Debate on 16 words a distraction

by Trudy Rubin

July 22, 2004

Did the Bush administration mislead the country to war by hyping evidence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction?

That question hangs in the air after the devastating Senate Intelligence Committee report on the CIA's performance. It is bound to stay a hot topic through election season.

So Bush supporters are trying to change the story line.

The new story -- as promoted by the Wall Street Journal editorial page, conservative columnists and some of my readers -- goes like this: The president was right about WMD.

How so? Because the Senate report raised questions about the February 2002 mission to Niger of Joe Wilson. He is the former diplomat dispatched by the CIA to check whether Iraq had contracted to purchase uranium from the African country of Niger.

Wilson blew the whistle on the famous "16 words" in the president's 2003 State of the Union address that claimed Saddam Hussein had sought "significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This information was attributed to the British government.

Wilson said he'd found "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place" and told the administration so. The White House admitted the 16 words should not have been in the speech.

Keep in mind that the 16 words were part of a speech that contained other strong claims about WMD that we now know were not backed up by reliable intelligence.

Soon after Wilson went public, the name of his wife, Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative, was leaked to columnist Robert Novak by two top administration officials. The leakers claimed that Wilson's mission was a case of nepotism. But such a leak is criminal; a special prosecutor is now investigating the highest reaches of the administration. Wilson said the leak was revenge.

Now back to the new story line.

The Senate committee said Wilson's report had no effect and in fact may have lent some credibility to the belief that a uranium deal was in the works. That was because Wilson reported an official from Niger had been queried by an Iraqi official about increasing trade in 1999. The Nigerian official thought the Iraqi may have wanted to talk about uranium, but the subject didn't come up.

Out of that thin gruel, the we-were-right crowd claims that the 16 words were correct. They point to the fact that the Butler report -- a highly critical take on Britain's prewar Iraq intelligence -- still defends the British info on Niger. And they point to the fact that the Senate report claims that Wilson's wife did indeed suggest him for the Niger mission.

What's amazing about this tack is that its adherents don't seem to have bothered to read the Senate report. It details how CIA analysts -- and even more so the State Department -- repeatedly raised suspicions about the veracity of British intelligence on Niger, independently of Wilson's report.

In October 2002, the CIA told Congress "the Brits have exaggerated this issue." The same month, CIA Director George Tenet told the White House to remove a reference to African uranium from a key speech because the reporting behind it "was weak." Key documents on sales of Niger uranium were found to be forged.

We still don't know why the White House included the discredited reference to African uranium in the State of the Union. There's still no solid evidence to back it up. And you won't find new evidence in the Senate report.

The new focus on Joe Wilson is simply a distraction. Last July, the respected Newsday reporters Tim Phelps and Knut Royce quoted a "senior intelligence officer" as saying it was other CIA officers, not Plame, who recommended Wilson for the job. Maybe the Senate source got it wrong. My point is: Who cares?

Wilson had strong qualifications for the mission. He was a former U.S. ambassador to Gabon who had served as Africa expert on the National Security Council, and he knew Niger and its leaders.

If this was nepotism, Plame hardly did her husband a favor. We are not talking trips to Paris here. And there obviously were no CIA rules against sending an agent's relative on a non-secret mission -- otherwise, Wilson wouldn't have been cleared.

In other words, the new story line is a flop. The debate on Iraq and WMD will continue. And so will the investigation into who leaked Plame's name.

TRUDY RUBIN is a columnist and editorial board member for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Write to her at trubin@phillynews.com or at Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8262, Philadelphia, PA 19101.