libby, niger and iran

* jason leopold:

"Some of the officials who worked with Libby in the office of the vice president and who are said to have faced criminal charges in the case have made deals with the special prosecutor in exchange for their testimony, sources close to the case said.
Other officials who work or worked in the State Department, the CIA, and the National Security Council at the time of the leak have also decided to cooperate with Fitzgerald...
[...]
Libby's claim of forgetfulness is expected to be contradicted by his former colleagues who worked closely with him on foreign policy issues. These officials have told Fitzgerald over the past year that Libby continued his campaign against Wilson long after Libby and other White House officials allegedly unmasked Plame Wilson's identity to reporters in late June and early July 2003...
[...]
The sources close to the case said the officials also told Fitzgerald that Libby's "obsession" with Wilson lasted well into October 2003 - the first time Libby was questioned by investigators probing the leak - and into March of 2004, when Libby testified before the grand jury...
[...]
Moreover, the administration officials told Fitzgerald that from September 2003 through March 2004 Libby urged White House communications director Dan Bartlett on numerous occasions to aggressively respond to Wilson's further attacks against the administration.

Moreover, the administration officials told Fitzgerald that from September 2003 through March 2004 Libby urged White House communications director Dan Bartlett on numerous occasions to aggressively respond to Wilson's further attacks against the administration. Libby's attorneys have said in court documents that Libby had forgotten about Wilson during this time and that is the reason his grand jury testimony wasn't accurate.

Libby also discussed with Cheney and other aides to the vice president Wilson's relentless "campaign against the administration" and sought his colleagues' support for issuing a response, one person close to the investigation said.

"Mr. Libby was a lone wolf in that regard," this person said. "He did not receive any backing from the administration. Everyone thought he should just let it go."
[...]
Weeks before he was questioned by investigators probing the leak in November 2003, people close to the case said, Libby had discussed Wilson with unnamed individuals of the Republican National Committee and sought help in discrediting Wilson.

Libby reportedly became angry when Joseph Wilson's book, "The Politics of Truth," was released in April 2004. He had been closely following the book's release during the prior weeks, which coincides with his grand jury appearance, and had again pressed the White House to respond to certain passages he believed were untrue, according to sources close to the case.

"The Wilson affair was still very much on his mind," said one attorney who is representing a witness in the case. "Mr. Libby seemed to be consumed by it.""

well, well. that's a whole nutha can o' pandoras completely...

the headline is: "Obstruction trial may jog Libby's memory" - but that completely misses the story.

Libby was desperate to keep Wilson quiet - months after the niger thing had been debunked, and the SOTU thing had been retracted, and months after BJ/Plame was outed, and months after the leak investigation was opened, and months after Ashcroft recused himself, and long after Libby had perjured himself (and from memory, at this time, he knew that Fitz had the documentation which proved that Libby lied)

what the hell is going on? I'd always presumed that the GetWilson/GetPlame story ended with the outing of BrewsterJennings. damage done, mission accomplished - right?

not according to leopold. let's take this article at face value (although i'll ignore the "lone wolf" bit, for the mo) - what can we learn?

perhaps there really was a Get Wilson campaign - but if so, it seems more likely that it didn't have anything to do with "What I Didn't Find in Africa" - but perhaps something else that Wilson was threatening to expose (playing a chess game like Wilson was involved in, it would have made a lot of sense to keep some ammunition dry).

Why was Libby so nervous about Wilson's book? Was he really angry about stuff that appeared in it? Or was he just scared out of his wits about what Wilson might say? Was he worried that Wilson would expose the Turkish drug/arms trafficking? The closest the book seemed to come to mentioning that was the shot across the bow re Jamerson/Grossman

Or perhaps scooter was worried about something else.

What I didnt find in "What I Didn't Find in Africa" was any mention of the fact that while Wilson found that Iraq wasn't trying to get any yellowcake, he did find that Iran had tried to procure uranium in Niger.

Remember this post from Clemons immediately after Larisa's Plame article:

"Someone with knowledge of the classified report that Joe Wilson "orally" filed after his now famed investigative trip to Niger shared with me that there were two notes in that report that had nothing to do with Iraq and its purported activities in Niger.

These two notes focused on Iran's interests and possible activities in Niger.

The question is "why would Iran be interested in Niger uranium when it has more than adequate domestic sources of uranium?"

The response that has come from various intelligence sources that I have consulted is that if Iran was trying to access external sources of uranium -- somewhere like Niger -- it is because those "secret efforts" would be outside the international intelligence monitoring of Iran's domestic mining operations.

I do not have the fully articulated "notes" from Joe Wilson's Niger report (in fact, I have just learned that those written "notes" were destroyed), but I have just learned that these Iran-Niger references appear in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Joe Wilson's Niger trip.

What is fascinating is that one of the staffers of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence mistakenly recorded in the published report that Iraq -- rather than Iran -- attempted to purchase 400-500 tons of uranium. Wilson apparently made clear that it was Iran and not Iraq attempting to make such purchases.

The Washington Post, which reported this inaccuracy -- had to issue a correction that the purchase effort, as reported by Joe Wilson, was made by Iran and not Iraq."

ftr, that Wapo article was by Steno Sue, and the SSCI report is famously dodgy, and was led by uber-hack Pat Roberts - so apparently there was a full-on cover-up in play about this apparently obscure/irrelevant information.

Was Libby so afraid of that 'iran, not iraq' info from coming out? The 'not iraq' element had long been debunked - and by all accounts, the Niger/Iran transaction could not, and did not, happen (the proposed transaction dated back to 1998 - prior to the purported transaction in the niger forgeries).

Here's an odd thought - was Libby involved in that proposed transaction? was he trying to help iran get uranium? was cheney? were they both involved in the nuclear black market that sibel refers to? is that why AQKhan is walking free? is that why Iran can appear 'belligerent'?

We know that Plame was working on iranian nukes, and that program was mostly sourced via AQKhan's network. As John Pike said:

"...it was one program doing business in three locations (Pakistan, North Korea and Iran) and that anything one of these countries had they all had."

Did Plame uncover evidence of Libby & Cheney's involvement in the supply of iranian nukes? Or did Wilson? Or both?

hmmm - intriguing.

all that aside, leopold has really opened a can of worms - and to the extent his reporting is valid, then it completely changes the dynamic.

more later.