Uranium from Africa and the Aluminum Tubes - Some Observations on the Relevant Articles by Murray Waas (Part 3)
by eriposte
[PREFACE: This a long overdue post which I had not had time to post previously. Over the past couple of weeks, I've been reviewing my list of stories still left to cover at TLC on the Nigergate and Al tubes hoaxes and I wanted to make sure I wrapped up this short series.]
This is third part of a short series (Part 1, Part 2) discussing Murray Waas's articles in National Journal (from early this year) on the uranium/Nigergate/Plamegate matter and the aluminum tubes issue. In Part 1, I highlighted key pieces of information in Waas' recent articles that I had previously reported here at TLC - as part of my aluminum tubes coverage in the series "WMDgate: Fixing Intelligence Around Policy" and as part of my coverage of the uranium from Africa scandal "Uranium from Africa and the Valerie Plame expose (Treasongate): A Synopsis". In Part 2, I highlighted some information missing in Waas' stories which, when filled in, provides even more evidence for the Bush White House's deliberate deceptions and lies. In this part, I summarize some of the key information in Waas' articles that was newly reported at that time (sections 1, 2 and 4 below) - information that adds to the body of evidence of the Bush administration's history of deception and cover-up (section 3 below).
The articles of Waas that I focus on here are the ones from 3/30/06, 3/2/06 and 2/2/06. Note that all emphasis in quoted sections is mine.
1. The Hadley/Rove cover-up operation
2. Bush briefed directly by Tenet in Sep 2002
3. The systematic pre-election cover-up in the SSCI Report
4. Libby and Cheney briefed on CIA recall of uranium claim
1. The Hadley/Rove cover-up operation
Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, cautioned other White House aides in the summer of 2003 that Bush's 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. Rove expressed his concerns shortly after an informal review of classified government records by then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley determined that Bush had been specifically advised that claims he later made in his 2003 State of the Union address -- that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon -- might not be true, according to government records and interviews.
Hadley was particularly concerned that the public might learn of a classified one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, specifically written for Bush in October 2002. The summary said that although "most agencies judge" that the aluminum tubes were "related to a uranium enrichment effort," the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department's intelligence branch "believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons."
...
The previously undisclosed review by Hadley was part of a damage-control effort launched after former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV alleged that Bush's claims regarding the uranium were not true.
Although I had reported last year on the President's Summary of the NIE, its contents and its implications, what I did not know was that Hadley and Rove actively sought to cover-up that particular piece of information after Joseph Wilson's op-ed. This is an important observation that exposes the White House's culpablity - both from the standpoint of pre-war intelligence fixing and from the standpoint of their despicable campaign against Joseph Wilson.
2. Bush briefed directly by Tenet in Sep 2002
In mid-September 2002, two weeks before Bush received the October 2002 President's Summary, Tenet informed him that both State and Energy had doubts about the aluminum tubes and that even some within the CIA weren't certain that the tubes were meant for nuclear weapons, according to government records and interviews with two former senior officials.
Official records and interviews with current and former officials also reveal that the president was told that even then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had doubts that the tubes might be used for nuclear weapons.
Although I had published an essay last year by reader FMJ that mentioned the mid-September 2002 CIA briefing of the Bush administration, indicating the dissenting views on the end use of the aluminum tubes, what I did not know was that Tenet directly briefed Bush on this and that Bush was specifically told about Colin Powell's doubts at that time. This is an important piece of information.
3. The systematic pre-election cover-up in the SSCI Report
In the end, the White House's damage control was largely successful, because the public did not learn until after the 2004 elections the full extent of the president's knowledge that the assessment linking the aluminum tubes to a nuclear weapons program might not be true. The most crucial information was kept under wraps until long after Bush's re-election.
...
As National Journal first disclosed on its Web site on October 27, 2005, Cheney, Libby, and Cheney's current chief of staff, David Addington, rejected advice given to them by other White House officials and decided to withhold from the committee crucial documents that might have shown that administration claims about Saddam's capabilities often went beyond information provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies. Among those documents was the President's Summary of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.In July 2004, when the Intelligence Committee released a 511-page report on its investigation of prewar intelligence by the CIA and other agencies, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said in his own "Additional Views" to the report, "Concurrent with the production of a National Intelligence Estimate is the production of a one-page President's Summary of the NIE. A one-page President's Summary was completed and disseminated for the October 2002 NIE ... though there is no mention of this fact in [this] report. These one-page NIE summaries are ... written exclusively for the president and senior policy makers and are therefore tailored for that audience."
Durbin concluded, "In determining what the president was told about the contents of the NIE dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction -- qualifiers and all -- there is nothing clearer than this single page."
Waas' statements have some additional significance which I had not specifically highlighted in my WMDgate series at that time of his article, but which I expanded upon at some length in a follow-up post "WMDgate: Fixing Intelligence Around Policy, Part 5: The Anatomy of a Cover-Up". If you look at the most crystal clear evidence from official Government reports which showed that Bush and his cabinet were well aware of the alternative views on the aluminum tubes, one thing that becomes quite apparent is that the main pieces of evidence against the administration (on the topic of the Al tubes) were carefully and sometimes cryptically buried in the hundreds of footnotes in the Robb-Silberman Commission report which came out in 2005 (Waas makes a brief note of the latter in his 3/2/06 article), while this same evidence was clearly suppressed in the declassified portion of the whitewashed SSCI Report which came out in 2004, prior to the election. So, what Waas was highlighting was one of the cornerstones of the more elaborate cover-up operation that had been put in place to protect Bush in 2004. More on that here: "WMDgate: Fixing Intelligence Around Policy, Part 5: The Anatomy of a Cover-Up".
4. Libby and Cheney briefed on CIA recall of uranium claim
Vice President Cheney and his then-Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were personally informed in June 2003 that the CIA no longer considered credible the allegations that Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from the African nation of Niger, according to government records and interviews with current and former officials. The new CIA assessment came just as Libby and other senior administration officials were embarking on an effort to discredit an administration critic who had also been saying that the allegations were untrue.
CIA analysts wrote then-CIA Director George Tenet in a highly classified memo on June 17, 2003, "We no longer believe there is sufficient" credible information to "conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad." The memo was titled: "In Response to Your Questions for Our Current Assessment and Additional Details on Iraq's Alleged Pursuits of Uranium From Abroad."
Despite the CIA's findings, Libby attempted to discredit former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who had been sent on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger the previous year to investigate the claims, which he concluded were baseless.
While I had previously reported on the June 17, 2003 CIA memo, I was not aware that Libby and Cheney had been directly briefed on it. This is fairly damning evidence against Libby in particular, who continued to peddle the uranium claim as being valid, well after this date.