I'm intrigued by this new report from
Murray Waas, who reveals that Dick Cheney received a CIA memo from George Tenet, dated June 17, 2003. Cheney and Libby were briefed about the memo only days after it was written. The memo states
"We no longer believe there is sufficient" credible information to "conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." The memo was titled: "In Response to Your Questions for Our Current Assessment and Additional Details on Iraq's Alleged Pursuits of Uranium From Abroad."
Digby argues that the memo shows that Rove lied when he indicated to Matthew Cooper that "there's still plenty to implicate iraqi interest in acquiring uranium fro[m] Niger". I'm more interested, however, in whether this ties Cheney more closely to the Plame disclosure.
Waas goes into considerable detail about the inquiries that Cheney was making regarding Wilson and Plame in the weeks before the disclosure of Plame's status.
Sources said that Tenet may have discussed Plame with Cheney because of requests from Cheney, Libby, and other administration officials for more information about the Niger matter and Wilson's mission. Cheney's and Libby's interest in Niger was apparently rekindled after New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof wrote on May 6, 2003, that the CIA had sent an unnamed former ambassador to the African nation in February 2002 to investigate allegations that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger. Kristof wrote that the ex-ambassador reported back to the CIA and the State Department that the allegations were "unequivocally wrong" and "based on forged documents."
The column led Cheney and Libby to inquire about the then-still-unnamed ambassador and his trip to Niger. On May 29, 2003, Libby asked then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman for information about the mission. Grossman in turn assigned the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research to prepare a report on the matter. Cheney's and Libby's interest in the issue led Tenet to seek more information as well.
On June 11 or 12, according to the grand jury indictment of Libby, Grossman reported back that "in sum and substance Wilson's wife worked at the CIA, and the State Department personnel were saying that Wilson's wife was involved in the planning of his trip."
Also on June 11, 2003, according to the indictment, "Libby spoke with a senior officer of the CIA to ask about the origin and circumstances of Wilson's trip, and was advised by the CIA officer that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and was believed to be responsible for sending Wilson on the trip." On the very next day, June 12, the indictment said, Cheney more specifically informed Libby that Plame worked at the CIA's "Counterproliferation Division."
Tenet received the highly classified memo on Niger from his analysts on June 17, 2003, five days after Cheney and Libby spoke with each other about Plame's working for the CIA. Sources familiar with the matter say that both Cheney and Libby were informed of the findings in the June 17 memo only days after Tenet himself read and reviewed it.
In other words, the Tenet memo comes after a series of inquiries begun by Cheney, circling around the question of how to blunt Wilson's apparent willingness to expose the administration's deceptions (which he would soon do very publicly in a NYT op-ed on July 6, 2003).
One tactic under consideration in May and June, apparently, was to claim that the evidence for Iraqi contact with Niger was strong and Wilson was wrong. The CIA shot that down, so they had to go to plan B....which was to attack Wilson/Plame personally. Only six days later, on June 23rd, Libby met with Judith Miller to discredit Wilson. According to Fitzgerald's indictment, Libby told her that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA. In early July, of course, the campaign to discredit Wilson and expose Plame picked up steam. But it is important to note that the opening moves came so soon after Cheney and Libby learned that the CIA was refusing to stand by the Niger claims.
This helps to link Cheney as directly as anything I've yet seen to the Plame disclosure. Indeed, that appears to be the direction that Murray Waas is taking the story. His final paragraphs focus on the question of why Libby bizarrely claimed that he learned about Plame's employment from reporters. The clear implication is that Libby was covering for Cheney. Waas quotes Stephen Gillers, an NYU law professor:
"The prosecutor's implicit inference before the jury may well likely be that Libby lied to protect the vice president. Even in a plain vanilla case, a prosecutor always wants to be able to demonstrate a motive."