Following Woodward statement, questions bigger than ever

In response to questions emailed to him, former ambassador Joseph Wilson has clarified that Post reporter Bob Woodward was not himself present at the June 14, 2003, DC conference where Wilson referred to his Africa trip. (Was that conference “mid-June 2003,” cf. Woodward’s published statement?)

 

Wilson also responds that Woodward was not present when the Post interviewed Wilson on July 6, 2003, when Wilson’s op-ed appeared in the New York Times.

 

Also in emails, Wilson responds in reply to questions that after being told that Mrs. Wilson was a CIA analyst, Woodward did not get in touch with either Wilson or his wife to check. Nor, if indeed Woodward passed this item along to Post reporter Walter Pincus, did Pincus. (Pincus reportedly has no recollection of Woodward’s telling him.)

 

A phone message left with Woodward and messages for his office via other offices at the Post, left the week before Thanksgiving, have not been answered. Reportedly Woodward has also not agreed to be interviewed by other Post reporters, although he and editor Len Downie have had some form of communication, and he has responded to some questions relayed by the new and very good Post ombudsman.

 

Meanwhile, big media wagons are being circled. Two Sundays ago, two different talking heads, on two different morning talk shows at ABC, both suggested that Richard Armitage might be Woodward’s unnamed source. This would have the effect of discrediting the State Department, as one of the talking heads pointed out, along with the Cheney-Rumsfeld axis in the administration. This past Sunday, the CIA leak or plant was all but ignored on the talk shows.

 

The Washingtonian magazine is about to publish a feature, complete with photo line-up, of the 50 most influential media figures in Washington. According to the Post, the feature will include Downie and also the Post’s “media critic,” Howard Kurtz, known for not holding the Post to the standards he allows for some other newspapers.

 

Many questions arise from the text of Woodward’s published statement. Some of the more detailed questions have already been printed; some will come out in days and weeks ahead. Larger and broader questions also lie ahead.

 

Several commentators, including me, have already noted questions for Woodward that are similar to questions for Judith Miller, formerly at the NYTimes. If some administration figure passed along a damaging item to Woodward and he sat on it, then he was in effect sitting on a story – not about Mrs. Wilson, but about how the administration was going after its critics. Why did he do so?

 

Both Woodward and Miller have made the argument, or had the argument made for them, that they were not even writing about the Plame leak story. So, in keeping the story (of administration tactics) quiet, were Woodward and Miller acting as journalists?

 

And how is keeping the aggressor’s name a secret the same as protecting a source? This was not protecting a whistleblower, exposing governmental wrongdoing. If anything, it was protecting a public official who indulged in behind-the-scenes retaliation against Wilson’s rather mild whistleblowing.

 

On top of Mrs. Wilson’s name, we still do not know from the Woodward statement printed in the Post whether the name of the CIA front company Brewster-Jennings came up, or with whom, or in what context. All we know about the front company as of now, aside from its role in regard to Saudi oil, is that Robert Novak outed it too, after outing Mrs. Wilson.

 

We know that Bush had big problems re Iraq “WMD” as of June 2003. His two trailers full of chemical weapons were just trailers. His weapons (Iraqi) were morphing into weapons “programs.” The PNAC neo-cons who had celebrated the end of major combat with him in March were becoming more subdued in June. Headlines everywhere but America were wondering in print what, if anything, had become of Saddam’s WMD.

 

Wilson had made his Africa trip at the beginning of 2003, had found nothing to go on, justifying concerns about an imminent and largescale Iraq threat – and the White House had rushed to war anyway. Now, on June 14, there was that Capitol Hill conference at which Wilson referred to his Niger trip and mentioned to Ray McGovern, retired (genuine) CIA analyst, that he was about to go public with the information.

 

Was that why the unnamed administration official called Woodward? – Or did Woodward call him? Was the interview itself in person or by phone? How hurried was it? How urgent was it?

 

Following that conversation, Woodward included mentions of Wilson’s wife in at least two lists of questions or notes, and then took those questions or notes to other interviews. Why?

 

Woodward says in his statement that he has no recollection of asking about Mrs. Wilson. Is it possible that indeed he did not ask about her, because he knew perfectly well that the item was a plant? – And therefore that the administration was indeed, in all probability, engaging in retaliation against Wilson and some attempt to intimidate future critics?

 

Did he ever make, or try to make, an appointment with Vice President Cheney, about this matter?

 

Woodward’s statement says that Libby brought up the Niger story, days after another official told Woodward about Wilson’s wife, but without mentioning Wilson’s wife. In response, according to the statement, Woodward either didn’t ask about Wilson or his wife or does not remember doing so. If Libby never mentioned Wilson to Woodward, isn’t it possible that’s because they both knew he didn’t need to do so, since Woodward had already been told?

 

The entire narrative about Niger gives rise to one of the biggest questions of all: What else have they been sitting on?

 

working backward from Woodward

Woodward’s printed statement on the CIA leak case (“Bob Woodward’s Public Statement,” Washington Post, Nov. 16) was so puzzling that I ran it backward, to see whether it would parse better that way. Excerpting from the final graf backward to the beginning clarified some questions, as follows:

 

“It was the first time in 35 years as a reporter that I have been asked to provide information to a grand jury.”

  • So why did you think you would be subpoenaed this time?

 

“I answered all of Fitzgerald’s questions during my testimony without breaking promises to sources or infringing on conversations I had on unrelated matters for books or news reporting _ past, present or future.”

  • How could any comprehensive reporting on the invasion of Iraq be unrelated to the leak case?

 

“My testimony was given in a sworn deposition at the law office of Howard Shapiro of the firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr instead of appearing under subpoena before a grand jury.”

  • Why?
  • How was this deposition arranged?

 

“When asked by Fitzgerald if it was possible I told Libby I knew Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and was involved in his assignment, I testified that it was possible I asked a question about Wilson or his wife, but that I had no recollection of doing so. My notes do not include all the questions I asked, but I testified that if Libby had said anything on the subject, I would have recorded it in my notes.”

  • Do your prepared lists of questions show which questions you asked?
  • So your notes include everything Libby said?
  • Did he say anything about the CIA front co. called Brewster-Jennings?

 

“I testified that on June 27, 2003, I met with Libby at 5:10 p.m. in his office adjacent to the White House. I took the 18-page list of questions with the Page-5 reference to “yellowcake” to this interview and I believe I also had the other question list from June 20, which had the “Joe Wilson’s wife” reference.”

  • Why? Why did you take these references with you to see Libby?
  • Did the two questions lists have other questions in common that you did not ask?
  • Did you take any other lists or prepared material?
  • Did you ask about Brewster-Jennings?

 

“I testified that on June 20, 2003, I interviewed a second administration official for my book “Plan of Attack” and that one of the lists of questions I believe I brought to the interview included on a single line the phrase “Joe Wilson’s wife.” I testified that I have no recollection of asking about her, and that the tape-recorded interview contains no indication that the subject arose.”

  • Was the entire interview tape-recorded?
  • Did you take notes at this interview?
  • Do you still have any notes or notations you made during all these interviews?
  • Did you jot down anything from the interview on the list of questions, including which questions you asked?
  • Did you omit asking about Mrs. Wilson because the item about her looked like a plant?
  • Have you kept all notes and recordings you made at these interviews?

 

“Fitzgerald asked if I had discussed Wilson‘s wife with any other government officials before Robert Novak’s column on July 14, 2003. I testified that I had no recollection of doing so.”

  • Aside from what you yourself discussed, did you hear anything else about Wilson’s wife from any other government officials before Novak’s column?
  • Did you receive anything in writing/print about Wilson’s wife before Novak’s column, from any other government officials?
  • What about after Novak’s column?

 

“I have not been released to disclose the source’s name publicly.”

  • Why not?
  • Since the source has already gone to the prosecutor, doesn’t the public have a right to know?

 

“I was first contacted by Fitzgerald’s office on Nov. 3 after one of these officials went to Fitzgerald to discuss an interview with me in mid-June 2003 during which the person told me Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA on weapons of mass destruction as a WMD analyst.”

  • Why did the official go to Fitzgerald?

 

“All three persons provided written statements waiving the previous agreements of confidentiality on the issues being investigated by Fitzgerald. Each confirmed those releases verbally this month, and requested that I testify.”

  • By “verbally,” do you mean “orally”? Or are you saying that they confirmed those releases using words rather than, for example, sign language?
  • Did they confirm those releases to you directly?

 

“On Monday, November 14, I testified under oath in a sworn deposition to Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for more than two hours about small portions of interviews I conducted with three current or former Bush administration officials that relate to the investigation of the public disclosure of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame.”

  • How could you be sure that only small portions of interviews about the lead-up to the Iraq war relate to the CIA leak investigation?

 

A call to Woodward at the Post, last week, and several emailed requests that messages be forwarded to him have not been answered.

Recommending the book Thieves of Baghdad

Thieves of Baghdad by Matthew Bogdanos (available by year end, from Bloomsbury) is an illuminating read for anyone interested, from any perspective, in primary sources and first-hand experience in combat in Iraq.

 

(Two disclosures here: My advance reading copy of Thieves of Baghdad does not include the endnotes, and I went to high school with William Patrick, who collaborated on the book with Bogdanos.)

 

The author is understandably proud of his Greek-American family heritage. He is also proud of his pugilism, of his love of the classics, and of his career as a New York prosecutor and as a Marine, all of which he links together, so that his writing about trying to recover priceless antiquities in Iraq is thronged by friendly ghosts including Aeschylus, Thucydides, and Agatha Christie Mallowan.

 

Several important points emerge. First, the mission to recover items looted from the huge Baghdad Museum was ad hoc, drawing largely on the persistence, courage and expertise of a few individuals. Bogdanos largely put together the archaeological and artifacts recovery team, headed it with few personnel but with relative mobility, and operated in direct contact with Iraqis at virtually all levels. Their success was achieved by careful investigation and a nationwide amnesty for returned artifacts.

 

Second, in spite of early and popular successes, Bogdanos and his team were pulled from the mission before it was complete. The mission was truncated even though, and while, it was also a public relations success.

 

Third, the author argues concretely that early press reports of the looting of the museum itself were grossly exaggerated. Destruction and theft at the museum were devastating, but the numbers purveyed by the largest media outlets were unfounded.

 

If this point sounds like an apologetic, it should be placed in perspective by the related fact that the destruction and looting at the chief museum itself were only one part of the wider and more everyday looting at archaeological sites all over Iraq. The looting and commerce based on looting continue, little abated, to this day.

 

Bogdanos gives full credit to the personnel of eight law enforcement agencies in six countries trying to contain the illegal traffic in antiquities: Interpol, U.S. Customs, Scotland Yard, British, Kuwaiti and Jordanian customs, Italian carabinieri in Iraq, and U.S. Attorney offices in New Jersey and New York. However, he also makes clear that the entities involved lack the resources to stop illegal trafficking. One oddity of this looseness in the war on terror, of course, is that smugglers in illegal antiquities also often smuggle weapons and explosives. When you catch the one, you catch the other.

 

But commerce is powerful. Bogdanos refers to one foreign official who denies that Iraqi antiquities had ever been found in his country, contrary to reports. His proof was that they had never, in his entire country, ever seized any Iraqi antiquities. He refers to another who responds to a request for help by arguing that that would harm their customs and excise revenues.

 

As indicators that not all the problems lie abroad, the author also gives two anecdotes of smuggling caught in the act from the U.S. One case was that of part-time academic and journalist Joseph Braude, tried in Brooklyn Federal Court in August 2004. Bogdanos, one of the witnesses against him, raises a question: “So how did a relatively obscure quasi-academic like Braude, a small fish with no money . . . get the highest-paid defense attorney in the country, a lawyer whose clients [including Puff Daddy] usually leave the courthouse each day in a limo?”

 

Another was the April, 2003, seizure by customs officials in Newark of four FedEx boxes of 669 museum artifacts stolen, including 87 cylinder seals. Bogdanos says “The proper way to deal with such a cache is to use it as bait to catch a thief.” Understandably, the haul was instead impounded, and the warning was out: “The intended recipient, a Madison Avenue art dealer, once notified of the seizure could now say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about . . . It must be some kind of mistake at the other end.’ The opportunity to prove that it wasn’t a mistake . . . had been squandered. The thieves were probably out bulldozing archaeological sites, the European middleman shipper was licking more mailing labels, and the scheduled recipients, who should have been working on their ‘prison pallor,’ were soaking up the sun in the Hamptons or Vail.”

 

As the author comments, “The first dot you have to connect is the number of well-placed individuals, and the amount of ‘genteel’ money, involved in the antiquities trade. These people live in the Upper East Side and in Georgetown and in Pacific Heights, not in some Mafia enclave in Pawtucket. But even more important, you have to understand that a trial like Braude’s was all about the price.

            In real estate you need comps to get approval for a mortgage, sales of similar houses in your area that establish market value. To establish market value in smuggling, you need a judgment from a court of law. The calculus the bad guys use is actually quite sophisticated. In addition to the actual value of the item itself, be it drugs, weapons or antiquities, there is the risk associated with the smuggling operation from start to finish . . . The bottom line with regard to Iraqi antiquities was that if the first guy who gets caught coming through customs gets a slap on the wrist, the price of smuggled antiquities goes down. If he does prison time, the price goes up.

            Not surprisingly then, I noticed some familiar faces, art collectors and art dealers, in the courtroom the day I testified.”

 

I must admit that the one form of pure greed I can empathize with is love of art. When I see a bargain myself, I jump at it, although my collecting is both modest and legal. But trafficking in items that belong to the ancient history of both East and West is greed of a decadence beyond what I can empathize with. Bogdanos’ book lays out constructive, measured suggestions for coordinating an international effort to impede trafficking in cultural heritage. Perhaps some of them will be put into effect.

More on January 2002

Regrettably, those overwhelmed individuals in the administration trying to dominate the world were even busier at the beginning of 2002 than last week’s column expressed.

 

All signs indicate that behind the scenes, January 2002 was a freakish window of opportunity for desk planners, a hinge in the devastating chronology linking the conquest of Afghanistan to that of Iraq.

 

Jesse Jackson observed that the defeat of Afghanistan by the USA was scarcely in doubt, a recognition probably shared by most people in touch with reality. From certain statements that have now come to light, however, it appears that there were neo-cons in the administration actually surprised that a tiny, starved nation dominated by the Taliban had been bowled over so easily by American military might. Anyone who could think the Taliban a military threat, to say nothing of a tinpot dictator like Saddam, probably has been unconsciously influenced by anti-Muslim rabidity; beyond that, some of the comments almost imply a disappointment that the war was over so quickly. Whatever the individual pathologies, however, several such thinkers began scratching around to resurrect the idea of invading Iraq, which had been temporarily tabled after its bringing up immediately after 9/11.

 

It is noteworthy that even the most distant planning for invading Iraq was accompanied by what amounts to a concomitant attack on the Bill of Rights. That January was a particularly busy month, as alert emailers have reminded me with the following chronology.

 

On January 9, 2002, a Memorandum was submitted to William J Haynes II, General Counsel to the Department of Defense, by the Office of Legal Counsel in the Justice Department, written by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and Special Counsel Robert J. Delahunty. This Yoo-Delahunty memorandum became the basis for rejecting the Geneva Convention for captured members of al Qaeda and the Taliban.

 

On January 18, 2002, the president determined that captured Talibani and Al Quaeda were indeed unprotected by the Geneva POW Convention.

 

The next day, in a memorandum dated 19 January, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to inform combat commanders that “Al Quaeda and Taliban individuals . . . are not entitled to prisoner of war status for purposes of the Geneva Conventions of 1949.”

 

This order was followed on January 22, 2002, by the Bybee memo from Jay Bybee, Office of Legal Counsel for Alberto R. Gonzales, Counsel to the President and William J. Haynes II, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Re: Application of Treaties and Laws to al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees, which reinforced the Yoo-Delahunty memo.

 

On January 25, 2002, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales in turn sent a memorandum to President Bush regarding his presidential decision of the 18th. The legal advisor to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell had objected, but Gonzales advised Bush that “there are reasonable grounds for you to conclude” that the Geneva Convention “does not apply . . . to the conflict with the Taliban.”

 

Thus was prepared, by a sequence of formal memoranda at the highest levels of government, a mode of operation in which individuals detained either in the United States or abroad under the rubric of the war on terror could be kept in indefinite detention; could be incarcerated without even being told the charges against them; and could be tortured.

 

Even setting aside the Bill of Rights, looking at this mode of operations from the more self-interested perspective of us still safely in our homes, we can now easily see that it also established a set-up difficult to penetrate in case of mistakes. Prisoners not allowed even to see counsel cannot tell the rest of us much. To its credit, the Pentagon has by now released large numbers of those formerly incarcerated. But the secretive authors of these ridiculous but tragic policies are not exactly thronging forward to admit past errors.

 

Every individual who had access to National Security Council meetings in the first Bush term now has the gravest possible questions to answer before Congress and the public, in regard to the uses of intelligence leading to the Iraq war.

 

Lying about the attacked, dumping the indicted

Lying about the Attacked, Dumping the Indicted

 

 

Here is graf 5 of Joseph Wilson’s “What I Didn’t Find in Africa,” published July 6, 2003:

 

“In February 2002, I was informed by officials at the Central Intelligence Agency that Vice President Dick Cheney’s office had questions about a particular intelligence report. While I never saw the report, I was told that it referred to a memorandum of agreement that documented the sale of uranium yellowcake – a form of lightly processed ore – by Niger to Iraq in the late 1990’s. The agency officials asked if I would travel to Niger to check out the story so they could provide a response to the vice president’s office.”

 

Last Sunday, October 30, PNAC signatory and commentator Charles Krauthammer said on Inside Washington that Wilson had claimed that Dick Cheney sent him to Africa: “The person who lied here was Wilson.” On Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer the next half-hour, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) also suggested that Wilson claimed to be sent on his Niger trip by Cheney.

 

Thus was launched one of two main arguments from the pro-war faction, regarding the indictment of Irve Lewis Libby, Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Cheney: Dick Cheney, minding his own vice presidential business, heard that someone named Joe Wilson whom he had never met was going around saying that Cheney had sent him to Africa. Thus Cheney, asking as anyone would Who is this guy and Why is he saying things about me, made inquiries about Wilson – and found that actually the spectacular boondoggle of a Niger junket had been arranged by Wilson’s wife. The vice president’s office then got in touch with major media outlets to set the record straight. Discussing this nepotism with reporters, they revealed that Wilson’s wife was in the CIA. Presumably they couldn’t let it be supposed that she was in, for example, the Near East division of the State Department, working with Elizabeth Cheney.

 

The other main argument was rolled out by Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas), also last Sunday: the indictment is limited to “a single individual” and thus indicates no conspiracy and no crime. William Safire on Meet the Press with Tim Russert went farther, saying that the prosecutor “found” that the “law was not broken”: “This is a cover-up of a non-crime.” (N.b.: Bradblog points out that Rush Limbaugh went farther yet, claiming that the prosecutor said there had been no crime.)

 

As a citizen, I hope that these arguments get what they deserve, and it will be mildly interesting to see whether anyone maintains them on this week’s talk shows.

 

As a human being, I think Mr. Libby’s friends and relatives are on firmer ground arguing that he was basically overwhelmed.

 

Take the key month of January, 2002. In the press, front-page stories around the nation featured the spectacular collapse of Enron with its links to the White House and to Cheney’s office, including numerous mentions of Libby individually. Articles with titles like “Some Bush officials sold Enron stock before bankruptcy” and “Some Bush officials got out in time” pointed out accurately that the law forcing Rove and Libby to sell their Enron stock also saved them from losing everything they had put into it.

 

With the Enron flap ongoing, Osama bin Laden seemed to have eluded the December attacks on Tora Bora, Afghanistan. Enron and bin Laden eased up only when displaced by Iraq. In these weeks the yellowcake item was being floated around the administration, and Newsweek reported on January 20 that the administration had reached “general consensus” for “regime change.”

 

Along with sitting in on Iraq strategy, Libby spent part of January going over drafts of the State of the Union speech (January 29) with its “Axis of Evil,” according to Bob Woodward’s Plan of Attack. Libby wanted to include North Korea and Syria rather than singling out Iraq. As high officials haggled over which nations to Axis-ize, meanwhile, on January 23, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl vanished from Pakistan, which had not made the cut.

 

Along with everything else, Mr. Libby’s father, Irve Lewis Libby, Sr., a retired businessman in a condo in Boca Raton, Florida, died on January 20.

 

That someone involved in some of the highest-level, sensitive strategy discussions for invading Iraq should be working as a Bush speech writer may be a historical oddity. But that too much landed on his plate was historically inevitable. As Woodward’s book pointed out, Libby’s “three formal titles” – chief of staff to Cheney; national security adviser to Cheney; and an assistant to Bush – comprised “a trifecta of positions probably never before held by a single person.”

 

Next up: the young George W. Bush and Laura Welch in Houston, or, how the religious right has been fooled.