The WP article that started the Plame Affair

[shockingelk]

The WP ran a front page article that mentioned a "retired U.S. ambassador" being sent to Africa - Dateline June 12, 2003 - the day Cheney revealed Plame's identity to Libby according to last night's NYT scoop:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46957-2003Jun11?language=printer

Excerpts of the Post article:

A key component of President Bush's claim in his State of the Union address last January that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program -- its alleged attempt to buy uranium in Niger -- was disputed by a CIA-directed mission to the central African nation in early 2002, according to senior administration officials and a former government official. But the CIA did not pass on the detailed results of its investigation to the White House or other government agencies, the officials said.

... Armed with information purportedly showing that Iraqi officials had been seeking to buy uranium in Niger one or two years earlier, the CIA in early February 2002 dispatched a retired U.S. ambassador to the country to investigate the claims, according to the senior U.S. officials and the former government official, who is familiar with the event. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity and on condition that the name of the former ambassador not be disclosed.

During his trip, the CIA's envoy spoke with the president of Niger and other Niger officials mentioned as being involved in the Iraqi effort, some of whose signatures purportedly appeared on the documents.

After returning to the United States, the envoy reported to the CIA that the uranium-purchase story was false, the sources said. Among the envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong," the former U.S. government official said.

However, the CIA did not include details of the former ambassador's report and his identity as the source, which would have added to the credibility of his findings, in its intelligence reports that were shared with other government agencies. Instead, the CIA only said that Niger government officials had denied the attempted deal had taken place, a senior administration said.

[OrangeCountyDemocrat]

1. Just A Coincidence....

It sure is weird how the day of this discussion between libby & cheney ties into the Same day the WP published this story.

[Name removed]

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[shockingelk]

3. In that case, it's here:

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/05/06/nyt.kristof/

Still, I can't imagine the WP article was not part of the 6/12/03 Rove/Libby conversation.

[Name removed]

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[mzteris]

5. From the Kristoff story:

"Consider the now-disproved claims by President Bush and Colin Powell that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger so it could build nuclear weapons. As Seymour Hersh noted in The New Yorker, the claims were based on documents that had been forged so amateurishly that they should never have been taken seriously.

I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. 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. "