July 10, 2004

The Truth and Joe Wilson

Besides the conclusion that the Bush White House didn't pressure intelligence analysts to "sex up" their information, the most interesting part of the Senate Intelligence Committee report on Iraq intelligence failures is Joe Wilson's role. Wilson denies that his wife offered him up to investigate the possible sale of Niger yellowcake uranium to Iraq. The report says otherwise:

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.

"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

We have two claims that directly contradict each other. Here are a few possibilities:

1. The "CIA official" is lying.
   
2. Wilson is lying.
   
3. Valerie Plame, Wilson's wife, is lying. Therefore Wilson is wrong due to bad intel (kind of like the Bush administration).
   
4. The Intelligence Committee is lying.
   

Number one is possible because of all the hell coming down on that agency someone wanted to do some CYT--cover your tush. Number two is also quite possible since Wilson has been such a harsh critic of the President then and now.

Number four is pretty weak since a Democratic Senator could just step up to a microphone and declare the Wilson portion of the report as a sham and discrediting the whole document.

That brings us to number three, Plame is a liar. The Wilsons have been taking full advantage of "Plame Game" by the couple accepting interviews and Joe selling lots of copies of his book (when will Valerie's come out?). How long could Valerie keep her secret away from her husband? When it would come out it would make him look like a fool? So this possibility doesn't seem likely.

We're down to the claim of an annoynmous CIA official versus a former ambassador. The former is unknown so we can't do much to critically evaluate his claim. The latter has a vendetta against the administration. This is where we stand.

I did this exercise to show my pro- and anti-Bush brethren that there's a difference between lying and being wrong. While one of the most likely possibilities is that Joe Wilson lied about his wife's role there is also the possibility that he was left in the dark. I didn't titled this post "Joe Wilson is a Liar!!!!" for a reason. We don't know... yet. It takes a lot more thought to dig into what might have happened than just doing the perverbial scream.

"Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission" [via PoliBlog]