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July 09, 2003
Once again it's 'What did they know and when did they know it?' time...
There's a lot of information today flying around about the forged documents that were behind the administration's claim that Saddam Hussein was trying to get uranium yellowcake from Niger. Potentially the most devastating - if it's true - is a report that not only was Bush aware that the documents were not considered reliable but that he was determined to use them anyway. According to an article at Capitol Hill Blue, Terrance Wilkinson, who is described as a CIA adviser, says Bush was not only told on at least 2 occasions (which Wilkinson claims to have witnessed) prior to the State of the Union address that report of Iraq trying to purchase Uranium from Niger had been discredited, but that Bush's response was that if the CIA's current agents couldn't find any proof it was true, then they needed to hire some who could.
An intelligence consultant who was present at two White House briefings where the uranium report was discussed confirmed that the President was told the intelligence was questionable and that his national security advisers urged him not to include the claim in his State of the Union addressAdd that to the other contention that's been made recently - that while writing the speech, intelligence officials made their concerns about relying on the Niger documents known, and in response, the Bush administration decided to say that they got the information from the British - and it begins to look more and more like people in the higher levels of the Bush administration - and probably even Bush himself - knew that the Niger documents were fake, but were determined to make the accusation that Saddam was trying to get radioactive materials, even if they had no reliable evidence whatsoever to back it up. It also appears that they were willing to go to some length to try and make their accusation at least sound plausible for as long as possible in order to get the war underway."The report had already been discredited," said Terrance J. Wilkinson, a CIA adviser present at two White House briefings. "This point was clearly made when the President was in the room during at least two of the briefings."
Bush's response was anger, Wilkinson said.
"He said that if the current operatives working for the CIA couldn't prove the story was true, then the agency had better find some who could," Wilkinson said. "He said he knew the story was true and so would the world after American troops secured the country."
An interesting twist in the story comes from the Financial Times, which notes that when the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) asked for information from the US about the claims that Saddam had tried to purchase uranium from Africa, the administration was very slow to respond.
The US government withheld from United Nations weapons inspectors evidence to back its claim that the Iraqi government had attempted to obtain uranium from Africa, despite repeated pledges to co-operate fully with the inspectors.No reason for the delay seems to have been provided, but if the administration was aware that the documents were forged, and if they had no other evidence to back up their claims, its not hard to imagine why they might have been less than eager to hand it over.In a letter released on Tuesday, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was forced to wait six weeks for the evidence - from December 2002 to early February 2003 - at a critical time, when it was investigating US charges that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear programme.
During that period, the US several times repeated the allegations, most notably in President George W. Bush's January State of the Union address.
On other occasions, when questions about the reliability of the Niger documents have come up, administration officials have answered that the forgery wasn't the only information they were relying on - there was additional information indicating that Saddam had also tried to obtain radioactive material from other African nations. Today's admission contradicted that information as well.
The White House on Tuesday sought to explain how a statement based on false information could have been included in the most important speech of the presidential calendar. The documents alleging a transaction between Niger and Iraq had been forged, a White House official confirmed, and said further reports of other Iraqi attempts to source uranium in Africa were "not detailed enough to be certain that such attempts were in fact made".
For the White House to finally say that "Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech" is all well and good. The question, however, is if knowing what they knew then, should they have included it? From the look of things, the answer is most likely, no.
ADDENDUM: A caveat. The website - Capitol Hill Blues - that pubished one of the articles referenced above is one I'm not terribly familiar with, but the way the article is written comes off as a bit more propaganda-ish than I'm usually comfortable with using as a sole citation for something. The information in the story sounds credible to me - I can easily hear Bush responding that way - and if it's true, it's also very important - but without further information on CHB or the story itself, I didn't want to offer it without at least noting that I have some minor reservations at the moment. If you happen to know anything about either the Capitol Hill Blues or the story itself, please leave a note or link in the comments section.
On a forum for the CHB website, Doug Thompson, who runs CHB, was asked about the problems a Freeper had reported in trying to get information on Wilkinson. Here is the meat of Thompson's reply:
I've known Terry Wilkinson for 20+ years and his decision to go public was a painful one that I'm sure will bring recriminations. But he loves his country a lot more than any political party or politician. I've received some emails today regarding his comments and have forwarded them on to him. It's his decision as to whether or not he wishes to respond.Hopefully, there will be some kind of confirmation or refutation of this story within the next few days, but I thought the information was interesting enough to at least make note of it. I'll let you know if I find out anything further.But I don't feed anyone's desire for a witch hunt. When we ran the stories about Bill Clinton's sexual assaults on women, we identified a number of the women. I don't recall anyone at Free Republican demanding "proof" of their identity although I did have a number of liberal media types hounding me for more information.
I didn't pander to them and I won't to anyone else. I stand by the stories that run on our web site. You are free to read them or not read them, believe them or not believe them. It's a free world. We've been on the web since 1994 and we will be here 10 years from now.
Posted by thorswitch at July 9, 2003 12:40 AM
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Comments
Great series of posts, K. Good research, depth, synthesis and analysis skills. BTW on the test below I had Green Party first, Kucinich 2nd.
Posted by: Dave Pollard at July 9, 2003 02:05 AM
You might be interested in this follow-up article from Capitol Hill Blue.
http://chblue.com/artman/publish/article_2529.shtml
Posted by: Kathy K at July 19, 2003 10:39 AM
Yeah, as I noted above, I wasn't totally sure about the Capitol Hill Blue article, and there's a later posting that notes the CHB retraction. Even though that part was not true, however, there's still a considerable amount of evidence that virtually everyone involved in writing the SOTU knew or should have known about the questionability of the information and decided to use it anyway, so the overall question of why they opted to use that info still stands.
Posted by: kriselda jarnsaxa at July 19, 2003 04:54 PM
Kriselda...
There's a huge difference between knew, or should have known. So you say theres a considerable amount of evidence that almost everyone involved in writing the sotu should have known something?
So the overall ?? does no longer stand if you're stating what someone, in your hindsight, should have known. what does that statement even mean.Sounds like no true evidence from you, just a desire to keep the ??'s rolling.
Posted by: J Wood at August 2, 2003 10:34 AM
(FYI: the same comment was posted 3 times, so I deleted 2 of them - no actual content was deleted because it's all in the one I left - I just don't like having multiple posts if its possible not to)
As for your comments, when I say that someone should have known something, I'm meaning that the information was available to them, and in the capacity of the job they perform, it is reasonable to expect that they would have paid attention to that information.
For example, we've heard that both George Bush and Condoleeza Rice had the National Intelligence Estimate available to them, and that the NIE contained crucial information on the disagreement within the intelligence community about the validity of the "uranium from Africa" and the "aluminum tubes" claims. Since that information was available to them it is reasonable to expect them to have made use of that information. Yet both of them have said that they did not read the NIE in its entirety, so they weren't aware of the dispute.
Also, Stephen Hadley, Rice's deputy, has said that he was aware that the "uranium from Africa" claim was questionable and that he had been given 2 memos and a phone call from the CIA on the matter. It is reasonable, then, to think that he should have known that the information regarding the "uranium from Africa" claim shouldn't have gone into the SOTU, and that he is close enough to the top to have communicated that to at least Rice if not Rice and Bush.
The standard of "known or should have known" is one that is commonly used in legal proceedings. It's the basic concept that wilfull ignorance of something that you can reasonably be expected to know is no defense for violating the law or another's rights. When someone signs a contractual agreement, it's reasonable to expect that they should know the terms and conditions of that contract. If someone is the Chief Financial Officer of a company, then it's reasonable to expect that they should know about the financial dealings of that company. If someone is the President's National Security Advisor, it's reasonable to expect that they should know the opinion of the various intelligence agencies on a piece of intelligence being used in the President's SOTU address. And if someone is the President, then it's reasonable to expect that he will know whether the words that come out of his mouth are true or not.
Posted by: kriselda jarnsaxa at August 2, 2003 11:31 AM