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Sunday, October 30, 2005

Here's a longish piece in the Washington Post purporting to be a run-down of the Libby/Wilson/Plame business: A Leak, Then a Deluge - Did a Bush loyalist, trying to protect the case for war in Iraq, obstruct an investigation into who blew the cover of a covert CIA operative?

But here's something I don't get. Here's that dilemma again. There's no mention of the fact that Iraq had, in fact, sought uranium in Niger, Joe Wilson said as much and then wasn't "forthright" about it. From Stephen Hayes' piece:

...Wilson was debriefed by two CIA officials at his home on March 5, 2002. He never filed a written report. The resulting CIA report was published and disseminated in the regular intelligence stream three days later. The report included the unsurprising declaration of former Nigerien prime minister Ibrahim Mayaki that Niger had signed no contracts with rogue states while he served first as foreign minister and then prime minister, from 1996 to 1999. But Mayaki added one tantalizing detail, also included in the CIA report that resulted from Wilson's trip. An Iraqi delegation had visited Niger in 1999 to explore "expanding commercial relations" between Iraq and Niger. Mayaki had met with the Iraqis and later concluded that their request for enhanced trade meant they wanted to discuss purchasing uranium. Mayaki said he had not pursued the matter because such deals were prohibited under U.N. sanctions.

Reactions to the report differed. The INR analyst believed Wilson's report supported his assessment that deals between Iraq and Niger were unlikely. Analysts at the CIA thought the Wilson report added little to the overall knowledge of the Iraq-Niger allegations but noted with particular interest the visit of the Iraqi delegation in 1999. That report may have seemed noteworthy because of the timing of the Iraqi visit. The CIA had several previous reports of Iraq seeking uranium in Africa in 1999, specifically from Congo and Somalia.

On balance, then, Wilson's trip seemed to several analysts to make the original claims of an Iraq-Niger deal more plausible...

Yet upon reading the Post's story, the clear narrative one comes away with is that of the "VP wanted war at all costs and lied about uranium in Niger" point of view. You get nothing of the above quote.

So, is this just Post bias or is Hayes incorrect with what he's got written above? Or am I misunderstanding something? It certainly continues to sound as thought the Hayes narrative is correct, or at least a more honest and fair description of the Administration's viewpoint, but Post readers would never know.

1 Comment

Though it's almost a year and a half old, this roundup still seems to me a very clear, concise, and accurate presentation of the Wilson/Plame/Niger yellowcake story.

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