Dan Darling writes a few brief conclusions on the Senate Report. I decided to pull apart his comments on Joe Wilson, and this is what I found.
Dan, on the Wilson matter: You call the man a "liar and not a particularly good one at that". Then you've got a few paragraphs from which we're supposed to infer exactly that, I suppose. I don't get there from what you've written and the publicly available documents.
After some pointless characterization of Wilson's public image, you state: "Even more so, I would argue, if only for the fact that he was making claims about a number of issues, for example the forged documents referring to Niger, of which he had no actual knowledge - a very polite way of saying that the man was blowing smoke out his ass."
The Senate report is available at http://intelligence.senate.gov. It is a little awkward to deal with, as it does not contain a text layer (it's image only). I refer to page numbers in the document, not in the PDF file.
According to the Senate report, page 36, the first CIA report on the Iraq-Niger deal was written on Oct. 18, 2001. The first CIA report referred to a report from a foreign government's intelligence service. Per the Senate report, page 37, the second CIA report was issued on February 5, 2002. This second report "provided what was said to be the 'verbatim text' of the accord". In other words, the second report contained the alleged contract between Iraq and Niger.
On page 40 of the Senate report, we learn that Wilson participated in a February 19, 2002 meeting "to discuss the merits of the former ambassador travelling to Niger". On page 41, of the SR:
"The INR analyst's notes also indicate that specific details of the classified report on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal were discussed at the meeting, as well as whether analysts believed it was plausible that Niger would be capable of delivering such a large quantity of uranium to Iraq. The CIA has told committee staff that the former ambassador did not have a 'formal' security clearance but had been given an 'operation clearance' up to the Secret level for the purpose of his potential visit to Niger."
In other words, Wilson was present at a meeting during which specific details of the CIA's reports on the alleged Iraq-Niger deal were discussed, and he had clearance to be there. We know that the second report contained the "verbatim text" of the agreement, which presumably would mean it contained the names of those who signed it. It is entirely possible that the names were discussed or seen at that meeting.
Page 45 of the SR notes:
"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have 'misspoken' to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were 'forged'. He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself."
Note the remarkably minimal text that is directly attributable to Wilson himself. The 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' is in fact the entire extent of the quote, in the June 13, 2003 Post story (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A46957-2003Jun11¬Found=true). We are then told only TWO WORDS of Wilson's testimony: 'misspoken' and 'forged'. What did Wilson actually say? This is summary of summary of summary, and isn't evidence of a damn thing.
The Washington Post article says this:
"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."
Note that Wilson is not QUOTED as saying that the documents were forged; he is quoted as saying 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong'. The March 2003 IAEA report concluding that the documents were forged and that they had the wrong names on them had already been published at that point, and Wilson had likely already seen it. Note that the SR indicates that the word 'forged' is a quote from wilson, in the context of the Post article. It is not; that is the reporter's verbage. So all we have here is that in June 2003, Wilson told a reporter that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong', which was both true and public knowledge. That the documents were forged was ALSO public knowledge.
I encourage you to be more specific about "making claims about a number of issues, for example the forged documents referring to Niger, of which he had no actual knowledge". Back it up with a specific claim that Wilson has made, quoted in his OWN words if you please, rather than a multiple levels of indirection.
Next, you state "the name of Wilson's wife was leaked to the press in order to punish him for having "debunked" the administration's claims with respect to Iraq attempting to purchase uranium from Africa. As the report very clearly indicates, this was simply not the case". Where do you see this in the Senate report? By "simply not the case", do you mean that Wilson's wife's name was leaked, or do you mean that his report did NOT in fact "debunk" the Iraq-Niger deal? On the first, there's no text in the SR concluding anything about whether the administration leaked her name; we're therefore talking about whether Wilson's report "debunked" anything. Why, then, do you lead your sentence mentioning the leak of Plame's name? Perhaps you have inadvertently connected the SR and this conclusion.
On the SR, page 43, we learn that Wilson was debriefed after his trip on March 5, 2002. Pages 43 and 44 contain summarizations of the report that resulted from that debriefing. It is quite clear that Wilson came to the conclusion, during his trip and his meetings with Nigerien officials who would have had to have been involved at the time, that the Iraq-Niger deal was bogus. But did this "debunk" the theory? On page 73:
"Conclusion 13. The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to unranium to Iraq."
Some analysts believed him, and some did not. In Wilson's mind, the Iraq-Niger deal was a done deal. In the minds of at least some analysts (INR), his report further affirmed what they thought. I find nothing in the SR contradicting wilson's claim that his report "debunked" the Iraq-Niger deal; please point out where you see it. I don't mean to be combative, here -- with over 500 pages of image-only data you may have seen something that I didn't. My point is that nothing in the SR makes it inconsistent for Wilson to have claimed to have debunked the Iraq-Niger story.
You conclude that "Wilson's trip to Africa did not 'debunk' the administration position that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger - in fact it strengthened this position on the basis of Wilson's claim that an Iraqi delegation had traveled to Niger in 1999". The only fact in Wilson's report that bolstered any part of the original claim was that it placed an Iraqi delegation in Niger in June of 1999. Everything else went against it. As noted in Conclusion 13 above, the information "did not change" assessments.
Wilson clearly believed he had shown the Iraq-Niger deal was false. We know now that he was correct. The Senate report shows us that wilson's report may have had less effect on analysts' opinions than he thought. Does that make him "a liar and not a particularly good one"?
You link to Instapundit, who claims that Joe Wilson lied in that linked article. Specfically, Instapundit is referring to the recent Susan Schmidt article that stirred this particular pot. Schmidt's article is available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html?referrer=emailarticle. Instapundit tells us to "read the whole thing", but he presumably means for us to read Schmidt's article instead of the Senate report upon which it is based. When we go to the Senate report Schmidt has professed to "summarize" for us, we find something rather different.
I've discussed the one of the differences above -- the difference on the document forgery and names. The Senate report discusses this on page 45. I struggle to see how this difference impugns Wilson in any way; the information is accurate, it was public when he said it, and it was a sentence fragment embedded into a much more general paragraph. The contested implications are generated by the reporter.
On page 44 of the SR, there is a brief discussion of the other differences. The first concerns whether Wilson's report discounted BOTH an actual sale of uranium to Iraq AND that Iraq had approached Niger to buy uranium; the intelligence report generated from wilson's debriefing "did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium". That's a pretty microscopic difference; Wilson's report indicated that a meeting with the Iraqi delegation had taken place but that only "commercial interests" had been discussed. The Nigerien representative inferred that uranium could have been what the Iraqis were interested in, but that discussion did not happen. So, in the context of Wilson's report, an approach to buy uranium did not happen. The analyst writing the report may have wanted to include the possibility that the meeting concerned more than Wilson was told, or that there were other meetings.
Continuing on page 44, the committee found that "the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal". The Senate committee noted that the intelligence report "made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal". I don't think we can draw too much of a conclusion from this particular statement. Wilson was sent to Niger to examine whether an Iraq-Niger uranium deal had taken place. The resulting debriefing report (not transcript) doesn't contain any mention of the deal he was sent to investigate? Seems to me that a debriefing report about a trip to examine a uranium deal would mention that deal. I think we're seeing fragments here, and far too many conclusions are being drawn.
The third "difference" on page 44 is this:
"Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the information was the --redacted-- intelligence service. The DO reports officer told Committee staff that he did not provide the former ambassador with any information about the source or details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and, noted that there were no 'documents' circulating in the IC at the time of the former ambassador's trip, only intelligence reports from --redacted-- intelligence regarding an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal."
What we have here is a debriefing officer saying that he didn't tell Wilson any details about the originating report. He probably didn't; as the Senate report itself says on page 41 (and discussed above),
"The INR analyst's notes also indicate that specific details of the classified report on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal were discussed at the meeting, as well as whether analysts believed it was plausible that Niger would be capable of delivering such a large quantity of uranium to Iraq. The CIA has told committee staff that the former ambassador did not have a 'formal' security clearance but had been given an 'operation clearance' up to the Secret level for the purpose of his potential visit to Niger."
so we have Wilson, participating in a CIA meeting, where "specific details of the classified report" ... "were discussed". So if Joe Wilson says that CIA contacts told him that information, how exactly is that a lie? It's not. This particular officer was simply indicating that he had not told Wilson. Wilson had already learned that information through the February 19, 2002 meeting.
Instapundit also raises the issue of Joe Wilson's statements about his wife. Apparently it is brand new news that there was a memo from Plame, February 12, recommending Wilson for the trip. The clear implication is that Wilson lied about his wife's involvement in his selection. The public quote, from Wilson's book, is given almost everywhere as:
"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
So what did he actually write? Here's where you can see a fuller excerpt from his book: http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E27%257E2163873,00.html.
"Apart from being the conduit of a message from a colleague in her office asking if I would be willing to have a conversation about Niger's uranium industry, Valerie had had nothing to do with the matter. Though she worked on weapons of mass destruction issues, she was not at the meeting I attended where the subject of Niger's uranium was discussed, when the possibility of my actually traveling to the country was broached. She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."
Wilson's clearly referring to the meeting where the decision got made. Note that according to the Senate report, page 39, Wilson had made at least two other trips to Niger on behalf of the CIA; his name was not unknown to that organization. Still, "definitely had not proposed" doesn't seem to square entirely. Looking a little further, we can see an interview that Wilson gave, October 28, 2003, to Talon news (http://www.gopusa.com/news/2003/october/1028_wilson_interview.shtml). Quoting from that interview:
"Wilson: Those were the premises under which I argued that we ought not to rush into an invasion, conquest, occupation, war. That said, that all took place well after my trip. I was selected to go to Niger because there was maybe one other person in the U.S. government who knew those who had been in office at the time this purported agreement memorandum was signed, and his credibility was somewhat damaged not by anything he did, but by the fact that he had been an ambassador out there and as a consequence, he had to be the daily point of friction with the military junta during the time he was out there. I was senior director for African affairs at the time. I started my career in Niger and had a whole series of relationships and a great credibility with that group of people who had been in power at the time.
I also happen to know a fair amount about the uranium business, having served in 3 of the 4 countries in Africa that produce uranium, including having been ambassador to the Gabonese Republic which is also a uranium exporter.
TN: Did your wife suggest you for the mission?
Wilson: No. The decision to ask me to go out to Niger was taken in a meeting at which there were about a dozen analysts from both the CIA and the State Department. A couple of them came up and said to me when we're going through the introductory phase, "We have met at previous briefings that you have done on other subjects, Africa-related."
Not one of those at that meeting could I have told you what they look like, would I recognize on the street, or remember their name today. And as old as I am, I can still recognize my wife, and I still do remember her name. That was the meeting at which the decision was made to ask me if I would clear my schedule to go.
TN: An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?
Wilson: I don't know anything about a meeting, I can only tell you about the meeting I was at where I was asked if I would prepare to go, and there was nobody at that meeting that I know. Now that fact that my wife knows that I know a lot about the uranium business and that I know a lot about Niger and that she happens to be involved in weapons of mass destruction, it should come as no surprise to anyone that we know of each others activities."
This reporter talks about a meeting where Plame may have suggested Wilson's name; the Senate report speaks of a memo. The bottom line is that this is old news; in this interview Wilson clearly indicates that his wife was not part of the decision-making process. He also clearly acknowledgehat s that his wife knows what he does and about his background, that that they know of each other's activities.
Wilson is publicly acknowledging here that his wife may have contributed to his selection; he also is clearly indicating that she had nothing to do with the decision. Criticism of Wilson on this point is, to my mind, requiring of unfair precision on his part.
The lesson in all of this is that quotes matter. By choosing parts, by displaying words without context or by supplying context and attributing it to the target, you can bend things around quite a bit.
Do I think that Joe Wilson stretched things a little? Probably; it seems to me that he felt his report was more dispositive of the Iraq-Niger deal than it actually was, to the analysts involved. But that is not a lie.
Criticize, by all means. Call a spade a spade. But recognize that your third-degree source on a matter may be inaccurate or be a mischaracterization.
on
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