“They wanted to demonstrate that the intelligence community had given the administration and Congress every reason to believe that Saddam had a robust WMD program that was growing in seriousness every day. The briefers were questioned about press accounts saying that the White House had taken references to Niger out of the Cincinnati speech at the CIA's request. Why then did they insert them again in the State of the Union address?" Tenet wrote in his book.
The NIE Leak and the Attack on Wilson
McClellan wrote in his book that the campaign to discredit Wilson heated up at the White House in June 2003 when Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus contacted the Office of the Vice President.
“In early June, while making inquiries about what [New York Times columnist Nicholas] Kristof wrote, Pincus had contacted Cathie Martin, who oversaw the vice president's communications office. Martin went to Scooter Libby to discuss what Pincus was sniffing around about,” McClellan wrote. “The vice president and Libby were quietly stepping up their efforts to counter the allegations of the anonymous envoy to Niger, and Pincus's story was one opportunity for them to do just that.”
Kristof accused Cheney of allowing the truth about the Niger documents the administration used to build a case for war to go "missing in action." The columnist obtained his information from Wilson in May 2003 at a political conference in Washington sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.
In mid-June 2003, Libby chose New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward as recipients of the still classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. The Pulitzer Prize winning journalists were urged by Libby to report that that Iraq had in fact attempted to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger, directly contradicting Wilson's claims.
A week before he met with Libby, around June 16, 2003, Woodward met with two other government officials, one of who was later revealed to be Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Woodward says Armitage, referring to him as an unnamed official, told him in a "casual" and off-handed manner that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.
Woodward said the meeting with Libby and the other government officials had been set up simply as "confidential background interviews for my 2004 book "Plan of Attack" about the lead-up to the Iraq war, ongoing reporting for the Washington Post and research for a book on Bush's second term to be published in 2006."
Woodward wrote a first person account in the Washington Post about his involvement in the Plame leak a couple of weeks after Libby was indicted. The Watergate-era journalist wrote that when he met with Libby on June 27, 2003, "Libby discussed the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, mentioned "yellowcake" and said there was an effort by the Iraqis to get it from Africa. It goes back to February '02. This was the time of Wilson's trip to Niger."
Neither Miller nor Woodward wrote stories for their newspapers about the intelligence report Libby leaked to them.
Libby also met with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, another Pulitzer Prize winner, and leaked the same portions of the NIE when Miller raised questions about Wilson's claims about the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence.
Miller spent 85 days in jail for in 2006 for refusing to reveal the identity Libby as her source who disclosed to Plame’s identity to her.
Libby and Cheney continued to peddle the Niger intelligence as solid even though there was agreement among Bush’s senior officials that the White House would issue a mea culpa. Indeed, on July 14, 2003, just three days after senior officials met to discuss the White House response, Libby contacted then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and asked him to contact the editorial department at the Wall Street Journal and leaked the NIE to the paper as a way of undermining Wilson. Cheney approved leaking the NIE to the Journal.
"After July 14, in that week, the Vice President thought we should still try and get the [NIE] out. And so he asked me to talk to the Wall Street Journal. I don't have as good a relationship with the Wall Street Journal as Secretary Wolfowitz did, and so we talked to Secretary Wolfowitz about trying to get that point across [to the Journal], and he undertook to do so," Libby testified.
Wolfowitz faxed the Wall Street Journal a set of "talking points" about the former ambassador that the paper's editors could use to discredit him in print, according to Libby's grand jury testimony, and then leaked to the paper a portion of the then-still-classified NIE that claimed Iraq did in fact attempt to acquire uranium from Niger. The Journal printed, verbatim, Wolfowitz's talking points in an editorial in its July 17, 2003, edition and then misled its readers about the source of the information.
According to the editorial, "Yellowcake Remix," the Journal said the data the newspaper received about Iraq's interest in uranium "does not come from the White House," despite the fact that Libby testified that he personally lobbied Wolfowitz to leak the NIE to the Journal, and that arguably Wolfowitz's position as Undersecretary of Defense made him a senior member of the Bush administration.
Bush’s Role
The NIE Leak and the Attack on Wilson
McClellan wrote in his book that the campaign to discredit Wilson heated up at the White House in June 2003 when Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus contacted the Office of the Vice President.
“In early June, while making inquiries about what [New York Times columnist Nicholas] Kristof wrote, Pincus had contacted Cathie Martin, who oversaw the vice president's communications office. Martin went to Scooter Libby to discuss what Pincus was sniffing around about,” McClellan wrote. “The vice president and Libby were quietly stepping up their efforts to counter the allegations of the anonymous envoy to Niger, and Pincus's story was one opportunity for them to do just that.”
Kristof accused Cheney of allowing the truth about the Niger documents the administration used to build a case for war to go "missing in action." The columnist obtained his information from Wilson in May 2003 at a political conference in Washington sponsored by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.
A week before he met with Libby, around June 16, 2003, Woodward met with two other government officials, one of who was later revealed to be Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage. Woodward says Armitage, referring to him as an unnamed official, told him in a "casual" and off-handed manner that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA.
Woodward said the meeting with Libby and the other government officials had been set up simply as "confidential background interviews for my 2004 book "Plan of Attack" about the lead-up to the Iraq war, ongoing reporting for the Washington Post and research for a book on Bush's second term to be published in 2006."
Woodward wrote a first person account in the Washington Post about his involvement in the Plame leak a couple of weeks after Libby was indicted. The Watergate-era journalist wrote that when he met with Libby on June 27, 2003, "Libby discussed the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, mentioned "yellowcake" and said there was an effort by the Iraqis to get it from Africa. It goes back to February '02. This was the time of Wilson's trip to Niger."
Neither Miller nor Woodward wrote stories for their newspapers about the intelligence report Libby leaked to them.
Libby also met with former New York Times reporter Judith Miller, another Pulitzer Prize winner, and leaked the same portions of the NIE when Miller raised questions about Wilson's claims about the administration's use of pre-war Iraq intelligence.
Miller spent 85 days in jail for in 2006 for refusing to reveal the identity Libby as her source who disclosed to Plame’s identity to her.
Libby and Cheney continued to peddle the Niger intelligence as solid even though there was agreement among Bush’s senior officials that the White House would issue a mea culpa. Indeed, on July 14, 2003, just three days after senior officials met to discuss the White House response, Libby contacted then Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and asked him to contact the editorial department at the Wall Street Journal and leaked the NIE to the paper as a way of undermining Wilson. Cheney approved leaking the NIE to the Journal.
"After July 14, in that week, the Vice President thought we should still try and get the [NIE] out. And so he asked me to talk to the Wall Street Journal. I don't have as good a relationship with the Wall Street Journal as Secretary Wolfowitz did, and so we talked to Secretary Wolfowitz about trying to get that point across [to the Journal], and he undertook to do so," Libby testified.
Wolfowitz faxed the Wall Street Journal a set of "talking points" about the former ambassador that the paper's editors could use to discredit him in print, according to Libby's grand jury testimony, and then leaked to the paper a portion of the then-still-classified NIE that claimed Iraq did in fact attempt to acquire uranium from Niger. The Journal printed, verbatim, Wolfowitz's talking points in an editorial in its July 17, 2003, edition and then misled its readers about the source of the information.
According to the editorial, "Yellowcake Remix," the Journal said the data the newspaper received about Iraq's interest in uranium "does not come from the White House," despite the fact that Libby testified that he personally lobbied Wolfowitz to leak the NIE to the Journal, and that arguably Wolfowitz's position as Undersecretary of Defense made him a senior member of the Bush administration.
Bush’s Role
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