Wilson- Plame timeline surrounding CIA leaks

This is a composition of events surrounding the outing of CIA op and WMD specialist Valerie Plame; wife of Ambassador Joe Wilson.  It is taken from his book The Politics of Truth from the timeline near the end of the book but more so from the final handful of chapters in this book.  I’ve also added some recent events and other milestones.  I know there is a Plame Leak Timeline in the dKosopedia but it is cluttered and is much more than Wilson’s interpretation of the events.  Later today I will add any info in this list to the main list at the dKosopedia if anything should be added.

I feel this is pertinent to the present discussion and I hope it is informative.

•   1988  Joe Wilson takes position as the Deputy Ambassador to Iraq.

•    1990 Novak article on Wilson re: Iraq War I.  

“The chief American diplomat, Joe Wilson, shepherds his flock of some 800 known Americans like a village priest. At 4:30 Sunday morning, he was helping 55 wives and children of U.S. diplomats from Kuwait load themselves and their few remaining possessions on transport for the long haul on the desert to Jordan. He shows the stuff of heroism.

•   1992  George H. W. Bush appointees Wilson as ambassador to two African countries.

•   26 April 1999  George H. W. Bush (President and former Director of the CIA).

“[W]e need more protection for the methods we use to gather intelligence and more protection for our sources, particularly our human sources, people that are risking their lives for their country.  Even though I’m a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources.  They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.“

•   January 2002  Niger-Iraq nuclear connection first surfaces

•   February 2002  Wilson is asked and accepts the mission to Niger to investigate; Wilson found no evidence.

•   March 2002  Wilson delivers his report to CIA regarding the suspected uranium deal.

•   September 2002  British white paper makes an Iraq-Niger uranium connection.

•   28 January 2003  16 words are spoken by the President.

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

•   5 February 2003  Powell goes to the UN.

•   7 March 2003  IAEA, el Baradei, provides proof that the Niger-Iraq claims were based on forgeries.

•   8 March 2003  State Department says “we fell for it” regarding the forged documents.  

•   8 March 2003  Wilson indicates to the CNN that the U.S. government has more information than the state department acknowledged.

• 8 March 2003  Wilson is informed that the final decision to out his wife was made in the “Office of the Vice President – possibly attended by Dick Cheney, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Newt Gingrich, and other senior Republicans – to produce a workup on Wilson to discredit him.”

•   2 May 2003  Mission Accomplished

•   8 June 2003  Rice deflects criticism surrounding the uranium claim

•   6 July 2003 Wilson writes his article; What I didn’t find in Africa.

•   8 July 2003  First word of treason.

A friend informs Wilson that Novak believes that his wife had something to do with Wilson’s appointment to investigate the Yellow Cake claim

“He asked Novak if he could walk a block or two with him, as they were headed in the same direction; Novak acquiesced.  Striking up a conversation, my friend, without revealing that he knew me, asked Novak about the Uranium controversy.  It was a minor problem, Novak replied, and opined that the administration should have dealt with it weeks before.  My friend then asked Novak what he thought about me, and Novak answered:  “Wilson’s an asshole.  The CIA sent him.  His wife, Valerie [Plame], works for the CIA.  She’s a weapons of mass destruction specialist.  She sent him.””

Wilson’s friend went right to Wilson’s office and documented the exchange.

•   9 July 2003  Novak returns call from Wilson (made the day before) but they missed each other.

•   10 July 2003  In conversation with Novak he claimed a CIA source informed him of Plame’s position as an undercover CIA WMD specialist.  Wilson exclaimed that he couldn’t imagine why he would “blurt out to a complete stranger what he had thought he knew about my wife.”  To which Novak apologized and asked Wilson if he could confirm the claim.  Of course Wilson wouldn’t and reminded Novak that Plame had nothing to do with his stork re: Yellow Cake.  It was about the 16 words in the State of the Union address.

Wilson noted a story written in 1990 by Novak and Evans and suggested that Novak “check his files” before writing about him.  Wilson claimed he was “hardly antiwar, just anti-dumb war.”  Novak apologized.

•   11 July 2003  Condoleezza Rice skirted the question regarding the 16 words claiming that the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) would have informed someone.

•   a few days before 14 July 2003

Wilson writes that Walter Pincus (WaPo) alerted Wilson that “they are coming after you.”  Also see 28 September 2003.

*   14 July 2003 Novak writes this

“Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson’s wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. “I will not answer any question about my wife,” Wilson told me.

this is completely different than what Novak claimed 4 days earlier; he said that his source was a CIA source not a “senior administration official”.  To this Novak said that he misspoke.

Wilson informed Plame and described her as “crestfallen” and wondering if her 20 years of work was all a loss.  She immediately started to “minimize the fallout” of this treasonous act.

•   17 July 2003  David Corn in the Nation publishes “A White House smear”.  Personal call from Corn informs Wilson that this leak was a crime.

•   20 July 2003  Andrea Mitchell informs Wilson that a senior White House source told her to press the story of the Wilson family.  Not the 16 words.

•   21 July 2003 [morning]   Wilson does interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell.  In this interview the editors at the NBC evening news had omitted important qualifiers in the wording Wilson used to talk about his wife.  This, in Wilson’s words, “changed the tenor of the interview and gave CIA lawyers cause to briefly consider whether or not I myself might have been in violation of the same law of the senior administration officials…”.  Wilson requested a copy of the raw footage for future use but was denied.  Wilson requested Mitchell save a copy; she agreed.

•   21 July 2003 [afternoon]   Chris Matthews informs Wilson that Karl Rove considered his wife “fair game”.

•   22 July 2003  Wilson appears on the Today show.

•   22 July 2003  Stephen Hadley, Rice subordinate, admits the 16 words should have been deleted from the Presidents speech.  He offered to resign but was denied by the President.

•   24 July 2003  The CIA reported “possible violations of criminal law” to the Attorney General John Ashcroft.  (via Conyers letter reply)

•   24 July 2003  Wilson appears on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Here he shows Stewart a letter from Dick Cheney asking Wilson to be “a cochairman of the Washington, D.C., campaign to reelect Bush-Cheney.

•   30 July 2003  Rice “grudgingly” admits the contents of the speech were her responsibility; never offered her resignation.

•   30 July 2003  The CIA reported to the DoJ      (via Conyers letter reply)

•   4 August 2003  Paul Wolfowitz quotes Wilson’s claim that he believes that there will be WMDs found in Iraq.

•  12 August 2003  The Wall Street Journal editorial page charged that Wilson was “moving the goal post” in Iraq by saying that the WMDs did not meet the “imminent threat test”; which the Journal claims is a phrase the President and his administration had never used in the first place.

20 August 2003  Wilson at a town meeting in Seattle with Congressman Jay Inslee; “wouldn’t it be fun to see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs?  And I measure my words.”

•   14 September 2003  Wilson publishes “Seeking Honesty in U.S. policy” in The San Jose Mercury.

•   28 September 2003 MSNBC has announced that Justice Department has begun its investigation.

•   28 September 2003  the Washington Post quotes a senior administration official saying “that before Novak’s column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife.”  …  “They [the leakers] alleged that Wilson, who was not a CIA employee, was selected for the Niger mission partly because his wife had recommended him.”

•   29 September 2003   John Conyers, Jr. sends letter to the CIA, the response is cited several times above.  The point is the time lapse is large for such an important matter of security to the nation.

•   29 September 2003  DoJ requests the FBI investigate the leak.

•   30 September 2003  Ed Gillespie on CNN said Wilson had donated to the Gore and Kerry campaign.  Which was true but Gillespie failed to mention contributions to Republicans.

•   1 October 2003 Novack writes this

The leak now under Justice Department investigation is described by former Ambassador Wilson and critics of President Bush’s Iraq policy as a reprehensible effort to silence them. To protect my own integrity and credibility, I would like to stress three points. First, I did not receive a planned leak. Second, the CIA never warned me that the disclosure of Wilson’s wife working at the agency would endanger her or anybody else. Third, it was not much of a secret.

•   1 October 2003  On the set of Face the Nation Senator Chuck Hagel expressed “bewilderment” at Republicans who were spinning a possible high crime into a partisan attack.  During the broadcast he claimed that Plame was not a partisan issue.  WTF?

•   7 October 2003  The President, when asked about the leak, said “I want to know the truth.”  But fail to hold his senior people accountable.

•   October [first week]  investigators begin to collect documents.

•   15 October 2003  Wilson receives the truth teller of the year award.

•   October [late]  Ken Star advisor during Whitewater, Samuel Dash’s Newsday article argues that the PATRIOT Act should be invoked.

“If, as it now seems likely, top White House aids leaked the identity of an American undercover agent, they may have committed an act of domestic terrorism as defined by the dragnet language of the Patriot Act their boss wanted so much to help him catch terrorists.”

He cited Section 802 which defines domestic terrorism as an act that endangers human life while violating criminal laws of the U. S. in order to “intimidate or coerce a civilian population.”

•   24 December 2003 Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board finds that the White House made a “questionable claim” with respect to the Iraqi nuclear ambitions.

•   30 December 2003  Ashcroft labels this issue a “grave matter” indicates that it shouldn’t be managed by partisan politics.

•   21 January 2004  The federal grand jury begins hearing testimony.

•   23 January 2004  David Key resigns as head of the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group; admitting that Iraq had no WMDs.

•   30 January 2004  Conyers receives letter response.

•   3 June 2004   CIA Director George Tenet resigns.

•   3 June 2004  Bush and his administration consult lawyers.

•   27 June 2005  SCOTUS refuses to hear reporters, Miller and Cooper, appeal.

•   30 June 2005  Time magazine will hand over Cooper notes surrounding the leak case

•   6 July 2005  Wilson statement

The sentencing of Judith Miller to jail for refusing to disclose her sources is the direct result of the culture of unaccountability that infects the Bush White House from top to bottom.  President Bush’s refusal to enforce his own call for full cooperation with the Special Counsel has brought us to this point. Clearly, the conspiracy to cover up the web of lies that underpinned the invasion of Iraq is more important to the White House than coming clean on a serious breach of national security.  Thus has Ms Miller joined my wife, Valerie, and her twenty years of service to this nation as collateral damage in the smear campaign launched when I had the temerity to challenge the President on his assertion that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium yellowcake from Africa.

The real victims of this cover-up, which may have turned criminal, are the Congress, the Constitution and, most tragically, the Americans and Iraqis who have paid the ultimate price for Bush’s folly.