The Credibility of Joe Wilson
I haven't been posting about the leak case, but one of the things that's amazed is the way the press has consistently referred to the original op-ed in the New York Times written by Amb. Joe Wilson without ever mentioning the fact that it has since been discredited. Thus the idea that the famous 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union address were "a lie" has been reinforced, and not corrected, by the coverage.
So when I saw a story on Wilson's credibility in today's Post I thought, ah-ha, here we go.
Really, not so much.
Take a look at this:
Wilson's central assertion -- disputing President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger -- has been validated by postwar weapons inspections. And his charge that the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq has proved potent.
Well, no, Wilson's claim in the op-ed had to do with whether Iraq had sought nuclear material in Niger, not with whether they had obtained it or not, so the fact that none has been found is irrelevant to those claims -- which center on intent. Thanks anyway.
Check this out:
Wilson has also armed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair. For example, Wilson told The Washington Post anonymouslyin June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson "had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports." Wilson had to admit he had misspoken.
If a source had burned me that way I don't know that I'd be so invested in protecting him by saying he had "misspoken." At the very best he was trying to pump himself up by making himself look more important in the saga than he was. (It turns out that that word -- "misspoken" -- comes from Wilson himself. In other words, these reporters are simply accepting Wilson's characterization of what happened.)
But this is what really annoys me. Even though this comes deep in the article, and this is the best the reporters will do:
Wilson also had charged that his report on Niger clearly debunked the claim about Iraqi uranium purchases. He told NBC in 2004: "This government knew that there was nothing to these allegations." But the Senate committee said his findings were ambiguous. Tenet said Wilson's report "did not resolve" the matter.
Yes, there's a suggestion that the question remained open, but here's what the Post's reporting on the committee report said when it first came out:
The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts.
More:
Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.
That's the Post's reporting.
And of course, the Senate report is independent of the (apparently) now forgotten Butler report which the Brits put out, which determined that the statements about Iraq and Niger were "well founded" and that Wilson's op-ed was, you know, wrong.
I'm not interested in getting sucked into the whole leak story. But as a media angle, it's just interesting to me that the press just won't get into the question of whether Wilson's original op-ed was correct (or, more interestingly, correctly reflected what he was saying in private and classified channels) even as they report that the whole affair started as an effort to quash the response to that op-ed.
Update: Well, timing is everything. Isn't this interesting: an open letter to the press asking for better reporting on precisely this issue (even a suggestion on how to do it without any unnecessary verbiage) went out yesterday. And here's his take on today's Post article.
Yesterday morning, as NPR did yet another story on this stuff even though there was nothing new to report (the set up spoke of how abuzz DC is), and as we again got the brief recap of the "basic fact" of the case, I imagined a parallel universe in which those basics included some indication of WHY the fact that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA would in any way discredit him, rather than being neutral or even lending some credibility. And where the basic recap included a mention of the myriad ways Wilson has in fact been discredited. I also imagined a world in which the UN oil-for-food scandal, real scandal!, was newsworthy once in a blue moon.
Posted by: Judasmac | October 25, 2005 at 12:06 PM
Did the former Niger prime minister [Mayaki] meet with any Iraqi officials in June 1999?
In brief:
1. Wilson says “yes” during his private CIA debrief in March, 2002.
2. Wilson fails to mention the meeting in his NYT op/ed and his first “Meet the Press” in July, 2003.
3. Wilson lies and says “no” during a “Frontline” PBS Interview in August, 2003.
4. Wilson lies and says “no” twice during his second “Meet the Press” interview in October, 2003.
5. Wilson says “yes” during his third “Meet the Press” interview in May, 2004.
6. Wilson says “yes” to SSCI committee staff --report released in July, 2004.
Posted by: Reg Jones | October 25, 2005 at 12:16 PM
Just thought you might want to take a look at the other side of the issue. This is a post from No Quarter by Larry Johnson. They say that the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. No side is ever fully right. You might want to engage Larry and see where the search for the "truth" leads.
The So-called "Lies" of Joe Wilson
by
Larry C. Johnson
The smears keep on coming. The airwaves have been filled with folks like like Joe DiGenova, his wacky wife, Victoria Toensing, and Andrea Mitchell insisting that, "Joe Wilson lied" about who sent him to Niger and what he discovered. Well, let's play he said, she said and pinpoint the real liar.
Andrea Mitchell, a woman genuinely confused by facts, said the following on Tuesday's edition of Hardball:
MITCHELL: I don`t know that to be the case, but what I think people need to focus on, is the overall background of what was going on back then. This was a fight -- an internal fight -- between the CIA and Dick Cheney. . . .And in that context, when Joe Wilson went on television with us and in interviews and said he had been dispatched by the vice president, you could understand why Dick Cheney and his people probably said no, we didn`t send him. We had nothing to do with that, because, you know, whether Wilson was told or was simply inflating his own importance, he led people to believe, he said publicly, that he had been dispatched by the vice president.
Gee Andrea, don't you know how to read? Here is what Joe Wilson wrote on July 6, 2003:
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.
Got it! He did not write that Cheney sent him. Joe Wilson isn't lying, Andrea Mitchell is. Moreover, when Wilson appeared on Meet the Press on July 6, 2003 with Andrea, he did not say what she claims he did. Here's the relevant portion of the transcript:
MS. MITCHELL: But, in fact, many officials, including the president, the vice president, Donald Rumsfeld, were referring to the Niger issue as though it were fact, as though it were true and they were told by the CIA, this information was passed on in the national intelligence estimate, I've been told, with a caveat from the State Department that it was highly dubious based on your trip but that that caveat was buried in a footnote, in the appendix. So was the White House misled? Were they not properly briefed on the fact that you had the previous February been there and that it wasn't true?
AMB. WILSON: No. No. In actual fact, in my judgment, I have not seen the estimate either, but there were reports based upon my trip that were submitted to the appropriate officials. The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there.
Shocking! Joe Wilson consistently said that the request originated with the Vice President and was passed to the CIA. Don't stop there, that is also what the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported in July 2004.
Several in the media also keep repeating as fact that Joe Wilson got it wrong on whether or not Iraq was buying uranium in Niger. Here is what Joe wrote in July 2003:
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.
Guess what? That turned out to be true as well. Joe had his facts right, it was Bush and Cheney who were ignoring the truth. What we now know for certain is that the intelligence community, particularly the CIA, consistently shared Joe's judgment that the reports claiming Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium were not reliable. On at least two occasions in the Fall of 2002, CIA personnel specifically informed Senators and the White House that the reports about Iraq buying uranium were wrong. We now know that the only intelligence on this matter came from one source, Italian intelligence, which provided three separate reports.
Finally, several media hacks go after Joe claiming that the White House had to know about the results of his investigation. Here's what Joe said:
Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.
Andrea Mitchell on the October 13 edition of Hardball spreads further misinformation by insisting that Vice President Cheney was out of the loop:
MITCHELL: He did not necessarily know that any trip was even under way at the early stages of that trip.
MATTHEWS: Sure, but they...
MITCHELL: That`s what they were trying to clear up. That`s why they jumped up. And that was probably the original motivation.
MATTHEWS: Right. But is the vice president, Jim, still left with the explanation that he or someone has to give -- if a trip was undertaken to Central Africa to answer an inquiry raised by him, why didn`t they report back to him that there was no deal there involving uranium? And, therefore, why didn`t he tell the president before he gave his State of the Union address?
Wrong again Andrea! (How can someone get so much so wrong and still be considered a serious journalist?) According to the July 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report, Vice President Cheney asked his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger issue he had asked about in early February (which triggered Joe Wilson's trip to Niger). As a result of Cheney's request in early March, two CIA officers debriefed Ambassador Wilson on the results of his trip, wrote up the report, and disseminated the report on 8 March (p. 42 of the Senate report). Now, we're asked to believe that the CIA briefer never got back to Cheney? If you believe that call me, I have a bridge in Baghdad to sell you.
So boys and girls, what have we learned? Well if there is a liar it is not Joe Wilson. He told the truth. It is people like Andrea Mitchell, Joseph DiGenova, Victoria Toensing who are having trouble with the truth of the matter.
Posted by: nykrindc | October 25, 2005 at 12:36 PM
Just thought you might want to take a look at the other side of the issue. This is a post from No Quarter by Larry Johnson. They say that the truth always lies somewhere in the middle. No side is ever fully right. You might want to engage Larry and see where the search for the "truth" leads.
The So-called "Lies" of Joe Wilson
by
Larry C. Johnson
The smears keep on coming. The airwaves have been filled with folks like like Joe DiGenova, his wacky wife, Victoria Toensing, and Andrea Mitchell insisting that, "Joe Wilson lied" about who sent him to Niger and what he discovered. Well, let's play he said, she said and pinpoint the real liar.
Andrea Mitchell, a woman genuinely confused by facts, said the following on Tuesday's edition of Hardball:
MITCHELL: I don`t know that to be the case, but what I think people need to focus on, is the overall background of what was going on back then. This was a fight -- an internal fight -- between the CIA and Dick Cheney. . . .And in that context, when Joe Wilson went on television with us and in interviews and said he had been dispatched by the vice president, you could understand why Dick Cheney and his people probably said no, we didn`t send him. We had nothing to do with that, because, you know, whether Wilson was told or was simply inflating his own importance, he led people to believe, he said publicly, that he had been dispatched by the vice president.
Gee Andrea, don't you know how to read? Here is what Joe Wilson wrote on July 6, 2003:
In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake -- a form of lightly processed ore -- by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.
Got it! He did not write that Cheney sent him. Joe Wilson isn't lying, Andrea Mitchell is. Moreover, when Wilson appeared on Meet the Press on July 6, 2003 with Andrea, he did not say what she claims he did. Here's the relevant portion of the transcript:
MS. MITCHELL: But, in fact, many officials, including the president, the vice president, Donald Rumsfeld, were referring to the Niger issue as though it were fact, as though it were true and they were told by the CIA, this information was passed on in the national intelligence estimate, I've been told, with a caveat from the State Department that it was highly dubious based on your trip but that that caveat was buried in a footnote, in the appendix. So was the White House misled? Were they not properly briefed on the fact that you had the previous February been there and that it wasn't true?
AMB. WILSON: No. No. In actual fact, in my judgment, I have not seen the estimate either, but there were reports based upon my trip that were submitted to the appropriate officials. The question was asked of the CIA by the office of the vice president. The office of the vice president, I am absolutely convinced, received a very specific response to the question it asked and that response was based upon my trip out there.
Shocking! Joe Wilson consistently said that the request originated with the Vice President and was passed to the CIA. Don't stop there, that is also what the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported in July 2004.
Several in the media also keep repeating as fact that Joe Wilson got it wrong on whether or not Iraq was buying uranium in Niger. Here is what Joe wrote in July 2003:
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.
Guess what? That turned out to be true as well. Joe had his facts right, it was Bush and Cheney who were ignoring the truth. What we now know for certain is that the intelligence community, particularly the CIA, consistently shared Joe's judgment that the reports claiming Iraq was trying to buy yellowcake uranium were not reliable. On at least two occasions in the Fall of 2002, CIA personnel specifically informed Senators and the White House that the reports about Iraq buying uranium were wrong. We now know that the only intelligence on this matter came from one source, Italian intelligence, which provided three separate reports.
Finally, several media hacks go after Joe claiming that the White House had to know about the results of his investigation. Here's what Joe said:
Though I did not file a written report, there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission. The documents should include the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a C.I.A. report summing up my trip, and a specific answer from the agency to the office of the vice president (this may have been delivered orally). While I have not seen any of these reports, I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.
Andrea Mitchell on the October 13 edition of Hardball spreads further misinformation by insisting that Vice President Cheney was out of the loop:
MITCHELL: He did not necessarily know that any trip was even under way at the early stages of that trip.
MATTHEWS: Sure, but they...
MITCHELL: That`s what they were trying to clear up. That`s why they jumped up. And that was probably the original motivation.
MATTHEWS: Right. But is the vice president, Jim, still left with the explanation that he or someone has to give -- if a trip was undertaken to Central Africa to answer an inquiry raised by him, why didn`t they report back to him that there was no deal there involving uranium? And, therefore, why didn`t he tell the president before he gave his State of the Union address?
Wrong again Andrea! (How can someone get so much so wrong and still be considered a serious journalist?) According to the July 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report, Vice President Cheney asked his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger issue he had asked about in early February (which triggered Joe Wilson's trip to Niger). As a result of Cheney's request in early March, two CIA officers debriefed Ambassador Wilson on the results of his trip, wrote up the report, and disseminated the report on 8 March (p. 42 of the Senate report). Now, we're asked to believe that the CIA briefer never got back to Cheney? If you believe that call me, I have a bridge in Baghdad to sell you.
So boys and girls, what have we learned? Well if there is a liar it is not Joe Wilson. He told the truth. It is people like Andrea Mitchell, Joseph DiGenova, Victoria Toensing who are having trouble with the truth of the matter.
Posted by: nykrindc | October 25, 2005 at 12:38 PM
Oops. I hit refresh by mistake when I was posting and didn't realize my post went through twice. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Posted by: nykrindc | October 25, 2005 at 12:57 PM
Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.
What's with the blogs on this issue. It was Iran not Iraq that tried to buy the 400 tons. Note the correction in the linked wapo article.
Posted by: Reg Jones | October 25, 2005 at 03:19 PM
Better reporting, indeed.
Posted by: Sven | October 25, 2005 at 03:58 PM
Hmmm.
Posted by: mkultra | October 25, 2005 at 08:57 PM
According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.
That was Iran, not Iraq, remember? The Post misquoted the report and had to issue a correction.
Posted by: Patterico | October 27, 2005 at 09:38 PM
I see another commenter already made that point.
Posted by: Patterico | October 28, 2005 at 12:02 AM