99th in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. The controversy over the bogus Niger story and the leak of Valerie Plame’s name continues to heat up. While top administration officials including Condoleezza Rice make public appearances in defense of the administration, a new string is added to the White House bow in the person of James Guckert/Jeff Gannon, an unusually overt media ally in White House press gatherings.
July 24-31, 2003:

 

 
July 24, 2003 – A CIA attorney notes the possibility of crimes in the exposure of Valerie Plame Wilson. CIA reports possible violations to Attorney General John Ashcroft.

 

July 24, 2003 – According to the progressive web site “Daily Kos,” this is the date that the web site www.jeffgannon.com debuts. Jeff Gannon is the nom de plume of newly credentialed reporter James Guckert, who becomes known for obtaining a White House press pass with seeming ease while other, more established journalists cannot get equivalent access. Gannon/Guckert also subsequently becomes notorious for asking overtly friendly questions and for editorializing on behalf of the administration, while participating in White House press briefings. See later.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/9/191334/075

 

 

July 27, 2003 – The London Sunday Telegraph reports that it has visited the Niger uranium mines, across the southern Sahara desert from the Niger capital of Niamey, and mine personnel clarify that it would be “impossible” to supply Saddam secretly with uranium.

 

July 30, 2003 – The CIA files a crime report with the Department of Justice regarding the Plame leak.  

 

July 30, 2003 -- Condoleezza Rice is interviewed on television by Jim Lehrer of PBS:

 
“Q The President's defense of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice today came at a critical time. A week ago, her chief deputy, Stephen Hadley, acknowledged he had been warned by the CIA in two separate memos that the Agency would not stand by information suggesting Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program. That claim made it into the President's State of the Union speech, and CIA Director George Tenet took the blame.       

    But with Hadley's admission, new questions emerged. If he knew about the error in advance, who else did? Was it overlooked simply because the administration was anxious to bolster the case for war?

    Here to answer these, and other, questions, is National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Welcome, Dr. Rice.

DR. RICE: Thank you, nice to be with you.

Q So the first question becomes the ones I just posed. Did you know, or should you have known that the information that went into the President's State of the Union speech regarding the purchase, or the efforts to purchase uranium in Niger, or from Africa, another country in Africa -- did you know that that information was not correct?

DR. RICE: When the line was put into the President's State of the Union address and cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency, when I read the line, I thought it was completely credible and that, in fact, it was backed by the Agency.

What happened here is that we're really talking about two different processes. The State of the Union was put together, the speech went out for clearance. But the speech that the President had given in Cincinnati in October had also been sent out for clearance and – Q That's the speech where he made the case for war?

DR. RICE: Well, this is one of the speeches in which he made the case for war. And in that speech, a line had been there about the uranium issue and Saddam Hussein seeking uranium in Africa. And Director Tenet had called Steve Hadley and he told him, in no specifics, he told him, I don't think you should put that in the President's speech because we don't want to make the President his own fact witness. Both Steve and Director Tenet remember the conversation in that way.

What we learned later, and I did not know at the time and certainly did not know until just before Steve Hadley went out to say what he said last week, was that the Director had also sent over to the White House a set of clearance comments that explained why he wanted this out of the speech. I can tell you, I either didn't see the memo, I don't remember seeing the memo -- the fact is, it was a set of clearance comments, it was three-and-a-half months before the State of the Union. And we're going to try to have a process now in which we don't have to depend on people's memories to link what was taken out of the speech in Cincinnati with what was put into the speech at the State of the Union.

Q Should you have seen the memo?”

 

July 31, 2003 – CIA officer Robert Grenier is interviewed by FBI investigating the CIA leak matter, and details his communications with Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis Libby, in May and June 2003 regarding the Wilsons. Grenier has informed Libby that Joseph Wilson’s wife works in CIA’s counter-proliferation division.
http://wid.ap.org/documents/libbytrial/jan24/DX420.pdf