. What's relevant to Joe's discussion here is that Oglesby maintains that the CIA has two warring factions, one being the Ivy League intelligence gatherers and analysts and the other the "cowboy" black ops group. He also contends that McCord was a "double agent" - a black ops type who was really working for the "Establishment" types. A couple of months ago I posted here that Gannon/Guckert was like the "piece of tape" McCord left in Watergate. I think he's another McCord. I also think Unirealist is right on. Cheney has eviscerated the CIA and the professional military. I believe they are aligned against this cabal. That's why we're getting so much information about Gitmo, Downing Street, etc., etc. People are talking with a purpose in mind. Mike Ruppert reported a couple of years ago that there were rumors of a coup circulating in Washington. Nothing would surprise me, including another "terrorist attack". I'm afraid of that, but I also agree with Unirealist that Economic Armageddon is a certainty. Well, now that I've freaked myself out, I think I'll retire. Thanks for your Blog, Joe; it's one of my daily requirements.
urbanmeemaw: I agree with you on Oglesby. "Yankee-Cowboy War" is one of the essential political books. You don't need to have an interest or belief in conspiracy theory to find value in the books primary thesis.
After I first read that book (circa 1988), I saw everything -- EVERYTHING -- in terms of Oglesby's Yankee/Cowboy dichotomy. And there came a point where I had to put the book aside, because it threatened to become something of an intellectual straightjacket.
When I got the chance to speak to Oblesby (nice guy, by the way) he semi-agreed that the first Bush presidency threatened to put the Y-v-C theory into rewrite, since GHWB was very much a Yankee pretending to be a Cowboy. That is also true, to some extent ,of his young'n, although in the current case, I think we are seeing the triumph of all the worst aspects of Cowboyism.
I would also recommend Peter Viereck's "Metapolitics," which traces a dichotomy similar to the Yankee-Cowboy split within Germany in the years leading up to the triumph of Nazism.
Oglesby's thesis nicely explained the political reality of the time he wrote -- but does it apply to today? Or have we reached the point documented by Viereck, where one cultural tendency has emerged victorious -- with disastrous results?
I wonder!
Here's a theory of how come Novak called Ms. Wilson 'Plame'. It is that the memo we are talking about was merely one of the sources of information the traitors had at hand.
What makes this memo special, is that Ari Fleischer knew about it. That's how Fitzgerald came to know about it. Ari Fleischer was sick of his job, took a new one outside of the regime, and likely was the source of the 'new information' that caused John Ashcroft to quit protecting Bush.
You can find good stuff on the BOGUS NIGER URANIUM DOCUMENTS -- Wilson knew they were bogus without having ever even seen them! -- by clicking here, and then on the links at the bottom of the left-hand column...
I believe Wilson is "getting even" with Rove by outing him with his umlot. You know the umlot over the name Roverer which may rip the mask off another of the Nazi Establisment, hell bent on destroying our fair slumbering land.
Wilson is the source, isen't he, of the new spelling of Rove to Roverer of the "gramps was architect of a death camp", geneology.
If true..then he is yet another of the demon spawn, sent over here, after WWll, to help the phantom armies of the night, sucjk the blood out of Ms. Liberty.
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