Squandered Opportunities: New York's Pataki Years Book

There are two basic plot strands here, and they are executed very well: the manipulation of intelligence, and the repeated use of disproven, debunked, and outright fabricated intelligence by the Bush White House to sell the war against Iraq to the American people; and the CIA leak case, which involved a bit of that fabricated and debunked intelligence. What seems clear is that although Iraq either having WMDs or engaging in WMD development programs was the main public rationale for the war, the White House didn't especially care whether this was true or not, based on the rush to war before inspections were given a chance to play out, on the nonchalance with which the initial invasion approached the search for WMDs and the securing of potential WMD sites, and on the shrugs given by Cheney and Bush as more and more time passed and no WMDs turned up. Rather, Bush and Cheney had bought into the neocon dream of remaking the Middle East, beginning with regime change and democracy in Iraq. But that would have been a much tougher sell to the American people and to Congress, so deception had to be used.

The leak of an undercover CIA operative's name stemmed from fabricated documents out of Italian intelligence purporting to show that Iraq had tried to, or was trying to, acquire 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger. The purpose of acquiring that much uranium would have been to make a nuclear weapon. Cheney asked the CIA to delve into the matter in 2002. Valerie Wilson was a CIA operative whose husband, a former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, had knowledge of African uranium, so she suggested he come and speak to the CIA's Counterproliferation Division. After hearing his talk, they asked him to go to Niger and take a closer look, which he did, concluding that a uranium deal of that size would have been almost impossible to pull off or hide. Yet the claim "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" still made it into Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech. The British intelligence was based on the same fabricated Italian documents the CIA had seen. Bush was in effect laundering the claim via British sources, so that people hearing the claim who knew of the Italian documents wouldn't necessarily know they were what was being referred to. But the claim about uranium kept popping up in the press, causing Joe Wilson to write a New York Times piece in July 2003 titled "What I Didn't Find in Africa." The claim had been debunked, Wilson said, and he assumed Cheney had been informed of his trip, so why was the administration continuing to use inaccurate intelligence? He argued that Congress should investigate Bush's use of the Niger charge.

Wilson's appearances in the media sent the White House into a rage. Determined to discredit him, Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and Karl Rove, Bush's senior adviser, both got to leaking the identity of Valerie Wilson and insisting she, not Cheney, was responsible for Joe Wilson's trip to Niger. Rove leaked to two reporters, Libby leaked to two reporters, and deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage leaked to two reporters. In total, five reporters received leaks from at least three administration officials. Only one leak would result in Valerie Wilson's public outing (Armitage's leak to columnist Robert Novak, which Novak confirmed with source Karl Rove). Note that a leak can be a criminal offense whether or not the leak results in a public outing.

Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel investigating the leak, ultimately decided not to charge Libby, Armitage, or Rove under the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which required proving they knew Wilson was a covert CIA employee, a bar deemed too high to prove in court. Nor did he charge them under the Espionage Act. This was a

World War I-era statute that makes it a crime to communicate any information relating to the "national defense" to any person not authorized to receive it. (The law also has a provision that allows government officials to be charged for "gross negligence" for failing to protect national defense information with which they have been entrusted.) But that law had rarely been used, and some legal experts worried that doing so in this case could create a dangerous precedent. It would effectively turn the archaic statute into a de facto Official Secrets Act - the law in Great Britain that makes it a crime to disclose any classified information. That would be a major and disturbing development, both for the news media and for the public. It would have a chilling effect on investigative reporting relating to national security and government excesses and abuses. In the end, Fitzgerald chose not to take that road.

Libby had dissembled most severely; he had lied to FBI interviewers, perjured himself before the grand jury, and obstructed justice, attempting to shield his boss, Cheney, who had told him that Valerie Wilson worked at the CIA's Counterproliferation Division. This is an excellent examination of the various details of the leak investigation. Having followed it in real-time and read multiple subsequent accounts, I still find it complex and sometimes confusing, and there are yet things we don't know about it.

In an Afterword, the authors briefly discuss the surge in the Iraq war and the Libby trial. Readers looking for thorough discussions of either the war itself, or the trial, should find sources other than this book.

It's important to note that Fitzgerald was a famously close-lipped prosecutor, never saying publicly any more than was necessary, never bringing up a name unless a person was implicated in something. Fitzgerald never spouted off, never said anything casually. So it was significant that in his closing argument at trial, he chose to assert, "There is a cloud on the vice president … That cloud remains because this defendant obstructed justice." The cloud also hung "over the White House." After Libby had been convicted, Fitzgerald spoke to reporters outside the courthouse and was asked about the cloud. "There was a cloud there," he said, "And by Mr. Libby obstructing justice and lying about what happened he had failed to remove a cloud. Sometimes when people tell the truth, clouds disappear. Sometimes they don't."