Over the last several days I have be re-reading previous pieces about the methods used by the White House to make its case for war with Iraq, especially those pieces that discussed the Niger documents. In an October 2003 piece largely dedicated to the Niger issue,
The Stovepipe, Seymour Hersh related something that really sticks out after recent discussion of the state department memo with parts that were marked "secret":
A routine settled in: the Pentagon's defector reports, classified "secret," would be funnelled to newspapers, but subsequent C.I.A. and INR analyses of the reports--invariably scathing but also classified--would remain secret.
Yes, you did read that correctly, reports that were classified "secret," the same level as the recently discussed state department memo, were routinely leaked. And who was receiving the defector reports before they were leaked?:
Chalabi's defector reports were now flowing from the Pentagon directly to the Vice-President's office, and then on to the President, with little prior evaluation by intelligence professionals. When INR analysts did get a look at the reports, they were troubled by what they found. "They'd pick apart a report and find out that the source had been wrong before, or had no access to the information provided," Greg Thielmann told me. "There was considerable skepticism throughout the intelligence community about the reliability of Chalabi's sources, but the defector reports were coming all the time. Knock one down and another comes along. Meanwhile, the garbage was being shoved straight to the President."
But the first person these classified reports went to was likely Scooter Libby. Karen Kwiatowski, who worked in the office that gathered defector reports said (link):
Name dropping included references to getting this or that document over to Scooter, or responding to one of Scooter's requests right away. Scooter, I would find out later, was I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the vice president's chief of staff.
OK, on from that pattern of leaks with the name of Scooter Libby being prominent onto the Plame case, where Libby's name is also now prominent as a source of the leak of classified info. Back in July 2003, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity wrote the following in a letter to President Bush about Cheney's role in the documents from Niger story, saying that it was laughable to pretend Cheney wasn't pushing the story:
Attempts at cover up could easily be seen as comical, were the issue not so serious. Highly revealing were Ari Fleisher's remarks early last week, which set the tone for what followed. When asked about the forgery, he noted tellingly--as if drawing on well memorized talking points--that the Vice President was not guilty of anything. The disingenuousness was capped on Friday, when George Tenet did his awkward best to absolve the Vice President from responsibility.
To those of us who experienced Watergate these comments had an eerie ring. That affair and others since have proven that cover-up can assume proportions overshadowing the crime itself. All the more reason to take early action to get the truth up and out.
There is just too much evidence that Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger at the behest of Vice President Cheney's office, and that Wilson's findings were duly reported not only to that office but to others as well.
Just today, Eric Boehlert dug up a reference to a visit to the very CIA bureau where Valerie Wilson worked by the vice-President and Scooter Libby. Here is a quote from the story Boehlert found:
In Washington, Plame was assigned to the CIA's Non-Proliferation Center, an organization of analysts, technical experts and former field operatives who work on detecting and, if possible, preventing foreign proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, met with officials at the Non-Proliferation Center before the invasion of Iraq to discuss reports that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium in Africa. A U.S. official with knowledge of those meetings said Plame did not attend. But the former U.S. intelligence official said she was involved in preparing materials for those meetings.
OK, so Cheney and Libby received defector reports that were classified as secret and also personally discussed the Niger story with CIA officials at the branch where Plame was working.
Hopefully, more to follow.