Plame + Yellowcake + DSM + WHIG + Perjury = Josh's Tectonic Shift?

[StefanX]

Could this be the "tectonic plate shift" Josh has been hinting at?

- It's one thing when the Downing Street Memos state that the Bush administration "fixed" the intel on Iraq.

- It could be quite another thing if a prosecutor with subpoena power (Fitzgerald investigating the Plame leaker) has Bush administration officials perjuring themselves under oath about fixing the intel on Iraq.


"...not about who leaked Valerie Plame's identity, but who was behind...those phoney Niger uranium documents"

I've gotten hints or suggestions from several sources over the last month that new information is bubbling to the surface, not about who leaked Valerie Plame's identity, but who was behind the underlying caper that started the whole drama afoot in the first place: those phoney Niger uranium documents.

-- Talking Points Memo

==========

Rove Time-line: It's still about fixed intelligence, stupid!

The intelligence about Uranium was just one of the piece of an array of fixed intelligence, and the Plame leak was just a small part of a propaganda effort to disseminate the fixed intelligence and give credence to it and to discredit anything that contradicted the fixed intelligence.

The cabal that coordinated the dissemination of that propaganda was called the White House Iraq Group. Rove was one of its leaders.

-- Daily Kos

==========

"...the White House Iraq Group, a little-known task force..."
("Story originally posted here was accurate but out-of-date and posted in error.")

Many of the documents subpoenaed Friday relate to the White House Iraq Group, a little-known task force. Newsweek reported that the group was created in August 2002. The Newsweek report cites an earlier Washington Post article that lists senior political adviser Karl Rove, Bush advisers Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney among the group's members.

-- via Atrios

==========

Have another slice of Yellowcake, Karl

A close look at the Plame outing might lead a conscientious investigator to scrutinize some of the issues raised by the story that originally led to the Plame outing -- that is, the report of a wholly mythical effort by Iraq to purchase 500 tons of yellowcake uranium ore from Niger.

If there are strands of evidence that tend to walk the responsibility for the production and/or disseminaton of those forged documents back to this side of the Atlantic, and if any of those strands lead towards the U.S. government, or "an internal working group dealing with Iraq" . . . well, Rove (and others) might find that perjury charges are the least of their worries.

-- Billmon

==========

Paper Chase
There were 2 separate sets of Iraq documents allegedly proving a uranium deal with Iraq.

I came across something confusing about the original Niger yellowcake story: the seeming existence of two separate sets of documents allegedly proving a uranium deal with Iraq.

Beginning shortly after 9/11, a foreign intelligence service -- maybe the Italians, but my guess is that it was someone else working through the Italians -- starts a drip campaign to persuade the CIA that Iraq is still trying to get the bomb.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the pipe, we have Cheney, constantly pushing for more evidence to show that Iraq is seeking to build a bomb. And, lo and behold, each time Cheney pushes, a new report surfaces from an unnamed foreign intelligence service claiming Iraq is trying to buy uranium. And whenever the skeptics push back with evidence that casts doubt on the thesis, yet another foreign intelligence report surfaces, with more detailed, albeit, false information.

By late summer of 2002, the battle has ended in something like a stalemate.

The deadlock is broken in September by the MI6, the British intelligence agency, which provides the Blair government with information for a white paper on Iraq's nuclear program. The paper charges that Iraq "has sought the supply of significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

But, while all the journalistic and investigative sturm und drang has focused on the October 2002 Italian forgeries, it seems to me the more interesting question is the origin of the first Niger documents -- the ones provided to the CIA in the fall and winter of 2001-02.

The later Italian forgeries were obvious fakes -- so obvious you can only wonder about the true motives of those who tried to pass them off. Were they really designed to implicate Iraq? Or, as Seymour Hersh has suggested, where they deliberately planted in order to discredit the Cheney White House?

Sy Hersch: "The agency guys were so pissed at Cheney," the former officer said. "They said, 'O.K, we’re going to put the bite on these guys.' "

What about the original Niger documents -- the ones the CIA and the DIA found so credible? Who created them? And what was their exact relationship to the SISMI, or MI6, or the CIA, or the Cheney White House?

The really intriguing question is this: Is there anybody out there armed with subpoena power -- like, say, the FBI or Patrick Fitzgerald -- who is trying to find out the full story?

-- Billmon

==========

Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence
By Walter Pincus, Washington Post
August 10, 2003

The escalation of nuclear rhetoric a year ago, including the introduction of the term "mushroom cloud" into the debate, coincided with the formation of a White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, a task force assigned to "educate the public" about the threat from Hussein, as a participant put it.

Systematic coordination began in August, when Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. formed the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG, to set strategy for each stage of the confrontation with Baghdad. A senior official who participated in its work called it "an internal working group, like many formed for priority issues, to make sure each part of the White House was fulfilling its responsibilities."

In an interview with the New York Times published Sept. 6, Card did not mention the WHIG but hinted at its mission. "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August," he said.

The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Among the regular participants were Karl Rove, the president's senior political adviser; communications strategists Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and James R. Wilkinson; legislative liaison Nicholas E. Calio; and policy advisers led by Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, along with I. Lewis {"Scooter"} Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

A "strategic communications" task force under the WHIG began to plan speeches and white papers. There were many themes in the coming weeks, but Iraq's nuclear menace was among the most prominent.

'A Mushroom Cloud'

The day after publication of Card's marketing remark, Bush and nearly all his top advisers began to talk about the dangers of an Iraqi nuclear bomb.

-- http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A39500-2003Aug9?language=printer">Walter Pincus, Washington Post, August 10, 2003


==========

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usleak0305,0,3272655,print.story?coll=ny-top-span-headlines">Air Force One Phone Records Subpoenaed

The federal grand jury probing the leak of a covert CIA officer's identity has subpoenaed records of Air Force One telephone calls in the week before the officer's name was published in a column in July, according to documents obtained by Newsday.

Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

-- http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-usleak0305,0,3272655,print.story?coll=ny-top-span-headlines">Tom Brune, Newsday


Related Links:
- "Narrowin' the Noose" -- Digby
- Google "air force one" "iraq group"
- Google "iraq group" fitzgerald
- Google "iraq group" subpoena

GOP Swept from Power in 2006; Impeachment Looms

{Edited Subject}

[seemslikeadream]

1. Are Josh Marshall's TECHTONIC PLATES finally starting to move?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4002813&mesg_id=4002813

[mzteris]

2. you might want to read this, too

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml%3Fi=express&s=ackerman072303

[jasmeel]

3. So, did the CIA create the Niger docs?n/t

[robertpaulsen]

5. That was Rocco Martino.

This is from Octafish on another thread:

Rocco Martino is the semi-spooky specialist in fakery, tomfoolery and profiteering who found the phony documents that the BFEE used as "proof" Saddam was working on the bomb. Odd how all the signatures were of retired Niger officials. Even Joe Wilson could see that, but the CIA sent him to check personally, anyway. Boy were the Bushies mad when he came back and told the truth: IRAQ HAD NO NUCLEAR PROGRAM.





Rocco Martino: 'I am the Source of the False Niger/Iraq Uranium Story'

by Juan Cole
published by Informed Comment

EXCERPT...

Martino may well be the "independent" source that British intelligence maintains it had, apart from the forged documents, for the story of Iraq attempts to purchase Niger uranium. If so, it turns out that his "reports" are no more genuine than his documents. Martino alleged that the forgeries were produced by Italian intelligence, SISMI, and were given to their agent in the Niger embassy in Rome to be passed on to Martino from there. They knew Martino, who had once worked for SISMI, would immediately sell the documents to Western intelligence agencies. The question of why SISMI would produce such bad forgeries, which were falsified within a day of their receipt by the IAEA in early March of 2003, remains a mystery unresolved in Martino's account.

The Financial Times concludes:

One western intelligence official said: "This issue shows how vulnerable intelligence services and the media are to tricksters like Martino. He responded to a legitimate . . . demand from the French, who needed the information on Niger. And now he is responding to a new demand in the market, which is being dictated by the political importance this issue has in the US. He is shaping his story to that demand."

Martino's confession bolsters the case made by Josh Marshall in The Hill recently that conservative attacks on the credibility of Ambassador Joseph Wilson have been misplaced. Marshall has been following the Niger story closely for over a year.

SNIP...

Plame's specialty? Fighting the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Her close contacts and friends in the 3rd world for the last 20 years? Likely mostly dead, now, thanks to some politico in the Bush White House.

SOURCE:

http://www.progressivetrail.org/articles/040802Cole2.shtml

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x4002813

[Media_Lies_Daily]

6. The NeoCons have been blaming the CIA for everything they can....

...and THAT is going to be the kiss of death for the NeoCons, IMHO.

[StefanX]

8. Note that there now seem to be TWO sets of phoney Iraq-Niger docs

(1) The amateurish set of forgeries we already knew about, which came from Italy's SIMSI intel service.

(2) An earlier, more professional set of forgeries - which Fitzgerald may be in the process of tracing to the WHIG (White House Iraq Group, which included Rove and Cheney).

So as a result of the inquiry into the Plame leak, we may see Yellowcake and DSM converging - with perjury charges coming out of Fitzgerald's inquiry.

Digby says the Dems should keep repeating the following simple message tying together Rove, Yellowcake, DSM and perjury: "Karl Rove and others in the White House exposed an undercover CIA agent in order to cover up their lies about Iraq."

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_07_03_digbysblog_archive.html#112042527513631290

[robertpaulsen]

11. Wow! I didn't catch that. Two sets?

Hmm...wonder if that has anything to do with that March 2003 WHIG meeting where Newt Gingrich was lurking around?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

4. It's all about building up to a critical mass.

[leftchick]

7. StefanX what a most impressive debut on DU!

you have had several great threads today this being the latest. Welcome to DU and keep them coming!

:toast:

[newsguyatl]

9. is that you josh?

[Luminous Animal]

10. This is excellent. Recommended (n/t)

[Independent_Liberal]

12. I don't know about you guys...

But I'm ready for the impeachment!

:)

[IndyOp]

13. This is a tantalizing comment

from Josh (first link in OP):

"And one last question: Cooper and Miller are very different kinds of journalists, swim in very different waters. Are they really in this jam for the same reasons?"

:think:

[sans-culotte]

14. Plame+DSM=Bush lied us into war!

Just don't let this just be about Rove.

We need to quit obsessing over whether or not Rove is the original source. That really doesn't matter.
While I'd like to see him have to share a cell with Rodney Ramrod as much as anyone, it misses the point.
By Rove's own admission, he engaged in trying to smear Wilson by spreading around his wife's name (he only claims he didn't start it) as a "fair game" retaliation for Wilson's pointing out that Bush and team were lying to make their case for war!
Rove, via his admissions, has confirmed that the DSM was true, whether or not he was the original source.
That is the impeachable offense for Bush.
This isn't about Rove in particular anymore. If we make it such, he’ll find a way to weasel out of it. He’s claiming that he wasn’t the original leak, that he only repeated it.
This is about the DSM and how the Plame affair proves it true.
This is about the end of the Bush/PNAC empire builders.

The PNAC/DSM/Plame tutorial.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Downing_street_memo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PNAC

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Plame

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/printrn20030714.shtml (This is the Novak article that started this whole Plame game)




The 1998 PNAC letter to Clinton proves this admin had a hard-on to go to war to oust Saddam before they ever took office. (PNAC is the neocon group founded by Rumsfeld and Cheney, other notable members incl Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Armitage,…ie; most of shrubs admin. They’re a huge part of understanding this).
The Plame affair, regardless of who was the initial leak, proves that the allegations made in the DSM were true. They were fixing the intel to make their case for war. This admin was so pre-set for war, they didn't even hesitate to smear the name and ruin the career of a covert agent as revenge, not to mention this obviously jeopardizes National Security (Rove's idea of fair game), to keep the truth from getting in the way of the war. All Wilson did was point out that the admin., specifically Bush in his 03 state of the union (his “12 words"), was lying to make the case for war.



Plame+DSM=Bush lied us into war!

This should be the end of shrub!

[mzteris]

15. try again with this link....

I didn't know that other one wasn't working right...... sorry about that..........


http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:-6SttapKojUJ:www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml%253Fi%3Dexpress%26s%3Dackerman072303+Carlton+Fulford&hl=en

[StefanX]

16. Narrowin' the Noose - More on the WHIG & Jim Wilkinson

I keep thinking Fitzgerald might uncover a lot more than just Rove-Plame via the grand jury testimony he's taking.

The DSM shows us the White House lied about the intel on Iraq - Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation into the Plame leak may end up showing the White House committed perjury about the intel on Iraq.

A smoking-gun memo from our top ally is bad enough - a count of perjury would be a lot worse (and a lot more actionable, legally).

=======

"Narrowin' the Noose"
-- By Digby at Hullabaloo

I have been on the case of this little group of Bush administration dirty tricksters called the Office of Global Communications (OGC) formerly the Coalition Information Center (CIC), for over a year and when the Plame thing was first revealed, this guy, Jim Wilkinson, was who I first suspected. When the story first leaked last July, I wrote:

It would be very wrong of me to speculate wildly that the infamous smear operation of the South Carolina primary that is now working right in the White House "communications shop" could possibly be behind this (or, more trivially but just as telling, behind the Drudge Report expose of the "Gay Canadian" reporter.)

{...}

I'm certain that these same people who now work extremely closely with George W. Bush and his advisors would never resort to such dishonorable and undignified behavior in the sacred office of the President of the United States. It's merely a coincidence that the tactics are so very similar.

According to Newsday* today:

Also sought in the wide-ranging document requests contained in three grand jury subpoenas to the Executive Office of President George W. Bush are records created in July by the White House Iraq Group, a little-known internal task force established in August 2002 to create a strategy to publicize the threat posed by Saddam Hussein.

So, it now turns out that the "Iraq Group," the supervisory marketing arm of the Iraq march to war is in the sights of the Plame grand jury. Jim Wilkinson is the one member of the administration who is simultaneously a member of the OGC and the Iraq Group.

The thing to remember about both the OGC and the Iraq Group is that they are not just spin artists. They are propagandists. They were very involved with Alisdair Campbell in the "sexing up" of the WMD threat, so it will be very interesting to see if these documents are turned over without a lot of national security hoo-hah.

There is a big story in those documents, perhaps much bigger even than Plame, although the subpoenas are only for July 2003 so they won't reveal the really interesting stuff about the blatant WMD lies. Because, not to go into too much tin-foil hat territory, there is a very interesting story to be told about the unprecedented "PR" sell-job that the White House coordinated to convince the American (and British) people that Saddam was a "grave and gathering" danger.

Many of you have probably read the paper written by Sam Gardiner, the retired colonel who taught at the National War College, the Air War College and the Naval Warfare College (in PDF here) in which he claims to have found more than 50 instances of demonstrably false stories planted in the press in the run-up to the war and charges the OCG and the Iraq Group as the culprits. This overview of the paper, originally published in The Edge brings up something quite interesting that ties it into the Plame affair:

Colonel Sam Gardiner (USAF, Ret.) has identified 50 false news stories created and leaked by a secretive White House propaganda apparatus. Bush administration officials are probably having second thoughts about their decision to play hardball with former US Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Joe Wilson is a contender. When you play hardball with Joe, you better be prepared to deal with some serious rebound.

After Wilson wrote a critically timed New York Times essay exposing as false George W. Bush's claim that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger, high officials in the White House contacted several Washington reporters and leaked the news that Wilson's wife was a CIA agent.

Wilson isn't waiting for George W. Bush to hand over the perp. In mid-October, the former ambassador began passing copies of an embarrassing internal report to reporters across the US. The-Edge has received copies of this document.

The 56-page investigation was assembled by USAF Colonel (Ret.) Sam Gardiner. "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II" identifies more than 50 stories about the Iraq war that were faked by government propaganda artists in a covert campaign to "market" the military invasion of Iraq.

{...}

According to Gardiner, "It was not bad intelligence" that lead to the quagmire in Iraq, "It was an orchestrated effort {that} began before the war" that was designed to mislead the public and the world. Gardiner's research lead him to conclude that the US and Britain had conspired at the highest levels to plant "stories of strategic influence" that were known to be false.

The Times of London described the $200-million-plus US operation as a "meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress, and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein."

The multimillion-dollar propaganda campaign run out of the White House and Defense Department was, in Gardiner's final assessment "irresponsible in parts" and "might have been illegal."

"Washington and London did not trust the peoples of their democracies to come to the right decisions," Gardiner explains. Consequently, "Truth became a casualty. When truth is a casualty, democracy receives collateral damage." For the first time in US history, "we allowed strategic psychological operations to become part of public affairs... {W}hat has happened is that information warfare, strategic influence, {and} strategic psychological operations pushed their way into the important process of informing the peoples of our two democracies."

Joe Wilson apparently knew that this propaganda machine {the WHIG, the OGC, the CIC} inside the White House had something to do with his wife's outing if he was handing out this inflammatory report by Sam Gardiner.

It could have been any one of the Iraq Group miscreants who leaked Plame's identity. I still think that one of them is very likely to have been Jim Wilkinson. He was, after all, privy to the highest levels of information. As Gardiner notes in the paper:

One of the things that struck Gardiner as revealing was the fact that, as Newsweek reported: "as soon as Lynch was in the air, {the Joint Operations Center} phoned Jim Wilkinson, the top civilian communications aide to CENTCOM Gen. Tommy Franks."

It struck Gardiner as inexplicable that the first call after Lynch's rescue would go to the Director of Strategic Communications, the White House's top representative on the ground.

As far as the honor and integrity of these fine people, we have only to look, again, at Jim Wilkinson, strutting around in a phony uniform (just like his boss) who told a member of the press in Iraq:

"I have a brother who is in a Hummer at the front, so don't talk to me about too much fucking air-conditioning." "A lot of people don't like you." "Don't fuck with things you don't understand." "This is fucking war, asshole." "No more questions for you."

Presumably, he toned down his goosestep as he walked away.

-- DigbysBlog.blogspot.com 29 February 2004

*Original article at Newsday has been pulled.

[Auntie Bush]

17. Off subject...but who's paying all those Marketing Groups that bush

hires to market/push/propagandize all his initiatives?