Wilson and Cheney

The liberal Known Fact of the day seems to be that Joe Wilson never claimed that Cheney authorized his trip. Let's do a little fact digging, shall we? I think it will be difficult for us to find the exact formulation, out of the mouth of Joe Wilson, "Dick Cheney sent me on this trip." But I think we will be more than happy to point out that this was the impression he was certainly giving, and further that this was the impression that the media clearly got, and that Wilson didn't bother to clear up any misunderstandings.

At the very least, we will find that the claim was repeatedly made that Cheney authorized the trip itself, regardless of whether one believes the claim was made that Cheney authorized Wilson taking the trip. Both of these are equally false.

In assembling a timeline (and I rely heavily on the work of the inestimable Tom Maguire for this), it appears that the first Wilson related piece belongs to Nick Kristof on May 6:

I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger.

We learned later, of course, that Wilson was both the ambassador in question, and also the person providing this information to Kristof. Again, though not explicitly said, the impression is clearly given here that the trip to Niger (whether involving Wilson or not) was undertaken at the express request of Dick Cheney. This, we will find later, is an exaggeration of the fact - Cheney never asked for an investigation, never authorized a trip, and never received any conclusions of the report.

Wilson's own July 6 editorial in the NYTimes is next:

In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney's office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake — a form of lightly processed ore — by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990's. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president's office.

This is a fairly decent accounting of the facts in question, but it never addresses the question of whether Cheney either asked for or authorized this trip in particular - it leaves the door open. Which makes the following sentence which occurs later in the editorial more pertinent:

Those are the facts surrounding my efforts. The vice president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.

Forget for a moment that the latter half that paragraph later turned out to be a lie, the link is clearly created here between the Vice President's query and the authorization of this trip.

Wolf Blitzer, in an exchange with Condi Rice on July 13th, said this:

RICE: Well, first of all, I didn't know Joe Wilson was going to Niger. And if you look at Director Tenet's statement, it says that counterproliferation experts on their own initiative sent Joe Wilson, so I don't know...

BLITZER: Who sent him?

RICE: Well, it was certainly not a level that had anything to do with the White House, and I do not believe at a level that had anything to do with the leadership of the CIA.

BLITZER: Supposedly, it came at the request of the vice president.

What said Salon about their interpretation of the July 6th editorial?

In his July 2003 Times column, Wilson revealed that he had been sent by Vice President Dick Cheney to West Africa in 2002 to investigate the Niger intelligence and had reported that it was "bogus."

In an interview with Amy Goodman in September 2003, after a lengthy series of questions about the relationship and communication between Wilson and Cheney, this interesting exchange took place.

AMY GOODMAN: He also said that he didn't know who had sent you, raising questions about the whole legitimacy of your mission to Niger.

JOSEPH WILSON: I heard that. I don't know what the Vice President was trying to get at in that. I'm not sure that he answered that series of questions particularly well.

Notice that, in the context of numerous members in the media, and many of his water-carriers in the liberal blogosphere making the claim that Cheney sent him to Africa, and asked a direct question about Cheney sending him to Africa, Wilson directly avoids answering the question whatsoever. Further, the "I don't know what the Vice President was trying to get at" is a fairly solid implication on the part of Wilson that Cheney was lying.

Which brings us, of course, to the transcript of Cheney himself, explaining what really did happen:

MR. RUSSERT: Now, Ambassador Joe Wilson, a year before that, was sent over by the CIA because you raised the question about uranium from Africa. He says he came back from Niger and said that, in fact, he could not find any documentation that, in fact, Niger had sent uranium to Iraq or engaged in that activity and reported it back to the proper channels. Were you briefed on his findings in February, March of 2002?

VICE PRES. CHENEY: No. I don’t know Joe Wilson. I’ve never met Joe Wilson. A question had arisen. I’d heard a report that the Iraqis had been trying to acquire uranium in Africa, Niger in particular. I get a daily brief on my own each day before I meet with the president to go through the intel. And I ask lots of question. One of the questions I asked at that particular time about this, I said, “What do we know about this?” They take the question. He came back within a day or two and said, “This is all we know. There’s a lot we don’t know,” end of statement. And Joe Wilson—I don’t who sent Joe Wilson.

Comments

[DW West]

So there was confusion in the Press about how the Niger trip got requested. Why didn't the Office of the Vice President simply issue a statement or give an on-the-record interview? That would have cleared things up without pointing to a CIA employee.

[Just Me]

Douglas I think they were saying that Cheney didn't send him, but the media kept asking the question-they obviously suspect Cheney (or wilson) was lying or they wouldn't have persisted in asking Wilson the question.

[DW West]

All the more reason why a clear-cut attributed statement would have cleared things up. I remember following the story at the time, and saw it as a relatively low-level report, one of many. It was the reference to the CIA person that gave the story legs. The White House must be wishing that it had been handled differently.

[LamontP]

The conversation between Cooper and Rove took place on July 11, 2003. Two of the transcripts above are from July 13 and July 14. Interesting, but they don't apply directly to Rove's July 11 comments. So they don't help Rove's case.

[Just Me]

Lamont-do you think the reporters weren't contacting the WH for comment on Cheney's desired mission to Niger?

It isn't neccessarily what is in print that demands the response, but what all the reporters are asking. I honestly think part of the problem is that Wilson wanted to make his mission sound slightly more important than it was (as the brits say "sexed up") to bolster his argument, and the press ran with that impression and put their own spin on it.

[LamontP]

There is no doubt that Wilson is a grandstander, no matter how careful the wording of his op-ed piece. And undoubtedly reporters were looking for comment from the White House. But I have to agree with Douglas - why didn't they just make an official statement? They could have said that this was all done at a lower level of the CIA, and was only a small part of the total evidence of a WMD program. Can someone explain why it was necessary to point a reporter to the identity of a CIA employee?