Setting the Record Straight: The New York Times Editorial on Pre-War Intelligence

White House

Wilson-Plame Fact List

Iraq's Weapons Programme

Fact 1:
Iraq had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, a nuclear weapon design and was working on enriching uranium for it prior to the Gulf War, which was confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Fact 2:
Many intelligence analysts believed that Iraq was trying to acquire nuclear materials from Niger, Gabon, Namibia, Russia, Serbia, and other sources.

Fact 3:
The British government has confirmed that it believed (and continues to believe) that Iraq sought African uranium, based on evidence independent and separate from that of the US.

Fact 4:
Wilson's own report stated that according to the former prime minister of Niger a businessman approached him in June 1999 in order to arrange a meeting with an Iraqi delegation to discuss uranium sales.

Fact 5:
Wilson himself believed that Iraq had WMD: he warned ABC's Dave Marash that Saddam might "use a biological weapon in a battle" or unleash "some sort of a biological assault on an American city, not unlike the anthrax attacks that we had last year."

Downing Street Memo

Fact 6:
The Downing Street Memo states that "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

Fact 7:
If the intelligence was "fixed", then so were the facts. How do you "fix" a fact?

Fact 8:
"Fixing" in British English does not mean what "fixing" means in American English. It's like "shrimp on the barbie" in Australian English.

Fact 9:
Robin Niblett of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, says it would be easy for Americans to misunderstand the reference to intelligence being "fixed around" Iraq policy. "'Fixed around' in British English means 'bolted on' rather than altered to fit the policy," he says."

Fact 10:
Rhodes scholar and former CIA Director James Woolsey explained "that's not what fixing means in these circumstances. I think people are not listening to British usage. I don't think they're talking about cooking the books…. I think people ought to back off a bit on this notion…"

Fact 11:
The British left-wing author Christopher Hitchins writes that "the English employ the word "fix" in a slightly different way — a better term might have been 'organized'".

Fact 12:
The Hutton Inquiry report shows that even the author of the Downing Street Memo believed that Saddam should be removed because of the WMD threat.

Bush's Statements

Fact 13:
Bush did not claim that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger. In his State of the Union address he stated that: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This was correct (see Fact 3) .

Fact 14:
The independent British inquiry headed by Lord Butler concluded that "the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."

Fact 15:
In September 2003, Bush stated that if "there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, the person will be taken care of. … If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."

Fact 16:
In June 2004, Bush was asked if he stood by his pre-existing pledge, and he said yes.

Fact 17:
In July 2005, he stated that "if somebody committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration."

Fact 18:
All three above statements are completely consistent. Without any backtracking he is under no obligation to "take care" of anyone in the Bush administration who has not violated the law.

Fact 19:
The independent, non-partisan Annenberg Political Fact Check has researched this issue and concluded "Bush accurately stated what British intelligence was saying, and that CIA analysts believed the same thing."

Wilson's Lies

Fact 20:
In a September 2003 interview with Paula Zahn, Joe Wilson stated, "In actual fact, my first political appointee was as ambassador. And I was appointed by George H.W. Bush, the first President Bush." But in 1985–1986, Wilson served in the offices of Senator Albert Gore and the House Majority Whip, Representative Thomas Foley, as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow.

Fact 21:
In the New York Times on July 6, 2003, Wilson claimed that he had been sent to Niger because of Cheney's interest: "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." In two separate interviews, one on PBS, he answered, "No. This was not a CIA mission" and "My trip out there, by the way, was not a CIA trip". But CIA Director George Tenet reported: "In an effort to inquire about certain reports involving Niger, CIA's counter-proliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region to make a visit to see what he could learn."

Fact 22:
Wilson asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger: "Valerie had nothing to do with the matter. She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip." But a CIA official has testified to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee that Plame suggested Wilson for the Niger trip, and specifically recommended him for the mission to the CIA's Directorate of Operations on Feb. 12, 2002. The report cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent and said that interviews and documents showed his wife, a Counterproliferation Division employee, had suggested him.

Fact 23:
Wilson claimed his report was conclusive and significant: "I had gone out and I had undertaken this study. I had come back and said that this was not feasible. … This government knew that there was nothing to these allegations." But CIA Director George Tenet stated that Wilson's report "did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad".

Fact 24:
The bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report found that Wilson's report did not debunk intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has claimed, but bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts.

Fact 25:
Wilson said his findings were ignored by the White House, but CIA Director George Tenet confirmed that the president, vice president and other senior officials were never briefed on Wilson's report. Moreover, the CIA never told the White House of qualms about the Africa intelligence that was reported in the January 2003 State of the Union address.

Fact 26:
The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post in June 2003. Wilson said that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on clearly forged documents because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." But Wilson had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. In fact the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited had not even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip!

Fact 27:
Wilson claimed that there was an orchestrated partisan smear campaign against him. But the Senate Intelligence Committee is bipartisan. It includes liberal Democrats such as Dianne Feinstein and John Edwards.

Fact 28:
Mr. Wilson has stated (for example, on C-SPAN on 29 September 2003) that he opposed military action in Iraq because he didn't believe Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. This contradicts Fact 5.

Fact 29:
Wilson has refused to admit that he is a registered Democrat and insisted he remained a centrist at heart. But he is indeed registered as a Democrat in DC, was an advisor to the Kerry campaign, and has admitted that "it will be a cold day in hell before I vote for a Republican, even for dog catcher."

Fact 30:
Wilson has admitted to distorting the truth. When the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee asked how he "knew" that the intelligence community had rejected the possibility of a Niger-Iraq uranium deal, he confessed to "a little literary flair".

Valerie Plame

Fact 31:
Former covert CIA agent Fred Rustmann disputed Mrs. Plame's identification as an "undercover agent," saying that she had worked under extremely light cover overseas before 1998, after which she got married, had children and worked for at CIA headquarters in Langley as an analyst, which she did not conceal. He said that most of the Wilsons' neighbors and friends knew that she was a CIA employee.

Fact 32:
Novak told the Washington Post on 28 September 2003 that when discussing Wilson's trip, the CIA told him that "it's doubtful she'll ever again have a foreign assignment. They said if her name was printed, it might be difficult if she was travelling abroad, and they said they would prefer I didn't use her name. It was a very weak request. If it was put on a stronger basis, I would have considered it." That's hardly an active attempt to conceil her identity.

Fact 33:
When her identity was revealed, even to most Washington veterans were not familiar with her face. But Wilson introduced her to the crowd at a Nation magazine luncheon thereafter, and later she posed with her husband for a photograph in Vanity Fair, which is available on the Internet. This is not the behaviour of an agent who needs to inconspicuous.

Fact 34:
As Clifford May reported, Plame's identity was not exactly secret before its publication: "That wasn't news to me. I had been told that — but not by anyone working in the White House. Rather, I learned it from someone who formerly worked in the government and he mentioned it in an offhand manner, leading me to infer it was something that insiders were well aware of."

Fact 35:
The CIA suspected that Aldrich Ames had given Mrs. Wilson's name, among others, to the Russians in 1994. Her undercover security was undermined at that time, and she was brought back to Washington for safety reasons.

The State Department Memo

Fact 36:
Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage requested the memo be sent to Colin Powell who was going on a trip to Africa the next day.

Fact 37:
Rove was in the US; the memo was in Africa until after his conversations with reporters.

Fact 38:
Rove has testified that the first time he saw or even heard of the State Department memo was when shown it by the special prosecutor's office.

Fact 39:
The authors of material included in secret documents are routinely cited; the description of Wilson's wife was considered "a footnote" in a background paragraph in the memo. As such it was not the subject of the memo.

Fact 40:
The document was marked as "Secret", but that designation was not specifically attached to Plame's name and the memo did not describe her status as covert.

Fact 41:
"Secret" is the second-lowest classification grade possible. Covert agent status falls above even mere "Top Secret" level, and would never be allowed into a "Secret" document.

Fact 42:
People experienced with classified documents report that covert agents are not bandied about casually as in this memo, and that there is an explanatory sheet listing just what is actually sensitive in each paragraph.

Fact 43:
The use of unclassified information in a document (or paragraph) that is classified does not affect the status of the unclassified information in any way. Given that her status was not specifically listed as sensitive, this information could not be considered as such.

Fact 44:
The classified name Valerie Plame is not referred to in the classified State Department memo. It was therefore impossible to leak her identity from this document.

The Law

Fact 45:
To violate the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, a government official must

• know the CIA employee is a covert agent
• know that the government is actively concealing his identity
• disclose his name within 5 years of the his overseas assignment
• do so deliberately; and
• use information obtained in an official capacity.

Fact 46:
Plame had not been posted abroad during the five previous years.

Fact 47:
36 major news organizations such as the New York Times and the Washington Post filed a legal brief in March stating that no underlying crime has been committed.

The Telephone Call from Robert Novak

Fact 48:
The source who, when contacted by Novak, provided the outlines of the story that Wilson had been proposed for the Niger trip by his wife was described by Novak on 1 October 2003 as "no partisan gunslinger." Presumably liberals would not take this to apply to Rove.

Fact 49:
On 8 July 2003, Novak called Rove and told him his July 14 column would report that Wilson's wife was a CIA employee who had proposed that Wilson take the trip to Niger. Rove indicated that he was aware of the claim, but did not confirm its credibility.

The Telephone Call from Matthew Cooper

Fact 50:
In his testimony Matthew Cooper testified that when he called Rove on 11 July 2003, Rove did not reveal Joe Wilson's wife's name and did not reveal her covert status to Cooper.

Fact 51:
Cooper reports, "So did Rove leak Plame's name to me, or tell me she was covert? No."

Fact 52:
When Cooper called Rove, Rove did not disclose Plame's identity, but told him information would be declassified that would cast doubt on the credibility of her husband.

Fact 53:
Rove was urging caution because CIA Director George Tenet was about to issue a public statement on classified material regarding Iraq's interest in African uranium and its inclusion in the State of the Union address.

The Leak Summary

Fact 54:
Rove neither called reporters about the case, nor did he bring up the matter. He was contacted by them and asked by them about Wilson. This contradicts the theory that the White House was actively seeking to intimidate or punish Mr. Wilson.

Fact 55:
Walter Pincus of the Washington Post received specific information from an unknown source on Plame and Wilson prior to both Novak and Cooper conversations with Rove.

Fact 56:
Wilson himself admits in his 2004 book that on 10 July 2003 Novak told him he had obtained the information from a CIA source.

The Investigation

Fact 57:
Rove waived source confidentiality for all witnesses testifying before the Grand Jury. This is not the action of a man with something to hide.

Fact 58:
Rove testified that he originally learned about the operative from the news media and not government sources.

Fact 59:
Not only did Mr. Fitzgerald refused to indict Karl Rove, but he stated specifically that he was not accusing anyone of outing a secret CIA agent. There was no conspiracy, high level or otherwise, at the White House, the Defense Department, or the State Department.

Fact 60:
Joseph Wilson almost certainly engaged in unauthorized disclosure of classified material himself when he wrote publicly about his CIA-backed mission to Niger.

Sources

Annenberg Political Fact Check, 26/6/04
Associated Press, 12/7/05
Captain's Quarters, 17/7/05, 18/7/05 and 21/7/05
GOP.com, 14/7/05
JustOneMinute, 21/7/05 and 21/7/05
MSNBC, 21/6/05, 15/7/05 and 17/7/05
National Review, 11/7/03 and 29/9/03
New York Times, 11/10/03, 15/7/05 and 16/7/05
Newsweek online, 2/11/05
Power Line, 18/7/05
Radio Blogger, 15/7/05
Slate, 21/6/05
Smart Retorts, 18/7/05 and 22/7/05
Wall Street Journal, 13/7/05
Washington Post, 10/7/04, 11/7/05, 21/7/05, and 27/7/05
Washington Times, 15/7/05
Weekly Standard, 7/11/05