Remember Joseph C. Wilson? Probably if you’re a news junkie, but you can be excused if you don’t. While the Plame/Wilson Affair was all the rage in the NYT and LAT (particularly) when it seemed a huge (although somewhat inexplicable) embarrassment to the administration, it mostly vanished from the mainstream media when Wilson emerged as less than truthful and heroic — more of a sleazy lifetime vassal of the Saudis and their buddies in the State Department. That was it for his fifteen minutes. Oh, but he did manage to be photographed with his “secret agent” wife in Vanity Fair, not to mention publish a book filled with more lies than a National Guard document. Call it Rathergate, the Prequel.
But to refresh your memory, much of this brouhaha had to do with discrediting the Niger uranium forgeries supposedly used by our government to justify war in Iraq (although they weren’t). My friend Michael Ledeen was even accused of being the forger. (Serves him right for learning Italian.) But now the truth has been revealed. I wrote earlier on this blog that there were allegations these forgeries were made not by Ledeen, not by the now-notorious Bill Burkett (just kiddng – he certainly doesn’t know Italian), but by French Intelligence. Now, according to a court proceeding reported in the Telegraph, those allegations are evidently true.
The Italian businessman at the centre of a furious row between France and Italy over whose intelligence service was to blame for bogus documents suggesting Saddam Hussein was seeking to buy material for nuclear bombs has admitted that he was in the pay of France.
The man, identified by an Italian news agency as Rocco Martino, was the subject of a Telegraph article earlier this month in which he was referred to by his intelligence codename, “Giacomo”.
His admission to investigating magistrates in Rome on Friday apparently confirms suggestions that – by commissioning “Giacomo” to procure and circulate documents – France was responsible for some of the information later used by Britain and the United States to promote the case for war with Iraq.
Obviously the intention of the French was to discredit the US and the UK and the entire enterprise for their purposes (making cash from dictators). But enough about them. How does this relate to Wilson whose mission was to investigate yellowcake in Niger? I’m not sure. I don’t have the facilities to investigate, but I’d wager there are plenty of dots to connect, a great story for the mainstream media – a tale of subterfuge worthy of the early LeCarré, with plenty of buried bodies to unearth. If I were an editor, I’d assign it. But then what do I know? I’m only a blogger.
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13 Comments
1. Sandy P:–a tale of subterfuge worthy of the early LeCarrÈ,–
Or maybe even Simon??? They are not allies.
OTish – Check out Drudge – CBS – We were “misled”
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/20/politics/campaign/20guard.html?ei=5006&en=42f1be2f0a0efa9d&ex=1096344000&partner=ALTAVISTA1&pagewanted=print&position=
It’s a good day to be an American.
Sep 19, 2004 - 11:40 pm 2. Tom Grey:Again, all the mud that might, possibly, stick to Bush.
Note how the standard anti-Bush line is: he’s so incompetent, even by Michael Totten & Andrew Sullivan pro-Iraq war folk. Yet just WHY is he so incompetent? Little things; the feeling of mud that clung that should never have been flung.
In fact, Bush is better on econ than could be expected (deficits high mean employment high — until inflation starts increasing); he’s reasonable about Iraq, though well below Clinton or Reagan standards for explaining his position.
He seems a sincere social conservative, but his positions on such stuff (gay-marriage amendment, ban on partial birth abortions) are both moderate and not even going anywhere in the far-left judiciary.
It is NOT certain, though I do believe, that Iraq could be better. It IS certain that with more American power, America could have been a more effective OCCUPIER — but it is not clear that effective occupation is compatible with liberation. Liberation means the Iraqis have to stop Iraqis from being evil; that’s also what nation-building is about, and it IS slow, and it was NOT done much in Vietnam.
The mess in Iraq is because Iraqis are not, yet, stopping the evil Iraqis from killing innocent people. Not enough.
It looks to me like only the impatience of Americans, and the desire to criticize, will stop the Iraqis from creating democracy.
Sep 20, 2004 - 1:45 am 3. ed:I’d really keep an eye on Josh Marshall’s site if I were you. He’s started his reporting on just this topic.
Sep 20, 2004 - 7:52 am 4. David:I do hope your are wearing your official pajamas.
Sep 20, 2004 - 9:38 am 5. ed:I’m not sure I get your meaning.
Sep 20, 2004 - 10:07 am 6. TR Farmer:Wilson was here in Santa Barbara over the weekend to speak at a fundraiser for Congresswoman Lois Capps. There was an interview and article about him in the SB News-Press, which is as left as papers get out here. It was interesting that the article was really very balanced. I almost fell out of my chair when I read it. It had all of the information on how Wilson had lied and misled in his op-eds and books and all Wilson could say about the Congressional and British intelligence reports was that they weren’t true.
Living in a radical college town in a Democratic state you develop a filter about most local things you read, so it was shocking to see this. I mean it has just been in the last month or so that there are more Kerry bumperstickers than Dean and Kucinich ones.
Sep 20, 2004 - 10:47 am 7. Terrye:Kinda makes you wonder if the French have some [shall we say] connections with a certain American anchor man.
hummmmmmmmm
Sep 20, 2004 - 2:29 pm 8. megapotamus:Roger, it’s good to see you posting this. I read it, I think at Powerline and I thought, fool perhaps that I am, that it would be on… well, not 60 Minutes but some big outlet. Nada. Let’s see, is PaveFrance now a more relevant news outlet than the alphabets? Whatever. I’m keeping this little factoid in my pocket. Somehow, no matter what comes in the election, I think I will have a use for it.
Sep 20, 2004 - 3:00 pm 9. labar:Part 1.
The 911 commission concluded that Ambasador Wilson disputed in his book that his wife was responsible for the CIA picking him to go check out the uranium claim in Niger. She was.
She left a note for her boss that explained her husband has been the US Ambassador to counties in the Middle east, and he actually knew the Minister of Niger and could go if they needed him to.
Convienience is why they chose but he had never worked for any US intelligence agency and and sending him down their we now know was a huge mistake.
He goes down for two weeks, drinks mint tea and meets the minister and then comes back and reports to the CIA handler that there was no truth to it.
Then President Bush gives the SOTU speech, which includes those “16 words” that mention “British intelligence has recently learned that Iraq had sought large quanities of uranium from Niger”
Joe Wilson couldn’t believe it, and because he’s a honorable patriot, he decided he had to try to save the world from a madman, and he’d do it with an op-ed piece in the Wash Post “What I didn’t find in Niger” which basically accused President Bush of deliberately skewing, stretching and flat out lying about Iraq seeking uranium. But he didn’t know why? What is the evil Bush gang really wanting to invade Iraq for?
Sep 20, 2004 - 3:16 pm 10. JFB:Roger,
I don’t know where you get the idea that Joe Wilson is a “vassal of the Saudis”. He’s never served there.
If it’s because he has been part of a company that has dealing with the Saudis, then just what company could he possibly work for? Practically every Fortune 500 firm deals with the Saudis.
If it’s because he’s a member of Middle East Institute, then just what do you propose he be a member of? The Sons of Italy? The Koskiusko Society? His specialization was the Middle East. That’s what he knows and of course that’s what he’s going to hang around.
Wilson was a mediocre State Dept. officer who, because he had the “luck” of being Charge d’Affairs in Baghdad during Gulf War I, and doing all the requisite ass-kissing in the Dept., was rewarded with an Ambassadorship.
Slap him around all you like… I’ll hold him down for you. But kick him for what he did to deserve it.
Sep 20, 2004 - 5:54 pm 11. The Kid:It is good that Josh is blogging on this. I look forward to this thoughts on the following excerpt from the 9/16/04 WaPo:
Four reporters have now testified at Libby’s urging that he did not disclose Plame’s name or identity to them.
Link.
Read the whole thing.
“
Sep 20, 2004 - 5:58 pm 12. JorgXMcKie:Um, labar, the sixteen words _didn’t_ include “Niger” but “Africa” which Wilson conveniently didn’t address. There is, surprisingly evidently even to some former ambassadors to countries in Africa, rather a lot of Africa, two or three of which produce “yellowcake” uranium. Even had Wilson been right about Niger (which he wasn’t) he was still wrong to attack Bush on the sixteen words unless he had checked out all of Africa. Oh, well, it’s not all that obvious to me that the LAT understands that there is more than one country in Africa, either.
Sep 20, 2004 - 5:58 pm 13. Village Pendejo:I’m somewhat conspiracy minded, but it seems to me that Wilson said the Niger documents were forgeries before he could possibly have seen them. If that memory is correct it’s now possible we know how he knew they were forgeries. To get even more conspiratorial, maybe Plame had a French contact who told her about the memo’s, she wanted to discredit Bush, suggested Wilson and blah, blah, blah.
Far enough out there for you?
Sep 20, 2004 - 6:36 pm