I thought I’d keep going with my theme of journalists that do the bidding of our intelligence agencies. But, it does get a little complicated when the government begins to war with itself. In the lead up to and aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, the State Department and CIA were in a battle with the Pentagon and the Office of the Vice-President (OVP). And, even that is oversimplifying matters. For example, the OVP had people like John Bolton at State, while George Tenet was a largely compliant partner with the OVP, even as his agency kicked and screamed beneath him. Each of these factions had and has their own journalistic assets.
One journalist whose first allegiance was clearly to the OVP is PNAC signatory Clifford D. May. Joseph Wilson wrote his famous editorial on July 6, 2003. On July 8, 2003 Scooter Libby met with Judy Miller at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C. On July 11, 2003, Clifford May published a scathing attack on Joseph Wilson in the National Review. Tell me if you think May’s talking points were faxed or dictated over the phone by one I. Scooter Libby?
It also would have
been useful for the New York Times and others seeking Wilson’s
words of wisdom to have provided a little background on him. For example:
He was an outspoken opponent of U.S. military intervention in Iraq.
He’s an “adjunct scholar” at the Middle
East Institute — which advocates for Saudi interests. The March
1, 2002 issue of the Saudi government-weekly Ain-Al Yaqeen lists
the MEI as an “Islamic research institutes supported by the Kingdom.”
He’s a vehement opponent of the Bush administration which, he
wrote in the March 3, 2003 edition of the left-wing Nation
magazine, has “imperial ambitions.” Under President Bush, he
added, the world worries that “America has entered one of it periods
of historical madness.”
He also wrote that “neoconservatives” have “a stranglehold
on the foreign policy of the Republican Party.” He said that “the
new imperialists will not rest until governments that ape our world view
are implanted throughout the region, a breathtakingly ambitious undertaking,
smacking of hubris in the extreme.”
He was recently the keynote speaker for the Education
for Peace in Iraq Center, a far-left group that opposed not only the
U.S. military intervention in Iraq but also the sanctions — and even
the no-fly zones that protected hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Kurds and
Shias from being slaughtered by Saddam.
And consider this: Prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Wilson did believe
that Saddam had biological weapons of mass destruction. But he
raised that possibility only to argue against toppling Saddam, warning
ABC’s Dave Marash that if American troops were sent into Iraq, Saddam
might “use a biological weapon in a battle that we might have. For
example, if we’re taking Baghdad or we’re trying to take, in ground-to-ground,
hand-to-hand combat.” He added that Saddam also might attempt to
take revenge by unleashing “some sort of a biological assault on
an American city, not unlike the anthrax, attacks that we had last year.”In other words, Wilson is no disinterested career diplomat — he’s
a pro-Saudi, leftist partisan with an ax to grind. And too many in the
media are helping him and allies grind it.
May went back to work on July 18, 2003:
That retiree was Joseph C. Wilson IV, former ambassador to Gabon, and one-time deputy to ambassador April Glaspie in Iraq. (You’ll recall she was the U.S. official who reportedly told Saddam: “We have no opinion on your Arab-Arab conflicts, such as your dispute with Kuwait.”)
Wilson’s investigation, according to his recent New York Times op-ed, consisted of his spending “eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people.” He added: “It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction [sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq] had ever taken place.”
Wilson’s conclusion was probably correct. It’s likely that no such transaction occurred — which begs the question of whether Saddam attempted to complete such a transaction, as the British believe and as Bush said in his SOTU.
But let’s imagine for just a moment that one of the officials with whom Wilson met had accepted a million-dollar bribe for facilitating the transfer of uranium to Saddam’s agents. What is the likelihood that that information would have been disclosed to Wilson over sips of sweet mint tea? Not huge, I’d wager.
When did the vice president learn that this was the manner in which his orders had been carried out? Is there an explanation for such dereliction of duty by CIA and, possibly, by State as well? Was anyone held accountable?
Inquiring minds should want to know.
Then, on September 29, 2003, May penned Spy Games: Was it really a secret that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA?.
It’s the top story in the Washington Post this morning as well as in many other media outlets. Who leaked the fact that the wife of Joseph C. Wilson IV worked for the CIA?
What also might be worth asking: “Who didn’t know?”
I believe I was the first to publicly question the credibility of Mr. Wilson, a retired diplomat sent to Niger to look into reports that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase yellowcake uranium for his nuclear-weapons program.
On July 6, Mr. Wilson wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in which he said: “I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”
On July 11, I wrote a piece for NRO arguing that Mr. Wilson had no basis for that conclusion — and that his political leanings and associations (not disclosed by the Times and others journalists interviewing him) cast serious doubt on his objectivity.
On July 14, Robert Novak wrote a column in the Post and other newspapers naming Mr. Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative.
That wasn’t news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of.
I chose not to include it (I wrote a second NRO piece on this issue on July 18) because it didn’t seem particularly relevant to the question of whether or not Mr. Wilson should be regarded as a disinterested professional who had done a thorough investigation into Saddam’s alleged attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.
Congress should investigate Clifford May’s relationship to the disinformation that led to war. And Wolf Blitzer should reconsider his high level of respect for this dissembler.
BLITZER: Well, why would Clifford May say that he knew about it?
LARRY JOHNSON: Clifford May has been wrong on a whole variety of things.
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: But he’s a respected guy, Clifford May.
LARRY JOHNSON: Well, he’s respected by some people. I don’t respect him, because I…
BLITZER: I have known him for many years…
LARRY JOHNSON: I…
BLITZER: … going back to when he was a reporter for “The New York Times.”
LARRY JOHNSON: His information — his information — his information on this issue has been repeatedly wrong.
And, again, I’ll bet Clifford May $5,000. Find the reference prior to Robert Novak’s column in which that information was out there. It wasn’t out there…