Sunday, April 16, 2006

roof of Iran's nefarious intentions

lifted from the comments here (there's more, including the context, there)

viget:
But it's not just Novak. Fitz's latest filing makes it seem like Scooter was representing to Judy that the CIA report on Wilson's trip was going to be declassified (presumably with the NIE and the mysterious January 24th doc, which is either the DIA report or the NIO to NSC fax (which is basically the NIE recycled), see EW's place for spec on this).
lukery: waas' latest states that:
"A relatively small amount of information derived from the March 2002 report was revealed on July 11, 2003, when then-CIA Director George Tenet released a statement regarding Wilson's trip to Niger in which he disclosed some aspects of the debriefing described in the document. But other portions remained highly classified at the time that Cheney directed Libby to leak portions of the report, two senior government officials said in interviews. These officials say the White House abandoned its attempt to declassify all or part of the March 2002 report when Tenet released his statement."
Yet Novak was still pushing for declassification a couple of days later - perhaps Novak hadn't got that particular memo yet?
Perhaps Tenet's statement was a compromise - perhaps it was written in conjunction with rove/hadley - remember, they were 'negotiating' over the SOTU retraction at this time.

I wonder what is in the report that scared/scares the CIA... and i wonder if the WH really wanted to declassify ALL of the document - or if they were just bluffing.

viget:
Another intriguing thing is the discrepancy between Wilson's account of the debriefing and the reports officer's account in the SSCI. Both say Valerie was present. The reports officer says she didn't participate in the debrief. Wilson says only one CIA debriefer showed up. The reports office says there was someone else there besides him (a case officer).

I've always wondered if Wilson claimed there was just one person there so as to not out his wife as CIA (do we know exactly when he testified before the SSCI?). I have a sneaking suspicion that Valerie was his case officer, but I could be wrong on that point.
Lukery: Plame as Wilson's CO? that's intriguing speculation. Is it possible that's why the WH was trying to force the declassification? It sounds unlikely - but earlier Viget said
"The answer, it seems to me, is that there is something else in that report that's so politically damaging that they cannot let it get out. And you can't selectively redact that part without losing the meaning of the parts you want to get out."
and
Even if the CIA put up a stink, I'm betting the WH still would have declassified it regardless. My guess is that they couldn't do so without redacting so much that it wouldn't make sense.

Lukery: Continuing the wild speculation, is it possible that Tenet refused to declassify, and came to some sort of agreement with Hadley & Rove someone that if Tenet made his statement, the WH would back off (per waas). Contemporaneously, they went aound Tenet's back and signed up Novak to out Plame - and Novak's final para imploring the CIA to declassify the report was merely a headfake? (i noted earlier that the para "looks like it was written by commitee- if so, why?")

Viget:
And, if I recall correctly, I think EW was also speculating some time back that Ari was referring to the CIA report possibly being declassified as a way to butress his claims against Wilson. Clearly, this strategy was used in the SSCI report, where they cherrypicked bits and pieces from the CIA report to make it sound like Wilson was actually supporting the idea that Iraq was looking for yellowcake.

Lukery: actually I just read that post and wrote a brief post about it

Viget:
Though I'd love to see that report. I wonder what it's really about, since all accounts seem to agree that it only touched on Iraq peripherally, and was mostly about other nations' (Iran) attempts to obtain yellowcake from Niger. I think this is also somewhat telegraphed by Wilson's op-ed headline, "What I *didn't* find in Niger" as opposed to what he DID find (which is presumably still classified).
Lukery: I think you are right. I've made the same point previously:
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.
and yep, the document is still classified. What I cant understand is why the WH was actively attempting to declassify the document in the immediate aftermath of Wilson's op-ed - but then have gone out of their way since to keep the Iran stuff covered up - including lying in the SSCI.
Larisa and I discussed this in the first part of the interview

Is it possible that the WH knew that the Iran stuff was in there, and they knew that it was incredibly damaging, but they also knew that the Plame stuff was in there, and they decided that the Plame stuff was worth more to them than the Iran information - but once they found the alternate route to get the Plame info out, then the equation changed completely?

It all sounds very fanciful - not least because the Iran info (at least the stuff that has come out) hasn't done them any harm at all - in fact I'm surprised they aren't currently using that information today as proof of Iran's nefarious intentions.

Something doesn't add up.

--------
udate from the comments:
emptywheel said...

I have two votes.

One, that the CIA Report so obviously misrepresented Wilson's report (because it didn't include any of his specifics about Iraq) that the CIA didn't want it published.

Two, that the Iranian attempt toget yellowcake was a CIA black op, so the CIA didn't want it publicized. Iran has its own uranium. They don't need it from Niger. Particularly not when that would alert the IAEA that it was acquiring more uranium.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

fwiw arcticbeacon and tomflocco claim that Fitzgerald is looking at missing trillions in Swtizerland.

lukery said...

interesting EW

if the latter, i wonder if the WH knew this, and were trying to flush it out for some reason.

larisa asked the other day: "what are the niger docs really about?" - i've been trying to find an answer to that question. i wondered (pure speculation) if they were actually intended to flush out this purported iranian transaction.