Plame case documents: Whitewash reports

Raw Story, which has a pretty good track record on the indictment watch so far, is reporting that Patrick Fitzgerald has already given the grand jury a request for one indictiment, and plans to seek indictments against at least two suspects: Fitzgerald has decided to seek indictments, those near inquiry say by Jason Leopold and John Byrne 10/25/2005.

Meanwhile, what would a major political scandal be without whitewash reports?

On the British side, one of their whitewash reports was the Return to an Address of the Honourable the House of Commons dated 14th July 2004 for the Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction/Report of a Committee of Privy Counsellors/Chairman: The Rt Hon The Lord Butler of Brockwell KG GCB CVO.

It's better (and much more briefly!) known as the Butler Report (07/14/03).

From our own Congress, we have the Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq of 07/07/04. Among political junkies and Plame case addicts, this is known as the "SSCI report" (for Senate Select Committee on Intelligence).

Although Republican Committee Roberts made sure it did the most to shield the Bush administration from criticism, even whitewash reports can sometimes be informative.

As Larry Johnson recently wrote at the Crooks and Liars blog (Hinderaker's Folly 10/23/05), summarizing the conclusion of the SSCI report on Wilson's mission to Niger, he writes:

1. Prior to Joe Wilson's trip to Niger, most of the U.S. intelligence community (the CIA and State Department's INR) did not believe Iraq was trying to buy uraniusm from Niger. The intelligence community had received two intelligence reports from the same source (the Italian intelligence service)in the previous six months and did not find them credible.

2. Joe Wilson and the U.S. Ambassador to Niger both told the Senate investigators that they each concluded separately that there was nothing to the story that Iraq was trying to buy uranium, or could even do so, because of the local controls in place. (See p. 42 of the Senate report).

3. Joe Wilson returned from his Niger trip in March of 2002 and was debriefed by CIA officers on March 5. They in turn produced an intelligence report based on Ambassador Wilson's trip. He was not provided a chance to review or approve the report. The CIA's Directorate of Operations gave the report based on the Ambassador's debriefing a grade of good.

4. According to the Senate report, the results of Joe Wilson's trip to Niger were not shared with the Vice President because it did not provide any new information to clarify the issue.

In other words, the intelligence community discounted the notion that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from Niger. They continued to hold this position even in the now discredited October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. Moreover, even though the British Government provided a "white paper" that seemed to bolster the claim that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa, the intelligence analysts also dismissed the British paper as not credible. Senior CIA officials repeatedly briefed U.S. policymakers and legislators that there was no substance to the reports claiming that Iraq was up to no good in Africa.