[Peace-discuss] Bush's lies unravel

[patton paul]

ublished on Sunday, October 5, 2003 by The Nation
Of Lies and Leaks: Bush Threatened By New Revelations
by David Corn


The spin is not holding. Facing two controversies--the Wilson leak (click
here if you have somehow managed to miss this story) and the still-MIA
WMDs--the White House has been tossing out explanations and rhetoric that
cannot withstand scrutiny.

Let's start with the Wilson leak. In the issue coming out October 6,
Newsweek will be reporting that after Bob Novak published a July 14 column
containing the leak attributed to "senior adminsitration officials" that
identified former Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as an
undercover CIA operative, NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell was contacted
by White House officials who touted the Novak column and encouraged her to
pursue the story about Wilson's wife. The newsmagazine also notes that,
according to a source close to Wilson, shortly after the leak occurred
Bush's senior aide Karl Rove told Hardball host Chris Matthews that
Wilson's wife was "fair game." Matthews told Newsweek that he would not
discuss any confidential conversation. (He told me the same weeks ago when
I made a similar inquiry about this chat with Rove.) An anonymous source
described as familiar with the exchange--presumably Rove or someone
designated to speak for him--maintained that Rove had only said to
Matthews it was appropriate to raise questions about her role in Wilson's
mission to Niger. (In February 2002, Wilson had been asked by the CIA to
visit Niger to check out allegations Iraq had been shopping for uranium
there; he did so and reported back that the charge was probably untrue. In
July, he publicly challenged the White House's use of this claim and
earned the administration's wrath.)

These disclosures do not reveal who were the original leakers. (The
Justice Department, at the CIA's request, started out investigating the
White House; it has widened its probe to include the State Department and
the Defense Department.) But these new details are significant and
undercut the White House line on the leak. At a White House press
briefing, Scott McClellan, Bush's press secretary, repeatedly said that
Bush and his White House took no action after the Novak column was
published on July 14 because the leak was attributed only to anonymous
sources. "Are we supposed to chase down every anonymous report in the
newspaper?" McClellan remarked.

He was arguing that a serious leak attributed to anonymous sources was
still not serious enough to cause the president to ask, what the hell
happened? And he made it seem as if the White House just ignored the
matter. Not so. Mitchell's remark and even the Rove-friendly account of
the Rove-Matthews conversation are evidence the White House tried to
further the Plame story--that is, to exploit the leak for political gain.
Rather than respond by trying to determine the source of a leak that
possibly violated federal law and perhaps undermined national security (
The Washington Post reported that the leak also blew the cover of a CIA
front company, "potentially expanding the damage caused by the original
disclosure"), White House officials sought to take advantage of it. Spin
that, McClellan.

Newsweek is also disclosing that a National Security Council staffer
previously worked with Valerie Wilson (nee Plame) and was aware of her
position at the CIA. McClellan has indicated in his press briefings that
the White House did not--and has not--acted to ascertain the source of the
leak. But shouldn't Bush or chief of staff Andrew Card (if Card is not one
of the leakers) have asked this person whether he mentioned Valerie
Wilson's occupation to anyone in the White House? (I believe I know the
name of this person but since he or she may be working under cover I am
not at this point going to publish it.)

McClellan has had a tough time providing straight answers. At the October
1 press briefing, he was asked what Bush did after the leak first
appeared. He replied by saying that "some news reports" have noted that
Valerie Wilson's CIA connection "may have been well-known within the DC
community." That hardly seems so. Her neighbors did not know, and Wilson
maintains their close friends did not know. No reporter that I have talked
to--and I've spoken to many covering this story--had heard that.

During that briefing, reporters wondered if Bush approved of the
Republican campaign to depict Wilson as a partisan zealot lacking
credibility. McClellan sidestepped: "The President is focused on getting
to the bottom of this." The next day, he was once more asked whether it
was appropriate for Republicans to be attacking Wilson. "I answered that
question yesterday," he said. One problem: he hadn't. He also maintained
that Bush "has been the one speaking out front on this." Not quite. For
over two months, Bush had said nothing about the leak. And on this day,
Bush met with reporters for African news organizations and joked about the
anti-Wilson leak. When asked what he thought about the detention in Kenya
of three journalists who had refused to reveal sources, he said, "I'm
against leaks." This prompted laughter, and Bush went on: "I would suggest
all governments get to the bottom of every leak of classified
information." Addressing the reporter who had asked the question, Bush
echoed the phrase that McClellan had frequently used in his press
briefings and quipped, "By the way, if you know anything, Martin, would
you please bring it forward and help solve the problem?"

Perhaps Bush needed a good chuckle after reading--or being briefed on--the
testimony that chief weapons hunter David Kay was presenting that day to
Congress. In an interim report, Kay had noted that his Iraq Survey Group
had found evidence of "WMD-related program activities," but no stocks of
unconventional weapons. Kay also had an interesting observation about the
prewar intelligence on Iraq's WMDs: "Our understanding of the status of
Iraq's WMD program was always bounded by large uncertainties and had to be
heavily caveated."

Wait a minute. That was not what Bush and his compadres had said prior to
the war. Flash back to Bush's get-out-of-town speech on March 17, two days
before he launched the war. He maintained, "Intelligence gathered by this
and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to
possess and conceal" weapons of mass destruction. Yet Kay was saying there
had been "large uncertainties" in the intelligence. How does that square
with Bush's no-doubt claim? It doesn't.

Kay's testimony is more proof that Bush misrepresented the intelligence.
Regular readers of this column will know that Kay's remark were preceded
by similar statements from the House intelligence committee and former
deputy CIA director, Richard Kerr, who has been reviewing the prewar
intelligence. Both the committee (led by Representative Porter Goss, a
Republican and former CIA officer) and Kerr have concluded the
intelligence of Iraq's WMDs was based on circumstantial and inferential
material and contained many uncertainties.

Prior to the invasion, administration officials consistently declared
there was no question Iraq had these weapons. On December 5, 2002, for
instance, Ari Fleischer, then the White House press secretary, said, "the
president of the United States and the secretary of defense would not
assert as plainly and bluntly as they have that Iraq has weapons of mass
destruction if it was not true, and if they did not have a solid basis for
saying it." But what had been that "solid_basis"? Intelligence "bounded by
large uncertainties"?

Look at what Kay said about Iraq's nuclear weapons program:

"With regard to Iraq's nuclear program, the testimony we have obtained
from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up any
doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear weapons. They
have told [the Iraq Survey Group] that Saddam Husayn remained firmly
committed to acquiring nuclear weapons. These officials assert that Saddam
would have resumed nuclear weapons development at some future point.

"Despite evidence of Saddam's continued ambition to acquire nuclear
weapons, to date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertook
significant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons or produce
fissile material.

"Saddam, at least as judged by those scientists and other insiders who
worked in his military-industrial programs, had not given up his
aspirations and intentions to continue to acquire weapons of mass
destruction."

Compare this assessment to what Bush and Dick Cheney had said before the
war. In his 2003 State of the Union speech, Bush declared that Hussein was
a threat because he had "an advanced nuclear weapons development program"
in the 1990s. (Bush had failed to mention that the International Atomic
Energy Agency had reported in 1998 that it had demolished this "advanced"
program.) And Cheney on March 16 said, "we believe [Hussein] has, in fact,
reconstituted nuclear weapons." His aides later said Cheney had meant to
say "nuclear weapons programs."

But, according to Kay, the evidence so far collected indicates only that
Hussein maintained a desire to acquire nuclear weapons and had not
developed a program to satisfy that yearning. Kay later added that it
would have taken Iraq five to seven years to reconstitute its nuclear
weapons program. So what was the evidence for Bush's and Cheney's
assertions that the program was already revved up? By the way, Kay says
his team has found "no conclusive proof" Hussein tried to acquire uranium
in Niger. In fact, he reported that one cooperating Iraqi scientist
revealed to the ISG that another African nation had made an unsolicited
offer to sell Iraq uranium but there is no indication Iraq accepted the
offer.

Kay also reported, "Our efforts to collect and exploit intelligence on
Iraq's chemical weapons program have thus far yielded little reliable
information on post-1991 CW stocks and CW agent production, although we
continue to receive and follow leads related to such stocks." But before
the war, the Bush administration had said flat-out that Iraq possessed
chemical weapons. Did it neglect to pass along to Kay the information upon
which it based this claim? (Actually, the Defense Intelligence Agency in
September 2002 concluded there was no "reliable information" on whether
Iraq had produced or stockpiled chemical weapons, but that did not stop
Bush and his aides from stating otherwise.)

How did Bush respond to Kay's interim findings? He proclaimed they proved
that he had been correct all along. The "interim report," Bush remarked,
"said that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program spanned more than
two decades. That's what [Kay] said....He's saying Saddam Hussein was a
threat, a serious danger."

Reality check: Bush had said that the main reason to go to war was because
Hussein possessed "massive" stockpiles of unconventional weapons and at
any moment could hand them off to al Qaeda (with whom Bush claimed Hussein
was "dealing"--even though the evidence on that point was and continues to
be, at best, sketchy). Now Bush is asserting that Hussein was a threat
that could only be countered with invasion and occupations because he had
weapons research programs that indeed violated United Nations resolutions
but that had not produced any weapons. That's a much different argument.
Bush, Cheney, McClellan, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza
Rice, Colin Powell and others continue to deny they overstated (or
misrepresented) the case for war. But the evidence is incontrovertible,
and it keeps on piling up.

So all they have is spin. Bush changes the terms. McClellan, Rumsfeld,
RIce insist that before the war everybody knew that Iraq had WMDs.
Everybody, that is, except the folks putting together the intelligence
assessments chockfull of uncertainties. When it comes to the Wilson
affair, the White House ducks and covers, claiming it had no reason to
react to the original anonymous-source leak, even though its officials (at
the least) considered the leak solid enough to talk up to other reporters.
And instead of confronting the ugly (and perhaps criminal) implications of
the leak, the White House's allies in Washington lash out at Wilson, in a
vicious blame-the-victim offensive, while Mister Change-the-Tone has
nothing to say publicly about this. What if Wilson is a Democratic
partisan? That does not excuse what was done to his wife.

Leaking and lying--these are not actions easy to explain away. Drip, drip,
drip--that's the sound often associated with Washington scandals. But now
it may also be the sound of the truth catching up to the propagandists and
perps of the Bush White House.

JUST RELEASED AND AN AMAZON.COM BESTSELLER: David Corn's new book, The
Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception (Crown
Publishers). For more information and a sample, check out the book's
official website: www.bushlies.com.

Copyright 2003 The Nation