Update [2006-4-7 13:31:0 by BooMan]: A better explanation is here.
On July 18, 2003, the administration declassified the Key Findings from the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. Presumably, this is the information that Scooter Libby claims that President Bush authorized him to leak to Judith Miller on July 8, 2003. But, the relationship of Judy Miller to these findings goes all the way back to September 2002.
Let’s revisit Judith Miller and Michael Gordon’s infamous September 8, 2002 aluminum tube column. Who were the sources?
In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. American officials said several efforts to arrange the shipment of the aluminum tubes were blocked or intercepted but declined to say, citing the sensitivity of the intelligence, where they came from or how they were stopped.
The diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq’s nuclear program, officials said, and that the latest attempt to ship the material had taken place in recent months.
The attempted purchases are not the only signs of a renewed Iraqi interest in acquiring nuclear arms. President Hussein has met repeatedly in recent months with Iraq’s top nuclear scientists and, according to American intelligence, praised their efforts as part of his campaign against the West.
Iraqi defectors who once worked for the nuclear weapons establishment have told American officials that acquiring nuclear arms is again a top Iraqi priority. American intelligence agencies are also monitoring construction at nuclear sites…
“The jewel in the crown is nuclear,” a senior administration official said. “The closer he gets to a nuclear capability, the more credible is his threat to use chemical or biological weapons. Nuclear weapons are his hole card.”
The Central Intelligence Agency still says it would take Iraq five to seven years to make a nuclear weapon if it must produce its own supply of highly enriched uranium for a bomb, an administration official said. American intelligence officials believe that Iraq could assemble a nuclear device in a year or somewhat less if it obtained the nuclear material for a bomb on the black market. But they say there are no signs that Iraq has acquired such a supply.
All of these allegations would be included in the Key Findings of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that was produced in October 2002, and used to convince Congress to authorize the use of force against Iraq.
When Scooter Libby met with Judith Miller on July 8, 2003 and revealed classified information from the 2002 NIE, he was giving her information that she had already received before the NIE was even finalized. But, not only that, a full year after the Libby met with Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel and revealed the identity and job of Ambassador Wilson’s wife, the administration was refusing to declassify huge portions of the NIE.
Washington D.C., 9 July 2004 – The CIA has decided to
keep almost entirely secret the controversial October 2002 CIA intelligence
estimate about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction that is the subject
of today’s Senate Intelligence Committee report, according to the
CIA’s June 1, 2004 response to a Freedom of Information Act request
from the National Security Archive.The CIA’s response included a copy of the estimate, NIE
2002-16HC, October 2002, Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons
of Mass Destruction, consisting almost entirely
of whited-out pages. Only 14 of the 93 pages provided actually contained
text, and all of the text except for the two title pages and the
two pages listing National Intelligence Council members had previously
been released in July 2003. At that time, CIA responded
to the first round of controversy over the Niger yellowcake story
by declassifying the “Key Findings” section of the estimate
and a few additional paragraphs.The CIA’s censorship of the estimate mirrors its apparent treatment
of the Senate’s
own report. The Senate Intelligence Committee had previously
noted, in a 17
June 2004 press release, that “The Committee is
extremely disappointed by the CIA’s excessive redactions to the
report.” News accounts quoting Senate sources estimate that
this excessive redaction amounted to 50% of the entire text. After
a month of back-and-forth, not only did a number of Senators gain
an education in the subjectivity of classification, but also the
CIA retreated, to a final censorship level (by word-count) of 16%.
Perhaps the most
egregious example of the CIA’s knee-jerk secrecy occurs
on pages 49-50, when only one sentence survives censorship in the
Committee’s discussion of the British White Paper – and that sentence
reports that the British had actually published the Paper. Large
sections of blacked-out discussion following the Committee’s Conclusions
– such as the CIA’s
misleading of Secretary of State Colin Powell for his February 2003
United Nations speech (pages 253-257) and the CIA’s
misleading the public in its October 2002 white paper
that left out the caveats, hedged language, and dissents in the
underlying intelligence (pages
295-297) – are currently under declassification review
by CIA. The Committee itself withheld these sections from the CIA’s
review until release of the report so as not to be scooped or spun.The estimate has been the subject of multiple public speeches,
statements and testimony by CIA and other intelligence community
officials – even more of which is published in today’s Senate report.
These include public statements by CIA director George Tenet on
11 July 2003 and 11 August 2003, Tenet’s Georgetown speech of 5
February 2004, and NIC vice-chairman Stuart Cohen’s statement of
28 November 2003.
Now, let’s take a look at Libby’s testimony to Fitzgerald via TPM Muckraker:
According to defendant [Libby], at the time of his conversations with [Judith] Miller and [Matthew] Cooper, he understood that only three people – the President, the Vice President and defendant – knew that the key judgments of the [National Intelligence Estimate] had been declassified. Defendant testified in the grand jury that he understood that even in the days following his conversation with Ms. Miller, other key officials – including Cabinet level officials – were not made aware of the earlier declassification even as those officials were pressed to carry out a declassification of the NIE, the report about Wilson’s trip and another classified document dated January 24, 2003.
The bottom line here is that Judith Miller was given information all the way back in September 2002…some of which may have been denied to Congress in 2004. She was given information in July 2003 before the information had been vetted and cleared for declassification. Libby’s claim that Bush declassified the information prior to his meeting with Miller is nonsense. As far as Miller was concerned, nothing was ever classified.
