Reply #8: This is a tremendously informative article, but there is a big hole in its

[Peace Patriot]

time-line--perhaps the key to the whole business. It is this:

July 14, 3003: Plame outed (by Novak).
July 18, 2003: Brit chief weapons expert David Kelly found dead under extremely suspicious circumstances; his office and computers searched.
July 22, 2003: Plame's entire CIA WMD front company and network outed, all projects and agents put at risk.

Why the second outing--if the purpose was to "punish" Wilson? (--creating much greater risk of treason charges...)

The US/UK war coalition didn't lose just one WMD expert, during the "hunt" for WMDs in Iraq over the long hot summer of 2003, they lost TWO--Plame and Kelly, and also all of Plame's contacts. Virtually at the same moment.

Kelly started whistleblowing a month before Wilson (May 22, 2003--to the BBC). And here's another date missing from Morris's timeline--or, rather, an event on the same day that other things were happening among the Bushites:

July 7, 2003: Tony Blair informed (after Kelly was interrogated that day) that Kelly "could say some uncomfortable things"--"COULD say," not HAD said.

I think the missing element here is a plot to plant WMDs in Iraq, in summer '03, and to reap the enormous political benefit from a "find" of such weapons. That's why Kelly was killed. (--he knew about, or had foiled the plot.) That's why the SECOND Plame outing--of her whole WMD monitoring network--was done (probably something they found in Kelly's computers--something that linked whatever it was that Kelly knew to Brewster-Jennings, or to its contact network). And that's why Judith Miller had a very special "embed" contract, signed by Donald Rumsfeld, that permitted her to go running around in Iraq with US troops "hunting" for the weapons they all knew weren't there, but which they were about to plant there. Her reward for all she'd done for them was to get the "scoop" on the "find" of WMDs in Iraq.

She had cultivated David Kelly as a WMD expert; used him as a major source for her book "Germs"; and was the recipient of one of his last emails, in which he was concerned about the "many dark actors playing games." (--which she fails to disclose in the news article she wrote about his death, July 21, 2003, NYT).

He was otherwise upbeat, looking forward to his daughter's wedding and returning to Iraq, and thought the whole controversy surrounding him (huge in Britain) would blow over in a week. Had he told his bosses that he wouldn't disclose their worst secret? (--the "uncomfortable things" that Blair was told he "could say"?).

He was found outdoors near his home, along the route of his normal walk, under a tree, having supposedly slit one wrist (tough guy; top scientist) and bled to death all night, out in the rain and the cold.

After outing his name to the press, and interrogating him, Brit intel had let him go home apparently without surveillance or protection.

One other item missing from Morris' article: I recently read an interview of Wilson (Raw Story maybe? ) in which Wilson says that he called Condi Rice, to get the regime to disavow the Iraq-Niger nuke claim, and she told him (through intermediaries ) that she was not interested in his information, but, if he was so concerned about the matter, why didn't he publish it?

Sounds like she was baiting him--that they WANTED him to publish--perhaps to invent the Rove political revenge story as cover for outing Plame, who must have long been a target (can't have honest WMD intel), but who became extremely dangerous to them when David Kelly started whistleblowing (May 22), when they found out who it was who was whistleblowing to the BBC--the Brit chief WMD expert (around June 30)--and when they found out what all he knew (July 7).

Something turned David Kelly around about the war AFTER the invasion--something having to do with the cooked intel, to which he had been privy. And this is what I think it was: planting nukes in Iraq for political benefit. That's what got him whistleblowing. And that's what got him killed.

Just a guess. But it's sure an interesting working hypothesis.