You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Submit your comments on this article
Fifth Column
When Froggy Comes Marching Home
2003-10-01
Just the good part
Joseph C. Wilson ...was first in Niger with USAID during the Carter administration, then later in the 1990s as a Clinton National Security Council staffer. He arrived back in the Niger’s capital of Niamey in February 2002 on a CIA-sponsored mission to investigate a report that Iraq had bought uranium from Niger in 1999. This trip took place a year before President Bush uttered the so-called "16 words" in his State of the Union address ("The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa"). Note that the president accused Iraq of seeking uranium, not actually obtaining it, which is what Wilson was sent to look into. He spent most of his time at the hotel — a fourth-floor suite at the Gawaeye, one report said. He was very open about his mission and its object, and began to take meetings near the pool. "I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people," Wilson wrote in the New York Times last July, "current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country’s uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." It is unclear with whom Wilson met. No Nigerien officials have admitted to attending those meetings. El Hadj Habibou Allele, who runs COMINAK, the major uranium-mining concern, stated he was never contacted. For their part, the staff at the Gawaeye thought Wilson was a nice guy, and they nicknamed him "Bill Clinton" after his former employer.

I posted this only to ask if anyone knows what exactly ’frog-marching’ is. Some kind of French Army retreat ?
Posted by:eyeyeye

#9  Old Patriot
Hell of an analysis. It would be impossible for Wilson to ever hold an embassy position if his wife were really covert.
Posted by: logiccop   2003-10-1 11:04:42 PM  

#8  It sort of looks like his wife had him assigned to a boondoggle to sip mint tea with old friends.
Posted by: Super Hose   2003-10-1 10:28:42 PM  

#7  I've worked WITH the CIA, never FOR them. There's a lot of stuff that's classified. There's both an unclassified and a classified version of the CIA FACT BOOK. The unclassified part is even on the Internet, and anybody can look at it. I've known both covert and overt CIA agents in the past, and still have dozens of friends at the Agency. Most of these are people that worked for me, or with me, over the 26 years I spent in the Air Force. As far as I know, none of them are "covert". Still, I don't mention their names unless there's a reason to, and I don't draw attention to their employer.

One thing that worries me considerably about this is a former US Ambassador whose WIFE is a clandestine(???) operative for the CIA? Talk about a serious conflict of interest! This could keep Wilson from EVER being appointed to any other embassy in the world! If you're an accredited ambassador to a country, your family members had not better be members of an intelligence collecting agency, or you've compromised your position before you even get there. I'd want to keep a very close eye on both of them for a long, long time. Something is definitely odorous here, and it's not Robert Novak.
Posted by: Old Patriot   2003-10-1 8:46:36 PM  

#6  I don't know what to think of the story. But IF a White House official exposes a CIA operative it can't be excused no matter whether it's technically a felony or not.
This is simply not what I expect from an administration so concerned about WMD and how to prevent them from being spread.
It doesn't matter whether it was an open secret or not, you don't talk about this to journalists.
For me CIA means "classified" whatever someone may know or not.
Posted by: True German Ally   2003-10-1 7:30:00 PM  

#5  Hmm,so he spent his time on the investagation hangin out at poolside!
Posted by: Raptor   2003-10-1 6:45:48 PM  

#4  We are going to learn a lot about Mr. Wilson and his covert/not covert wife in the next few weeks.
Posted by: Cyber Sarge (VRWC CA Chapter)   2003-10-1 5:38:26 PM  

#3  Rev. Donald Sensing at One Hand Clapping talks about the law involved, and the points necessary to create an actual crime.
In order for Plame's identification in Novak's column to be considered violating the law, all the following elements of proof must be met:

1. The person who told Novak (or anyone else) had to have had access to classified information that identified Plame as covert. Even if the information is accurate, if the "leaker" did not learn it from classified sources, there is no violation of the law.

2. The disclosure of Plame's covert status must have been intentional; this would seem easy to ascertain.

3. The person receiving the information, i.e., Novak, was not authorized to receive classified information; again, this would seem easy to prove.

4. The discloser must have known that the information identified Plame as covert.

5. The discloser must have known that the United States was taking positive actions to conceal Plame's covert intelligence relationship to the US government.

Note well: all five of these things had to have happened in order for the law to have been violated. IMO, that will be very difficult to prove; in fact, the CIA itself seems to have shown that #5 was not being done. Novak writes,

At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me ... asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause "difficulties" if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered.

If the CIA was taking affirmative actions to conceal Plame's intelligence status, that's a pretty weak way of heading off a reporter's question, but no doubt that the official whom Novak interviewed will be extensively questioned by investigators.

Who is Donald Sensing?

I should advise my readers here that as the chief of media relations for XVIII Airborne Corps and five years as a public affairs officer at the Pentagon and as chief of public affairs for US Army CID Command, I have an awful lot of experience in speaking to reporters about topics that had classified content. I don't know what the CIA's public-affairs policy is, but I can't imagine it would be less restrictive than the US Army's. Our policy was quite simple: classified information was not discussed, period.

I guess he knows a little something about dealing with the press.

Posted by: Chuck Simmins   2003-10-1 4:43:20 PM  

#2  This article in the Guardian leads me to believe that this issue is strictly to hurt the administration by neutralizing Rove.

Old Patriot made some interesting comments in responding to a post yesterday. Evidently a list of CIA employees is published yearly in the public domain. I wonder if Wilson's wife is on the list. That would kind of undercut the idea that a crime was committed.
Posted by: Superhose   2003-10-1 4:34:59 PM  

#1  When a man's hands and legs are shackled, with the arms behind the body, grasp the person under each arm and bounce him along. Frog march. The degree of bouncing determines the condition of the person upon arrival at your destination.
Posted by: Chuck Simmins   2003-10-1 2:23:35 PM  

00:00