evolution

[UPDATE: Well, what do you know -- I did talk about the Plame affair. Updates are at the bottom.]

» Tom Maguire speculates on the nature of the indictments will be handed down.

» AJ Strata has been going wall-to-wall on this and has an interesting series of posts on the topic.

» Jeralyn Merritt has also been wall-to-wall, with dozens of posts that are well worth reading.

» Jeff Goldstein has a couple of pieces with thoughts on the roles of the Wilsons themselves which are also worth your time; I link to the most recent of these.

» You know, man, I hope you’re not in a public computer lab. I used to work in a public computer lab — I had to clean up after guys like you: the lube tubes, the Kleenex. Give a hoot, man. Don’t pollute.

» John Cole, with the help of his commenters (some help), painstakingly put together over the summer a timeline of the events leading to this point. It’ll be interesting to see how much of it is accurate.

» Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard also has a timeline, and cites memos that suggest Wilson’s wife suggested to the CIA that he (Ambassador Wilson) go to Niger and investigate a “crazy report”:

On February 18, 2002, the U.S. embassy in Niger sent a cable describing a new account of the alleged deal. The account, it said, “provides sufficient detail to warrant another hard look at Niger’s uranium sales.” The cable further warned against dismissing the allegations prematurely. The following day, back at Langley, representatives of several U.S. intelligence agencies met with Ambassador Wilson to discuss the trip. Contemporaneous notes from an analyst at the State Department’s INR suggest that Mrs. Wilson “apparently convened” the meeting. She introduced her husband to the group and left a short time later. Several of the attendees would later recall questioning the value of the proposed trip, noting that the Nigeriens were unlikely to admit dealing with the Iraqis. Still, the CIA approved the trip.

Hayes continues:

Wilson was debriefed by two CIA officials at his home on March 5, 2002. He never filed a written report. The resulting CIA report was published and disseminated in the regular intelligence stream three days later. The report included the unsurprising declaration of former Nigerien prime minister Ibrahim Mayaki that Niger had signed no contracts with rogue states while he served first as foreign minister and then prime minister, from 1996 to 1999. But Mayaki added one tantalizing detail, also included in the CIA report that resulted from Wilson’s trip. An Iraqi delegation had visited Niger in 1999 to explore “expanding commercial relations” between Iraq and Niger. Mayaki had met with the Iraqis and later concluded that their request for enhanced trade meant they wanted to discuss purchasing uranium. Mayaki said he had not pursued the matter because such deals were prohibited under U.N. sanctions.

Reactions to the report differed. The INR analyst believed Wilson’s report supported his assessment that deals between Iraq and Niger were unlikely. Analysts at the CIA thought the Wilson report added little to the overall knowledge of the Iraq-Niger allegations but noted with particular interest the visit of the Iraqi delegation in 1999. That report may have seemed noteworthy because of the timing of the Iraqi visit. The CIA had several previous reports of Iraq seeking uranium in Africa in 1999, specifically from Congo and Somalia.

On balance, then, Wilson’s trip seemed to several analysts to make the original claims of an Iraq-Niger deal more plausible.

What follows is long, but worth reading, and is not kind to Joseph Wilson.

It’s pretty easy for me to believe that “the government” is able to put out a public-relations “hit” on someone, but I’ve read a lot of things from the anti-Bush crowd, and most of them would do absolutely anything in the service of their cause. To me, Joseph Wilson seems to be one of these.

I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if the indictments handed down were for minor offenses, if there are any at all. Those indicted will probably resign (as they should), but this appears to me to be a whole lot of bureaucratic confusion and that if anyone was maleficent, it was Wilson.

» Some, perhaps on the Right, will be tempted to shoot the messenger, as was the case with the Left and Kenneth Starr. Do not fall into the trap. The special prosecutor in this case is as apolitical as they get, says one of his friends at National Review, who also cites the Schumer of the Chuck’s approval. From what I’ve seen and read, I’d have to agree with both of those assessments.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 26th, 2005 at 11:32 and is filed under politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.