Grossman & Plame

jason leopold:

"Defense attorneys for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said in a court filing late Wednesday that the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney doesn't remember a conversation he had with a State Department official in June 2003 in which the official told Libby that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA.

But the conversation did take place, according to current and former administration officials and attorneys who have remained close to the two-year-old CIA leak probe. At least a half-dozen witnesses who testified before a grand jury over the past two years said that they were at the meeting when Marc Grossman, the former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, told Libby that Plame Wilson worked for the CIA, according to attorneys and US officials close to the two-year-old CIA leak probe. Grossman also told Libby that Plame Wilson got the CIA to send her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, on a fact-finding trip to Niger..."

hmmm.

Leopold also outs Grossman as the source for the wapo sep 28 03 article (yay emptywheel)

Yesterday, a senior administration official said that before Novak's column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's wife. Wilson had just revealed that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson's account touched off a political fracas over Bush's use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

"Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge," the senior official said of the alleged leak.
[snip]
It is rare for one Bush administration official to turn on another. Asked about the motive for describing the leaks, the senior official said the leaks were "wrong and a huge miscalculation, because they were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility."

Leopold also outs Grossman as the source for this AP article from July 05:

"It wasn't a Wilson-Wilson wife memo," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is still under way. "It was a memo on uranium in Niger and focused principally on our disagreement" with the White House.

The memo said Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and suggested her husband go to Niger because he had contacts there and had served as an American diplomat in Africa. However, the official said the memo did not say she worked undercover for the spy agency nor did it identify her as Valerie Plame, which was her maiden name and cover name at the CIA.

Ok? Confused yet?

So the situation so far, apparently, is that Grossman was involved in some very dodgy dealings with Feith & Perle and the ISI amongst others, which apparently had something to do with the ATC. Joe Wilson was also involved in the ATC - and they both worked in/on Turkey at the same time.

One element of Brewster Jennings was maybe involved in tracking stuff from Turkey through the UAE, and perhaps Turkey more generally. Plame worked for Brewster Jennings, but she had nothing to do with Turkey - she was tracking WMDs to and from Iran.

Some documents were forged which suggested that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger. Wilson went to Niger to investigate resulting in the OVP outing Wilson's wife, leading to the outing of the entire Brewster Jennings organisation (setting back the CIA's WMD counter-proliferation efforts back by a decade) - in part because Grossman ordered a memo which contained Plame's name.

Grossman anonymously 'turned on' the Bush administration and was widely seen as a white-knight, although some of us thought that he was trying to reinforce the incorrect notion that the outing of Brewster Jennings was simply revenge against Wilson.

As it happens, Sibel points to Plame, but only as a way to point to Brewster Jennings, and Plame's outing apparently had nothing to do with the ATC, or Turkey. Larisa thinks that Plame was primarily outed for reasons other than the GetWilson campaign - presumably something to do with Brewster Jennings' work in Iran.

Grossman apparently came out against the WhiteHouse for outing Plame, perhaps in support of his associate Wilson. Perhaps Grossman was being honest when he said that he thought the outing was 'meant purely and simply for revenge' - but perhaps he was mistaken - even while he correctly notes that the leaks "were irrelevant and did nothing to diminish Wilson's credibility"

Man. that's pretty confusing. Larisa wasn't kidding when she said there are overlapping storylines.