The Washington Times yesterday
published part one of my two-part column about issues raised by
the Sean Penn movie Fair Game, about events surrounding
the release of the name of CIA case officer Valerie Plame Wilson.
This is part two of that column. In the Washington Times
article, I noted that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of
staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was convicted entirely on the
basis of differing recollections, between Libby and the late TV
journalist Tim Russert, about a particular conversation the two men
had related to the Wilson case. Yet it turns out that even Russert
was unsure, when first interviewed by the FBI, about the substance
of that conversation.
The FBI report reads: “Mr. Russert acknowledged that he speaks
to many people on a daily basis and it is difficult to remember
some specific conversations, particularly one which occurred
several months ago.” That, of course, was the exact substance of
Mr. Libby’s defense.
Libby’s lawyers had argued that he did not commit perjury
because he testified as accurately as possible about a conversation
that, months later, different people could legitimately remember
differently. My
column makes the case that Libby never should have been
convicted. So did
several other
excellent
pieces. Libby did not perjure himself or obstruct justice. Period.
More on that in a few moments.
Now here’s the rest of the story related to Fair
Game. The movie, highly entertaining but far from the “truth,”
not only intimates that Libby effectively was behind the leak of
Ms. Wilson’s name — which is demonstrably false — but also
portrays him as masterminding a devious, sinister manipulation of
evidence concerning Iraq’s pursuit of nuclear weapons. According to
the movie, Libby went to the CIA and browbeat a top
counter-proliferation agent to try to force a report that some
now-famous aluminum tubes were meant for nuke use. The movie Libby
also, at least by inference, is hip-deep in all affairs related to
the controversial “16 words” in President George W. Bush’s 2003
State of the Union address to the effect that British intelligence
had determined that Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium from Africa.
Libby thus is made complicit, ultimately, for “lying” the United
States into war.
Here’s the truth: Nobody lied us into war. Ambassador Joe
Wilson’s own report had noted a 1999 “trade mission” by Iraq, to
Niger, that likely was an attempt to secure yellowcake. British
intelligence, independently of forged reports, had indeed concluded
that Iraq actively sought yellowcake. And almost everybody involved
honestly believed Iraq still had weapons of mass murder. Those
believers included Valerie Plame Wilson herself.
On pages 95-98 of her memoirs (also called “Fair Game”),
Ms. Wilson writes this:
The U.S. intelligence community was not the only actor
that found Iraq’s provocations alarming. The Center for
Nonproliferation Studies (www.cns.miis.edu), a
non-partisan, non-governmental research organization devoted to
training the next generation of nonproliferation experts, was also
concerned. Here’s what some of their research revealed about the
state of Iraq’s WMD programs in 2001:
What followed was three full pages of details about what
was thought to be known about Iraq’s nuclear, biological, chemical,
and ballistic missile capabilities. The first item under “Nuclear”
was this: “With sufficient black-market uranium or plutonium, Iraq
probably could fabricate a nuclear weapon.” A few paragraphs after
the three-page list, Ms. Wilson wrote: “Many of the CIA liaison
partners around the world were picking up evidence that Iraq was
seeking to procure items that could be used in their suspected WMD
programs. It was a huge puzzle with only a few pieces that fit
together correctly.”
Here’s what the official Robb-Silberman commission that
later looked into the WMD question found out:
The intelligence community had learned a hard lesson after
the 1991 Gulf War, which revealed that the intelligence community’s
pre-war assessments had underestimated Iraq’s nuclear program and
had failed to identify all its chemical weapons sites. Intelligence
analysts [HILLYER NOTE: intelligence analysts, not political
pressure from the V-P’s office] were determined not to fall victim
again to the same mistake…. Collectors and analysts too readily
accepted any evidence that supported their theory that Iraq had
stockpiles and was developing weapons programs…. For good reason,
it was hard to conclude that Saddam Hussein had indeed abandoned
his weapons programs.
In short, the simple fact is that Ambassador Wilson’s
fulminations about the “16 words” were almost irrelevant. So much
evidence led so many intelligence analysts and agencies into
believing that Iraq had WMD that the Bush statement about uranium
was mere icing not on, but in the guise of, the
yellowcake.
What for strange reasons has never received the attention
necessary is that American forces did actually find WMD materials
after toppling Saddam Hussein. As
Deroy Murdock has noted in several columns, Iraq still
possessed mustard and sarin nerve agent, low-enriched uranium, and
live botulinum toxin. For what it’s worth, Iraq also operated a
terrorist training camp just south of Baghdad called Salman Pak,
and it knowingly harbored some terrorists and provided material
support to many others. It repeatedly violated United Nations
sanctions and repeatedly fired on American planes enforcing the
“no-fly zone.” And it had a history of gassing its own
people.
All of which makes all of Scooter Libby’s deep concerns
abut Iraq, and his actions and those of the whole Bush
administration, not sinister or in any way dishonest but instead
understandable and even wise efforts to protect Americans from
deadly future attacks.
The real record similarly has been obscured, by the
establishment media and especially by the movie Fair Game,
about the leak of Ms. Wilson’s name and Mr. Libby’s role in events
surrounding that leak. Here’s what it boils down to: Prosecutor
Patrick Fitzgerald’s case against Libby made no sense. None.
Richard Armitage, not Libby, leaked Ms. Wilson’s CIA affiliation.
CIA spokesman Bill Harlow confirmed it, on the record — hardly the
actions of an agency that wanted to protect the identity of a
covert operative. Robert Novak’s column containing the name
“Valerie Plame” began showing up in newsrooms on Friday, July 11,
2003. It was that same day that Libby spoke to Russert. It is
entirely plausible that Russert did indeed mention the information
to Libby after seeing or hearing about the Novak column on the
wires.
What is clear is that prosecutor Fitzgerald’s theory was
that Libby invented and lied about the information coming from
Russert in order to excuse subsequent mentions of Plame to the
New York Times’ Judith Miller and Time magazine’s
Matthew Cooper. But the judge and jury threw out the charges
relating to Cooper and Miller: Libby was innocent on those counts.
In that case, though, why would Libby have made up the bit about
Russert, months later, if he had no reason to try to hide something
else the jury concluded he didn’t do?
The man had no reason to lie or to knowingly deceive the
FBI or the courts. He quite literally had no motive.
It is a very bad thing indeed for a covert agent’s
identity to be divulged in public. But sometimes it happens
inadvertently — especially when the CIA’s own spokesman helps
divulge it. It is a far worse thing to try to create a
scapegoat for a leak that the scapegoat didn’t commit, on a subject
about which the scapegoat himself had no reason to feel defensive.
The whole “16 words” controversy was not just a tempest in a teapot
but a Katrina in a thimble. Those words did not make the difference
between this nation going to war or not going to war. The war
decision was based on a mix of faulty and accurate intelligence,
along with an entirely defensible assessment of the geopolitical
situation in 2003. It was made in the shadow of terrorist attacks
that killed innocents and changed our very way of life. What was on
the minds of Bush officials wasn’t bloodlust so much as protection
— protection of American lives and liberties. Nobody needed to lie
to make the arguments for war; whether they reached wise
conclusions or not, they merely had to cite all the best available
evidence for their positions.
Intending to refer to his trial and conviction, I asked
Libby if, with perfect hindsight, he would have done anything
differently.
“If I knew then what we know now?” he repeated,
rhetorically. “I would find some way to save those 3,000 Americans
who were crushed or burned alive on 9/11.”
On the available evidence, Scooter Libby contributed
mightily to ensuring it didn’t happen again. Forget his wrongful
conviction for perjury; it was his conviction to protect this
nation, his determination to see that no similar assaults
succeeded, that is the truest measure of his character and career.
It’s a measure not of shame but of high honor.
