Latest Story on Miller and Libby

The New York Times reports on the extreme cynicism of the Bush administration’s strategy to discredit Joe Wilson.

When President Bush authorized Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff to reveal previously classified intelligence to a reporter about Saddam Hussein’s efforts to obtain uranium, that information was already being discredited by several senior officials in the administration, interviews conducted during and since that crucial period in June and July of 2003 show.

A review of the records also shows that what the aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., said he was authorized to portray to reporters as a “key judgment” by the intelligence community had in fact been given much less prominence in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that Mr. Libby drew on when he spoke with the reporter. Its lack of prominence was a reflection of doubts about its reliability, records and interviews show.

Joe Wilson’s July 6th editorial said nothing about aluminum tubes. It only concerned the question of uranium from Niger.

Even as some officials, including Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, started to reveal deep doubts that Mr. Hussein had ever sought uranium to reconstitute his nuclear program, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were seeking to disseminate information suggesting that they had acted on credible intelligence, while not discussing their actions with other top aides.

The administration knew that the African uranium allegations were not credible before the 2003 State of the Union address. Nonetheless…

Mr. Fitzgerald, in his filing, said that Mr. Libby had been authorized to tell Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, on July 8, 2003, that a key finding of the 2002 intelligence estimate on Iraq was that Baghdad had been vigorously seeking to acquire uranium from Africa.

But a week earlier, in an interview at his office, Mr. Powell told three other reporters for The Times that intelligence agencies had essentially rejected that contention, and were “no longer carrying it as a credible item” by early 2003, when he was preparing to make the case against Iraq at the United Nations.

Mr. Powell’s queasiness with some of the intelligence has been well known, but the new revelations suggest that long after he had concluded the intelligence was faulty, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby were still promoting it.

They lied about the uranium, and when they got called on it,they lied about it some more.

According to Mr. Fitzgerald’s motion, Mr. Libby testified that he was directed by Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush to describe the uranium allegations to Ms. Miller as a “key judgment” of the National Intelligence Estimate. Citing intelligence as a “key judgment” in such estimates carries great weight with policymakers, because the reports are meant to highlight the most important and solid judgments of the government’s intelligence agencies.

In fact, the estimate’s key judgments, which were officially declassified 10 days after Mr. Libby’s meeting with Ms. Miller, say nothing about the uranium allegations.

Libby was sent out to lie to Judith Miller about the information that was in the 2002 NIE about uranium from Africa. At least, that is the story they are using this week. But, as I pointed out a couple of days ago, Judy Miller didn’t need to be briefed on the contents of the 2002 NIE. She had seen the intelligence that went into the NIE before it was written. This looks like another modified limited hang-out.

Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

6 thoughts on “Latest Story on Miller and Libby”

  1. the $trillion question is who shared this with Judy in 2002? Is that why she claimed to have ‘security clearance.’ Recall that?

    This leaky business is begining to gush. Jane Hamsher over at Firedoglake provides a link to AP that “Bush Didn’t Direct Libby to Leak”“

    Bush merely instructed Cheney to “get it out” and left the details to him, said the lawyer,”

    Well that answers my question. Nuff said. But looks like this is shaping up as more than a dogfight between preznit and vice.

  2. I love how the whole story is written in a “Judy Miller?  We don’t know any Judy Miller.”  tone.

    For people who should be more familiar with her work than anybody else, they sure haven’t picked up on the fact that someone had already leaked the report to her months before this.  

    Bet they are going to be shocked, shocked I tell you, when they figure it out.

    1. more

      Just Thursday, Bush emphasized the importance of straight talk. “When the president says something, he better mean what he says,” he told a North Carolina audience. “In order to be effective, in order to maintain credibility, words have got to mean something. You just can’t say things in the job I’m in and not mean what you say.”

      In September 2003, Bush said he was distressed by the CIA leak case. “If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it, and we’ll take the appropriate action,” he said….

      White House spokesman Scott McClellan said at the time: “If anyone in this administration was involved in it (the CIA leak), they would no longer be in this administration.”…

      Republican consultant Rich Galen said the controversy was “just another in a list of issues that have come up, emotional issues, that the White House has had a hard time getting in front of.”

      The White House scrambled to assert the president’s right to selectively declassify information, with McClellan insisting there’s a difference between leaks that can compromise national security and a president’s decision to declassify information “when it is in the public interest.”

      Democrats who fail to recognize that distinction are “engaging in crass politics,” he suggested.

      To which House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi responded, “The president owes the American people the truth about his manipulation of sensitive intelligence for political purposes.”

  4. “I think it is necessary for the president and vice president to tell the American people exactly what happened,” Specter told “Fox News Sunday.”

    “There’s been enough of a showing that the president of the United States owes a specific explanation to the American people … about exactly what he did,” Specter said.

    Translation: I’m willing to carry most anything the administration calls water, but golly gosh, I  just don’t know what to say about this one now. HELP!

    P.S. Should hearings be necessary, I’d be more than happy to run them. I promise to put on a good entertaining show, let a few juicy tidbits drop to feed the ravenous mass of discontent in the country, throw a hard bone or two for the fiercest crtics to naggle over, all the while covering up the most damaging information & insuring that business as usual can carry on in this great open Democracy of ours.

    Wilson says:

    that Bush and Cheney should release transcripts of their interviews with Fitzgerald.

    “It seems to me that first and foremost, the White House needs to come clean on this matter,” Wilson said on ABC’s “This Week.” “My own view of this is that the White House owes the American people and particularly our service people who have been sent into war, an apology for having misrepresented the facts.”   link

    An apology? Umm, no, that won’t quite do it now Joe . . .

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