The Washington Post had a good story on the front page today on the latest developments regarding Niger-gate. In my continuing efforts to give my readers a play-by-play of the scandal, I thought I’d summarize it for you. (And if you’re thinking that my “summaries” are usually longer than the original articles I refer to, I don’t want to hear it. That’s why we added the “read more” buttons!)
First of all, the forged documents linking Iraq and uranium ore from Niger were obtained by the State Department three months before Bush delivered the State of the Union.
Why is this interesting? Two reasons. One, the White House had been claiming that no one in the Bush administration had the documents before the SOTU speech. Like most of the administration’s claims, this wasn’t true. And two, the United Nations wanted evidence to back up the administration’s claims about Iraq’s nuclear program, but the White House waited four months to show the U.N. the Niger documents.
The Post reported that “State Department officials could not say yesterday why they did not turn over the documents when the inspectors asked for them in December.” It seems to me they probably didn’t want to show the docs to the U.N. because they easily-debunked frauds and the administration didn’t have any other proof of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.
In addition, the article appears to answer the question from yesterday about who represented the White House during “negotiations” with the CIA over how Bush could phrase the Niger claim in the State of the Union.
As the Post explained, “Robert Joseph, an assistant to the president in charge of nonproliferation at the National Security Council (NSC), initially asked the CIA if the allegation that Iraq sought to purchase 500 pounds of uranium from Niger could be included in the presidential speech. Alan Foley, a senior CIA official, disclosed this detail when he accompanied Tenet in a closed-door hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday.”
Evidently, the CIA’s Foley explained that the negotiations went just as most of us expected. The White House’s original draft for the SOTU claimed that Iraq had sought a specific amount of uranium from Niger. The CIA objected. The NSC’s Joseph compromised and agreed to change the wording to be more vague — removing the reference to the specific quantity of uranium and changing “Niger” to “Africa” — while adding a citation to British intelligence.
With all due respect to Mr. Joseph, this revelation begs the question: who told him to make these arguments? While I’m sure Joseph does fine work at the NSC and is capable public official, I suspect he was not in a position of such authority to negotiate on behalf of the White House without some kind of instructions. Joseph reports directly, for example, to Condoleezza Rice. Did she know about the substance of Joseph’s negotiations with the CIA over the SOTU’s wording? Who made the final call?
Congressional investigations are forthcoming and Joseph will be among many White House officials and presidential aides called to testify about what they knew, what they shared, and how information was distributed within the administration.
Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who has already indicated that his committee would like to speak to Joseph, said Wednesday, “We will take this where it leads us. We’ll let the chips fall where they may.” While I question Roberts’ commitment to a non-partisan investigation, I hope he’s sincere about this.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said, “The intelligence committee has crossed that line…and we are looking at people in the executive branch, including the White House.”
While Rockefeller’s quote may seem a bit overdramatic, he does have a point. Niger-gate has a ways to go. If the White House was hoping that George Tenet could issue a carefully crafted statement, accept responsibility, and end the controversy, they were sorely mistaken.
(By the way, just as an aside, has anyone else noted that the Washington Post has been kicking the New York Times’ butt on the Niger story?)