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Intelligence Failure
WMD Developments Suggest Drama Is Near
by Joe Duarte, M.D.
January 29, 2004

Editor's note:  This article was originally published on 1-26-04 at www.joe-duarte.com and represents one of the earliest recognitions and summaries of what could be the defining controversy of the Bush administration as it heads into what will likely be a highly contested election.

The White House has new worries. Other shadows, aside from the sudden surge by Kerry, may be lurking as the summer’s CIA “operative” name leak moves through a grand jury investigation. Even though at first glance, the leak should be a negative for Bush, there is more to the story than meets the eye. And what emerges is a surprising set of developments that became evident over the weekend.

The evolving situation comes at a time when the Bush administration is likely to face a new wave of questions about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which are likely to be raised as the grand jury progresses. Thus, it looks as if the Bush team is beginning to head this line of attack off at the pass.

According to reports that appeared over the weekend, (1-24) such as in the New York Times: “David Kay, who led the American effort to find banned weapons in Iraq, said Friday after stepping down from his post that he has concluded that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons at the start of the war last year. In an interview with Reuters, Dr. Kay said he now thought that Iraq had illicit weapons at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, but that the subsequent combination of United Nations inspections and Iraq's own decisions ["got rid of them."] Asked directly if he was saying that Iraq did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country, Dr. Kay replied, according to a transcript of the taped interview made public by Reuters, ["That is correct."]

Early on 1-25-04, the Washington Post reported: “One day after David Kay, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, said he believes Hussein had not stockpiled unconventional weapons for years, (U.S. Secretary of State) Powell told reporters that his prominent Feb. 5 argument was based on ["what our intelligence community believed was credible. What is the open question is how many stocks they had, if any, and if they had any, where did they go? And if they didn't have any, then why wasn't that known beforehand?"] Powell told reporters aboard his plane en route to Sunday's presidential inauguration of (Georgia’s) Mikheil Saakashvili.

On 1-25-04, Stratfor.com reported that: “David Kay, the former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq, said Jan. 25 that he believes former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction prior to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Kay said the United States should now asses why intelligence indicated that Iraq did have such weapons. Kay said, ["We led this search to find the truth, not to find the weapons. The fact that we found the weapons do not exist, we've got to deal with that difference and understand why,"] He was interviewed on National Public Radio. Sratfor.com.

And as the day progressed, the story was taking an interesting new tone, as the U.K.’s Telegraph reported what our subscribers have been advised of for months: “In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Kay, who last week resigned as head of the Iraq Survey Group, said that he had uncovered evidence that unspecified materials had been moved to Syria shortly before last year's war to overthrow Saddam. ["We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons,"] he said. ["But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."]

By the end of the day, the excerpts of Kay’s interviews throughout the day were clearly showing the new focus of the situation, as AP wrote: ["It's an issue of the capabilities of one's intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information,"] Kay said. Asked whether President Bush owed the nation an explanation for the gap between his warnings and Kay's findings, Kay said: ["I actually think the intelligence community owes the president, rather than the president owing the American people."] The CIA would not comment Sunday on Kay's remarks, although one intelligence official pointed out that Kay himself had predicted last year that his search would turn up banned weapons.

AP added: “Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., said Kay's comments reinforced his belief that the Bush administration had exaggerated the threat Iraq posed. ["It confirms what I have said for a long period of time, that we were misled - misled not only in the intelligence, but misled in the way that the president took us to war,"] Kerry, a White House contender, said on Fox News Sunday. ["I think there's been an enormous amount of exaggeration, stretching, deception."]

It is clear that the Bush administration is beginning to shift the focus of the WMD question toward the intelligence community and away from itself. Our extended analysis below provides an interesting glimpse into the details of this new and important development.

A Grand Jury‘s Quest May Deliver Unexpected Consequences

In the wake of our story last Friday, about the alleged Capitol Hill computer hacking of Democrat files by the Republicans, we received e-mail from several sources about potential problems that are also lurking in the wings. And of course, these are areas that we will be monitoring and adding to our seemingly endless surveillance list.

But, among the most interesting communiqués, was one from a Capitol Hill source, who was responding to our query on another subject. With regards to our original query, our source told that it was important, but that it may not turn out to be more than a lot of “inside baseball,” meaning that it could cause heartburn to the heavy duty insiders on the Hill, but may never make the evening news.

Instead, our source told us that the buzz in Washington is increasingly concerned with the ongoing grand jury investigation into the alleged CIA leak from the summer of 2003, which involved well known conservative columnist Robert Novak. According to our source: “The Novak/Plame thing is what really might have legs.” Our source continued by commenting on the fact that “CIA agents have asked Congress to conduct its own investigation, not trusting the Justice Dept.” This was a fact that was also reported by the New York Times on 1-24: “This week, a group of former intelligence officers pressed Congressional leaders to open a separate review into the case because they were concerned that the Justice Department was not moving quickly enough.”

The remarks by Mr. Kay and Secretary Powell above are almost certain to increase the anti war rhetoric once again, as it will likely continue to become a dominant election issue.

Making the war a campaign issue is likely to be viewed inside the Bush administration as a positive, as it is there that they might have an advantage and can take away the focus of the discussion away from an economy that is improving, but is not providing the job growth that American became accustomed to in the 1990s.

Summer 2003

The story of how the grand jury came about is complex, but centers around Novak having named Valerie Plame, the wife of career diplomat Joseph Wilson, in a column in the summer of 2003, in the context that Novak was exploring at the time; why would the Bush administration send Joseph Wilson, a Democrat with ties to the Clinton administration to investigate the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

On July 14, 2003, Novak, in his syndicated column wrote: “ The CIA's decision to send retired diplomat Joseph C. Wilson to Africa in February 2002 to investigate possible Iraqi purchases of uranium was made routinely at a low level without Director George Tenet's knowledge. Remarkably, this produced a political firestorm that has not yet subsided.”

Novak continued with: “Wilson's report that an Iraqi purchase of uranium yellowcake from Niger was highly unlikely was regarded by the CIA as less than definitive, and it is doubtful Tenet ever saw it. Certainly, President Bush did not, prior to his 2003 State of the Union address, when he attributed reports of attempted uranium purchases to the British government. That the British relied on forged documents made Wilson's mission, nearly a year earlier, the basis of furious Democratic accusations of burying intelligence though the report was forgotten by the time the president spoke.”

The story continued to unfold in Novak’s column with: “Wilson's mission was created after an early 2002 report by the Italian intelligence service about attempted uranium purchases from Niger, derived from forged documents prepared by what the CIA calls a ["con man."] This misinformation, peddled by Italian journalists, spread through the U.S. government. The White House, State Department and Pentagon, and not just Vice President Dick Cheney, asked the CIA to look into it.”

And here is the point where all kinds of things began to happen, in paragraph 6 Novak wrote: “Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report. The CIA says its counter-proliferation officials selected Wilson and asked his wife to contact him. ["I will not answer any question about my wife,"] Wilson told me.”

Novak, addressing the controversy, that his column started during the summer, in an October 2003 column, wrote: “I was curious why a high-ranking official in President Bill Clinton's National Security Council (NSC) was given this assignment. Wilson had become a vocal opponent of President Bush's policies in Iraq after contributing to Al Gore in the last election cycle and John Kerry in this one.” In the original Novak identified her as an “operative,“ although it is not exactly known in what way she operated at the CIA. But, Wilson, according to Novak’s account, in the same October 1, 2003 column, “after telling me in July that he would say nothing about his wife, has made investigation of the leak his life's work -- aided by the relentless Sen. Charles Schumer of New York.” Novak added that “These efforts cannot be separated from the massive political assault on President Bush.”

Novak’s original column was in response to an op-ed piece in the New York Times, penned by Wilson, on July 6th, 2003, titled: “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.” In the piece Wilson wrote: “Did the Bush administration manipulate intelligence about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs to justify an invasion of Iraq? Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”

Wilson’s piece can be summarized by extracting a selection of lines. He arrived in Niger in February 2002 and went to the U.S. embassy where he “met with Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick at the embassy. For reasons that are understandable, the embassy staff has always kept a close eye on Niger's uranium business. I was not surprised, then, when the ambassador told me that she knew about the allegations of uranium sales to Iraq — and that she felt she had already debunked them in her reports to Washington. Nevertheless, she and I agreed that my time would be best spent interviewing people who had been in government when the deal supposedly took place, which was before her arrival.”

Wilson’s stylish prose continued with: “I spent the next eight days drinking sweet mint tea and meeting with dozens of people: current government officials, former government officials, people associated with the country's uranium business. It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.

He further explained that the uranium transaction would have been too difficult to move forward due to the structure of the industry in Niger, which involves a consortium of “French, Spanish, Japanese, German and Nigerian interests.” Thus, according to Wilson’s op ed: “If the government wanted to remove uranium from a mine, it would have to notify the consortium, which in turn is strictly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Moreover, because the two mines are closely regulated, quasi-governmental entities, selling uranium would require the approval of the minister of mines, the prime minister and probably the president. In short, there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired.”

20/20 Hindsight

While we are not disputing Wilson’s account of the events of his trip or his loyalties, we respectfully submit that interviews in Niger, regardless of how trustworthy or truthful the sources may have been, might have provided only the information that was available to the sources which he interviewed. That information might or might not have been the whole truth, but only events as those interviewed perceived them. At no point did Wilson, in his article, describe any activity on his part, such as inspecting the uranium mines, or taking any kind of field trip. He never mentions any interview with independent experts nor consultation with the IAEA.

Which is why his op-ed piece, and his trip to Niger, may have been described by Novak as being viewed by the CIA as “less than definitive.”

We submit that recent events have proved that nuclear proliferation and contraband is widespread throughout the world, and that perhaps, Mr. Wilson’s mission to Niger, although well intentioned, and likely carried out to the best of his abilities, may have fallen short of the mark.

And here are two examples: 1) According to the Washington Post, on January 24: “Pakistani investigators have concluded that at least two of the country's top nuclear scientists -- including Abdul Qadeer Khan, considered the father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb -- provided unauthorized technical assistance to Iran's nuclear weapons program in the late 1980s, according to senior Pakistani officials.” We also note, based on previously reported evidence, that there were strong ties between France and Iraq, and to a lesser degree, Germany and Iraq, during Hussein’s days in power.

And 2), also from the Washington Post: “Libya's quest for atomic weapons was aided by a sophisticated nuclear black market that offered weapons designs, real-time technical advice and thousands of sensitive parts -- some of them apparently manufactured in secret factories, according to diplomats and experts familiar with the probe of Libya's weapons program.” In fact, according to the Post: “The scale of the black-market operation -- described by one expert as an ["international supermarket"] for nuclear parts -- exceeds anything seen before, and it was undetected by Western intelligence agencies until recent months, the officials said. The same operation also is believed to have aided Iran.”

In fact, the problem may be so widespread, an until now so well camouflaged, that Wilson’s sources might have been telling the whole truth of what they knew, which may have not been much at all. The Post continued with: “Investigators believe some of the centrifuge parts came from factories built expressly to manufacture nuclear components for the black market -- a development that would represent a new and problematic milestone in nuclear proliferation. U.S. and IAEA officials are investigating one possible manufacturing site in Malaysia, with the help of that country's government, well-placed officials said. The site has been visited by U.S. officials in the past two weeks, the sources said.’

The situation is grim. ["A moral barrier has been breached,"] said one Europe-based diplomat familiar with the Libya investigation (to the Washington Post). ["Always, in the past, what we saw were single states, acting in their interests, looking to make nuclear weapons. Now we have atomic bomb factories."] David Albright, a former IAEA inspector in Iraq who has closely tracked the Libyan investigation, said Libya's centrifuge supply network was similar to the one developed by Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s -- only much bigger. ["The fact that Libya could go out and buy an entire centrifuge plant without anyone detecting it is startling," said Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security. "It represents a failure of the export-control system, and most certainly a failure of intelligence."]

Wilson, in July, continued with: “Before I left Niger, I briefed the ambassador on my findings, which were consistent with her own. I also shared my conclusions with members of her staff. In early March, I arrived in Washington and promptly provided a detailed briefing to the C.I.A. I later shared my conclusions with the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip.”

“In September 2002, however, Niger re-emerged. The British government published a "white paper" asserting that Saddam Hussein and his unconventional arms posed an immediate danger. As evidence, the report cited Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium from an African country. Then, in January, President Bush, citing the British dossier, repeated the charges about Iraqi efforts to buy uranium from Africa. The next day, I reminded a friend at the State Department of my trip and suggested that if the president had been referring to Niger, then his conclusion was not borne out by the facts as I understood them. He replied that perhaps the president was speaking about one of the other three African countries that produce uranium: Gabon, South Africa or Namibia. At the time, I accepted the explanation. I didn't know that in December, a month before the president's address, the State Department had published a fact sheet that mentioned the Niger case.”

Wilson then concluded that his op-ed column was merely an act of questioning whether there had been “the selective use of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq,” and he noted that it “is neither idle sniping nor ["revisionist history,"] as Mr. Bush has suggested. The act of war is the last option of a democracy, taken when there is a grave threat to our national security.”

The Current Situation

Fast forward to January 2004, and we now have an ongoing grand jury investigation into the matter, and as we noted above, a possible Congressional investigation as well.

According to the New York Times: “A special prosecutor has begun presenting evidence to a grand jury about the improper disclosure of an undercover C.I.A. officer's identity and has advised several people who have been employed at the White House that they could be summoned to testify, senior officials said on Friday. The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, began submitting evidence this week to a grand jury at the federal courthouse here.”

What validates our source’s impression is this from the New York Times, quoting the inevitable unnamed official: “At least some White House employees have been asked to meet informally with the prosecutor in what appeared to be a possible effort to obtain voluntary admissions of wrongdoing in exchange for offers of immunity.

The prosecutor in charge Patrick Fitzgerald is recognized as a tenacious and hard-nosed prosecutor. He was assigned to lead the investigation “last month to after Attorney General John Ashcroft withdrew amid concerns about the appearance of a conflict. Mr. Fitzgerald's use of the grand jury could prove awkward for the White House, which has sought to control the damage over accusations that unidentified administration officials leaked the name of the C.I.A. operative, Valerie Plame, in retaliation for her husband's public criticism of President Bush's policies on Iraq last summer.” This week, a group of former intelligence officers pressed Congressional leaders to open a separate review into the case because they were concerned that the Justice Department was not moving quickly enough.

As our source suggested, the fact that the grand jury is in session suggests that something more serious is in the works. “Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who has led the calls for an aggressive investigation, said the report on the grand jury suggested that investigators might be zeroing in on suspects. ["Inevitably,"] Mr. Schumer said, ["you don't convene a grand jury unless there's something serious."]

Our source’s opinion was that Attorney General Ashcroft may be in for a difficult time. “I don't think Ashcroft is off the hook yet; he may have made the worst of all possible choices. By selecting a Justice Dept. employee to conduct the investigation he is still subject to complaints that the investigation is not really independent.“ Our source also noted that “the guy he (Ashcroft) picked ( to conduct the investigation) is a bulldog and might end up giving him huge headaches.”

For his part, Novak, again in his October column noted the following: “During a long conversation with a senior administration official, I asked why Wilson was assigned the mission to Niger (searching for clues into WMD in Iraq). He said Wilson had been sent by the CIA's counterproliferation section at the suggestion of one of its employees, his wife. It was an offhand revelation from this official, who is no partisan gunslinger. When I called another official for confirmation, he said: ["Oh, you know about it."].

Novak’s self defense continued with “The published report (in the Washington Post) that somebody in the White House failed to plant this story with six reporters and finally found me as a willing pawn is simply untrue. At the CIA, the official designated to talk to me denied that Wilson's wife had inspired his selection but said she was delegated to request his help. He asked me not to use her name, saying she probably never again will be given a foreign assignment but that exposure of her name might cause ["difficulties"] if she travels abroad. He never suggested to me that Wilson's wife or anybody else would be endangered. If he had, I would not have used her name. I used it in the sixth paragraph of my column because it looked like the missing explanation of an otherwise incredible choice by the CIA for its mission.”

Conclusion

We have a grand jury investigating an alleged leak of a CIA employee’s name to the media. We have a prominent conservative journalist involved. The Attorney General of the United States has recused himself from the case. And there is no proof at this point, that the story of the yellowcake, was any more than a hoax, if we are to believe Novak’s account of the original source being “forged documents” by a “con man” peddled by “Italian Intelligence.”

So, it seems reasonable to ask the following:

Who’s idea was to send a diplomat to an African country to chase down what might have been better handled by a James Bond, special forces type?

Who would send a member of the previous opposition president’s National Security Council on such a delicate assignment?

And is this apparently casual an nonchalant way of doing business, as portrayed by Mr. Wilson’s account the way things of this nature always get done?

Our bet is that the Bush team has begun to ask these questions, and as the key statements of David Kay and Secretary Powell attest to, above, a seed has also been planted, hinting at how the White House is going to proceed in this matter, as it distances itself from a major problem. Any reporter worth his paycheck is thinking about this, even as we write.

Note also that the change in rhetoric from Powell, came just after the nuclear weapons “supermarket” story was published.

The timing suggests either an evolving strategy on the Bush team, or a different understanding of what is truly going on in this complex situation.

Here are a few thoughts out of the mainstream, as we see the whole story. Wilson probably did the best he could when he went to Niger. His conclusion was based on the information that he obtained, which he likely believed to be true, and was likely given to him as truth. But based on the information that is known from public sources, it seems as if sending one man to do a set of interviews is not the way that the U.S. government should investigate illegal nuclear materials traffic.

And if the information just uncovered in Pakistan and Libya is any clue to what is really going on, then it becomes highly plausible that the ball was dropped by somebody, somewhere along the way, that there might have been some kind of attempt at a transaction in Niger, and that Wilson, just flat out missed it, despite an honest and likely trustworthy effort on his part.

Our point is this, and is one that the Bush team has likely come to as well. Due to the complex nature of this case, it is now about much more than just an alleged leak of a CIA “operative’s” name. It is about how the CIA goes about its business. Note, how Novak’s account of the story suggests that at least one CIA employee confirmed Novak’s knowledge of Plame’s name in what seemed to be a fairly casual exchange between the two.

It then follows that if casual talk with CIA employees can yield such delicate information to journalists, there are all kinds of interesting things going on at Langley that would make great fodder for a President that is suddenly in a tight race.

It also makes sense that the grand jury may uncover all kinds of information that may or may not have anything to do with whether the White House leaked out a CIA agent’s name to a syndicated columnist, but that may have more to do with the way the CIA does business, and how Saddam’s WMD program disappeared.

The bigger story, in our opinion, is who else has nuclear weapons, and why didn’t global intelligence agencies, including the CIA, find this network without the fortuitous developments in Libya?

© 2004 Dr. Joe Duarte
Dr. Duarte's Bio and Archive

Joe Duarte, M.D.

Joe Duarte M.D. is founder and Editor in Chief of Joe-Duarte.com. Dr. Duarte is a board certified anesthesiologist, a registered investment advisor, and President of River Willow Capital Management, where he manages individual client accounts. His latest books "Successful Energy Sector Investing" and "Successful Biotech Investing" (Prima/Random House) are available on line at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, borders.com, Traders Press, and all major online and brick and mortar bookstores in the U.S., U.K. Europe, and Australia. Dr. Joe Duarte’s Daily Market I.Q. is a subscriber service that provides daily intelligence, trading strategies, and technical analysis at www.joe-duarte.com.