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Wilson was on Keith Olbermann last night.....

aps

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and had a fantastic interview. He is a very articulate man. He explained why people were saying his report on what he learned had been debunked (which it had not been) and why people perceived that he had stated that he had gone to Niger on behalf of the VP. I'll post the transcript of the hearing once it's up on MSNBC.

The VP had stated that he wanted the attempt to buy uranium to be investigated. It was up to the CIA how that issue would be investigated. It determined that it would send someone to Niger. So, indirectly, Wilson was going to Niger for the VP.

It looks like he is planning on filing a civil suit in this matter. Woo hoo! The standard in a civil suit is much lower than that in a criminal matter (preponderance of the evidence vs. beyond a reasonable doubt). I would think that, at a minimum, those who were involved will have to pay out some serious $$$$$.
 
aps,

According to the CIA, upon Wilson's return he was interviewed by Agents and his trip proved nothing one way or the other. It was not forwarded to the VP or anyone at the Whitehouse because it was a wasted trip in that it did not answer the question. The Whitehouse did not know he was going, did not know he went, did not know he came back, did not know of his report. They found out about Joe Wilson's trip when Joe Wilson began leaking to the Washington Post and then wrote his NY Times Opinion piece. They were blindsided by Joe Wilson.

It is not possible in Washington to do what Joe Wilson did and expect a good outcome. The Wilson's should have known that an attack would begin. Did he think "I will write this, join the Kerry campaign and no one will question the circumstances surrounding my trip"???? No, when you attack the administration...any administration, in the manner he did...expect a full assault on all fronts.

The administration should have handled this differently. They should have found out the facts of the situation and when they found out Joe Wilson had misrepresented himself...on all counts...called for an investigation of Wilson in the Congress. This in a way did occur later in the Bi-Partisan Senate Investigation in regard to WMD in Iraq, where Wilson's story was refuted.

This indictment does not rehabilitate Joe Wilson in any way.
 
mike49 said:
aps,

According to the CIA, upon Wilson's return he was interviewed by Agents and his trip proved nothing one way or the other. It was not forwarded to the VP or anyone at the Whitehouse because it was a wasted trip in that it did not answer the question. The Whitehouse did not know he was going, did not know he went, did not know he came back, did not know of his report. They found out about Joe Wilson's trip when Joe Wilson began leaking to the Washington Post and then wrote his NY Times Opinion piece. They were blindsided by Joe Wilson.

It is not possible in Washington to do what Joe Wilson did and expect a good outcome. The Wilson's should have known that an attack would begin. Did he think "I will write this, join the Kerry campaign and no one will question the circumstances surrounding my trip"???? No, when you attack the administration...any administration, in the manner he did...expect a full assault on all fronts.

The administration should have handled this differently. They should have found out the facts of the situation and when they found out Joe Wilson had misrepresented himself...on all counts...called for an investigation of Wilson in the Congress. This in a way did occur later in the Bi-Partisan Senate Investigation in regard to WMD in Iraq, where Wilson's story was refuted.

This indictment does not rehabilitate Joe Wilson in any way.

What the adminstration could have done is DISPROVE what Wilson said. Don't you think it's better to attack the message and disprove it than attack the messenger? Attacking Joe Wilson without refuting what Joe Wilson alleged is indicative that the Bush Admin knew that the intelligence was false. They were caught and threw a tantrum.

Trust me, if Joe Wilson had done something wrong, don't you think there would have already been an investigation on him?

I forget what the Senate Intelligence Committee said about Wilson.

Regardless, the Bush Admin looks both vindictive and unethical, which are the opposite of "honesty" and "integrity." (Bush and Cheney claimed that would restore honesty and integrity to the White House.)
 
aps,

Disprove is what was done by the administration and the Senate Report.

Here is an article on the Senate Report by the Washington Post:




washingtonpost.com
Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role

By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09


Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.

Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.

Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.

The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.

Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer.

Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.

"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."

The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.

Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."

According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.

Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.

The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has "not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa."



© 2004 The Washington Post Company

Plame's input cited
 
aps said:
What the adminstration could have done is DISPROVE what Wilson said.

They had and you and the left didn't believe them you believed Wilson, what some in the WH did do was alert the press that THEY should disprove Wilson so that YOU and others might not take him on his word, that he was lying. Had the WH simply come out and said that the press wouldn't have believed them. They what exactly it is you think the WH should have done?


Don't you think it's better to attack the message and disprove it than attack the messenger?

How was he attacked, the only thing that happened was that the press was told the truth about how he got the job, how is that an attack?

Attacking Joe Wilson without refuting what Joe Wilson alleged is indicative that the Bush Admin knew that the intelligence was false. They were caught and threw a tantrum.

The Senate hearings when he was put under oath refuted him. But the WH had every right to let the press know he was lying about how he got the job and they had every right to tell the press to investigate further even doing so behind the scenes.

Trust me, if Joe Wilson had done something wrong, don't you think there would have already been an investigation on him?

There should be but there won't be. The press and the left would scream bloody murder and 1swt amendment and the WH is just going after him. Heck you are doing that in your post. It was better to let the press do it, and let a bi-partisian committe do, which all of them did.

I forget what the Senate Intelligence Committee said about Wilson.

Then you have just proven you don't know much about it and apparently don't want to know much about it. The is a KEY piece of information in this whole affair.

Regardless, the Bush Admin looks both vindictive and unethical, which are the opposite of "honesty" and "integrity." (Bush and Cheney claimed that would restore honesty and integrity to the White House.)

Oh and they wouldn't have looked that way to you if they had launched a full investigation of Wilson after his op-ed piece.

Wilson and his wife should both be investigated for thier actions. They tried to pull a fraud on the American people and tried to attack our national security and the war effort. Will it happen? The press and the left have too much invested in them to let that happen.
 
Factions within the CIA seem to have been at odds with the WH for some time. Indeed, the CIA has played a central role in the 'Plame' kerfuffle. Today's WSJ carries an article which makes some relevant points in this matter.

First: The CIA sent [Plame's] husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, to Niger on a sensitive mission regarding WMD. He was to determine whether Iraq had attempted to purchase yellowcake, an essential ingredient for nonconventional weapons. However, it was Ms. Plame, not Mr. Wilson, who was the WMD expert. Moreover, Mr. Wilson had no intelligence background, was never a senior person in Niger when he was in the State Department, and was opposed to the administration's Iraq policy. The assignment was given, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee, at Ms. Plame's suggestion.

• Second: Mr. Wilson was not required to sign a confidentiality agreement, a mandatory act for the rest of us who either carry out any similar CIA assignment or who represent CIA clients.

• Third: When he returned from Niger, Mr. Wilson was not required to write a report, but rather merely to provide an oral briefing. That information was not sent to the White House. If this mission to Niger were so important, wouldn't a competent intelligence agency want a thoughtful written assessment from the "missionary," if for no other reason than to establish a record to refute any subsequent misrepresentation of that assessment? Because it was the vice president who initially inquired about Niger and the yellowcake (although he had nothing to do with Mr. Wilson being sent), it is curious that neither his office nor the president's were privy to the fruits of Mr. Wilson's oral report.

• Fourth: Although Mr. Wilson did not have to write even one word for the agency that sent him on the mission at taxpayer's expense, over a year later he was permitted to tell all about this sensitive assignment in the New York Times. For the rest of us, writing about such an assignment would mean we'd have to bring our proposed op-ed before the CIA's Prepublication Review Board and spend countless hours arguing over every word to be published. Congressional oversight committees should want to know who at the CIA permitted the publication of the article, which, it has been reported, did not jibe with the thrust of Mr. Wilson's oral briefing. For starters, if the piece had been properly vetted at the CIA, someone should have known that the agency never briefed the vice president on the trip, as claimed by Mr. Wilson in his op-ed.

• Fifth: More important than the inaccuracies is the fact that, if the CIA truly, truly, truly had wanted Ms. Plame's identity to be secret, it never would have permitted her spouse to write the op-ed. Did no one at Langley think that her identity could be compromised if her spouse wrote a piece discussing a foreign mission about a volatile political issue that focused on her expertise? The obvious question a sophisticated journalist such as Mr. Novak asked after "Why did the CIA send Wilson?" was "Who is Wilson?" After being told by a still-unnamed administration source that Mr. Wilson's "wife" suggested him for the assignment, Mr. Novak went to Who's Who, which reveals "Valerie Plame" as Mr. Wilson's spouse.

• Sixth: CIA incompetence did not end there. When Mr. Novak called the agency to verify Ms. Plame's employment, it not only did so, but failed to go beyond the perfunctory request not to publish. Every experienced Washington journalist knows that when the CIA really does not want something public, there are serious requests from the top, usually the director. Only the press office talked to Mr. Novak.

• Seventh: Although high-ranking Justice Department officials are prohibited from political activity, the CIA had no problem permitting its deep cover or classified employee from making political contributions under the name "Wilson, Valerie E.," information publicly available at the FEC.

The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft. It is up to Congress to decide which.

Bottom line: Wilson hasn't been entirely truthful in his recounting of his actions. He seems, more than anything else, to be enjoying his 15 minutes of fame and trying quite desperately to parlay his role in this kerfuffle into a career.

Link to source for this article
 
aps said:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9910582/

Here is the link for the transcript of the the interview with Wilson. You need to scroll down a bit, but he is the first guest.

Did he admit he lied about who picked him for the trip?
Did he admit he was not sent by Cheney?
Did he admit he lied about what he found in his WSJ article?
Did he admit he lied about the forged documents which didn't even come to light until 8 months after his trip?
Did he admit his wife was not a covert agent?
Did he admit he did not report back to the office of the VP?
Did he admit he was told that the Iraqi's were in Niger looking to buy "things"?
 
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