traitors should be impeached, at least

They Were Talking about Wilson’s Wife before Wilson’s Article Came Out
by MARGIE BURNS

Why were there all these administration colloquies about Wilson’s wife circulated before Wilson’s article came out? Retaliation is too simple an answer.Every major news outlet reporting on the CIA leak and the Libby trial has taken the line that CIA analyst Valerie Plame was outed in retaliation for a column by her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, published on July 6, 2003. But unrefuted testimony and documents in the trial of I. Lewis Libby, formerly Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, reveal that administration discussion of Mrs. Wilson, her CIA status and Wilson’s trip began several weeks before Wilson’s column appeared.
If Wilson’s New York Times op-ed column, “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” had set off the chain of events that resulted in exposing Plame, those events would have begun on July 6 of that year.

Instead the perjury and obstruction trial of Libby, convicted on four of five counts, has demonstrated that tense colloquies about Mrs. Wilson took place in the administration substantially before Wilson’s column came out:

May 29, 2003 – Libby calls then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, according to Grossman’s testimony, asking how and why Joe Wilson was sent on a trip to Niger about uranium.

“late May and early June, 2003” -- Grossman gives oral interim reports to Libby that Wilson was the ambassador who went to Niger (mentioned but not named in a May 6 New York Times piece by Nicholas Kristof, “Missing in Action: Truth”).

June 9, 2003 -- Grossman has a conversation with Wilson, who is “upset” that Condoleezza Rice had claimed on "Meet the Press" that the White House was unaware of doubts about the Niger uranium story. (In his book, Wilson says this conversation “elicited the suggestion that I might have to write the story myself”; he got in touch with the New York Times the same day. p.332.)

June 9, 2003 – classified documents from CIA are faxed to the Office of the Vice President to Libby and colleague John Hannah, mentioning the Wilson trip but not naming Wilson.

June 10, 2003 – a classified State Department memo written by State’s Bureau of Intelligence & Research (INR) gives Grossman the background on Wilson’s Niger trip, names Valerie Wilson as Wilson’s wife and as “a CIA WMD manager.” The memo, like previous memos, also debunks the Niger uranium story.

June 11, 2003 – Robert L. Grenier, longtime CIA official and “Iraq mission manager” and “point person for Iraq” in 2002 and 2003, receives a phone call from Libby, then Libby summons him from a meeting with the CIA Director to follow up about Wilson; Grenier tells Libby that Wilson’s wife is in CIA. (Grenier now works for Kroll Associates.)

June 11/12, 2003 – Marc Grossman has a “30-second discussion” about Mrs. Wilson with Libby, according to Grossman’s testimony.

June 12, 2003 – Libby is informed by Cheney in a phone call that Wilson’s wife is in CIA (handwritten note: “CP: his wife works in that div”). Walter Pincus' Washington Post article that day mentions the trip but not Wilson by name.

June 12, 2003 – David Addington, Cheney’s government lawyer, receives the same notes from Libby’s office mentioning that Wilson’s wife worked in the Counter-Proliferation Division (typed copy).

June 13, 2003 – Richard L. Armitage, then Deputy Secretary of State and formerly a PNAC signatory boosting war with Iraq, tells Bob Woodward in a taped interview, with expletives, that Mrs. Wilson works for CIA. Bogus macho-man duet suggests that Mrs. Wilson sent Wilson on the Niger trip.

June 14, 2003 – CIA daily briefer Craig Schmall briefs Libby at Libby’s home; notes question about Wilson (“ex-amb”) and the Niger trip; notes Wilson and Valerie Wilson by name.

June 23, 2003 – Libby has a discussion with Judith Miller, mentions Wilson’s wife at CIA. (Miller had returned to the U.S. from Iraq on June 8.)

July 6, 2003 – Joseph Wilson’s op-ed criticizing the Niger story appears in the New York Times.
Additionally, according to a statement by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post, Woodward brought a list including the terms “yellowcake” (unprocessed uranium) and “Joe Wilson’s wife” with him when he met with another official on June 20, spoke with Libby on the phone on June 23, and then met with Libby on June 27. Woodward’s statement leaves unclear whether the terms were dealt with in these communications, all of which occurred before the July 6 op-ed.
So why were there all these colloquies in the administration, about Wilson’s wife, before Wilson’s article came out?

Retaliation is too simple an answer. Wilson had appeared on television expressing doubts about the war and about Iraq WMD from January through April, 2003. He pulled his punches—undoubtedly wondering whether the White House might actually have some evidence—but still made plenty of public comments that could have provoked a White House counterattack. There is no sign of one until May 2003, when Wilson made few public remarks.

Nor does the administration seem to have tipped its hand to the Wilsons beforehand to stop Wilson from going public.

What did happen in regard to Niger uranium—before Kristof’s piece—is that Seymour Hersh published a devastating New Yorker article, “Who Lied to Whom?" in March, which reappeared on April 22 as "Iraq Post Mortem” in the British magazine Prospect. The article emphasized the blatantly forged Niger documents about “yellowcake.” (Judith Miller, for one, seems to have backed down on Iraq WMD immediately following the definitive debunking in Prospect.) Did the administration simply launch a pre-emptive strike against Wilson, fearing that his going public on the “mushroom cloud” would be the last straw? With its usual tin ear, did it fear that Joe Wilson and Seymour Hersh would join forces? Or did it go for a two-fer, moving to disrupt analysis in the WMD unit at the CIA where Mrs. Wilson worked?

By the time Wilson’s column appeared, his wife’s name and CIA connection had already been leaked to Bob Woodward of the Post and Judith Miller of the Times—two of the most famous reporters in the U.S.—for 23 days and 13 days, respectively.Armitage, Woodward’s source, is another longtime Cheney-Rumsfeld man since the “Team B” days of previous GOP administrations.
Going into the trial, I too thought of the CIA leak as retaliation for Wilson’s column and took the same line in previous postings, like most other writers. Joseph Wilson’s book, The Politics of Truth, takes the same tack. But Wilson did not have access to the behind-the-scenes discussions about his wife now revealed publicly. Retaliation there was, in spades, but retaliation cannot have been the whole story. Theorists who believe the aim was partly to disable the Counter-Proliferation Division in CIA where Valerie Plame worked may be right.

Margie Burns [link to her blog at margieburns.com] is a freelance journalist in the DC area. A previous version of this article was posted at www.bradblog.com.