Bwa-hahahahahah!!! Too funny!!! Almost like throwing your voice through Cline, yes?

But seriously…the translated documents part is frighteningly similar to another episode where the truth was hidden in documents but minimized and ignored because the translations became a larger issue of their own over the original documents and the truth they contained.

By which I mean the TANG documents. The truth was right there, but the translations developed a life of their own with everyone looking at kerning instead of the content. Nice redirection, a classic ploy nearly perfected by the players in this administration.

In the case of the Niger documents, somebody in WINPAC might have picked up immediately on the nature of the forgery if they had not only read the original in French, but had seen the other contextual clues in the four corners of the forgery (i.e., the quality and age of the letterhead, other telltale factors like formatting, etc.). What won’t get asked within this trial because of the narrow scope is who determined the documents must be translated, who buried the untranslated copies in the CPD files. The timing of the documents genesis also won’t come into play; how convenient that they began in late 2000 as the U.S. was trying to sort out its election outcome.

Something one of the other commenters here said in an earlier thread encourages me to continue to think the outing was not merely aimed at discrediting Wilson; it was designed to squash any possible rebuttal from WINPAC specifically that could bring CIA handling of the forgeries to light. There was more riding on this than the Iraq War at this point; there was groundwork on Iran at risk as well, as Kwiatkowski’s comments indicated, and WINPAC needed to be â€encouraged†to see intelligence differently.

Cheney pulled a two-fer.

Agh, exactly, page 9, section 27 at the link provided by eriposte from paulweiss.com:

27. [REDACTED] CIA/WINPAC received the translated documents from the State Department on 7 February 2003. A preliminary examination of the document confirmed the identities of a key Iraqi [REDACTED] but did not progress sufficiently to fully examine other claims in the document. Key forensic clues–errors in format and grammar contained in the original documents–were not conveyed in the translation process.

They waived around the â€original†fakes for the benefit of receptive but not overly inquisitive parties, then ensured only sanitized translations arrived where it might be noted immediately they were fakes…and then only after Powell has made a critical presentation to UNSC.

Thanks, all …

Materials and methods, eh?

ew: Perhaps if Libby had said no to the Tom Cruise meeting, we would have found Osama bin Laden.

hey now, make sure to SMILE when you twist that knife

random thought: if Tom Cruise is the Xenu-Jesus, doesn’t that mean that he should be crucified to keep the aliens from blowing up our volcanoes?

and seriously again. Dismayed says:
I think the defense can be summed up as â€We’re stupid, not guilty.â€

Nice one, very succinct. The jury will be thrilled to have that part of it over with so quickly! The problem for Libby is, he might be able to prove that he’s stupid, but that doesn’t automatically make him not guilty.

I just read through the (damning? pathetic? telling?) CIA summary background report of the Iraq-Niger Uranium issue [32 paragraphs on this issue alone, as sent to the House Intelligence Committee on April 3, 2003] that the CIA also faxed (â€ASAP†via the Situation Room) to the attention of Hannah and Libby the afternoon of Monday, June 9, 2003 [Defense Exhibit #64, which eriposte linked above]. I’m a long way from expert on that whole forged document timeline, but you can see the political manipulation of the process that is going on behind the scenes, it seems to me, by reading this CIA report.

CIA admits (via whomever very carefully authored their background report) that the Directorate of Intelligence at CIA knew that State/INR had and immediately offered to the CIA copies of the actual (forged) Iraq-Niger Uranium documents as transmitted to them by Embassy Rome, as of October 15, 2002 (obtained by Embassy Rome thanks to the Panorama journalist volunteering them to the USA on October 9, 2002):

â€Embassy Rome indicated that it had learned from CIA that the documents provided by the journalist were the subject of the CIA report issued on 5 February, 2002, as described in paragraph three. Embassy Rome shared copies of the documents [redacted] the Embassy forwarded the documents through State Department channels to its Bureau of NonProliferation (State/NP). The Directorate of Intelligence did not request or place a high-priority on obtaining the actual documents, at this time, [redacted].â€

Does it get any more damning for an intelligence service in the lead-up to an â€optional†war…? The whole thing reads like an agency desperate to keep the truth from getting out, until that war was well and truly launched. And in that objective, top dogs at the CIA, White House (and State) achieved Mission Accomplished. The forgeries weren’t officially debunked until a week before the invasion in March, 2003, and by that time the die had been cast. [Admittedly debunked finally on March 11th by our government, after the IAEA had called our bluff and the bluff of whomever forged those documents and got their substance into our government’s hands in late 2001 and early 2002.] The next paragraph in that CIA background report that Congress saw two weeks after the invasion reads:

â€12. [redacted] On 15 October, 2002, an Intelligence Community E-mail (ICE-mail) from the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the Department of State (State/INR) to CIA acknowledges receiving the documents acquired by Embassy Rome and noted doubt about the alleged uranium deal. State/INR also offered to provide copies of the documents to CIA at a meeting of the interagency group assigned to review nuclear export matters, occurring the next day. The delivery did not occur, nor did CIA press State/INR for the documents, for the same reasons articulated [in the redaction] in paragraph eleven.â€

One thing that is starting to be reinforced by the Libby trial is the importance of the hierarchy of the Executive Branch, in terms of actions and reactions. Who was pulling rank on whom, in State/NP vs. State/INR and in the CIA’s different directorates and subunits is a critical component to this backstory. It’s very enlightening reading about that ’dog eat dog’ lay of the land through emptywheel’s detailed blogging of the witness testimony. Libby outranked Marc Grossman – the #3 at the State Department – and Robert Grenier – near the top in the CIA – and they knew it, and acted accordingly when contacted personally by Libby.

This administration’s behavior is a textbook example of how to ruin an intelligence product costing $44 billion dollars a year invested in unearthing our â€best guess†at the truth, with the application of bad faith political interference and arrogant office politics in the top-down-run Executive Branch.

P.S. A reminder that the Special Counsel and DOJ are kindly hosting all of the government’s trial exhibits at their website, so bloggers won’t have to go to the trouble. The evidence is updated daily (when trial’s in session):

http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/index.html

Nice work, pow wow. The question now is how close to the top of the Directorate was the decision to turn CIA’s back on the documentation. All the way to Tenet? Still doesn’t sit well with me, but I can’t deny it’s not entirely possible.

Thanks for that pow wow.

When I sent all those to you and eriposte, I thought those three reports were just the fax cover letters–didn’t look any further. I guess it’s a sign that I need to get more sleep, huh?

It looks like Big Time Dick is posting again, this time as MTtoilet…
it’t time for you to come out of the closet Big Time…

I’m sure eriposte will make very good use of the new material, emptywheel, while you are otherwise very productively engaged. And soon, yes, I hope you can somehow catch up on your sleep after today’s further marathon of blogging. Glad you noticed the CIA report after a second look [one of the fruits of the defense’s failed graymail effort…].

I’m beginning to appreciate why (perhaps unbeknownst to him) Joe Wilson probably has some very appreciative cheerleaders in the Intelligence Community ranks where the work is actually done. Wilson did something the insiders were simply unable to do: he (very effectively) broke through the political censor(s) who had been successfully holding back the objective facts that had been generated (or should have been allowed to be generated) by career civil servants whose jobs were reality-based, not political agenda-driven. How frustrating to get it right, just to see the higher-ups deliberately and deceptively bury your work for political reasons, and to have nowhere to turn, with the Congress (and much of the media) basically co-opted by the Executive Branch. Wilson happened to be in a unique position to end-run the Intelligence Community’s political filters to get word out to the public, and he did just that, using every tool available to him to great effect. It was that successful penetration of their carefully-constructed shield that was the cause of the white-hot attention paid to Mr. Wilson by the Vice President and his Chief of Staff.

I do believe there’s much more here than meets the eye… Mimikatz, I think it was, on an earlier thread about the Niger forgeries, got it right about the necessary distinctions that must be made between the different players and powerbrokers within each agency and how their individual agendas conflicted and were promoted, in addition to the already-recognized conflicting interplay that may have existed between the different agencies (CIA, OVP, State, Defense, etc.) as a whole.

Emptywheel isn’t the only Next Hurrah blogger to positively affect the news cycle. We have emptypockets to thank for this (from the New York Times): Of Gay Sheep, Modern Science and Bad Publicity.

Or, how about asking some ambassador over for a little mint tea-and-translation? French IS the language of diplomacy! And State DOES have that reputation of a long history of close relations with the CIA (to say the least).

Well, that may have been so before Bush and Cheney came into power, and their neocons â€reformed†the civil service.

Okay, then why not get in touch with one of those Old School ambassador, maybe even one that’s retired. Who knows, you might even have found one with a ready made connection to the â€bureauâ€.

Has anybody pointed out that Tom Cruise appears to be the missing link in this story? Armitage met with him on the day that Armitage leaked to Woodward and Libby met with him on the day that Schmall told Libby about Joe and Valerie. Or, maybe, Tom Cruise meets with Bush Administration officials all the time.

[In case anybody cares, this is not a serious comment, not exactly anyway…]

She inserts her own opinions into her blogging! God forbid! (This troll, who has obviously never visited Kos, has been adequately dealt with)

>>> it was designed to squash any possible rebuttal from WINPAC specifically that could bring CIA handling of the forgeries to light

Not sure who claimed this since you show this in quotes but this doesn’t make sense knowing what we know about WINPAC’s role:
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/…..mirror.htm

>>> Would it not be more likely WINPAC was like a dike holding back the career types, with Fleitz’ Finger stuck in it?

I apologize but I don’t understand this question or its context.

Where’s Jeff?

Dardog –

The implication, per Schmall’s PDB Table of Contents note, is that Libby told/asked Schmall about Joe and Valerie Wilson, not the other way around, on June 14, 2003. Schmall wrote the names down to help him recall the point of his accompanying note of a query from Libby for the CIA: â€Why was the Amb told this was a VP office question?â€

In the handwriting of Scooter Libby (Goverment Exhibit #528A), as dictated to him by Vice President Cheney on Air Force Two on July 12, 2003, Libby was directed to relay the following single alleged quotation from the CIA’s (classified to that point) 2002 debriefing report of Joe Wilson to selected members of the media on â€deep background†as an anonymous â€Administration official†(in addition to some dictated â€on the record†comments denying involvement in the Wilson trip by the OVP, etc.):

Only written record of Wilson trip included â€[] that former P.M. of Niger saying he had been approached by Iraqi officials in what he believed to be an effort to buy more uranium in 1999.â€

Cathie Martin took those handwritten Libby notes and typed the VP’s July 12 quote (Government Exhibit #528B) for the media into:

The only written record of Joe Wilson trip included that â€the former Prime Minister of Niger said he had been approached by and met with a delegation of Iraqi officials in what he believed to be an effort to acquire more Uranium in 1999.â€

That written CIA debriefing of Joe Wilson from 2002 has no such simplistic quote in it, we now know because most of that debriefing report was released as an attachment to the now-mostly-unclassified INR report via Defense Exhibit #71. That sentence and quotation instead condense about a paragraph in the CIA report of qualification and clarification about the meeting that took place with an Iraqi delegation in 1999 in regard to â€expanding commerical relations.†In pertinent part:

â€Although the meeting took place, [Nigerien P.M.] Mayaki let the matter drop due to the United Nations (UN) sanctions against Iraq and the fact that he opposed doing business with Iraq. Mayaki said that he interpreted the phrase â€expanding commerical relations†to mean that Iraq wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales.

[snip]

Mayaki claimed that if there had been any contracts for yellowcake between Niger and any rogue state during his tenure [P.M. 1997-1999], he would have seen the contract.â€

Parsing the truth in order to mislead and deceive, while avoiding actual bald-faced lying where it might be unearthed, in order to peddle a cynical and corrupt political agenda regardless of the underlying body of evidence and fact and of the public good, while maintaining plausible deniability throughout. The m.o. of the Cheney adminstration, and I’m afraid of much of corporate America.

EW:

Have you seen this defense exhibit?: http://wid.ap.org/documents/li…../DX421.pdf

It’s the internal CIA e-mail where Schmall indicates that Cheney, Libby and Edelman were seeking info or commenting on Wilson.

In the e-mail, he remembers Cheney and Libby asking questions about the trip dating back to May 6, 2003.

He remembers faxing to Edelman (in June 2003) memos done for Cheney and Rumsfeld on Iraq/Niger/uranium. He notes that Cheney and Libby asked him repeatedly in â€this time frame†(although it’s not at all clear to me the time frame he’s referencing) about the â€tripâ€. In another moment of incomprehensibility, the CIA briefer to the VP and his #1 guy pleaded â€ignorance†on the matter. That’s positively nuts. The VP asks his person CIA briefer, repeatedly, for info on a supposed matter of monumental national security import, and the CIA briefer pleads ignorance on multiple occassions? Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be CIA briefers. Jeez.

Schmall notes that Libby was da man on making the case for WMD and AQ connections in Iraq.

And this fun tidbit: Schmall told that FBI that he heard unsubstantiated rumors in the â€briefer’s hallway†that one of their briefers spilled to a NSC staffer about Valerie. He stresses that the rumors were unsubstantiated and he couldn’t remember who had told him.

How was this covered in the trial? I didn’t see much on this (may have missed it or misunderstood it.)

BTW, outstanding, as usual, live blogging. I think you deserve a Pulitzer.

I’m still going through the trial exhibits, but a couple of quick observations.

I was struck by the same thing as pow wow – the presentation by Cheney and Libby of a paraphrase as a direct quotation. The interesting thing, of course, is that at that date the trip report itself was still classified.

One interesting thing to see is defense exhibit 18, which is the fax that went from NIO/SNP Robert Walpole to the NSC after a request for anything new on Iraq nuclear program on January 24, 2003. It appears to simply reiterate the uranium claim from October 2002 NIE; but we’ve heard about this document both in pretrial and now at trial, as it was a piece of the pushback against Wilson, purported to show that the intelligence community was still standing by the Niger story some four days before Bush’s SOTU. This was one of the three documents that were being pushed for declassification in July 2003, along with the NIE and the report from Wilson’s trip. Sanger and MIller wrote about the document in their July 23, 2003 piece in the NYT, which is interesting since we learned from Cathie Martin yesterday that leaking to Sanger was one of the tactics they brainstormed in OVP a little earlier; this may have been the closest Sanger got to the definitive piece they said he was working on.

But the information that is new and notable is that while we’ve heard this was an NIO-to-NSC fax, in fact it was transmitted not only to Hadley (who made the request) but also to Libby. It always puzzled me why the official story was so emphatic in its insistence that this document was part of the preparation for Powell’s UN presentation, not for Bush’s SOTU. And I suspect the reason is because of Libby’s role here – which is not to say it’s not true that it was for the Powell presentation. But it at least raises the question of whether Libby might have been involved in the SOTU and the 16 words more and more directly than we’ve heard. I note that the cover page has the delivery instruction

They need by Saturday ILLEGIBILE WORD [magina?]

That would be Saturday, January 25 – the fax was transmitted the day before, but I’m having a hard time interpreting the two notations of the time.

More later – I want to try to see ew on tv.

Jeff,

Here’s my quick analysis of some of the bits you brought up. I think the illegible word is morning, spelled dyslexically â€morginnâ€.

There are three time notations on the document. Walpole wrote â€24 Jsn ’03†right above the line for â€Time transmittedâ€. Well above, but in the vicinty of the â€Time recieved†line, is a stamp that says â€White House Situation Room†and â€2003 JAN 24 PK 0:53â€. At first I thought that was GMT, but that’s not right. I think it is just a mistake. They probably used one of those old-fashioned stamps and forgot to roll down the â€2â€. Much more interesting to me is that line at the very top of the page that indicates the document faxed FROM the WH Situation Room on Friday, July 11, 2003 22:2?.

Correction:

â€â€¦on Saturday, July 12, 2006 from the Situation Room…â€

should read

â€â€¦on Saturday, July 12, 2003 from the Situation Room…â€

in my preceding comment.

This is what Isokoff is reporting in Newsweek: â€Rove has said in secret testimony that, during a chat on July 11, 2003, Libby told him he learned about Plame’s employment at the CIA from NBC Washington bureau chief Tim Russert, a legal source who asked not to be identified talking about grand jury matters told NEWSWEEK.â€

Is this the first we’ve heard this? I thought the indictment implied that Rove told Libby about Novak during this chat. Rove’s such a bastard. If this is what he’s going to testify to, then he’ll really be sticking it Libby. On the one hand, that’s pretty sweet since he can claim to contemporaneously back up Libby’s lie (about Russert), and sink Scooter in the process. On the other hand, this unbelievable story (that Libby told Rove way back in July 2003 about learning info from Russert) is about the best evidence there is that Rove himself is part of the conspiracy. It seems so obviously that this was a cover-story designed after the fact.

But Rove is obviously a horrible witness — otherwise Fitz would have called him himself. I wonder how Fitz will handle Rove considering the odds are high that he doesn’t believe Rove either. And I wonder what openings Rove will provide for the defense. Either they’re desperate in calling him, or Rove really has some info that can derail the case. I wonder if the Wells is really going to try to paint the Wilson’s wife thing as the responsibility of the White House. I don’t really see how that would help Scooter, except to further confuse the jury or to motivate the White House to cough up a pardon, and pronto.

Isikoff also reports that Ari was told about â€Wilson’s wife†by BOTH Libby and Bartlett. Bartlett…. (I wonder if this is why Milbank needlessly mention Bartlett in a story that was otherwise about Cathie Martin today.)

Top White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis â€Scooter†Libby discussed their contacts with reporters about an undercover CIA officer in the days before her identity was published, the first known intersection between two central figures in the criminal leak investigation.

Rove told grand jurors it was possible he first heard in the White House that Valerie Plame, wife of Bush administration Joseph Wilson, worked for the CIA from Libby’s recounting of a conversation with a journalist, according to people familiar with his testimony.
AP 10/19/05

pollyusa,

Thanks. I guess I had remembered it as a one-way conversation. But am I correct in thinking this is the first time we’ve learned that Rove claims Libby was updating him specifically on the Libby-Russert chat during this July 11 encounter?

MayBee,

This would hurt Libby in that Rove’s testimony would show that Libby was lying from the get-go about learning info from Russert. After all, Libby was telling Ari about Wilson’s wife a few days before he even talked to Russert. If Rove says Libby claimed on July 11 that he learned the info from Russert, it would show that Libby was lying to the other players about this as early as July 11. Libby’s defense relies partly on the fact that Libby was misremembering and conflating conversations months later, when the FBI finally talked to him. Rove’s testimony would undercut this in that Libby was already claiming he got the info from Russert right after talking to Russert. Libby talked to Rove soon after the Russert conversation, not months later. The idea that Libby would totally â€misremember†a conversation that took place earlier that same day (or the day before) is not credible.

I realize the defense might want to spin this in their favor by claiming that Rove provides contemporaneous evidence of Libby’s recollection of the Russert conversation, and that it is therefore Russert who is misremembering or lying. They could try that, but it is undercut by the testimony of other government officials who have already testified about telling Libby about WIlson’s wife, and esp. Ari’s expected testimony that Libby told him about Wilson’s wife prior to the Libby-Russert conversation.

Anyways, that’s how I see it, thus my Rove is â€sticking it to Libby†idea. My guess is that the defense is calling Rove not primarily to bolster the alleged Libby-Russert conversation, but to instead say the conspiracy to out Wilson’s wife came from Rove and others, not Libby. In other words, the defense might be trying to put Rove on trial as either a smokescreen, or desperate attempt to send the White House a message: give Libby a pardon, or else. (I say it is a â€smokescreen†because whether or not Rove was involved in this, Libby wouldn’t be off-the-hook on any of the criminal charges against him.)

Personally, assuming the Newsweek thing is true, I doubt the truthfulness of Rove’s likely testimony. It seems way more likely that Bush aides *and* the OVP were working in concert to pushback on Wilson. It makes more sense that Libby, Bartlett, and Rove were all working together on their leaks. (Why would Bush aides be unconcerned about Wilson? They’d have as much motive as the OVP to discredit Wilson, and work with the OVP to do so.) In which case, it doesn’t really make sense that Libby would lie to Rove about the Russert conversation. I think the â€blame it on reporters like Russert†story that Libby’s relying upon was created well after the fact, when the investigation commenced. Both Libby and Rove agreed upon the storyline back in Sept 2003, back when the idea that reporters would be targeted by a prosecutor seemed a ridiculously unlikely possibility. Both Rove and Libby are mentioning Russert as a source, not because it’s true, but because that’s part of the their cover-up.