Yes, we had seen that here, but thanks for the comment.

“I was told about this amazing wiretap where British Intelligence overheard a call from North Korea to Libya saying, ‘My god, if the Americans ever go into Iraq, they’re going to find out about our nuclear program. And who’s going to pay all the Iraqi nuclear scientists in Libya if Saddam falls?”

Exclusive Special Report

Defense & Foreign Affairs Daily, July 29, 2003

Niger-Iraq Uranium Reports Involve Ongoing Libyan Deception Ops

The Libyan External Security Organization (ESO) passed on, in a single transaction and through a Libyan intermediary, a file of forged documents to Italy’s SISMI (Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare). According to Italian sources, the documents appeared to be part of a larger, ongoing Libyan double-deception operation designed to discredit US decisionmaking and the US leadership. The documents were designed to take issues which were in fact verifiable — or approximately verifiable — by US intelligence agencies and then provide seemingly valid collateral documentation. By then exposing the “valid collateral documentation” as fake, the premise of the intelligence — and the subsequent US policy —would then be undermined and discredited.

Libyan and other sources have told this Service that, in fact, yellowcake was being procured (or at least had been the subject of agreements) from Niger for Iraq during the embargo period, but by the Libyan Government. The yellowcake was being used for weapons development programs by Iraq and Libya (and possibly Egypt, one of the partners in the strategic weapons program) being conducted by joint teams in the Libyan facilities at Sabha and Kufra.2 When asked whether the ESO documentation was designed to cover up and distract from Libyan involvement in the Iraqi nuclear program, one key Libyan source told this Service that this was only part of the objective. This Service was told that it was part of a broader plan, involving other documents and deception operations, designed to more comprehensively discredit US decisionmaking. This Service, on November 8, 2000, discussed how Iraq and Egypt had agreed with Libya in 1999 that Libya should act on behalf of all three countries to procure NoDong-1 strategic weapons-capable ballistic missiles from North Korea. The pattern for Libya-Iraq strategic weapons cooperation — which had been evident even before that time — was thus clearly established in the current context.

Further down on the page…
Loftus: “I was told about this amazing wiretap where British Intelligence overheard a call from North Korea to Libya saying, ‘My god, if the Americans ever go into Iraq, they’re going to find out about our nuclear program. And who’s going to pay all the Iraqi nuclear scientists in Libya if Saddam falls?’”

Shawn: “You’re saying before the war there were Iraqi nuclear scientists working on a potential bomb in Libya before we launched this [war in Iraq]?”

Loftus: “Yeah. This was a treaty signed by a man called Ali Sobree. He was the Foreign Minister of Iraq. And he went to [Libyan leader Mu’ammar al-] Qadhafi and they worked out a whole protocol. Qadhafi would donate a hollowed out mountain in Libya; Iraq would provide the nuclear scientists, and North Korea would provide the uranium. And they would literally make a factory for nuclear weapons. And once that factory was complete, we had lost the war on terrorism. People don’t realize that even a small nuclear weapon can kill 300,000 people. That’s one hundred 9-11′s. So that’s why we put [garbled] bin Laden on the back burner — we were really focusing on getting the Ali Sobree protocol — we had to smash that ring.”

Source: http://www.gisresearch.com/
The Global Information System (GIS) is a global-coverage, core current strategic intelligence service for use only by governments. It is not available to non-governmental subscribers.

SBD

And of course, by sheer coincidence, Valerie Plame works at CPD.

It’s just registered that in Wilson’s reply to Blitzer, Wilson very plainly stated that his 1999 trip to Niger for the CIA was “related to uranium activities”.

Because he’s been so mum about that trip, as compared to so vociferous about the 2002 trip, perhaps we can surmise that for the 1999 trip he was required to sign a secrecy agreement. If so, would he not have been violating that restriction in his remark to Blitzer?

Musings: we know there was a Wilson-Gore connection; a Wilson-Clinton connection. Has anyone come across any hints or indicators of a Wilson-Frank Rich connection? Sure would like to be a fly on the wall over at FOX news during a Shawn/Hunt notes-comparing session re: the oil-for-food scandal. They’ve done yeomans’ work.

As have you, AJ- congratulations on your much-deserved award!

It’s in a July 14, 2005 entry titled “Joe Wilson’s Top Ten Worst Inaccuracies And Misstatements”, and is at #5.) Wilson Has Claimed His 1999 Trip To Niger Was Not Suggested By His Wife: “CNN’s Wolf Blitzer: ‘Who first raised your name, then, based on what you know? Who came up with the idea to send you there?’ Joe Wilson: The CIA knew my name from a trip, and it’s in the report, that I had taken in 1999 related to uranium activities but not related to Iraq….’…..’I HAD DONE A LOT OF WORK WITH THE NIGER GOVERNMENT DURING THE PERIOD PUNCTUATED BY A MILITARY COUP AND A SUBSEQUENT ASSASSINATION OF A PRESIDENT.’ ‘So I knew all the people there”

This was on CNN’s “Late Edition”, July 18, 2004 – so just 11 days after the release of the Select Committee report.

He “had” done a lot of work with the Niger government during a period punctuated by a military coup – tells us his ’99 CIA jaunt was then later than April 9th-10th.

Curiouser and curiouser – and what work would he have been doing “with the Niger government duriing a period punctuated by a military coup…assassination of a president”? Just what was “JC Wilson International Ventures”?

Hmmmmm. Have a great day.

First on the trip comment. You are thinking this through as an intellectual property issue with the government. But the non-disclosure statement covers what the CIA told Wilson to prep for the trips, his contacts in the CIA, etc. What is really strange is Joe had a lot of access and visibility going into the deal. He was brought in to meet with key intel community people at the meeting where most thought it a waste of time. So Joe was supposed to have the non disclosure form simply to cover the people he met.

On the second point about Tenet – I agree it is hard to believe this is Tenet. If you recall my initial reaction was Plame or someone right above her. But Tenet could have been the one. The mistake between the debrief date and the report date actually points to someone coming to this fresh, still mangling dates and events, someone reading a report of an investigation. It is very detailed and accurate for the time it was written.

It would be very nice to know who this was – no doubt about it.

Two Questions for George Tenet

The “nuts”:

“• Why did the CIA, under your direction, treat the Vice President’s query about Iraqi efforts to purchase yellowcake in Niger so casually?

• When Joe Wilson started blabbing in public about his CIA mission to Niger – and lying about what he reported to the CIA upon his return – why didn’t you say something rather than allow the President’s credibility to be shredded?”

Please, like they say, read the whole thing.

Re. Landay’s June 12, 2003 article and the identity of his source…

a. I can’t imagine George Tenet talking to a KnightRidder journalist… I have absolutely no idea about this, but I can’t imagine the Director of CIA talking to a KnightRidder reporter… Robert Novak, yes; Jonathan Landay, no.

b. the CIA director would not have known or cared about the exact 2002 debriefing date of Mr. Joseph Wilson, even on June 12, 2003 when this issue was bubbling. Moreover, that would not have been an important piece of data for the Director of CIA/DCI to pass on to a journalist. Keep in mind, the debriefing date could NOT have been the same date that the WH received the information! Those DO debriefers needed at least a few hours to write up their report, get it blessed by their editors, and have it released into classified channels! Even IF this had been a hot item back in March 2002, you’ve gotta give these CIA wonks a bit of turnaround time.

I have no idea how quickly the CIA editors turned around their reports…but since the DO debriefers didn’t exactly debrief Wilson as he was deplaning I doubt the editors had their hair on fire either.

Landay’s source sounds to me to have been Joe Wilson, Plame, or someone in Plame’s supervisory chain.

For our purposes, though, it’s important to establish the date-time-group of the CIA report which was generated from the Joe Wilson Feb 2002 debrief.

Re:

“Why didn’t the Agency require Wilson to sign a non-disclosure agreement respecting his trip to Niger?”

“Why did the Agency pay only his expenses?”

“Why have his report remain oral?”

Here’s my take:

On Wilson’s previous trip to Niger (1999), it has been reported that one of the reasons the CIA used him was because “he was already going there” on business anyway. This says to me that the CIA didn’t “task” him to take the trip; the CIA was simply taking advantage of this pre-planned travel opportunity. It says to me that Wilson’s consulting business paid for his flight, food, & lodging. The only “expenses” the Agency should have picked up, therefore, would have been for any additional activity Wilson conducted on behalf of the CIA which he had not already planned to conduct on behalf of his own business.

When he came back from that trip, he should have been debriefed by DO case officers and they, in turn, should have written their collection reports which should have been distributed pro forma via classified channels throughout the government. My guess is Wilson did NOT sign a non-disclosure agreement with the CIA for the 1999 trip. If he paid for that entire trip, then he owned all of the information that he acquired. He was simply passing on to the CIA information which he had acquired during his business travel.

Wilson was the “source” of any information which entered classified channels through any intelligence report written by the DO case officers. He would NOT, himself, have written any report subsequent to his 1999 trip. And, while any information distributed by the CIA would have been classified, Wilson himself would have been free to talk about everything he found out about his trip which he paid for on his own dime.

As for his February 2002 trip, we need to establish what expenses he was reimbursed. If the Agency reimbursed Wilson for his flight, food, & lodging, then that indicates they “tasked” him to take the trip, i.e., he wasn’t “already going there”. If such was the case, then the CIA would “own” the information derived from the Feb 2002 trip, and I would have expected the CIA to request a signed non-disclosure agreement. I don’t know the specific legal aspects of this…but I think this is where we need to obtain the detailed answers.

In any event, Wilson would NOT have been required to write any report about his Feb 2002 trip to Niger. Regardless of who paid for it, he was simply a “source”, as he had been in 1999. He was debriefed, as it occurred, in his own home which is not unusual…especially if his business paid for the trip. And his debriefers dutifully wrote their intelligence report and distributed it pro forma through classified channels.

I would love to find out the date-time-group of the debriefer’s report, actually.

I don’t think that Fitzgerald is naive.
I think that this 11th hour FBI search was just a dog-and-pony show. They were so obviously FBI in their black suits. Fitzgerald has gone after terrorists and even claimed that there were links between Al Qaeda and Iraq.

“The former Manhattan prosecutor was asked about his 1998 indictment against Osama bin Laden that asserted that al Qaeda had an “understanding” with Iraq that it would not “work against that government” and that “on certain projects, specifically including weapons development,” they would “work cooperatively.” Mr. Fitzgerald testified that “there was that relationship that went from opposing each other to not opposing each other to possibly working with each other.”
http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005237

I keep hoping Plamegate is some big terrorist/corruption/Iraq investigation and Rove was just the red herring to fool the media.

The way Wilson is acting, I think he knows he’s in trouble for something, so he is pretending to be a dissenter from the official policy. That way, when he gets arrested, he can claim he was framed by the Neocons because of his views.

I really don’t think Wilson is a dissenter. I think he’s in trouble because of something he did that is now being investigated.

Just my opinion. I am no expert or Washington player.

In any case he has 2 scenarios (of where the leak came from)

1- VIPs inspired (he has his money on this one, but that his just his opinion–wink, wink) to hurt Goss for toeing Bush’s line (Rogue bad bad bad bad guys) who should be SHOT
or
2- Angered Bush guys trying to drive a stake through the CIA (um, yeah…and compromise and on-going and useful Intel operation)

I actually think, that this post is one of his most treacherous and frankly concerning.