(cross-posted at TPMCafe...)
The right-wing blogosphere is going crazy over the fact that Bob Somersby of the Daily Howler's has accepted the basic premises of the efforts to discredit Joseph Wilson, and is trashing anyone who actually bothers to understand the dynamic at work here. Most prominent on Somersby's hit list is Josh Marshall himself, whom Somersby accuses of proposing some sort of vast conspiracy including all eight Democratic Senators who "concocted" a cover story which explains why Cheney was never briefed on Wilson's mission.
The problem with Somerby's analysis, of course, is that Democrats are a minority on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, and in order for those Democrats to get certain facts and conclusions into the report that they wanted in there, it was absolutely necessary to "compromise" on less crucial issues, like the specific details and descriptions of events surrounding Joseph Wilson's trip. Trashing Wilson was a high priority for the GOP members of the committee, and maintaining the credibility of Joseph Wilson was a much lower priority for the Democrats.
How high a priority the trashing of Wilson was for the GOP is reflected in the SSCI report itself. The CIA provided three different, and increasing detailed, summaries of the report that Niger had agreed to sell yellowcake to Africa. The first report (dated 10/15/01) and the generally skeptical reaction to it, is discussed on pages 36-37 of the SSCI report.
The second report, dated 2/5/02, provided more detail, and it was this report that initiated Wilson's trip. The report itself, and the general reaction to it, is discussed on pages 37-39 of the report. Wilson's involvement is given a far more detailed treatment than the report itself, taking up more than 7 pages of the SSCI report (39-46), including large swaths of information that was completely irrelevant to the committee's stated purpose, but was designed to cast Wilson in as bad a light as possible. (One of the most egregious examples of this is the description of an earlier trip taken by Wilson on behalf of the CIA (reportedly) at the suggestion of his wife, for which no report was written because Wilson was unable to "uncover" the information he was seeking. )
But what is most damning about the SSCI's discussion of the Niger yellowcake story is its treatment of the third report (3/25/02) from the CIA's Directorate of Operations on the subject. The "discussion of this report, which included additional "details" not available in the first two reports, takes up less than 2/3s of one page, and most of that discussion revolves around the fact that there were no "obvious" discrepancies in the report's description of what happened. (The fact that there were significant discrepancies in the details of the report, especially the fact that two minor officials mentioned in the report did not have the positions cited in the report, goes unremarked. All that mattered to the GOP majority was that the discrepancies were "obvious" as opposed to "significant.")
It is the existence of this third report --- and the fact that there is no indication that any effort was made to discuss the previous conclusions that the sale described in it was virtually impossible to have taken place as described --- that is most significant here. Nor is there any indication that any effort was made to verify the "new details" (including the erroneous "minor official" information) found in this report. Apparently, this third report was considered authoritative...at least until the CIA was finally provided copies of the actual forged documents on which it was based in October 2002, and subsequently realized that it was a forgery.
According to the SSCI, on March 1, the State Department issued a report detailing the reasons why the reported sale was not credible, and Cheney himself asked for more information "in early March". In response to Cheney's request, he was briefed on the subject on March 5, the same day that Wilson was returning from Niger and would be debriefed, and Cheney was told that the CIA would be "debriefing a source who may have information related to the alleged sale on March 5." Wilson's report, of course, did have "information related to the alleged sale", but we are supposed to believe that Wilson's conclusions (which confirmed the estimates of the State Department) never reached Cheney.
Perhaps they didn't --- but the real questions are
- why they didn't, and why a subsequent report issued three weeks later on the same subject was issued by the CIA without (apparently) any reference to the information provided to the CIA by Wilson that was consistent with the evaluation of the State Department.
- Why (apparently) no steps were taken to verify the accuracy of the "new details", steps that had they been taken in March would have raised even more questions about the reliability of the reported sale.
It is these questions that go to the heart of the issue of how intelligence was handled by the administration --- and which the Democrats had been forced to agree not to examine in 2003 in order to get at least some information out about the abuse of intelligence in the run-up to the US-Iraq War.
Somersby's premise, which is that the Democrats on the committee had to conspire to "concoct a cover story" explaining why Wilson's report was never provided to Cheney doesn't hold water when examined in the light of reality. The Democrats were not permitted to examine the handling of intelligence by the White House, and were in the minority on the committee. They didn't "concoct" the story, the GOP majority did, and the most reasonable explanation is that the Democrats, who had bigger fish to fry, acquiesced to the "cover story".in order to get other information into the report.