[Mb-civic] The Get-Wilson Crusade

Fri Jul 23 17:46:09 PDT 2004

The Get-Wilson Crusade

By David Corn, The Nation
 Posted on July 23, 2004, Printed on July 23, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/19328/

So this is what the campaign against former ambassador Joseph Wilson is
about? In a long editorial yesterday, the hawks of The Wall Street Journal
called for Patrick Fitzgerald, the US attorney investigating the Bush
administration leak that identified Wilson's wife as a CIA officer, to "fold
up his tent." The goal of the WSJ conservatives  and perhaps that of the
other GOPers who have been bashing Wilson  is to get the Bush White House
off the hook for the leak that outed Valerie Wilson (nee Plame). This leak,
which appeared in a Robert Novak column a year ago, ruined the career of a
government employee who worked to prevent the spread of unconventional
weapons. It may have undermined national security by impairing her
operations and threatening her contacts. And it was a possible violation of
the federal law that prohibits government officials from disclosing the
identities of covert government officers.

In other articles, I've addressed the campaign against Wilson. But let's
zero in on the logic  or lack thereof  of the Journal's editorialists.
They write:

"Mr. Wilson had been denying any involvement at all on Ms. Plame's part, in
order to suggest that her identity was disclosed by a still-unknown
Administration official out of pure malice. If instead an Administration
official cited nepotism truthfully in order to explain the oddity of Mr.
Wilson's selection for the Niger mission, then there was no underlying
crime. Motive is crucial under the controlling statute."

Much is wrong in this short paragraph. First, Wilson did not deny "any
involvement at all on Plame's part." He denied that she had specifically
recommended him to be an envoy for the CIA. He has said she was involved in
bringing him to a meeting at the CIA that led to his assignment. But Wilson
and his detractors are now arguing over the details of this minor matter.
But if there is going to be a nitpickfest, the Journal should be careful to
get its facts straight.

Second, did Wilson deny his wife's involvement so he could suggest the leak
was done out of pure malice? I doubt it. His family was hit hard by the
leak. He didn't need to downplay  if that is what he did  his wife's
participation to accuse the leakers of thuggish behavior. He would have had
a strong argument even if she had signed his travel orders. His trip was no
junket. He was not paid for it. Her involvement  in any capacity  did not
justify the leak.

Third, there was nothing odd about the CIA dispatching Wilson on an informal
mission to Niger to check out the allegation that Saddam Hussein had been
shopping for uranium there. Wilson, an old African hand who had worked for
both Democratic and Republican administrations, had the experience and the
contacts in Niger to do what he was asked. (By the way, at the time of the
trip, he was no Democratic or anti-Bush partisan. He had even made a
political contribution to George W. Bush during the 2000 primaries.)

Fourth, the Journal's claim that the leak was legal if Wilson's wife was
involved in his trip is  to be kind  wacky. Here's what the law says:

"Whoever, having or having had authorized access to classified information
that identifies a covert agent, intentionally discloses any information
identifying such covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive
classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies
such covert agent and that the United States is taking affirmative measures
to conceal such covert agent's intelligence relationship to the United
States, shall be fined not more than $50,000 or imprisoned not more than ten
years, or both."

It does not say it is okay to identify a CIA officer if that officer engaged
in an act of nepotism (as if sending your spouse to Niger for a no-pay job
is an act of nepotism). Motive, contrary to the editorial, is not addressed
in the above passage. Intentionality does matter, as does the state of
knowledge of the offender (regarding the status of the covert officer). But
surely the geniuses of the WSJ know the difference between motivation and
intentionality. Whether the leakers outed Valerie Wilson to undermine
Wilson's credibility (his wife sent him, so how much could he really know
about this stuff?) or to punish him for challenging Bush's claim that
Hussein had been caught trying to buy yellowcake uranium in Africa, the law
applies just the same.

Pointing to supposed discrepancies in Wilson's account is not a defense 
and does not mitigate the need for a criminal investigation.

"The entire leak probe now looks like a familiar Beltway case of
criminalizing political differences," the editorial maintains. This is the
canard often pressed into service when Republicans are accused of illegal
activity. For years, the rightwing has dismissed the Iran-contra scandal as
merely an instance of when political differences were "criminalized." And in
the case of the Wilson leak, the use of this rhetoric is especially absurd.
The probe was requested by the CIA. The Justice Department initiated it.
Attorney General John Ashcroft recused himself, and his deputy handed the
case to Fitzgerald, who set up a quasi-independent inquiry. Where are the
political motivations in all this?

As other Wilson critics have done in recent days, the Journal selectively
picks material out of the Senate intelligence committee's report on the
prewar intelligence to accuse Wilson of having misrepresented his trip to
Niger. Wilson declared that what he learned there showed that the allegation
about Iraq purchasing uranium from Niger was "highly doubtful." His foes at
the Journal (and elsewhere) note that the Senate report maintains his trip
was seen by intelligence analysts as partially confirming the allegation.
But the Journal and the others conveniently ignore the fact (contained in
the report) that analysts split on this point, and that the lead analyst at
the State Department saw Wilson's report as confirmation of the State
Department's view that the allegation was improbable.

The Journal and the rest also make much of Wilson's statement that he had
concluded documents purporting to outline a uranium deal between Iraq and
Niger were forgeries. A-ha, they say, these documents did not appear until
eight months after his trip. Wilson has acknowledging misspeaking about the
forgeries. Still, the Journal writes, "Joe Wilson didn't tell the truth
about how he supposedly came to realize that it was 'highly doubtful' there
was anything to the story he'd been sent to Niger to investigate. He told
everyone that he'd recognized as obvious forgeries the documents purporting
to show an Iraq-Niger uranium deal" But this is another misrepresentation.

Wilson went public about his trip to Niger by publishing an op-ed piece in
The New York Times on July 6, 2003. In that piece, he specifically noted
that his conclusions had had nothing to do with the forged documents that
appeared months after his trip. Here is the key portion of that piece:

"I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens
of people: current government officials, former government officials, people
associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to
conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever
taken place."

"Given the structure of the consortiums that operated the mines, it would be
exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq. Niger's uranium
business consists of two mines, Somair and Cominak, which are run by French,
Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests. If the government wanted
to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which
in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental
entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of
mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's
simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have
transpired. (As for the actual memorandum, I never saw it. But news accounts
have pointed out that the documents had glaring errors  they were signed,
for example, by officials who were no longer in government  and were
probably forged. And then there's the fact that Niger formally denied the
charges.)"

Again, the Journal got it wrong. Wilson's determination that the charge was
"highly doubtful" was unconnected to the forged documents (or anything he
might have subsequently said about the documents).

The Journal ended the editorial with what has become the chorus of
conservative war-backers: the Senate report is proof that Bush did not
oversell the case for war. It notes that a British inquiry released days ago
found that Bush's use of the uranium-shopping allegation was "well-founded."
But as have other conservatives, the Journal's editorialists ignore the
portion of the report that says there was no intelligence to back up Bush's
prewar assertion that Hussein was a threat because he was "dealing" with al
Qaeda. (If that wasn't overselling, please define the term.) They also fail
to address the extensive parts of the report that show that the intelligence
on WMDs in Iraq was much weaker than Bush told the public during the run-up
to the war.

It's too bad that one cannot say it is surprising that the conservatives of
The Wall Street Journal care more about the supposed inconsistencies of Joe
Wilson than either the leaking of classified information that might have
harmed national security or the dramatic overstatements Bush peddled to
grease the way for war. The Journal and other rightwingers, eager to strike
an ideological foe and protect the Bush White House, are trying to recast
the Wilson episode by blaming and impugning the victims (the Wilsons). In
doing so, these law-and-order conservatives are mounting a disingenuous
attempt to politicize  and excuse  possible criminal behavior.