There is a little known (outside of Washington circles) journalist named Clifford D. May that is a professional liar. That’s what he does. He gets paid to lie. There are other journalists out there that get paid to distort. Cliff May just lies. He tells bold untruths. So, when Joe Wilson started talking publicly about the basic dishonesty of the 16 words in the State of the Union speech, it’s quite natural that Dick Cheney’s outfit would turn to Cliff May. As Mr. May said back in September 2003 (emphasis mine):
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.
Well…well…well. Cliff May was the first. He was the annointed. The man with the plan. May got the briefing. Did he know about Plame’s identity before Novak revealed it? Here’s what he said in the same September 2003 article:
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?”….
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.
Let’s look at May’s statement that he wasn’t told by someone in the White House. As we do this, keep in mind the dates: (July 6th, Wilson’s article appears) (July 11th, May writes and publishes his column, Novak writes his column and it goes out on the syndication wires) (July 14th, Novak’s column appears).
The July 11th date is of particular interest to us, but before we get to that, we have to look at what May wrote in his piece that day. What kind of dirt did he have on Wilson?
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.
What you have just read is not the independent research of one intrepid reporter named Clifford May. It is the result of a month or more of research by Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. On June 7th, or perhaps a day or two later:
According to anonymous sources, Vice President Dick Cheney
meets with President Bush a second time and tells the president that
there was talk of “Wilson going public” and exposing the flawed Niger
intelligence. Cheney advises Bush that a section of the classified
National Intelligence Estimate that purports to show Iraq did seek
uranium from Niger should be leaked to reporters as a way to counter
anything Wilson might seek to publish. Throughout the second half of
June, Andrew Card, Karl Rove,
and senior officials from Cheney’s office keep Bush updated about the
progress of the campaign to discredit Wilson via numerous emails and
internal White House memos. (truthout)
The White House knew Wilson was about to blow their lying scheme a month before it happened. And they didn’t just idle away the time. On June 10th, the famous State Department memorandum was created. On the 11th, Libby asked the CIA for information on the trip. On the 12th, Libby participated in an office meeting about how to respond to inquiries about the trip from Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus. Sometime between the 12th and the 15th someone tells Woodward about Valerie Plame. On the 23rd, Libby tells Miller about Plame.
But, Plame was only one part of the story. The reason that the White House was so focused on Plame was because they were focused on Nicholas Kristof’s article from May 6, 2003 where Kristof made a mistake and what they considered a distortion. The mistake was that Kristof claimed:
In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.
But Wilson never saw the documents and did not know they were forged. Nor did he tell Kristoff that. The distortion was that the article left the impression that Cheney knew someone had been dispatched to Niger. It’s not clear whether Cheney ever saw Wilson’s report. It was these weaknesses in Kristof’s reporting that they wanted to focus on. As the White House formulated their plan, they decided to paint Wilson as a partisan and made up the bullet pointed talking points that Cliff May used in his column. They also wanted to undermine his credibility by suggesting that he was unqualified for such a mission and was only chosen for it as a favor to his wife. That made up the Plame piece of it. And lastly, and most importantly, they wanted to deny that they had known the documents were forgeries before the State of the Union, or that Cheney had ever seen the results of Wilson’s trip.
Now, let’s look at what was going on July 11th, the day that May made the first attack on Wilson using Rove and Libby’s talking points.
July 10 or 11
- Libby speaks with a senior official in the White House, “Official A”, presumed to be Karl Rove. Libby is advised of Rove’s earlier-that-week conversation with Robert Novak, that Wilson’s wife was discussed, and that Novak will be writing a column. (Libby Indictment, p. 8)
- Novak calls CIA spokesman Bill Harlow to confirm information regarding Plame and Wilson. (WaPo, Tatel opinion, p. 38)
[edit]July 11
- Earliest possible chance that Novak‘s July 14 article “Mission to Niger“, which will out Valerie Plame‘s
name and occupation to the public, is sent out when Novak’s regular
syndicated column is distributed by Creators Syndicate on the AP wire.
The exact timing of the release of Novak’s column is not known.
- Condoleezza Rice informs CIA Director George Tenet that she and the president will be telling the media that Bush’s speech “was cleared by intelligence services.” (LA Times)
- 5:15 a.m. EST – Condoleezza Rice in a press gaggle
with Ari Fleischer aboard Air Force One skirts the responsibility
regarding the 16 words claiming that the speech conformed to the
October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and the DCIA
cleared the speech. She says she learned of the document forgery in
March, and of Wilson’s trip “on whatever TV show it was” “about a month
ago”.
- Ari Fleischer and Dan Bartlett prompt reporters to look into the bureaucratic origins of the Wilson trip. (Newsweek, NYT)
- early to mid morning, EST – Time reporter John
Dickerson discusses the Wilson trip with two administration officials
while in Africa. Both officials prompt him to look into the orgins of
the trip (OSC letter, p. 4, Slate, Firedoglake). Ari Fleischer is one of the officials. He is careful to not specify Plame or her position. (Slate).
- 11:00 a.m. – Clifford May puts up a piece
on NRO which attacks Wilson in a number of ways but does not include
any reference to Valerie Wilson/Plame. The piece also states: “Wilson
was sent to Niger by the CIA to verify a U.S. intelligence report about
the sale of yellowcake — because Vice President Dick Cheney requested
it, because Cheney had doubts about the validity of the intelligence
report.”
- Before 11:07 a.m. – White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has a short conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.
Rove tells Cooper that Wilson’s wife works for the CIA and had a hand
in sending him to Niger. Rove does not mention her by name.
- 11:07 a.m – Cooper e-mails his bureau chief after speaking to Rove. (Newsweek)
- […] Cooper wrote that Rove offered him a “big
warning” not to “get too far out on Wilson.” Rove told Cooper that
Wilson’s trip had not been authorized by “DCIA”–CIA Director George
Tenet–or Vice President Dick Cheney. Rather, “it was, KR said,
Wilson’s [sic] wife, who apparently works at the agency on WMD (weapons
of mass destruction) issues who authorized the trip.”
- After 11:07 a.m. – Karl Rove e-mails deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley after speaking to Cooper. (AP)
- Matt Cooper called to give me a heads-up that he’s got
a welfare reform story coming. When he finished his brief heads-up he
immediately launched into Niger. Isn’t this damaging? Hasn’t the
president been hurt? I didn’t take the bait, but I said if I were him I
wouldn’t get Time far out in front on this.
- After 1:00 p.m. – John Dickerson and Matthew Cooper
trade the information they have learned. They agree that Cooper will
follow up on “the wife business”. (Slate)
- 3:09 p.m. – George Tenet issues a statement taking the heat for the 16 words, and saying the decision to send Wilson was the CIA’s alone. (Cooperative Research)
July 11 was a very busy day. The White House was in a full court press mode. Over in Africa, Fleischer and Bartlett were encouraging reporters to dig into the “bureaucratic origins” of Wilson’s trip, where they would run into a Rove-briefed “high-ranking official” that would give them the dirt on Plame. Rove was on the phone with Novak and Cooper. Tenet was being told that he was going to take the fall for it. And in the middle of it all, it was Clifford May that broke the ice and posted the talking points. A mere pawn in a bigger game, May did his duty and carried out his little part.
And then, in September, when it became apparent that the Justice Department would be investigating the Plame Affair, it was May that came out and claimed that everyone in Washington knew that Plame was in the CIA. Well, Fitzgerald shot that down pretty good:
“Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer. In July 2003, the fact that Valerie Wilson was a CIA officer was classified. Not only was it classified, but it was not widely known outside the intelligence community. Valerie Wilson’s friends, neighbors, college classmates had no idea she had another life.
“The fact that she was a CIA officer was not well-known, for her protection or for the benefit of all us. It’s important that a CIA officer’s identity be protected, that it be protected not just for the officer, but for the nation’s security. Valerie Wilson’s cover was blown in July 2003. The first sign of that cover being blown was when Mr. Novak published a column on July 14th, 2003.”
Clifford May is a hired liar.
