It’s hard work trying to figure out what really drives the Bush administration’s foreign policy. The latest allegations that Condi Rice leaked “national defense information to a pro-Israel lobbyist in the same manner that landed a lower-level Pentagon official a 12-year prison sentence”, is but one example of the curious relationships that take place at the highest levels of government. But I keep going back to the words of chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson:
IN PRESIDENT BUSH’S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld…
I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less.
I have a hunch that the State Department’s Plame memos reveal something that no one has been talking about. They appear to reveal an attempt by a Cheney supported cabal within the State Department to hide their role in misrepresenting the Niger documents from Colin Powell (then the head of the Department) and, therefore, from President Bush. Bear with me, as I lay out the evidence.
Carl Ford
First, let’s do a little refresher. There are two memos we will be discussing. The first was created on June 10, 2003 (Wilson did not go public until July 6, 2003). It was titled “Niger/Iraq Uranium Story”, and was sent by the head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) Carl Ford, to Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman. The memo made explicit reference to Valerie Wilson and described the events that led to her husbands trip to Niger. It is still not publicly known who asked for this information to pulled together, or who Marc Grossman gave the information to. However, Jason Leopold recently reported Grossman was the source for the September 28, 2003 Mike Allen and Dana Priest piece that reported (about the Plame leak):
The source also claims that, “Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge.” He stated that he was sharing the information because the disclosure was “wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson’s credibility.”
If Grossman was the source for the Allen/Priest column it is very significant. He instigated the report and evidently felt that the information was misused. I am speculating that Grossman requested this memo be created at the request of Hadley, Libby, Bolton, or another member of Cheney’s cabal.
One piece of information in support of this speculation is that (according to the Libby indictment) the day after the memo was created, Scooter Libby asked a “senior officer of the CIA about the origin and circumstances of Wilson’s trip. He is advised by the CIA officer that Wilson’s wife works at the CIA and is believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip.”
This clearly demonstrates an active interest in Wilson’s trip, from the Office of the Vice-President, in the exact time period when the original State Department memo was created. Now we will skip ahead to the second memo.
On July 6, 2003, the New York Times published Joe Wilson’s editorial, What I Didn’t Find in Africa and he made an appearance on Meet the Press. From the dkosopedia timeline:
In response, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage calls INR director Carl Ford at home, seeking explanation and background on the Wilson-Niger claims. Armitage asks Ford to forward this information to Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The next day Carl Ford tasked the INR to gather information on Wilson’s trip. They discovered the original June 10 memo. In the early evening, Powell, Rice, and Bush embarked on a flight to Africa. So, Carl Ford sent the June 10 memo to Powell aboard Air Force One. However, someone rewrote the cover letter.
From emptywheel:
The June 10 memo includes the following passage:
What follows is based on our paper and electronic files: we are confident that these records and the recollections of person involved at the margin are basically accurate but the two INR staff members who were most involved are not here (one has been reassigned to REDACTED other is on leave) to guide us through the files and emails.
While
the July 7 rewrites that passage (in the electronic file–this is more than redaction) to read (I’ve bolded the differences in both passages):What follows is based on our paper and electronic files: we are confident that these records and the recollections of person involved at the margin are basically accurate but one INR staff member who was most involved is not here (he has been reassigned to REDACTED to guide us through the files and emails.
What is notable is that the July 7 version has dropped a reference to one of the people ‘most involved’ in analyzing the Niger documents. That analyst had been ‘on leave’ in June. It is not known if they were still on leave in July. emptywheel argues convincingly that the missing analyst is the Bureau of Intelligence and Research’s (INR) Iraq nuclear analyst referenced in Pat Roberts’s whitewash of an investigation. Roberts’s SSCI report noted that the Niger documents were debunked immediately upon receipt.
Now we need to do another review. This controversy, after all, centers on the ‘Niger documents’. Before there were ‘Niger documents’ there were ‘Niger allegations’. But October 2002 was a significant time. In the first week of October the intelligence community produced the National Intelligence Estimate and gave it to Congress. [This is the same estimate that Libby would later leak to Judith Miller. It is also the some estimate the misplaced the State and Energy Department’s dissents on the Niger story in the footnotes]. On October 10th, the House introduced the Iraq War resolution. And it was at precisely this time that the Niger documents arrived at the American Embassy in Rome.
In early October 2002, an Italian journalist, Elisabetta Burba, received copies of documents from Rocco Martino that indicated the Iraqi government had arranged the purchase of 500 tons of “yellowcake” uranium from Niger in 1999 and 2000. The documents were signed by officials of the government of Niger and appeared to be on official letterhead. Under instructions from her magazine’s editor, Burba gave copies of the letters to officials at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, and then left for Niger to investigate the situation herself. Once there, her discussions with businessmen involved in the uranium business and investigations into the companies mentioned in the documents led her to the conclusion that the documents were fake. She returned to Rome and dropped the story, though there is no evidence she shared her conclusion with the officials at the U.S. Embassy with whom she had already shared the documents.
The U.S. Embassy in Rome sent the documents on to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) at the State Department in Washington, D.C., which conducted its own investigation and also forwarded the documents to the CIA. Both the INR and the CIA soon came to the conclusion that the documents were fake
[Note: a redacted portion of the declassified July 7, 2003 memo seems to indicate that the Niger documents came first to the Defense Department]
What else happened in the first week of October? Remember that ‘mushroom cloud’ speech Bush gave in Cincinnati?
In early October 2002, George Tenet called Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, asking Hadley to remove reference to the Niger uranium from a speech President Bush was to give in Cincinnati on Oct. 7. This was followed up by a memo asking Hadley to remove another, similar line. Another memo was sent to the White House expressing the CIA’s view that the Niger claims were false; this memo was given to both Hadley and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
So, the Niger ‘documents’ made their appearance at the very moment that the Niger ‘allegations’ were being forcefully debunked. Here is where we must look very closely at what happened. According the the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s report:
…on October 11, 2002, the U.S. Embassy in Rome reported to State Department headquarters that it had acquired photocopies of documents on a purported uranium deal between Iraq and Niger from an Italian journalist. The cable said that the embassy had passed the documents to the CIA’s SENTENCE DELETED. The embassy faxed the documents to the State Department’s Bureau of Nonproliferation (NP) on October 15, 2002, which passed a copy of the documents to INR.
Immediately after receiving the documents, the INR Iraq nuclear analyst e-mailed IC colleagues offering to provide the documents at a previously planned meeting of the Nuclear Interdiction Action Group (NIAG) the following day. The analyst, apparently already suspicious of the validity of the documents noted in his e-mail, “you’ll note that it bears a funky Emb. of Niger stamp (to make it look official, I guess).” [emphasis added]
Here is what the July 7 memo says:
(S//NF) In October 2002, an Italian Journalist passed purported copies of a Niger-Iraq agreement of July 2000 for the purchase of uranium to Embassy Rome. These documents, which were sent to Washington via [redacted] Department channels, were not adequately analyzed until much later and were judged to be fraudulent.
The process of elimination strongly suggests that the retracted word (above) is ‘Defense’. But the SSCI report is quite clear.
The cable said that the embassy had passed the documents to the CIA’s SENTENCE DELETED. The embassy faxed the documents to the State Department’s Bureau of Nonproliferation (NP) on October 15, 2002, which passed a copy of the documents to INR.
The evidence suggests that the Niger documents were forwarded to some redacted department of the CIA and to John Bolton’s Bureau of Nonproliferation. There is nothing in there about the Defense Department receiving these documents. And, regardless, the John Bolton received them at State and ‘passed a copy’ to INR, where they were ‘immediately’ deemed fraudulent.
Therefore, the July 7th memo was badly misleading. Let’s look at how misleading it was. We have already noted that the cover sheet deleted a reference to one of the people ‘most involved’ in analyzing the documents. This appears to be the person that ‘immediately’ noted the funky seals. As we look at the following, keep in mind two totally separate departments within the State Department. There is John Bolton’s Non-proliferation department (NP) and the Carl Ford’s intelligence agency (INR). NP passed the documents on to INR where they were debunked immediately. However:
“In mid-December 2002, the Department (NP) released a fact sheet that pointed ‘to efforts to procure uranium ore from Niger,’ this despite the alleged objections of WINPAC. The WINPAC caution was reportedly ‘not obtained in time to correct the listing on the State Department web site,’ but ‘was acted on in time, however, to remove it from Ambassador Negroponte’s statement.’ On January 12, 2003, INR ‘expressed concerns to the CIA that the documents pertaining to the Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries.’ The conclusion may, however, have been reached and communicated for the first time somewhat earlier; the record is not clear on this point.
There is a lot in this to comment on. It shows that John Bolton’s NP group was still pushing these documents in mid-December. But, it disguises the fact that the documents had been debunked immediately by the INR Iraq nuclear specialist. And the very existence of that analyst has been removed from the cover letter.
Keep in mind that July 7 memo was intended for Colin Powell, and that Powell needed the information in order to help the President respond to a rather pressing public relations problem arising from Joe Wilson’s editorial and appearance on Meet the Press. The information that was passed from Carl Ford to Colin Powell was inaccurate. It suggested that the documents had passed from Rome to the Defense Department, not John Bolton’s outfit. It allowed for the possibility that the INR has debunked the documents at some undefined earlier date, but provided a date definite of January 12, 2003.
It appears to me that the July 7 memo was dishonest, and served to hide the hand of John Bolton’s outfit in pushing the Niger allegations, after they had been debunked, from Secretary Powell and from the Condi Rice and George W. Bush.
This helps explain why Carl Ford, Lawrence Wilkerson, Richard Armitage, and Colin Powell all opposed John Bolton’s appointment to the United Nations. It also helps explain Wilkerson’s comments [cited at the top of the diary] that Cheney and Rumsfeld operated a cabal that drove policy…sometimes without the knowledge of the President.
Remember this?
As the war planning progressed, on December 21, 2002, Tenet and his top deputy, John McLaughlin, went to the White House to brief Bush and Cheney on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Woodward reports.
The president, unimpressed by the presentation of satellite photographs and intercepts, pressed Tenet and McLaughlin, saying their information would not “convince Joe Public” and asking Tenet, “This is the best we’ve got?” Woodward reports.
So, here we have John Bolton’s NP pushing the Niger forgeries in ‘mid-December’ despite the INR debunking them earlier. Days later, Bush is unimpressed with the intelligence on WMD. And when the shit hits the fan in July 2003, the role of the NP is disguised and hidden from the President as he tries to devise a response.
There is only one problem with my theory. The July 7 memo was signed by Carl Ford of INR. He would not have intentionally misled Powell and the President to cover for the actions of John Bolton. So, how did Bolton’s crew control the information that Ford obtained?
