Thus, both pre-9/11 and post-9/11, these PNAC fools in the White House told the U.S. intelligence services to go fuck themselves, going so far as to establish their own counter-U.S. intelligence service “filters” in the White House called the Office of Special Plans and the White House Iraq Group, both charged with “fixing” the intelligence around their preemptive Iraq War policy.

IMHO, the 9/11 attacks happened because of this pre-9/11 obsession over Iraq by the Bush/Cheney/PNAC cabal in the White House. Also, the outing of a covert CIA is directly related to and happened due to this same obsession.

Thank you eRiposte, for your diligence. It is my feeling that your uncovering and exposing the odd circumstances surrounding the Niger forgeries, Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger and the subsequent outing of his wife’s covert position at the CIA, may just someday seque into exposing how Bush/Cheney/PNAC’s obsession over Iraq in 2001 directly contributed to the 9/11 attacks occurring and 3,000 U.S. citizens dying.

The Bush/Cheney/PNAC cabal has the blood of countless innocents on their hands. The 9/11 victims. Those killed in Iraq, both Iraqi and U.S./Coalition forces. And all because of their warped worldview and “go fuck yourself” policies. It is time (actually well past the time) to completely clean these scumbags out of the White House and fumigate the place.

“TS/[redact]” on a document it indicates that it deals with a COVERT operation, source or agent.

THAT information may help you ascertain a little about what some of the redactions mean on these CIA documents further down. These may discuss an agent or operation that is COVERT.

Of course, given the redactions on the SSIC it may also mean that the redaction was made at the behest of someone simply trying to conceal politically embarassing information.

But anything that would suggest that Plame was covert or involved in covert operations would be politically embarassing!

“Q. So your notes don’t indicate one way or the other whether or not Wilson’s wife’s employment at the CIA is classified. Correct?
A. It’s correct, although when I’m dealing with something which involves COVERT stuff, we usually write TS
(redact)on the document.”

[Note-Libby actually said out loud the “code word” that is redacted from documents AFTER the “TS/[Redacted]” that we see throughout the documents. This suggests that each of those documents actually deals with at least one covert individual or operation!]

“MR. FITZGERALD. We’ll strike that. We’ll just put TS and a word.
WITNESS. We usually write TS and a code word next to it which is a –sorry.
MR. FITZGERALD. We’ll redact that.
BY MR. FITZGERALD:
Q. So you put TS and a code word?
A. Yes, usually when there’s something that is of that caliber.
Q. And recognizing that beyond code word, SCI and sensitive compartmented information, there’s top secret and
then there’s secret and then there’s confidential, all of which are classified. Correct?
A. Correct.
Q. So top secret information wouldn’t have a code word marking NECESSARILY.
A. Correct.
Q. And secret wouldn’t have a CODE WORD. Correct?
A. Correct.
Q. And confidential wouldn’t have a CODE MARKING but I all of those three categories of non-code word materials are still classified. Correct?
A. Still classified and could have a code word, but I don’t necessarily.
Q. And so your understanding, when you learn information, wasn’t that it was code word, but did you have an affirmative understanding that it was not classified in any sense at the confidential, secret or top secret that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA?

A. I had no sense at all that it was classified. Is that what you asked? I’m sorry.”

So why did some genius at the CIA send Wilson?

Scarecrow:I think we have to consider the climate within the intelligence community under the Bush/cheney regime. Security/classification issues present a barrier, but under Bush/cheney, we also have political considerations. People are replaced, new directors sympathetic to the WH are brought in; whistleblowers are fired/discredited. Careers are ended.

Since we know that Cheney was making regular slogs down to Langley to browbeat analysts into giving him junk intel, some genius decided to send a Cheney-resistant envoy to Niger. Cheney couldn’t browbeat, intimidate or demote a retired ambassador. (Especially an ambassador who hung a noose around his own neck and dared Saddam to come get him, in the lead up to the first Gulf War.)
So what could Cheney do to Wilson? I can just see it now: Cheney, who saw himself as the heir of Nixon’s Ratf*ckers, looked up at Libby and said, “Scooter, let’s f*ck his wife! That’ll show him who’s in charge around here!”

And the rest is history.

Here’s another possibility. If one is going to stovepipe intelligence one wants as much information as possible that one can then use to find a few sows ears in the pearls. Libby would have Feith extract and revise whatever they wanted to release to Congress and the public.

So the State Department had already established that the claims of any actual transaction was illogical based upon their assessments from Ambassador Barbro Owens-Kilpatrick in Niger. And the DIA (in the Dept. of Defense) sent out 4-star General and head of NATO Command, Gen. Carlton Fulford, hoping to get sometime. That would have been ordered by Rumsfeld. Again NADA! But the third leg of the approach was by Cheney to the CIA…who sent Wilson.

I think they sent Wilson because he was the best qualified for the job of interrogating FORMER Nigerien officials about this. From the SSIC and extracts of the now declassified sections of the Libby Trial Docs, it’s clear that Wilson had been asked (after his wife pointed out his credentials) in 1999 to investigate reports of another countries efforts to procure yellowcake from Niger. The fact that Plame was aware of these reports suggests her specific tasking BTW.

It now seems clear that Wilson, after interviewing government officials at that time, discovered that IRAN and PAKISTAN had both made efforts to acquire yellowcake from Niger. In fact, it sounds as if there was some IAEA “international” action as a response that was embassing to Niger.

Thus Wilson had been on a successful intelligence operation to Niger in 1999. This, of course, was precisely the time that the IRAQ reports asserted that a contract had been signed. Such a “contract” would seem implausible since it was precisely when Niger would have been aware of Wilson’s investigation, that Niger took the heat for even interacting with Pakistan, and that scrutiny of Niger’s mines was increased even more as a result of the above.

So that’s why Wilson was sent again. Could the reports actually have been valid? Perhaps there was something deeper..perhaps a political move by someone to discredit someone in the government, or a ‘Cloak & Dagger” version of the Nigerian “send me money to get $1 billion hidden by the ex-Dictator out of the Nigerian State Bank”.

Does one really believe that some government officials secretly trying to smuggle TONS of yellowcake to the Iraqis would then go to Niger’s Supreme Court and ASK PERMISSION to do so legally????!!!!

And the CIA didn’t see right off the bat that this smelled like a cave full of guano?

Don’t you think this episode should invite some phone calls by the Democrats in the Senate or House Intelligence Committees to the FBI or the CIA? (And shouldn’t money grow on the trees in your backyard?)

I love your exquisitely detailed work and this is not a criticism of any of it, but I am curious: Why don’t you call him yourself?

Perhaps you have the same reasons everybody else did – that you assume everything he says would be a ridiculous fabrication anyway?

My swag is the local NCIS gives out cold, hard cash for information that pans out. They get a lot of crap as a result and this “business man” was peddling a bunch of b-s in the hopes of scoring some.

It ~was~ after “Uranium for Africa” was in the public discourse, Niger was the African largest exporter, it’s not that hard a story to peddle, right?

Martino was likely a similar peddler, and got used in a larger plot. WABman may have been used too, but his info was so crude that it seems far less likely, is my swag.

Yes, I agree the CIA had no reason to investigate the documents as, at least, the director had to know they were fake. In any event they were probably following the old Reagan-era idea that if a story suits your needs don’t investigate it’s veracity.

Politicians work in the White House AND in the secretary positions of departments, including the DCI (director of Central Intelligence, like Tenet was).

What does this mean?

It means Cheney had better tread carefully or Bush will stab him in the back the way the Bush family always stabs collaborators when they’re done with ‘em.

It means if Cheney wishes to strike a blow, it had better be a death blow or there will be severe repercussions.

For us it means Fitzgerald might be able to turn one against the other to bring ‘em all down in one gawd-awful tragi-comical disastrously funny indictment.

However, bringing them down might have us replacing one of them with an appointee not to our liking. Remember Jerry Ford was appointed Veep when there was a Dem majority in the House. If Dick goes down first then who would Dubya appoint, his brother Jeb perhaps? If Dubya goes down then who would kneel before King Dick? It’s a nasty story no matter how you read it.

It’s the media Run-up to the War that I remember best – BushCo’s minions flooding the Talking Head programs, Rovian Talking Points galore, Judy’s NYT pieces, anthrax (remember that?) and the greatest coordinated conflation in modern history – 911/Iraq.

To now see the same effort was at work in the IC makes sense, but is also alarming at the same time.

My understanding of the Intelligence Community is that it was set-up with 19 Independent Agencies – all of whom are tasked with watching the others – as a safety precaution against ‘false memes’ taking root as real and becoming the foundation of bad policy and erroneous action.

This appears to be a ‘breakdown’ of a massively redundant system – very unexpected, and frankly probably not possible without sanction and direction from the highest levels.

As other posters have said, this needs Congressional Oversight – for no other reason than IT COULD HAPPEN AGAIN if not addressed.

The consequences could be enormous. For instance, if BushCo invades Iran using ‘cooked intell’ and a Pool of Media Stenographers with Bullhorns – might that be a SIGN that IDEOLOGY has penetrated the corridors of Power in our Government, perverted our principles and muted our voices?

A successful Covert Coup d’Etat is one in which the ‘People’ never see the wires behind their ‘elected’ Representatives.