November 8, 2005
Wilson Also Deserves Some of the Scrutiny
By Dennis
Byrne
Like children in a fever to dive into their Christmas presents,
Senate Democrats can't wait for a new Senate report on pre-Iraq
war intelligence failures. They even forced the Senate into a
rare secret session last week because, ironically, of their supposed
determination to make government more transparent.
It's almost as if they have forgotten that the Senate's bipartisan
Select Committee on Intelligence already issued a report last
year on the quality of the intelligence. The one that should have--but
hasn't--stopped former ambassador Joseph Wilson from recklessly
claiming that President Bush's "lies" and "disinformation"
led us into war. The same report that convincingly demonstrated
that any prewar intelligence misinformation was the result of
organizational failure or incompetence, not evil intent.
That 500-page unanimously approved report contained 48 well-researched
pages just on Wilson's highly self-touted "investigation"
of a foreign intelligence report that Niger was slipping Iraq
enough lightly processed uranium ore, called yellowcake, to make
50 nuclear bombs. Whatever the truth to the yellowcake charge,
the Senate report makes you wonder why the CIA bothered to dispatch
Wilson.
Don't get the idea that because he called it an investigation
he was sleuthing around, digging up the dirt and sniffing out
the truth, like some clandestine CIA operative. He spent, in his
own words, "eight days drinking sweet mint tea," and
interviewing "dozens" of current government officials
and others. Wrong. The Senate report said he didn't meet with
current government officials; that would be inappropriate because
the U.S. has a real ambassador to do that. Appears Wilson couldn't
even get straight with whom he sipped tea.
Never mind. At least he persuaded, cajoled or coerced the truth
out of the rest of the "dozens." Sure. The Senate report
said the interviewees knew his answers would get back to the U.S.
government. Making it ridiculous to assume that they would have
confessed to any yellowcake caper. "Yellowcake? Oh, no, boss.
Maybe white cake, or chocolate cake. But never, ever yellow cake."
No wonder the intelligence community considered his conclusions
to be "unreliable," as the report said.
Among his other nuggets was the conclusion that the yellowcake
episode couldn't have happened because a French mining consortium
controlled Niger mining operations. Swell. No wonder he provided
no "substantially new" information, as the Senate report
said. About the only credible information he did bring home actually
reinforced intelligence reports that an Iraqi delegation had met
with the Nigerian prime minister and that Iraq was interested
in buying uranium.
Even Wilson could only claim that he "found no evidence"
of a yellowcake caper. Yet, somehow, partisans have irresponsibly
morphed that into something far beyond logical reach: that Wilson's
work actually proved that (1) Iraq wasn't seeking yellowcake,
(2) Iraq had no nuclear program, and ultimately (3) President
Bush lied about the weapons to get us into war. In fact, Wilson
had the unenviable task of proving a negative, and at that, he
failed.
But who should be surprised, considering his questionable objectivity?
The Senate
report confirms that his wife, the now famously uncloaked
CIA officer Valerie Plame, called an intelligence meeting to suggest
that "someone" should go to Niger to investigate and,
oh, by the way, my husband would be a good someone. And that she
prepped her husband for the job by referring to the "crazy"
report about Niger selling uranium to Iraq. Other meeting participants
considered such a trip to Niger to be "redundant," the
report said, but it happened anyway.
Then come Wilson's own possibly illegal leaks. Wilson told a
reporter that he knew that the original intelligence reports disclosing
the yellowcake affairs were fake because he spotted bogus names
and dates on them. Yet, the Senate report asked, how could he
know when "he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge
of what names of dates were in the reports?" Wilson replied
that he must have "misspoken" to the reporter. Sure
So, where did he get the information? From Plame? And didn't he
break the law by publicly disclosing information about the classified
document?
No one should get off the hook for exposing Plame as a CIA officer.
But as we breathlessly await the release of the second installment
of the Senate's report on intelligence failures, some work remains
unfinished from the first one: Why is no one demanding that Wilson
be investigated for the same kinds of offenses that got Lewis
Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, indicted?
Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer and consultant. E-mail:
dennis@dennisbyrne.net
