Congress Now Has a Map To Look for Cheney's Role in Iraq Intelligence Scam

From Volume 2, Issue Number 27 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published July 8, 2003

InDepth: National

Congress Now Has a Map To Look for Cheney's Role in Iraq Intelligence Scam

by Edward Spannaus

A series of interviews with former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, the last chargé d'affaires in Iraq before the 1991 Gulf War, and an op-ed written by him in the New York Times, all appearing on July 6, bring to a new level the evidence about the role of Vice President Dick Cheney in manipulating the U.S. Congress, U.S. intelligence agencies, and the United Nations, in order to start an early war against Iraq.

Wilson reveals that he is the former Ambassador sent to Niger to investigate the story of Iraq allegedly purchasing uranium for a nuclear program. He details what the debriefings were when he returned with the information from his mission that debunks the story, and says there are at least four reports that show the information was false.

As Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche has singularly—among the Democratic candidates—had the courage to state categorically, Cheney should be impeached. The U.S. Congress, which is already "investigating" the false information on Iraq, should act without delay.

The following is a summary of Wilson's public statements and writings of July 6. Electronic Intelligence Weekly will have a full report in the next issue.

Source: New York Post, July 6: "If they'll lie about things like this, there's no telling what else they'll lie about," former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson told the New York Post. "This government persuaded Congress to give a blank check based on the immediate and grave danger of nuclear weapons, so to say that they don't remember the intelligence is disingenuous."

Source: New York Times op-ed, by Joseph C. Wilson, July 6: It was Dick Cheney's office that initiated a February 2002 investigation into claims that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium yellowcake from Niger, and it is certain that the Vice President's office was informed of the results, writes the former Ambassador, who went to Niger on behalf of the CIA. The official, Joseph C. Wilson, writes: "Those news stories about that unnamed former envoy who went to Niger? That's me."

Wilson is a now-retired career foreign service officer, who served as Ambassador to a number of African countries from 1976 on, and, he notes, "as chargé d'affaires in Baghdad, I was the last American diplomat to meet with Saddam Hussein." In 1997-98, he was director of Africa Affairs for the National Security Council.

Wilson begins his op-ed by asking if the Bush Administration manipulated intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq. "Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war," Wilson writes, "I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

"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," Wilson writes. "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 1990s. 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."

When he got to Niger, the U.S. Ambassador told Wilson that she was already aware of the yellowcake reports, and that she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Wilson himself spent eight days interviewing people who had been in the government at the time of the alleged transactions, and he concluded that "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place," for reasons which he details.

Wilson says that when he returned to Washington, he promptly provided a detailed briefing to the CIA and later to the State Department. Wilson says that "there should be at least four documents in United States government archives confirming my mission," which he identifies as "the ambassador's report of my debriefing in Niamey, a separate report written by the embassy staff, a CIA 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)." Wilson adds that "I have spent enough time in government to know that this is standard operating procedure.

"The Vice President's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer," Wilson continues. "I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.

"The question now," Wilson says, "is how that answer was or was not used by our political leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses."

He then adds, parenthetically: "It's worth remembering that in his March 'Meet the Press' appearance, Mr. Cheney said that Saddam Hussein was 'trying once again to produce nuclear weapons.'

"At a minimum," Wilson says, "Congress, which authorized the use of military force at the President's behest, should want to know if the assertions about Iraq were warranted."

Source: Washington Post, by Richard Leiby and Walter Pincus, July 6: "It really comes down to the Administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war," said former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, in an interview with the Washington Post, then, "It begs the question, what else are they lying about?"

In the Post interview, Wilson recounted the details of his trip to Niger. He describes himself as "perplexed" when the Niger/Iraq story showed up in a British "white paper" in September 2002. Then, when President Bush cited in it his State of the Union address, in January 2003, Wilson contacted an associate at the State Department, telling him, "You might want to make sure the facts are straight." After IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei announced that the Niger documents were bogus, Wilson read a March 8 story in the Washington Post, quoting an unidentified U.S. official as saying, "We fell for it."

"That quote was 'a wake-up call ... that somebody was not being candid about this Niger business,' " Wilson told the Post.

Wilson takes strong issue with the June denial—by National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice—that top Administration officials were not aware of the fake documents at the time of the State of the Union, when Rice also stated: "Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the Agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery."

Wilson states that he considers this to be "inconceivable." Based on his own experience at the NSC, Wilson says such a report would not have been buried. Referring to Cheney's office expressing interest in the Niger story, Wilson states: "If you are senior enough to ask this question, you are well above the bowels of the bureaucracy. You are in that circle."

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