With each news cycle, it becomes clearer that George W. Bush has been a core actor in a White House conspiracy to destroy Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame.
Today we learned that weeks before Plame was "outed", Bush sat in White House meeting with Cheney, Libby and other key aides, including Rove, Rice and Hadley, in which he participated in discussions about how to deal with Wilson and Plame. As part of this campaign, the President authorized the leak of a classified CIA document. See,David E. Sanger and David Johnston, NYT, "Bush Ordered Declassification, Official Says", http://www.nytimes.com/... ;
Jason Leopold, Truthout, "Bush and Cheney Discussed Plame Prior to Leak", http://www.truthout.org/...
The object of this conspiracy was to suppress what was seen as CIA resistance against the Administration's Iraq policies.
If Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald decides to seek charges against Bush, perhaps as an unindicted co-conspirator, what sort of documentary evidence would he rely on, beyond the contents of the leaked National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and testimony about it?
This diary pins down what is likely to be a key documentary exhibits in the conspiracy case against Bush and his confederates.
We focus on a memo produced by the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) that names Plame and discusses her role in her husband's trip to Niger in 2002. Various versions of that document were passed from Libby to other participants prior to Plame's public exposure. This is the story of the June 10, 2003 INR that has been largely overlooked. It has been overshaded by the CIA National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that Bush summarily declassified. The diary that follows traces the genesis, chain of custody, and evidentiary significance of the INR as a key element in a potential conspiracy charge against Bush.
It is surprising that the INR has not received more attention. As far as any charge under the Intelligence Officer Identities Protection Act (IIPA), it is certainly far more relevant than the NIE. As far as is known, the NIE makes no specific reference to Valerie Plame, while the 6/10/03 version of the NIE not only names her, it describes her role in the trip taken by her husband to Niger in early 2002. The NIE in various guises was also known to have circulated from UnderSecretary of State Marc Grossman to Scooter Libby, before making its way on July 7, 2003 onto Bush's Air Force 1 flight where it was reportedly passed around by key aides. The document itself is Top Secret. It is marked with "S" security symbols at the section that discusses Plame, and any White House official reading it should have known not to disclose information there about a CIA covert officer.
THE NIE
Last Thursday, we first learned that Libby had testified before the Plame Grand Jury that President Bush authorized him to disclose a classified CIA National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) originally published in October 2002. Bush confirmed that himself following a speech this morning.
The NIE document was leaked by Libby to New York Times reporter Judith Miller ten days before the Agency first declassified it in part on July 18, 2003.
That was a very selective leak, the purpose of which was to discredit Ambassador Wilson, who was viewed by the White House as a proxy for those within CIA who were contradicting the Administration's assertions that Saddam Hussein was developing nuclear weapons.
Much of that NIE does not support the case that had been made by the President for invading Iraq. According to the New York Times, Mr. Libby and Miller did not discuss during their July 8 breakfast findings in the leaked NIE that undermined the Administration's position about Iraq's WMD program. They did discuss ways to use the Times to broadcast a contested item about Iraqi efforts to obtain African uranium found 24 pages into the 90-page document. NYT, David Sanger, David Barstow, "Iraq Findings Leaked by Cheney's Aide Were Disputed",O4/09/06; http://www.nytimes.com/...
During that breakfast meeting at the St. Regis, Libby revealed to Miller that Plame was a CIA officer. It is generally not believed that either Mr. Wilson or his wife is specifically referenced in the classified NIE, large parts of which remain classified. So, Libby almost certainly learned about Plame somewhere else. Reports say that Vice President Cheney was his original source, and that Libby also talked to a CIA former chief of station in Pakistan about Plame. But, the INR is the documentary source of information about Plame that we can connect to Libby.
Three days later, Condi Rice also made reference to the NIE during a press gaggle aboard AF 1. She downplayed the importance of a dissenting view found at the end of the NIE, saying it was a "footnote". That dissenting view was provided by the State Department INR. Speaking to reporters on the plane, Rice attempted to defend her role and that of the President in retaining "the 16 deadly words" that made it into the State of the Union address in January. Condi continued to assert, as did Bush and Cheney, that the White House had good reason to insist that Iraq had recently sought uranium yellowcake from Niger as part of its alleged nuclear weapons program. That assertion was not supported by the key findings of the NIE.
THE INR
However, in late May, 2003, Libby did obtain a second document, a letter prepared by an INR analyst, which identifies Valerie Wilson as a CIA counter-proliferation officer and discusses her role in Wilson's 2002 fact-finding trip to Niger. That letter was incorporated into a formal INR memo dated June 10, 2003, that was seen by several White House staffers during a trip to Africa during the week before Plame's name appeared in Robert Novak's column. Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post, "Cheney Aide Libby Is Indicted", Saturday, October 29, 2005; A01, http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
That INR memo has been largely overshadowed by the back-to-back revelations that Cheney authorized Libby to release the NIE, and the blockbuster last week that Bush summarily declassified the NIE. But, the INR memo is a smoking gun that potentially connects other top Bush aides, including Condi Rice, to the scheme to out Plame. The INR may be one of the documents that Stephen Hadley has stated he was trying to get formally declassified when they were improperly leaked.
THE CONSPIRACY
What has emerged from the Libby prosecution is a picture of a classic top-down conspiracy initiated and controlled by three leading figures: President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Mr. Libby, who served both. The object of the criminal conspiracy was an attack on the institution viewed as the main rival for control over classified information, the Central Intelligence Agency. By his summary declassification of the NIE in late June, Bush started the ball rolling in outing Plame, lied about this to the Special Prosecutor, thus committing the felony offense of Obstruction of Justice. He may have also opened himself to charges as a co-conspirator under the IAIPA.
By his summary declassification, without the normal action by the head of the Agency, Bush effectively cut CIA Director George Tenet off at the knees. This happened as a bloodless civil war was breaking out between the White House and the intelligence community, a relationship that had been strained to the breaking point by the Iraq War policy of an Administration viewed by many career officials as reckless, venal, and verging on treason. That split directly led to vengence in the form of the public disclosure by columnist Robert Novak of an non-official cover CIA analyst working under her maiden name, Valerie Plame. This bitter conflict between the White House and the CIA also resulted after Tenet "took it in the chest" for faulty Iraq WMD intelligence, and the attempted scapegoating of CIA for the failed Iraq occupation.
On July 30, 2003, the CIA Inspector General sought prosecution of the Plame case. Sixteen days earlier, conservative columnist Robert Novak exposed Plame as an undercover CIA officer, setting off a prosecution that now threatens to bring down the Bush Administration.
Following the public exposure of Plame, an internal Agency assessment found that massive and long-term damage had been done to the capability of the covert CIA counter-proliferation unit where Plame worked as analyst on Middle East WMD programs.
THE NIE RED-HERRING
Since the Washington Post article appeared on July 12, 2003 we have heard periodic reference to declassification efforts related to an NIE dealing with Iraq's WMD program. The NIE was first publicly mentioned in the famous Washington Post report that broke the story the Bush Administration had been forced to back off its assertions that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear and chemical/bio weapons program, after no significant stockpiles were found in Iraq by occupying coalition forces.
That Post story reported that the White House had laid full blame for that misrepresentation on the CIA:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/....
Bush, Rice Blame CIA for Iraq Error
Tenet Accepts Responsibility for Clearing Statement on Nuclear Aims in Jan. Speech
By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, July 12, 2003; Page A01
President Bush and his national security adviser yesterday placed full responsibility on the Central Intelligence Agency for the inclusion in this year's State of the Union address of questionable allegations that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa.
The president defended use of the Iraq yellowcake allegation by saying the Jan. 28 speech "was cleared by the intelligence services."
The Post story contains a background report on a press briefing given on board Air Force 1 by Condi Rice and Ari Fleisher the previous day -- three days after Scooter Libby revealed sections of the same newly "declassified" NIE to Judy Miller over breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, DC.
Rice discussed the issue for nearly an hour on Air Force One. Asked about the CIA efforts to discourage the British from making the claim [that Iraq had pursued purchase of uranium from Niger], Rice said: "If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence in the NIE" -- the National Intelligence Estimate that mentioned "yellow cake," a term for uranium ore -- "those doubts were not communicated to the president."
She said the only mention of doubts was in a "standard INR footnote, which is kind of 59 pages away from the bulk of the NIE." INR is the State Department's intelligence arm, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. "If there was a concern about the underlying intelligence there, the president was unaware of that concern, as was I," Rice said.
She said Secretary of State Colin L. Powell did not include the uranium allegation in the speech he gave to the United Nations on Feb. 5, eight days after the president spoke. She said that was because INR had questioned the matter. Neither Powell nor other State Department officials questioned its inclusion.
But, it is the more recent INR document that was reportedly passed around on board AF1 during the Africa trip. This one has an interesting provenance and chain of custody, having originated as the reconstructed notes of an INR analyst who had attended a 2002 meeting where Valerie Plame discussed sending her husband, Joseph Wilson, to Niger. The classified document, dated June 10, 2003, was originally prepared at the request of Marc Grossman, a Deputy Undersecretary of State.
The section of that document that names Valerie Wilson is marked with classification symbol, S, that indicate the adjacent paragraph is Secret. Jim VandeHei, Washington Post, Tuesday, October 18, 2005, http://www.sfgate.com/...
The 6/10/03 INR, prepared for Marc Grossman, is a potentially important piece of evidence that has been largely overshadowed by the older NIE shared by Libby with Miller. The Grossman INR was created as part of the developing WHIG plot to attack Wilson. From a prosecutorial standpoint, that document seems to offer significant evidence of wrongdoing. It is a classified document that clearly marks the section dealing with Valerie Wilson with a secret stamp. The paper was generated at the behest of Grossman in the absence of his superiors, Powell and Armitage.
That document is based on an earlier letter held by Grossman that was among a compilation of classified documents faxed on May 29, 2003 from Marc Grossman to Scooter Libby. It was then compiled into a document dated June 10 that made its way aboard AF 1 on July 7 with Colin Powell. What follows is one of only four major news articles that have focused on the INR. By comparison, there are dozens that have appeared concerning the NEI. See, Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig, Washington Post, "Cheney Aide Libby Is Indicted", Saturday, October 29, 2005; A01, http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
What follows is the second of only four major news articles that have focused on the INR. By comparison, there are dozens that have appeared concerning the NEI.
Plame's Identity Marked As Secret
Memo Central to Probe Of Leak Was Written By State Dept. Analyst
By Walter Pincus and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, July 21, 2005; Page A01
A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials. 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.
The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials. Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information, though that designation was not specifically attached to Plame's name and did not describe her status as covert, the sources said. It is a federal crime, punishable by up to 10 years in prison, for a federal official to knowingly disclose the identity of a covert CIA official if the person knows the government is trying to keep it secret.
CONCLUSION
Libby and Condi had access to the same information about Plame, the source of which was versions of the classified INR. Information in the NIE that Libby leaked to Miller was improperly declassified by Bush, but it probably does not identify Plame.
However, Plame and Wilson are the the main subject of the INR which Grossman produced as part of the effort to destroy them. We do not yet know whether Bush authorized the leak of the INR as he had endorsed leaks of the NIE. If he had contact with the State Department INR, this more directly ties the President to the unlawful exposure of Valerie Plame than his authorization of the NIE leak. If the NIE chain of custody leads to the President, we can say with some assurance that Bush involved himself in a White House conspiracy to ruin Plame's career by publicly revealing her identity as a covert CIA officer.
Finally, if someone in the White House is shown to have intended to out Plame, and Fitzgerald can pin that down, then Bush may also be indictable for conspiracy to reveal a covert CIA agent under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA) of 1982.
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2006. Mark G. Levey