Meeting Notes Implicate Cheney; Fitzgerald Explores Forgeries

Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has obtained notes from a 12 June 2003 meeting between Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, Scooter Libby, which show that Cheney knew Valerie Plame worked for the CIA. The notes do not mention her undercover status or if her identity was classified. On the same day, a Washington Post front-page story said that a retired diplomat had visited Niger but had not corroborated the claim that Iraq had been trying to buy yellowcake.

In another twist, UPI reports that Fitzgerald has expanded his investigation into the forged Italian documents alleging the Iraq-Niger connection.

Wilson as Bulls Eye
Joseph Wilson, the retired diplomat and Valerie Plame's husband, has been a target since his July 2003 op-ed in the New York Times which took the Administration to task for its claims about Iraq's nuclear capability and efforts to buy uranium.

Ironically, Wilson's intelligence-gathering had little impact within the CIA because it revealed nothing new -- that is, the intelligence community disagreed with the British assessment that Iraq was trying to buy uranium, according to an examination of the 7 July 2004 Senate report (Report on the US Intelligence Community's PreWar Intelligent Assessments on Iraq).

CIA to Congress
The CIA, in communication with the White House on 6 October 2002 regarding Presidential speech copy, said this about Iraq's attempts to buy uranium from Niger:

"The evidence is weak ...The procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already have a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory ... and we have shared points one and two with Congress, telling them the Africa story is overblown and telling them this one of the two issues where we differed with the British."

With convenient timing, however, the White House had received new "evidence" from Italy of the arrangement between Iraq and Niger right ... after the CIA explained why this reference was weak.

Those who fashioned the State of the Union address chose to believe British and Italian intelligence over US intelligence -- perhaps because of the marketing of the war, which began in September 2002 (From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.). In January 2003, President Bush said:

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The reference is technically correct -- that was the British position. And, apparently, that of the White House. Just not its own intelligence advisors.

Italian Intrigue
The forged Italian documents came to light almost immediately after the CIA warned against the Iraq-Niger connection and just before Congress was set to vote on the Iraq War Resolution .

According to the UPI story, last year Fitzgerald obtained the DOJ okay to expand the investigation "from the leak itself to the possibility of cover-ups, perjury and obstruction of justice by witnesses. This has renewed the old saying from the days of the Watergate scandal, that the cover-up can be more legally and politically dangerous than the crime."

UPI again:

This opens the door to what has always been the most serious implication of the CIA leak case, that the Bush administration could face a brutally damaging and public inquiry into the case for war against Iraq being false or artificially exaggerated...

There can be few more serious charges against a government than going to war on false pretences, or having deliberately inflated or suppressed the evidence that justified the war.

Blogs covering this story: Basie!, Political Animal, TPM, Taegan Goddard's Political Wire.

See Plame Timeline and Nigerian Yellow Cake - Facts and Fiction.

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