"Twisting the truth"

In the comments of his April 7th post, my friend Jeff continues our debate regarding the White House's release (or "leak", if you prefer) of the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, and asks a number of questions.

Jeff: "First, do you believe that the 16 words in the SOTU speech were completely accurate? If so, why did the administration retract the statement?"

In his 2003 SOTU, Bush said that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The British still stand by their intelligence, so yes - this statement is "completely accurate". What made it problematic - at least politically - was that, as George "slam dunk" Tenet said, "This should not have been the test for clearing a Presidential address. This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for Presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed."

Jeff: "If they weren't completely accurate, then Wilson's assertions that those words were not accurate are true. That was his main claim."

The problem is that Wilson's "assertions" after the fact don't fully match what he himself found in Niger - i.e., that the former Nigerian Prime Minister told Wilson he met with an Iraqi delegation in 1999, and that the PM believed the purpose was to "discuss uranium yellowcake sales". Wilson's report reinforced the analysis of those in the intelligence community who believed Iraq had indeed sought uranium from Africa - an important part of the story that Wilson deliberately omitted from his NYT op-ed. As a WaPo editorial put it just yesterday,

The material that Mr. Bush ordered declassified established, as have several subsequent investigations, that Mr. Wilson was the one guilty of twisting the truth. In fact, his report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.

Hardly a "little inconsistency", that.

Jeff: "Second, you made mention that the President didn't authorize the disclosure of Plame's name. We really don't know that yet".

Actually, we do already know that, if Fitzgerald is to be believed. See the quote from his court filing in the April 7th post.

Jeff: "Third, we do know that Cheney authorized the leak. What should be done about that? Did he, or Rove, or Libby, or anyone else involved do anything wrong in your view?"

The VP has the same statutory authority to declassify information - in this case, the 2002 NIE - as the President does. The only person accused of doing anything "wrong" is Libby, who has been charged with lying under oath. If Libby is indeed found guilty of lying under oath, then he should face the consequences.

Jeff: "The camel in the issue that you have to swallow to take your position is that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program".

Well according to the Duelfer report, "Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability - in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks - but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities." Although "Iraq’s ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed" after 1991, "Saddam did express his intent to retain the intellectual capital developed during the Iraqi Nuclear Program. Senior Iraqis - several of them from the Regime’s inner circle - told ISG they assumed Saddam would restart a nuclear program once UN sanctions ended." You may disagree, but for me Saddam's intent to reconstitute his nuke program is just as alarming as if he was already actually doing so.

Jeff: "and that exposing a CIA operative to score political points is okay".

I've said no such thing - you are conflating the NIE leak with the Plame name leak: they are two separate things. But the main person responsible for "exposing" Valerie Plame is Joe Wilson himself. Did Wilson not expect that once he went public in the NYT op-ed announcing his work with the CIA, people would start asking hard questions? Questions like, why was a retired diplomat with zero experience in nuclear proliferation and zero investigative experience sent by the CIA to Niger - a country he hadn't served in for 24 years - to investigate reported attempts by Iraq to purchase yellowcake from Niger? Ah, his wife at CIA set it up - that explains it.

Jeff: "If we're looking at inconsistencies, we can talk about WMD in Iraq and the reasons for war. Those have shifted 9 or 10 times."

Indeed? I suggest you read the 2002 joint Congressional resolution for the use of force, which lays out the rationale for war - WMD was cited, but also cited was Iraq's "supporting and harboring terrorist organizations", the "brutal repression of its civilian population", the refusal to "release, repatriate, or account for non-Iraqi citizens wrongfully detained by Iraq", the "continuing hostility toward, and willingness to attack, the United States", the "firing on many thousands of occasions on United States and Coalition Armed Forces engaged in enforcing the resolutions of the United Nations Security Council", Iraq's continuing to "aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations", Iraq's "obstruction of United Nations weapons inspections", etc. This was all explicitly laid out before the war, but folks like Jeff cry about "shifting" reasons whenever the administration refers to those rationales - why?

Jeff: "Or we can look at statements made by Bush about firing leakers (Rove still has a job) or about leaks in general."

Bush was referring to unauthorized leaks. Authorized leaks are perfectly legal - and in fact are SOP. As the WaPo said in yesterday's editorial concerning the NIE leak, "There was nothing illegal or even particularly unusual about that; nor is this presidentially authorized leak necessarily comparable to other, unauthorized disclosures that the president believes, rightly or wrongly, compromise national security."

Jeff: " Why was the summary of the NIE not leaked or declassified? Oh, it makes Wilson's case stronger. I see now."

I don't see how the conflict between DOE, State, CIA, and others in the intelligence community on Iraq's acquisition of aluminum tubes - which has nothing to do with the Niger issue - makes "Wilson's case stronger". In any event, the SSCI report had already revealed this conflict long ago. The CIA viewpoint (which was wrong) won out over State's and DOE - but we already knew this. And note that DOE was only questioning the specific issue of the tubes; on the larger question of whether Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, DOE was in agreement with CIA:

"The Department of Energy (DOE) agrees that reconstitution of the nuclear program is underway but assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program."

Also, I find it highly suspect that the author of the National Journal article you link to, Murray Waas, makes zero mention of Wilson's lies, or of the full context of DOE's assessment of Iraq's nuclear program. And it is a distortion by Waas when he states that the tubes issue was "a key rationale for going to war". Bush's SOTU mentioning the tubes was in January, but the use of force resolution had already been voted on - and passed by both houses - nearly three months earlier. The tubes (or the "16 words", for that matter) were not in any way part of the debate during the time that the resolution was being considered. Well, others have noted past distortions by Mr. Waas, so we should not be surprised.