Plamegate: The Movie

Martin Longman

19 years ago

If I didn’t have to spend all my time blogging, I’d begin work on a spy thriller screenplay. The bulk of the movie would take place in a three week window in July 2003. I’d have flashbacks to 2000, when shadowy ex-operatives began forging the Niger documents. To late 2001, when those documents were leaked to the Italian intelligence services. To early 2002 when Wilson was despatched to Niger to investigate. To October 2002, when Tenet told Hadley to take the claims out of the Cincinnati speech. To January 2003, when he told Hadley to take the claims out of the State of the Union speech.

:::flip:::

Maybe I would weave a love story out of Joe and Valerie’s courtship into the bargain. But stuff like this, are what great spy novels/movies are made of:

In a strange twist in the investigation, the grand jury — acting on a tip from Wilson — has questioned a person who approached Novak on Pennsylvania Avenue on July 8, 2003, six days before his column appeared in The Post and other publications…The person, whom Wilson declined to identify to The Post, asked Novak about the “yellow cake” uranium matter and then about Wilson…

Novak told the person that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA as a specialist in weapons of mass destruction and had arranged her husband’s trip to Niger, Wilson said. Unknown to Novak, the person was a friend of Wilson and reported the conversation to him…WP: 7/27/05

Yes, I can see it all coming together in my mind’s eye. Looking back, I can see where it all began to go wrong for the Bush administration:

At several turns, when Bush might have taken responsibility for the language in his Jan. 28 address to the country, he and his top advisers resisted, claiming others — particularly those in the intelligence community — were responsible.[snip]

White House finger-pointing in turn prompted the CIA’s allies to fire back by offering evidence that ran counter to official White House explanations of events and by helping to reveal a chronology of events that forced the White House to change its story.

The latest turn came Tuesday, when deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley and White House communications director Dan Bartlett revealed the existence of two previously unknown memos showing that Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet had repeatedly urged the administration last October to remove a similar claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa.
WP: 7/24/03

It wasn’t long before the White House realized the errors of their ways:

What is unusual about this episode is that the combatants are officials at the White House and the CIA — and that the White House has tried without success to resolve the controversy. The biggest lesson learned so far, said one administration official, is that “you don’t pick a bureaucratic fight with the CIA.” To which a White House official replied, “That wasn’t our intention, but that certainly has been the perception.”

Oh, but so much more was going on behind the scenes. Condi Rice publicly blamed the CIA for the sixteen words even though Tenet had repeatedly warned her deputy, Hadley, off making those claims. Then they asked Tenet to shut up and take the blame. On the very same morning that Tenet gave his mea culpa, Karl Rove was on the phone to Matt Cooper blowing the cover (once again) of Valerie Wilson.

But even earlier, Novak had her name. And Novak called the CIA for confirmation:

Harlow, the former CIA spokesman, said in an interview yesterday that he testified last year before a grand jury about conversations he had with Novak at least three days before the column was published. He said he warned Novak, in the strongest terms he was permitted to use without revealing classified information, that Wilson’s wife had not authorized the mission and that if he did write about it, her name should not be revealed.

Harlow said that after Novak’s call, he checked Plame’s status and confirmed that she was an undercover operative. He said he called Novak back to repeat that the story Novak had related to him was wrong and that Plame’s name should not be used. But he did not tell Novak directly that she was undercover because that was classified.

My oh my. Novak’s ‘two senior administration officials’ sure must have been convincing for Novak to ignore the warning and advice of the CIA’s spokeman. This screenplay just keeps getting more exciting.

Is it any wonder the CIA is on the warpath? They repeatedly warned the National Security Council and the Vice-President’s office that the Niger story was bogus and not to include it in speeches. When their advice was ignored, Tenet was blamed and forced to take responibility for the error.

As part of this effort, then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley spoke with Tenet during the week about clearing up CIA responsibility for the 16 words, even though both knew the agency did not think Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

Then his spokesman’s warnings to Novak were ignored and one of his agents was uncovered. Now, if I only knew how this movie ends.

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