The other day I wrote a diary about Valerie Plame's connections to al Libi. Since there's a post on the front page mentioning Dick Cheney's attempt to marginalize the CIA that doesn't go far enough, I thought I'd expand on it a bit.
Around the same time Cheney was looking for any possible link between Iraq and al Qaeda, we were torturing al Libi. Then al Libi confessed a link between al Qaeda and Iraq. Everything was awesome. Then in February 2002 Cheney got a report saying that al Libi's confession was in doubt. Not surprising, because he was tortured. The same report also said Iraq wasn't seeking uranium from Niger.
Cheney himself asked for more information on these.
As the Washington Post wrote:
The 2002 mission grew out of a request by Vice President Cheney on Feb. 12 for more information about a Defense Intelligence Agency report he had received that day, according to a 2004 report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An aide to Cheney would later say he did not realize at the time that this request would generate such a trip.
He wanted to get information mainly about this information released in this report. So he was aware from at least February 2002 onward that two major claims the administration was making were false. So when the linked article on the front page post says:
"I'm aware of the fact that in late 2002, early 2003, that (the alleged al Qaida-Iraq link) was an interest on the intelligence side.... That was something they were tasked to look at."
He said he was unaware of the origins of the directive, but a former senior U.S. intelligence official has told McClatchy that Cheney's and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's offices were demanding that information in 2002 and 2003. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the matter, requested anonymity.
That's right. They sought the information from February 2002 at least. Probably earlier. I'm wondering, was al Libi tortured before the February report or after? Was he tortured and subsequently gave bad information and was then questioned in the report, or was he giving information that seemed to suggest there was no link, and then he was tortured?
I'd be interested in finding out.
Here's where it gets a little weirder: Cheney asked the CIA for that information, but, via the Washington Post story, an aide to Cheney said he wasn't aware that his request would cause them to actually send Joe Wilson to Africa.
Why not? And more importantly, why was it significant enough to even mention that he didn't know? You'd think he'd be okay with a fact-finding mission to find facts. Apparently not, though. He obviously did not want Wilson or anyone going to Africa.
The Washington Post said:
Senior Bush administration officials told a different story about the trip's origin in the days between July 8 and July 12, 2003. They said that Wilson's wife was working at the CIA dealing with weapons of mass destruction and that she suggested him for the Niger trip, according to three reporters.
The Bush officials passing on this version were apparently attempting to undercut the credibility of Wilson, who on Sunday, July 6, 2003, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" and in The Washington Post and the New York Times that he had checked out the allegation in Niger and found it to be wrong. He criticized President Bush for misrepresenting the facts in his January 2003 State of the Union address when he said Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa.
So then, Wilson came back. He wrote a series of op-eds, including "What I didn't find in Africa" which said he investigated the administration's claims and they were likely untrue. And the CIA was still questioning al Libi's confession, among other intelligence about the Iraq/al Qaeda connection, and the weapons of mass destruction.
But when Tenet insisted in his personal meetings with the president that there was no connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq, Cheney and Rumsfeld initiated a secret program to re-examine the evidence and marginalize the agency and Tenet.
The administration's story was falling apart. All their lies were in danger of being exposed. Wilson had gone to Africa, his wife was in the CIA and a counterproliferation expert, especially with the ability of weapons to go in and out of Iraq and Iran. Al Libi's confession was looking worse and worse every day. Generals were saying that there weren't enough troops to go in. Then the Downing Street Memo. Everything seemed like it was crashing right in front of their faces.
Then, the administration started declassifying bits of information to newspapers and TV media, who of course decided to print and talk about everything the administration wanted. All the time. So, the plan was to share this "information" that would make more people believe that their claims were true or at least more true than the evil Democrats and media and CIA would like you to believe. They printed it, then members of the administration went on tv to talk about it.
That brings us to marginalizing the CIA. It's interesting how most or all of the leaks or stories were meant to make the CIA look untrustworthy or worse.
Here is one such example, of a Judith Miller story, where she conspicuously cites Bush administration officials and mentions them multiple times, including their false claims which ran counter to the CIA's claims... but didn't cite any CIA officials.
Then Valerie Plame's identity was leaked. A CIA agent working in counterproliferation who could've helped Cheney bolster his case... if his facts had been actual facts. She would know. People focused on the fact that she sent or did not send Wilson to Niger. Controversy ensued.
Al Libi was forgotten and no more information was sought.
So as I asked in my other diary, why, if he was looking for information and not trying to make up a link, would he so strongly attempt to discredit people who had information or attempted to provide him with information?
Regardless of WHEN al Libi was tortured, for now, why was he tortured when it produces false information if Cheney really wanted information? Why didn't Cheney support Wilson's trip? Why didn't Cheney support efforts to find who outed Plame given that she was one of the few people who could have helped him find real information about links between Iraq and al Qaeda?
And when WAS al Libi tortured? Was his torture in danger of being discovered if investigators started snooping around regarding that DIA's claims?
As the front page says, he requested raw reports because he didn't like the information he was being given and he got that DIA and wanted more information. He still wasn't being given information he wanted. Then they started declassifying and leaking their own information.
He had already made up his mind and damn anyone who got in his way:
In the spring of 2002 Dick Cheney made one of his periodic trips to CIA headquarters. Officers and analysts were summoned to brief him on Iraq. Paramilitary specialists updated the Vice President on an extensive covert action program in motion that was designed to pave the way to a US invasion. Cheney questioned analysts about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. How could they be used against US troops? Which Iraqi units had chemical and biological weapons? He was not seeking information on whether Saddam posed a threat because he possessed such weapons. His queries, according to a CIA officer at the briefing, were pegged to the assumptions that Iraq had these weapons and would be invaded--as if a decision had been made.
[...]
Valerie Wilson was no analyst or paper-pusher. She was an operations officer working on a top priority of the Bush Administration. Armitage, Rove and Libby had revealed information about a CIA officer who had searched for proof of the President's case. In doing so, they harmed her career and put at risk operations she had worked on and foreign agents and sources she had handled.
[...]
(Valerie Plame) Wilson, too, occasionally flew overseas to monitor operations.
He'd been very involved in monitoring all of the information, so yeah, he was indeed more of a "decider" than Bush. He wanted all of this information until it was proven false then his objective was to discredit it and the agency who produced it. Why go to all that trouble?
Why not defend an agent who'd flown to those places on multiple occasions who could help him get information?