A Case Of Treason

by Larry Johnson
Larry Johnson worked as a CIA intelligence analyst and State Department counter-terrorism official. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

The investigation into who in the Bush administration leaked the fact that Valerie Plame, wife of former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a CIA undercover operative, is nearing completion. Virtually lost in the recent spurt of press reporting is the fact that the compromise of Ms. Plame (and, as night follows the day her carefully cultivated network of spies) was unconscionable. Ms. Plame, a very gifted case officer, was a close colleague of mine at CIA. Her dedication and courage were clear in her willingness to assume the risks of an agent under non-official cover—meaning that if you get caught, too bad, you’re on your own; the US government never heard of you.

The supreme irony is that Plame’s network was reporting on the priority-one issue—weapons of mass destruction. Thus, it was made abundantly clear to all, including potential intelligence sources abroad, that even when priority-one intelligence targets are involved, Bush administration officials will not shrink from exposing such sources for petty political purpose. The harm to CIA and its efforts to recruit spies willing to take risks to provide intelligence information is immense.

Shortly after the invasion of Iraq, Ambassador Wilson publicly exposed an important lie, and the president as liar, when he debunked the report that Iraq was seeking uranium in the African country of Niger. Still, as Wilson himself has suggested, the primary objective of leaking his wife’s employment at CIA was not to retaliate against him personally, but rather to issue a stark warning to others privy to administration lies on the war not to speak out. Administration officials felt they needed to provide an object lesson of what truth tellers can expect in the way of swift retaliation.

All Based On A Forgery

Indictments or no, the mainstream media will continue to play down this key aspect of the story, and—equally important—prescind completely from the event that started the whole business—the forging of documents to feed the spurious report that Iraq was seeking uranium in Niger for its (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. Together with other circumstantial evidence, the neuralgic reaction of Vice President Dick Cheney to press reports that he was point man for promoting the bogus report suggests that he may also have been its founding father, so to speak. We do not rule out the possibility that he and his chief of staff Lewis Libby may have had a hand in commissioning the forgery, as a way to come up with an “intelligence report” with “mushroom cloud” written all over it, in order to deceive Congress into approving an unnecessary war.

These are the key neglected issues underneath the superficial who-said-what-to-whom-when press reportage. Small wonder that many of those following this story are missing the forest for the trees. It is important that a fuller story be available to citizens of this country, to enable us all to judge the enormity and significance of what happened. Accordingly, my Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) colleagues and I thought it would be useful to boil down some key facts in digestible form:

Feb. 13, 2002: According to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq” of July 2004 (pp 38-39), Vice President Cheney asked his CIA morning briefer for the Agency’s analysis of a report he had seen in a Defense Intelligence Agency publication that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium from Niger. In response, the Director of Central Intelligence's Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) issued an intelligence assessment with limited distribution. It said, “Information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated.” The assessment also noted, “Some of the information in the report contradicts reporting from the U.S. Embassy in Niamey. U.S. diplomats say the French Government-led consortium that operates Niger's two uranium mines maintains complete control over uranium mining and yellowcake production." The CIA sent a separate version of the assessment to the Vice President’s office, which differed only in that it named the foreign government service. Officials from the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO) told the Senate Intelligence Committee that, in response to questions from the Vice President's Office and also the Departments of State and Defense on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal, all were told that the Agency would look into it further.

Feb. 19: CIA operations managers—not Valerie Plame—decide to send Joseph Wilson to Niger to make immediate inquiries, according to CIA officials. Wilson, who was acting ambassador in Baghdad when the 1991 Gulf War began, had also served in Niger before becoming ambassador to Gabon. After meeting with DO managers and other intelligence community officials at CIA headquarters on Feb. 19, Wilson was commissioned to go to Niger and investigate.

Feb. 26: Ambassador Wilson arrives in Niger. He determined during the course of his visit that there was no substance to the allegation that Iraq was trying to procure uranium in Niger. The U.S. Ambassador to Niger told the Senate Committee that Ambassador Wilson’s conclusion was the same as that reached earlier by the U.S. embassy in Niger.

Early March: Vice President Cheney asks his CIA briefer for an update on the Niger issue: According to the Senate report on intelligence prewar performance, Cheney had not forgotten his original request. And so CIA officers immediately debriefed Ambassador Wilson on the results of his trip, wrote up his report, and disseminated the report on 8 March (p. 42 of the Senate report).

Fall of 2002: CIA officials repeatedly warn Administration and Congressional officials not to accept as fact the claim that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium: According to the Senate report (p. 54), the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency told Senator Kyl that the CIA did not agree with the British view that Iraq was trying to acquire uranium. On Oct. 6, 2002, CIA Director Tenet called Deputy National Security Advisor Hadley and warned him not to use the information in a presidential speech the next day (three days before Congress voted to authorize war). Hadley removed the passage from the speech (p. 56).

Jan. 28, 2003: In his State of the Union Address, the President includes the (in)famous bogus “16 words.” The President says, “The British government has learned (sic) that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

May 23: Vice President Cheney’s office reacts neurologically to May 23 report by New York Times columnist Nick Kristof regarding the mission of a “former US ambassador” to Niger, and in particular to Kristof’s assertion that the Vice President had instigated the trip: According to former senior CIA officials, Cheney’s aides were ”very uptight about the vice president being tagged that way.”

June: The White House, with the participation of Karl Rove and Lewis Libby (and, according to one recent report, of the president and vice president themselves), conceives and then executes a plan to discredit Ambassador Wilson. A variety of reports from journalists and others show that as early as the end of May, White House officials were trying to dig up dirt on Ambassador Wilson. And the State Department reportedly drafted a top-secret memorandum that identified Valerie Plame by her maiden name and made the connection.

July 13 : Robert Novak, citing two Administration sources, identified Valerie Plame by name as a CIA operative. Plame was still undercover when Novak published her name and thus compromised not only Plame, but also the many agents she had recruited—to provide information on weapons of mass destruction, for example. She had conducted several overseas missions as part of her cover job.

Betrayal. There is no other word for it. Except, some might call it treason.