WSJ editorial falsely claimed "Senate Intelligence Committee found" that Wilson "had lied" about Niger trip and that his report "produced no information of any intelligence value"

The Wall Street Journal falsely asserted in a March 28 editorial that "the Senate Intelligence Committee found" former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV "had lied in claiming his wife [former CIA agent Valerie Plame] had played no role in sending him to Niger to investigate whether Saddam [Hussein] was seeking to acquire uranium yellowcake." In fact, while the committee's report stated that "interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicated that his [Wilson's] wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Divison] employee, suggested his name for the trip," the full committee did not conclude that Plame had suggested the mission. In a partisan addendum to the report, committee chairman Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), joined by Sens. Christopher S. Bond (R-MO) and Orrin Hatch (R-UT), wrote that Democrats had specifically opposed including the conclusion, "The plan to send the former ambassador to Niger was suggested by the former ambassador's wife, a CIA employee," in the full committee's report. Further, multiple news reports have quoted unnamed intelligence officials who refuted the notion that Plame authorized, or even suggested, Wilson's trip.

Additionally, the Journal claimed that "[t]he same bipartisan report found that Mr. Wilson's trip, which he had advertised in a splashy New York Times op-ed, had produced no information of any intelligence value." In fact, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee report, "The CIA's DO [Directorate of Operations] gave the former ambassador's information a grade of 'good,' which means that it added to the IC's [Intelligence Community] body of understanding on the issue, (REDACTED). The possible grades are unsatisfactory, satisfactory, good, excellent, and outstanding, which, according to the Deputy Chief of CPD, are very subjective." The committee's report also stated: "The reports officer said that a 'good' grade was merited because the information responded to at least some of the outstanding questions in the Intelligence Community, but did not provide substantial new information." As Media Matters has documented, the committee concluded that "[f]or most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be willing or able to sell uranium to Iraq."

Wilson was sent to Niger in 2002 by the CIA to investigate whether Iraq had purchased yellowcake uranium from the African country. Wilson's investigation, which was prompted by questions from Vice President Dick Cheney's office, turned up no evidence that any sale had taken place and found that "it would be exceedingly difficult for Niger to transfer uranium to Iraq." After President Bush referred to Iraq's purported attempt to obtain uranium from Africa in his 2003 State of the Union address as justification for invading Iraq (the notorious "16 words"), Wilson detailed the findings of his trip in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed. Eight days later, in his July 14, 2003, column, Robert D. Novak identified Plame as "an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction" and wrote: "Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger."

The Los Angeles Times reported on July 15, 2004, that an unnamed CIA official confirmed that Plame was not responsible for the CIA's decision to send Wilson to Niger, saying: "Her bosses say she did not initiate the idea of her husband going. ... They asked her if he'd be willing to go, and she said yes." And a July 22, 2003, Newsday article reported that an unidentified senior intelligence official "said she did not recommend her husband to undertake the Niger assignment," and quoted the official making the following assertion: "They [the officers asking Wilson to check the uranium story] were aware of who she [Plame] was married to, which is not surprising. ... There are people elsewhere in government who are trying to make her look like she was the one who was cooking this up, for some reason."

In her memoir, Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House (Simon & Schuster, 2007), Plame provided the following account of her role in Wilson's trip to Niger:

However, in February 2002, I was still blissfully ignorant of any special visits or pressure from the administration vis a vis Iraq. I just wanted to get some answers. Thinking through the options available, the first and most obvious choice would be to contact our [REDACTED] office in Niger and ask them to investigate these allegations using local sources available on the ground. Unfortunately, the severe budget cuts of the mid-1990s had been particularly devastating for the Africa Division and many of our offices on the continent were closed, including the one in Niamey, Niger. [REDACTED]. Where else to go and who could do it for us? A midlevel reports officer who had joined the discussion in the hallway enthusiastically suggested: "What about talking to Joe about it?" He knew of Joe's history and role in the first Gulf War, his extensive history in Africa, and also that in 1999 the CIA had sent Joe on a sensitive mission to Africa on uranium issues. Of course, none of us imagined the firestorm the sincere suggestion would ignite. At that moment, the only thought that flashed through my mind was that if Joe were out of the country for an extended period of time I would be left to wrestle two squirmy toddlers into bed each evening. Joe and I had often said it was best not to be outnumbered by the twins. So I was far from keen on the idea, but we needed to respond to the vice president's office with something other than a lame and obviously unacceptable, "We don't know, sorry." The reports officer and I walked over to the office of the [REDACTED] Chief to discuss our available plans of action. Bob, our boss, listened carefully and then suggested we put together a meeting with Joe and the appropriate Agency and State officers. He finished with, "When you see Joe tonight could you please ask him if he would be willing to come into Headquarters next week to figure out what we're going to do? Oh, and send a Lotus note to Scott [our acting Division Chief] and let him know what we're thinking." I hurried back to my desk and drafted a quick e-mail to Scott to explain the situation and added that "my husband has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." Although the acting Division Chief had actually been in CPD - in another senior position - when Joe had gone to Africa in 1999, I was gently reminding him of Joe's credentials to support why my boss thought he should come into Headquarters in the first place. Months later, those words would be ripped out of that e-mail and cited as proof that I had recommended Joe for the trip. But at the time, I simply hit the "send" button and moved on to the other tasks that were demanding my attention.

That night, between cleaning up dinner dishes, picking up toys off the floor, and corralling our twins into the bath, I told Joe that my office had received a report from a foreign intelligence service, which I did not name. [REDACTED] I said that we were working on getting the vice president's office some answers as quickly as possible and passed on the request from my boss that he come into Headquarters to discuss the matter further. "Of course," Joe said without hesitation. So, the next week, I showed Joe into my cramped little office and introduced him some of my colleagues and escorted him into the scheduled meeting with Iraq/Niger experts from CPD, the DI, and State. We entered the windowless conference room and I introduced Joe to the ten or so participants. I was secretly proud that Joe might be able to assist in the Agency's work. After a minute or so, I went back to my desk to attend to what seemed like a hundred other operational crises. When the meeting broke, Joe poked his head in my office to say that the group had asked him to consider going to Niger to discuss the report. "Okay, sure. When do you go?" It looked like I would be outnumbered by the twins after all. [Pages 109-111]

From the March 28 Journal editorial:

Everyone else in the media is pounding Hillary Clinton for her tale, now shown to be fanciful, of dodging bullets on a Bosnian tarmac as first lady. But if you're looking for the best recent example of the lengths Mrs. Clinton will go to win the Democratic Presidential nod, consider that last week in Philadelphia she used Joe and Valerie Wilson as campaign props.

Was George Galloway not available?

Mr. Wilson and his wife are darlings of the antiwar crowd for their roles as self-styled martyrs in the CIA "leak" fiasco. The former ambassador is still cashing in on his claim that President Bush lied us into war, and the glam couple has had to endure Vanity Fair photo shoots, book tours and the other slings and arrows of outrageous modern celebrity.

[...]

This is the same Senator Clinton who spoke extensively of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his WMD, who endorsed the invasion as a way to remove that threat, whose husband endorsed the invasion, and who supported the war for years afterward until it began to jeopardize her chances of winning the Democratic nomination. (See our February 8, 2007 editorial, "Hillary on Iraq¹.")

As for Mr. Wilson, he was last seen campaigning for a Democratic Presidential hopeful for a brief period in 2004. John Kerry's campaign dumped him as a spokesman that summer after the Senate Intelligence Committee found Mr. Wilson had lied in claiming his wife had played no role in sending him to Niger to investigate whether Saddam was seeking to acquire uranium yellowcake. The same bipartisan report found that Mr. Wilson's trip, which he had advertised in a splashy New York Times op-ed, had produced no information of any intelligence value.

So in order to blunt Mr. Obama's attacks over Iraq, Mrs. Clinton has resorted to relying on the word of someone whose antiwar inventions were too embarrassing even for the Kerry campaign. Desperate times require desperate measures, and Mrs. Clinton is meeting the moment.