Adapted from The Next Hurrah
Thanks to John Casper for alerting me to a NY Sun article on the INR memo, complete with INR memo attached and check out this file (thanks to William) that includes the INR analyst's notes. The article itself is a piece of work. Josh Gerstein claims that, since almost every paragraph in the memo is marked with some kind of classification, there is no way for a reader to understand that Plame's identity was classified. Even though it pretends to be refuting a WSJ article from last year that first broke the news that the paragraph with Plame's name was marked "secret," it basically supports precisely the WSJ point, that the information was marked as secret.
Update: I misunderstood the two files attached. One is the July 7 document, one is the June 10 document. Neither resembles the document described in the Pincus/VandeHei story, as far as specifics. And the cover memo is odd, because those people are not in the same role now (except for Frisa). Curiouser and curiouser.
The Return of the Loquacious Luskin
The real straw man constructed in the article, though, comes courtesy of Robert Luskin.
An attorney representing a White House official under scrutiny in the investigation said yesterday that the broader context of the document undercuts the idea of a deliberate campaign to expose Ms. Plame.
"It's something that people got very excited about," the lawyer, Robert Luskin, said about the earlier reports on the memo. "The fact that the whole memo was marked this way further substantiates that nobody involved in discussions of her or her role in sending Mr. Wilson had the slightest inkling she was in classified status."
[snip]
Mr. Luskin, who represents President Bush's top political aide, Karl Rove, said Mr. Rove did not see the memo at the time it was issued.
Luskin would like to argue that, since this memo doesn't make Plame's status clear, there couldn't have been a deliberate leak of Plame's identity. He would like you to believe (as he or some other mysterious leaker would have liked you to believe last summer) that the memo is the only source of Plame's identity. At the same time, though, Luskin repeats (and amends, in curious fashion--by "at the time it was issued," does Rove mean June 2003, or July?) Rove's denials that he ever saw the memo.
Well, that's kind of the point, isn't it? There were other ways to find out about Plame that were much more revealing than this memo. As I pointed out, absolutely correctly, nine months ago, the memo couldn't have been the sole source of Novak's leak, because it didn't reveal Plame's identity. Glad to see these folks just now catching up.
In fact, you could argue that this memo exonerates Armitage (if he is the mysterious Mr. X) but not Rove. This is a State document. We know Armitage saw it in July. It has been alleged (with questionable justification, IMO) that Armitage saw it in June. But if he did learn of Plame, he likely learned of it from the INR analyst's notes (we now learn the INR analyst is Douglas Rohn), which apparently didn't reveal Plame's status either. (Note, this accords perfectly with Woodward's version, which has Mr. X telling about Plame's role in WMD, but not her covert status.) So if Armitage found out Plame's identity from these materials, then he--as Luskin points out--might not have realized Plame was covert. Rove, on the other hand, has apparently testified he learned of Plame's identity in some other fashion. Which makes it possible that he learned she was covert in the process.
The Memo
But on to the memo. The description leaked to the AP's diplomatic writer a year ago seems to be largely accurate:
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.
[snip]
The former State Department official stressed the memo focused on Wilson's trip and the State Department intelligence bureau's disagreement with the White House's claim about Iraq trying to get nuclear material. He said the fact that the CIA officer and Wilson were husband and wife was largely an incidental reference.
As does the content described in this Pincus/VandeHei article from last year:
Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.
[snip]
Almost all of the memo is devoted to describing why State Department intelligence experts did not believe claims that Saddam Hussein had in the recent past sought to purchase uranium from Niger. Only two sentences in the seven-sentence paragraph mention Wilson's wife.
[snip]
The memo was drafted June 10, 2003, for Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman, who asked to be brought up to date on INR's opposition to the White House view that Hussein was trying to buy uranium in Africa.
[snip]
On July 6, 2003, shortly after Wilson went public on NBC's "Meet the Press" and in The Post and the New York Times discussing his trip to Niger, the INR director at the time, Carl W. Ford Jr., was asked to explain Wilson's statements for Powell, according to sources familiar with the events. He went back and reprinted the June 10 memo but changed the addressee from Grossman to Powell.
Though, if the Pincus/VandeHei article is accurate, then there are almost certainly significant changes between this memo and the original June 10 memo. We know that Jane Harman has referred to two distinct versions of the memo (and presumably she'd have access to see both).
California Rep. Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has asked the State Department for two different versions of the memo from its bureau of intelligence and research that discussed
Plame, a congressional aide said.
And there are two specific details in the Pincus/VandeHei article which do not match: the number of mentions of Plame, and the page on which those mentions appear (I'll describe this below).
The Redactions
What is most interesting to me about the memo are the redactions. Best as I can guess from the context, here are the things redacted from the memo:
- Information about the genesis of Wilson's trip, particularly details about the February 19 meeting
- Details on what appears to be a description of the Italian intelligence report on the forgeries
- Details about how the Niger forgeries arrived in the US, which we know to have come through the Nonproliferation office of then-Bolton's department
- Details logically leading from the forgeries up to the December 2002 fact sheet, which was developed in Bolton's office by the Non-Proliferation special assistant, and which served to publicize the Niger claims internationally
- One bit of information relating to the cable reporting on Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick's and General Fulford's meeting with President Tandja earlier the in 2002
Items 2 and 5 seem to be sources and methods issues. The details about Wilson's trip may relate to Cheney's initial request and to operational details arranged with Wilson at the February 19 meeting. Though, if the Pincus/VandeHei article is completely accurate, then the redaction necessarily includes another reference to Plame; that article specifies, "Only two sentences in the seven-sentence paragraph mention Wilson's wife." But only one mention of Plame and only four sentences appear in the non-redacted part of that passage. Another possibility, of course, is that this passage got changed in the second draft. Again, if the Pincus/VandeHei article is correct, the Plame mentions appear on the second page of the memo. Which would mean a significant chunk of information has been removed.
Finally, the other two redactions serve to hide John Bolton's and his staff's involvement in Niger intelligence.
Now the presence of two mentions of Bolton's office is significant. I speculated last year that the INR memo would include just these two mentions of Bolton's office's involvement. As I pointed out then, State had hidden Bolton's role in these documents--particularly the fact sheet--before. Most significantly, the presence of two passages relating to Bolton that remain sensitive enough to classify makes it quite likely that Bolton was offered an opportunity to vet this memo. As I suggested last year,
More importantly, if Bolton was involved in the production of the document, it might mean that he was battling with INR over what to include. At the least, I suspect Bolton would have tried to remove any mention and responsibility for the Iraq fact sheet, as someone at State did for him in September 2002. But it might mean Bolton pushed to include other details or a particular spin in the memo. And keep in mind that Fred Fleitz probably knew Valerie Plame and her clandestine status from his other home at WINPAC.
That is, the inclusion of Bolton's office in this memo, and the continued sensitivity accorded his involvement, increases the likelihood that his office was involved in its production. Which may suggest a range of nefarious involvement by Bolton or Fred Fleitz or David Wurmser.
The Niger Forgeries
Finally, this memo is interesting for the description it gives of the INR reaction to the Niger forgeries. It includes the following descriptions:
These documents, which were sent to Washington via REDACTED Department channels, were not adequately analyzed until much later and were judged to be fraudulent.
[snip]
On January 12, 2003, INR, "expressed concerns to the CIA that the documents pertaining to the Iraq-Niger deal were forgeries." The conclusion may, however, have been reached and communicated for the first time somewhat earlier: the record is not clear on this point.
Compare that with these details from the SSCI.
(U) Immediately after receiving the documents, the INR Iraq nuclear analyst e-mailed IC colleagues offering to provide the documents at a previously planned meeting of the Nuclear Interdiction Action Group (NIAG) the following day. The analyst, apparently already suspicious of the validity of the documents noted in his e-mail, "you'll note that it bears a funky Emb. of Niger stamp (to make it look official, I guess)."
(U) The INR Iraq nuclear analyst told Committee staff that the thing that stood out immediately about the documents was that a companion document - a document included with the Niger documents that did not relate to uranium - mentioned some type of military campaign against major world powers. The members of the alleged military campaign included both Iraq and Iran, and was, according to the documents, being orchestrated through the Nigerien Embassy in Rome, which all struck the analyst as "completely implausible." Because the stamp on this document matched the stamp on the uranium document, the
analyst thought that all of the documents were likely suspect. The analyst was unaware at the time of any formatting problems with the documents or inconsistencies with the names or dates.
(U) On October 16, 2002, INR made copies of the documents available at the NIAG meeting for attendees, including representatives from the CIA, DIA, DOE and NSA. Because the analyst who offered to provide the documents was on leave, the office's senior analyst provided the documents. She cannot recall how she made the documents available, but analysts from several agencies, including the DIA, NSA and DOE, did pick up copies at that meeting. None of the four CIA representatives recall picking up the documents, however, during the CIA Inspector General's investigation of this issue, copies of the documents were found in the DO's CPD vault. It appears that a CPD representative did pick up the documents at the NIAG meeting, but after returning to the office, filed them without any further distribution.
[snip]
(U) On January 13, 2003, the INR Iraq nuclear analyst sent an e-mail to several IC analysts outlining his reasoning why, "the uranium purchase agreement probably is a hoax." He indicated that one of the documents that purported to be an agreement for a joint military campaign, including both Iraq and Iran, was so ridiculous that it was "clearly a forgery." Because this document had the same alleged stamps for the Nigerien Embassy in Rome as the uranium documents, the analyst concluded "that the uranium purchase agreement probably is a forgery." When the CIA analyst received the e-mail, he realized that WINPAC did not have copies of the documents and requested copies from INR. CIA received copies of the foreign language documents on January 16, 2003.
Both versions, of course, avoid all description of what that Iraq nuclear analyst (who is a different INR analyst, btw, than the guy who attended the February 19 meeting with Joe Wilson) was doing about the forgeries between the time he received them and the time he insisted to the CIA that they were BS. But the SSCI makes clear that that analyst suspected immediately that the documents were BS. The State Department's own review document is not only less exact--"the record is not clear"--but it avoids all mention of the INR analyst's initial, very skeptical response.
In other words, even the State Department's internal review buries the very early INR skepticism about those forgeries.
The Analyst's Notes
Just a few more details after reviewing the secret bits the Sun was trying to hide.
First, the cover memo, which appears to be dated June 10, 2003, appears to have been drafted by Neil Silver, cleared by Beth Frisa, and approved by Thomas Fingar. No mention of Carl Ford (who, as we saw in his Bolton testimony, was pretty skeptical about Bolton).
I have described how Beth Frisa backed off criticism of Bolton in her testimony during his nomination hearings. And Fingar has since gotten a very significant promotion, to the National Intelligence Council Chairman (he is rumored to have ties to Condi, but you could also argue, fairly, that since INR was right on most matters leading up to Iraq, and since Negroponte has long-held ties to State, the promotion is logical). Neil Silver, at least in his Bolton testimony, seemed fairly balanced.
Other than that, the most interesting parts of the secret bits reinforce Wilson's story that he learned details from the SISMI intelligence. Rohn's notes explain:
The alleged contract between Niger and Iraq says that Niger will sell Iraq 500 tons of Uranium in two tranches per year. INR explained that would mean somewhere between one sixth and one eighth of the total output of the two mines and that twice a year 25 semi tractor trailers loads of yellow cake would have to be driven down roads where one seldom sees even a bush taxi. In other words, it would be very hard to hide such a shipment.
When the idea of moving the stuff across the desert to Sudan (???) was broached INR responded that while it is not difficult to drive across much of the hard packed flat desert terrain, there are many problems including heat up to 130 degrees F, wear and tear on the vehicles, water, fuel and drifting sand that would make such a trip difficult in the extreme.
Apparently no one in the CIA has ever watched Lawrence of Arabia. From his tone, Rohn apparently thought these guys were wacko, just completely unaware of the realities of African geography.
Speaking of ignorance, I meant to point out above the title of the CIA report on Wilson's trip:
"WP/Nuclear Weapons: Nigerian Denial of Uranium Yellowcake Sales to Rogue States"
Nigerian, not Nigerien. It could be a simple spelling or transcription error, an error I'm sure I've made a lot over the course of my blogging on this affair. Or it could be that the people who took Wilson's report had absolutely no knowledge of Niger.
I'm just saying.