Why was Wilson chosen to investigate the Niger Yellowcake story?

[Old and In the Way]

Here's my cynical thoughts-

Plame had to be outed because she was in a position to gain some really damaging information on the war profiteers in this administration. Maybe Cheney, maybe House of Bush....but seriously damaging nonetheless.

I wondered why Wilson would have been chosen for this assignment in the 1st place; his opinions of this administration and Iraq's WMD capabilities must have been known well before his trip. This administration would not send someone who they knew might not cooroborate the Cheney position....we know that they always fit the "evidence" to support their case. This "fact finding" trip could have been sucessfully done by any number of lackeys willing to write a report that agreed with Cheney's yellowcake fantasy.

Was the Niger trip by Wilson a set-up to provide cover for outing his wife?

[ewagner]

1. He had been

Ambassador to Niger and was very familiar with the country and the "Yellow-cake" industry.

[oldtime dfl_er]

3. He had excellent contacts in the area

and was knowledgable about the situation.

http://www.cafepress.com/scarebaby/702950

[Old and In the Way]

8. Don't diagree that he was knowledgable...he was an expert in

ME/North African diplomcy. But why would he be chosen to investigate the Cheney claims? Why not someone who would be assured to validate the fantasy? Someone like Bolton....

Instead they chose an honest outsider who told the truth...then they outed his wife. Hmmmmmm.

[AlCzervik]

19. maybe Cheney thought Joe would just go along with gettalong

you know?

[kodi]

32. because at that point or level the CIA had not been so politicized

they went at it the old fashioned way, use your best assets instead of those which would produce a specific finding.

in other words, the CIA as acting in a professional manner.

[Old and In the Way]

34. I'd like to believe that.

"the CIA as acting in a professional manner."

But Tenet rolled mightily on 9/11. He also went along with the run up on the marketing of the Iraqi War. Was it even his call to send someone to check out the Niger yellowcahe story...another poster below thinks it came from Cheney or one of his underlings. Our understanding of these events relies greatly on a narrative supplied by this administration's unindicted co-conspirators, the mainstream media.

Was Valerie's outing a simple case of political revenge? Or could there have been other, more nefarious reasons to get Ms. Plame out of the loop? Look at the money and RDX that has gone accountable in Iraq....was outing her a pre-emptive strike by the BFEE? I wonder how many other NOC's engaged in similar intel operations may have also been exposed, retired, or gone missing that we are unaware of?

[BrklynLiberal]

6. It certainly was not a recent experience...and not the most recent person

to have been there...
Most of his history had been under Democrats.

http://www.cpsag.com/our_team/wilson.html

Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, IV

Ambassador Wilson served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 1997 until July 1998. In that capacity he was responsible for the coordination of U.S. policy to the 48 countries of sub-Saharan Africa, He was one of the principal architecs of President Clinton's historic trip to Africa in March 1998.

Ambassador Wilson was the Political Advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of United States Armed Forces, Europe, 1995-1997. He served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Gabonese Republic and to the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe from 1992 to 1995. From 1998 to 1991, Ambassador Wilson served in Baghdad, Iraq as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy. During ''Desert Shield'' he was the acting Ambassador and was responsible for the negotiations that resulted in the release of several hundred American hostages. He was the last official American to meet with Saddam Hussein before the launching of ''Desert Storm.''

Ambassador Wilson was a member of the U.S. Diplomatic Service from 1976 until 1998. His early assignments included Niamey, Niger, 1976-1978; Lome, Togo, 1978-79; the State Department Brueau of African Affairs, 1979-1981; and Pretoria, South Africa, 1981-1982.

In 1982, he was appointed Deputy Chief of Mission in Bujumbura, Burundi. In 1985-1986, he served in the offices of Senator Albert Gore and the House Majority Whip, Representative Thomas Foley, as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Brazzaville, Congo, 1986-88, prior to his assignment to Baghdad.

Ambassador Wilson was raised in California and graduated from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1972. He is a graduate of the Senior Seminar (1972), the most advanced International Affairs training offered by the U.S. Government. He speaks fluent French.

Ambassador Wilson holds the Department of Distinguished Service Award, the Department of State Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards, the University of California, Santa Barbara Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the American Foreign Service Association William R. Rivkin Award. Additionally, he has been decorated as a Commander in the Order of the Equatorial Star by the Government of Gabon and as an Admiral in the El Paso Navy by the El Paso County Commissioners

[AtTheEndOfTheDay]

23. Wow. I had no idea.

Pretty impressive credentials. Thanks for the scoop.

[ihelpu2see]

25. why no indictments yet??? My hope is that the Prez. is over seas and

there is that standing protocol not to disparage the "Commander and Chief" while out of the country and if you bring charges against Rove and Cheney while * is out of the country a lot of remarks will begin to fly about what * knew.... and this is not like Iran-Contra Rove is not Ollie North, Ollie was a low level cog in a much larger wheel. Rove leads directly to someone!!! My hope is that this is why Cheney had his internal pacer checked today, for the news coming next week!!

[BrklynLiberal]

2. hmm A double-double cross...right from the get-go. Wouldn't put

anything past Rove.

[LiviaOlivia]

18. My thoughts exactly..

eom

[John Q. Citizen]

4. Wilson was also ambassador to Iraq before Gulf war 1

[achtung_circus]

10. Not Ambassador

but Chief of Mission.

[lumberjack_jeff]

14. Essentially "vice ambassador"

He was also named ambassador to Gabon by Bush 1 and had lots of business dealings with Niger.

Also, George Tenet claims that they asked Wilson to do the job without the explicit approval of the administration.

He was a good choice for the job because of his experience with both countries.

And I find it plausible that Plame may have, if not suggested him, at least given him a good reference.

[Old and In the Way]

16. The Nigerian Yellowcake evidence was a fabrication of this administration.

Not a misunderstanding of facts.

I have read this too - "Also, George Tenet claims that they asked Wilson to do the job without the explicit approval of the administration."

I have real problems with trusting Tenet's claims these days. I think he let the CIA take the fall for 9/11 and I have no idea why. He did get the Medal of Freedom from Bush, though.

What if he was asked to send Wilson, but to say it was his idea? If this administration knowingly fabricated the whole story, wouldn't you expect them to take an active interest in who is sent to investigate the story?

[lumberjack_jeff]

24. Strict mistrust of a stopped clock....

... will cause you to be wrong twice each day.

It's a good practice to distrust what this administration says, but the http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Politics/documents/2004/07/14/butler.pdf">Butler Report
indicates that British intelligence is standing by their claim that Iraq's visit to Niger was a fact-finding mission by Iraq on the possibility of buying uranium.

IAEA disagrees, and the Butler report notes this.

This investigatory trip did not warrant the response we made, (it was practically impossible for Saddam to buy any uranium from Niger - even if all parties agreed, if for no other reason than because France owns all of Niger's output) but I don't think that our cause is served by closed-mindedness.

There is no reason to believe that Saddam bought uranium, but there is some credible evidence indicating he may have researched the possibility.

"Big deal" you might say, and I'd agree. But being correct is better.

[Old and In the Way]

27. Thanks for the posts.....

I never used to be this mistrustful of a US government, but after 5 years of layer upon layer of lies, misdirections, and hidden agendas, I take nothing at face value with these criminals anymore.

What you and other posters have commented on is pretty much what the prevailing collective wisdom is on what this whole episode is about. Still, I keep wandering back to want Valerie Plame might have known and what that knowledge could mean to the war criminals/profiteers that have control of our government.

Actually, it might very well have had nothing to do with what she did know at that time, but what she could have learned after the Iraqi invasion and occupation got underway. There's billions of USD and tons of RDX explosives that have gone unaccounted for since the war began.....maybe her removal was a pre-emptive strike to assure that both remained unaccountable.

[John Q. Citizen]

30. But we already have the Downing Street Memos and the

vast media war propaganda effort launched by both the British and the Americans which suggests that they would lie to cover each others backs, in fact have both lied repeatedly.

Everyone has a theory and a study by the British Government isn't exactly proof or reliable. In fact your link needs fixing which proves my point on purely technical grounds.

They have some people who say Iraqis were visiting on government business and then they infer what that means, which is nuclear bombs. Sounds like the run up to the war.

What I'm interested in is who forged the original phony intelligence yellow-cake Niger papers? How did they come into the White Houses hands?

Another arch criminal, this time a forger effecting National Security and war and peace decisions slips away from the bush crime family and media attention, and America gets fed faked WMD BS in the State of the Union. Motive, opportunity and means- Who had those? It's been two years, how's the investigation going?

As to what transpired in the commissioning of Mr. Wilson to investigate the claims, I believe his version of events. He has been very credible and chooses his words wisely. The nature of his hiring isn't the story so much as the story, which is that Bush mass fed America and Congress made up crap in the constitutionally mandated State of the Union Address. No credibility.

The bush White House then retaliated by exposing his CIA operative wife and her entire WMD monitoring network.

If Wilson had to fill out an employment application or not doesn't seem to effect the picture, but I trust his version.

Personally, I think how bush and cheney got their jobs is a lot more suspicious than why Wilson was sent.

[John Q. Citizen]

29. Actually, "Acting Ambassador to Iraq," which makes him ambassador

during that period.

[Vincardog]

5. He was 'The right man for the job'

Outing his wife was pay back and warning for anyone else who might be willing to speak truth to power.

[Old and In the Way]

13. I agree, he was totally the right man for the job.

...but since when does this administration want an honest expert proving that their story was a lie?

"Outing his wife was pay back and warning for anyone else who might be willing to speak truth to power." Yes, that's the CW and a well established Bush-Rove MO. The MSM has certainly amped that line of thinking.

But just what did Valerie Plame know? That's what I'm interested in finding out...

[blm]

7. That's the problem dealing with this fascist gang. There's almost always

a few angles to their every move because they've been at it for about 5 decades by now.

[Old and In the Way]

12. Indeed.

They are experts at covering their tracks. Of course, Plame was a career appointee and not beholden to the BFEE. If her job was running an intel operation of people engaged with buying/selling weapons, there's a damn good chance she'd be getting information that might prove extremely damaging to certain people in this administration.

They couldn't outright fire her....but it seems they'd be willing to nuetralize her by framing her exposure as an act of political revenge.

[1932]

9. Because he worked there and still had connections.

And, by the way, he didn't get paid to go. He did it as a volunteer.

[achtung_circus]

11. Expenses only. nt

[Chomp]

15. Hang on...

...wasn't there a suggestion at a point in time that Plame recommended Wilson for the job? Or was that story part of the subsequent smear?

[Old and In the Way]

17. I need to research that....did Wilson say it or did this administration?

Would the Nigerian yellowcake investigation be in her area of responsibility? Perhaps. Was she approached for her opinion? If so, why? We now know the story was a fabrication....so why would this administration be looking for an objective source to prove it false?

[achtung_circus]

20. What Wilson said

in Politics of Truth was that his name was spit out of a computer. When Someone mentioned that he was married to Valerie Plame she made the initial overture to him to see if he was interested.

[Disturbed]

21. Cheney requested that someone check out the Yellow cake claim.

The CIA picked Joe Wilson to do so. Cheney didn't know that Wilson would make a public statement about the Pres.'s State of Union claim about nuke material request by Saddam of Yellow cake being false. Maybe too much credit is being given to the Bush Regime personnel for being that clever.
After Joe Wilson make a stink the calls to discredit him were made. It was stated that his wife got him that job, implying that his credibilty was in question. Perhaps it wasn't about stopping her work at all. The story is real interesting and mysterious.

[Old and In the Way]

22. But don't you find that odd?

"Cheney requested that someone check out the Yellow cake claim."

If Cheney fabricated the story to start with, then why would he request someone to check it out? I could see-

directing a specific someone to check it out. Someone who could be counted on to say, "yes sir, just like you said." No shortage of those types available to this administration.

Maybe they thought Wilson would be such a man, given GWH Bush's testimonial about Joe Wilson. Still, it seems like a real stretch to send someone who has demonstrated real courage and who seems to have real integrity to investigate a story that you know will be found to be false. Why risk it?

If Cheney,in fact, requested someone, then it wasn't Tenet's independent decision, as an earlier post notes. And if it was Cheney, I wonder if he also suggested Wilson?

[lumberjack_jeff]

26. More likely self-delusion than fabrication

The Whitehouse created the office of special plans to give them the intelligence that fit their world view. The arrogance of the administration is that they truly believe that their world view BECOMES reality solely because it's their view.

Cheney was unafraid of hearing the truth about Iraq, because he convinced himself that the selective reality he asked for was true and complete.

Personally, I think that Saddam may have done some investigatory probing for a uranium marketplace. He obviously didn't find one, so the "mushroom cloud" hyperbole was inappropriate.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5458642

BTW, the Senate report indicates that they reviewed memos in which Ms Plame initially recommended Mr Wilson for the assignment.

http://intelligence.senate.gov/iraqreport2.pdf (see page 39)

Wilson claims that this is not the case, but...

[Jim Lane]

28. I agree, even though this partially absolves Bush/Cheney/Rove

I don't think one of those three gave the order to falsify documents. It was more likely down by someone at the Michael Ledeen level or lower. There could well have a been a G. Gordon Liddy attitude about it: The people doing the deed know that the higher-ups will be glad they did it, but the higher-ups need to preserve their deniability, so the lower-downs will be offered as scapegoats if necessary.

So, on this theory, the documents are fabricated by someone who wants to help Bush et al. get on with the project of invading Iraq. When they come to light, the top bosses don't know that their own employees fabricated them. In fact, because they automatically believe anything that's negative about Saddam, they have no objection to sending a knowledgeable investigator. (From Richard Clarke's account, the afternoon of September 11 saw Bush focused on blaming Saddam. I don't think that was just for political convenience. I'll bet Bush could probably have passed a lie detector test while asserting that he really believed it to be an Iraqi operation. He still held his belief even after Clarke told him that Saddam was not involved.)

We mock Bush as being a dimwit. In some ways that question is secondary. Bush reminds me of the line often attributed to Will Rogers. "The problem in America isn't so much what people don't know; the problem is what people think they know that just ain't so."

[Old and In the Way]

33. Welcome on board!

Good points.

W's dimwittedness is clearly secondary to his hubristic arrogance and his delusions of grander. IMHO, his longterm fixiation on Iraq and his eagerness to invade and depose of Hussein is probably rooted in a complex psychological need to upstage/repudiate his father's legacy with DS1. Bush the Lesser was, afterall, the neer-do-well, underachieving son who relied on Dad to fix his screw-ups and provide his meal ticket. I think that played heavily on GWB's psyche. The Iraq invasion was more about Dimson's personal desire to prove his father wrong as it was about geo-strategic politics. Cheney, of course, selected George for these easily exploitable character flaws....Operation Iraqi Liberation was gonna make Dick lots of money.

Now that George the Lesser has failed, yet again, on the centerpiece of his foreign policy and the bill of the collective criminal actions of his administration comes due....I wonder how this will play out with his mental health?

I'll bet Shakespeare would have loved to have had a crack at this guy...

[John Q. Citizen]

31. No, they were busy fixing the intelligence to lie to congress and

the American public and the world about why they were going to war.

bushINC knew nobody would buy the truth so they purposely altered intelligence to sell the deal, then they blamed the problems and undisirable consequences on intelligence instead of themselves.

Personally, I think Saddam was far preferable than what's happening in Iraq today. While he was a thug, he apparently is not such a big thug as the bush crime family, eh? If bush was serious about regime change he should have at least put a credible coalition together. Instead, it's the American Empire's occupation of Iraq.

All based on these lies.

Wilson is a real American hero. He stood up for the truth.

[lilymercury]

35. You are asking good questions!

Thanks for hooking me up with this thread.

I totally agree with your assessment, can't believe it's not more obvious to others.

Well, as you said, "Great paranoid minds think alike!"

[Old and In the Way]

37. Thanks for posting....

Seems line an interesting line of inquiry...nothing is what it seems with this administration.

[grasswire]

36. because we know the Niger document was forged...

...then shouldn't we consider that the whole thing was a setup? Let's walk through this scenario:

The WH must not let it be discovered that no nuclear threat exists in Iraq.

Valerie Plame might know this.

A forged document is produced and given to the Italian reporter.

The claim in the document must be investigated.

Wilson is set up to investigate the claim.

The WH claims to reporters that Wilson's wife, the covert op, sent him to Niger.

Plame is outed and her work stopped. Other agents are probably compromised/exposed. The CIA's front entity (her "employer") is exposed.

The WH can claim Saddam's "mushroom cloud" with impunity.

And Joe Wilson is harmed as a bonus.

[WinkyDink]

38. Totally...

agree 100%.

[mzteris]

39. The CIA report says.........

". . . The intelligence committee report says, "Some officials could not recall how the office decided to contact the former ambassador, however, interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD employee, suggested his name for the trip. The CPD reports officer told Committee staff that the former ambassador's wife 'offered up his name' and a memorandum to the Deputy Chief of the CPD on February 12, 2002, from says, 'my husband has good relations with both the PM and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity.' ... The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that when CPD decided it would like to send the former ambassador to Niger, she approached her husband on behalf of the CIA."

The report also notes, "On February 19, 2002, CPD hosted a meeting with the former ambassador, intelligence analysts from both the CIA and INR , and several individuals from the Africa and CPD divisions. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the merits of traveling to Niger. An INR analyst's notes indicate that the meeting was 'apparently convened by wife who had the idea to dispatch to use his contacts to sort out the Iraq-Niger uranium issue. The former ambassador's wife told Committee staff that she only attended the meeting to introduce her husband and left after about three minutes." . . .


. . . it is certainly imaginable that an INR analyst sitting in a meeting in which there is talk of dispatching a CIA officer's husband to Africa could have received the impression that his wife had initiated the mission. But if that was the case, why did Valerie Wilson attend for only a few minutes? If Valerie Wilson's account of this meeting is not accurate, where are the contradicting accounts from the other participants? Why does the report not quote them on this topic? Since only a week elapsed between the time Valerie Wilson "offered up" her husband and a meeting was held to consider sending him to Niger, it is possible that someone participating in the matter might have thought that Valerie Wilson's original advice – talk to my husband – was related to question of sending an unofficial envoy to Niger to seek out additional information.

When Wilson returned from Niger two CIA officers debriefed him. "The debriefing," the Senate report says, "took place in the former ambassador's home and although his wife was there, according to the reports officer, she acted as a hostess and did not participate in the debrief." If Valerie Wilson had played a key role in sending Joseph Wilson to Niger, would she have skipped out on this debriefing? Perhaps. But this scene reinforces Wilson's claim that she was not deeply involved in his Niger trip. . .

. . . The report notes that the CIA people in charge of investigating the Niger allegation deliberated over what to do and then reached the decision to ask Wilson to perform a pro bono act of public service. And he said yes. He had the experience for the job. His trip was not a boondoggle arranged by his wife for his or their benefit.

http://occupationwatch.org/article.php?id=5973