“Mr. Wilson was embraced by many because he was early in publicly charging that the Bush administration had ‘twisted,’ if not invented, facts in making the case for war against Iraq. He claimed to have debunked evidence that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger; suggested that he had been dispatched by Mr. Cheney to look into the matter; and alleged that his report had circulated at the highest levels of the administration.
“A bipartisan investigation by the Senate intelligence committee subsequently established that all of these claims were false – and that Mr. Wilson was recommended for the Niger trip by Ms. Plame, his wife. When this fact, along with Ms. Plame’s name, was disclosed in a column by Robert D. Novak, Mr. Wilson advanced yet another sensational charge: that his wife was a covert CIA operative and that senior White House officials had orchestrated the leak of her name to destroy her career and thus punish Mr. Wilson. …
“The [Libby] trial has provided convincing evidence that there was no conspiracy to punish Mr. Wilson by leaking Ms. Plame’s identity – and no evidence that she was, in fact, covert.” [Washington Post, March 7, 2007]
But everything in this Post attack on Wilson was either a gross distortion or a lie, often parroting long-discredited White House talking points.
Wilson did debunk suspicions that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. He was dispatched by the CIA because of questions asked by Cheney. (Wilson never said Cheney personally sent him.) His information did reach the highest levels of the administration, explaining why the CIA kept trying to delete references to the Niger claims from Bush’s speeches.
The full Senate Intelligence Committee did not conclude that “all [Wilson’s] claims were false.” That assertion was rejected by the full committee and then inserted into “additional views” of three right-wing Republicans – Sens. Pat Roberts, Orrin Hatch and Christopher Bond – who carried the White House’s water in claiming that Wilson’s statements “had no basis in fact.”
As for the CIA selection of Wilson for the Niger trip, the Post editorial-page editors knew that Wilson was chosen by senior CIA officials in the office of counter-proliferation, not by Valerie Plame, who played only a minor introductory role in the agency’s recruitment of her husband.
The Post also knew that Wilson was well qualified for the assignment since he had served as a diplomat in the U.S. embassies in Iraq and Niger. He also took on this task pro bono, with the CIA only paying for his expenses.
Plus, Wilson was right again when he alleged that the White House was punishing him for his Iraq War criticism. Indeed, the Washington Post’s own reporters had described this reality in the news pages.
On Sept. 28, 2003, a Post news article reported that a White House official disclosed that the administration had informed at least six reporters about Plame and did so “purely and simply out of revenge” against Wilson.
“Plame-gate” special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald made the same point in a court filing in the Libby case, stating that his investigation had uncovered a “concerted” effort by the White House to “discredit, punish or seek revenge against” Wilson because of his criticism of the administration.
Hiatt and his editorial team could have looked up that fact. It was on the Post's front page. [Washington Post, April 9, 2006]
The Post’s ‘Covert’ Lie
Regarding Plame’s covert status, the Post editors were lying there, too.
In the March 7 editorial, they apparently were still hanging their hats on false statements by right-wing lawyer Victoria Toensing, who had made a small cottage industry out of her assertion that Plame failed to meet the definition of “covert” in the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, which Toensing said she had helped draft.
Toensing insisted that Plame was not “covert” because she had not been “stationed” abroad in the past five years, which Toensing claimed was the law’s standard.
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