News on Plame Case from DC

[Guest guest]

D

Fri, 16 Sep 2005 00:03:21 -0400

News on Plame Case from DC

 

For Immediate Release:

Contact: Jeff Lieberson

 

September 15, 2005

202-225-6335 (office)

 

 

 

202-225-0817 (cell)

 

 

 

Hinchey Leads Broad Congressional Coalition

Calling For Expansion Of Plame Name Leak Investigation

 

Forty-One Members Of Congress Ask Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald To Examine

Bush Administration's False Uranium Claims That Led To

Disclosure Of CIA Operative's Identity To Determine If Additional

Federal Laws Were Broken

 

 

 

Washington, DC -- Troubled by what they see as violations of federal

law that prohibit making false and fraudulent statements to Congress,

Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) and 40 of his House colleagues

today sent a letter to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald asking that he

expand his investigation of who in the Bush Administration revealed to

the news media that Valerie Plame, the wife of Ambassador Joseph

Wilson, was a covert agent for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Hinchey and his colleagues urged Fitzgerald, who was designated as

special prosecutor for the case, to examine the causes behind the

exposure of Plame's identity -- specifically, the Bush

Administration's false and fraudulent claims in January 2003 that Iraq

had sought uranium for a nuclear weapon, which the Administration used

as one of the key grounds to justify the invasion of Iraq.

 

 

 

" In order to fully investigate the disclosure of an undercover

CIA agent's identity, it is clear that you should fully investigate

the reasons for that disclosure, " Hinchey and his colleagues wrote to

Fitzgerald. " As we outline below, we believe that members of the

Administration may have violated laws governing communications with

Congress with respect to assertions about Iraq's nuclear capabilities.

Ambassador Wilson's efforts to publicly contradict these assertions

seem to be the reason for the uncovering of Mrs. Wilson's identity.

It is very likely that you would encounter these assertions during the

course of your investigation, and thus their legality should be the

subject of your investigation. "

 

 

 

Between January 20 and January 29, 2003, the Administration made a

series of claims - which are now known to be false - that Iraq had

sought uranium for nuclear weapons from Niger. These claims were at

the very core of the president's final justification for war, and

apparently were made despite broad internal disagreement over their

veracity. Joseph Wilson then exposed the Administration's lies in his

New York Times opinion piece on July 6, 2003. The desire to discredit

Ambassador Wilson is the nearly-universally accepted motive behind the

leaking of his wife's identity.

 

 

 

It is fully possible that the Bush Administration's claims of an

Iraq-Niger connection were illegal - especially given the venues at

which the claims were delivered (including President Bush's 2003 State

of the Union Address before Congress). That fact, when combined with

the link between the Administration's behavior and the subsequent

exposure of Mrs. Wilson, is sufficient justification for Mr.

Fitzgerald to expand his efforts.

 

 

 

" The...matters [in our letter] are clearly related to your current

investigation, " Hinchey and his colleagues wrote to Fitzgerald.

" Ambassador Wilson's op-ed article focused on the uranium claim made

in the 2003 State of the Union Address and he concluded that

'intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to

exaggerate the Iraqi threat.' You are investigating whether any laws

were violated when Administration officials - in order to discredit

Wilson's claim and/or to retaliate against him - leaked to the press

the fact that his wife was a CIA agent. As set forth in this letter,

Wilson's original charge that the Administration " twisted " the

evidence concerns matters that are just as criminal as the

Administration's attempts to discredit Wilson and his charge by

revealing the identity of Mrs. Wilson as a CIA operative. "

 

 

 

Hinchey said, " Mr. Fitzgerald's investigation holds grave

implications for the safety of our C.I.A. operatives, the freedom of

our press, and the accountability of our current executive branch

leadership. The laws that high-level members of the Bush

Administration may very well have violated are of a very serious

nature on their own. However, when you take into account that these

laws may have been broken in order to commence a major war, it becomes

clear that action must be taken to punish those who misled the

Congress and the American people. We have American men and women

dying in Iraq on a daily basis because people in this Administration

fabricated or manipulated intelligence on uranium that was used as a

key reason for justifying the war. This is wholly unacceptable and I

believe that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has the authority and the

responsibility to investigate these possible criminal violations. "

 

 

 

The 40 other House members who signed Hinchey's letter to Fitzgerald

are: Congressmen Neil Abercrombie (HI-01), Tammy Baldwin (WI-02),

Xavier Becerra (CA-31), Wm. Lacy Clay (MO-01), John Conyers, Jr.

(MI-14), Sam Farr (CA-17), Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07), Luis V. Gutierrez

(IL-04), Michael M. Honda (CA-15), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18), Jesse

Jackson, Jr. (IL-02), Marcy Kaptur (OH-09), Carolyn C. Kilpatrick

(MI-13), Dennis J. Kucinich (OH-10), Barbara Lee (CA-09), Jim

McDermott (WA-07)

 

James P. McGovern (MA-03), Cynthia McKinney (GA-04), Carolyn B.

Maloney (NY-14), Doris Matsui (CA-05), George Miller (CA-07), James P.

Moran (VA-08), Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), Richard E. Neal (MA-02), Frank

Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06), Donald M. Payne (NJ-10), Charles B. Rangel

(NY-15), Martin Olav Sabo (MN-05), Bernard Sanders (VT-AL), Jan

Schakowsky (IL-09), José E. Serrano (NY-16), Louise Slaughter (NY-28),

Hilda L. Solis (CA-32), Fortney Pete Stark (CA-13), Edolphus Towns (NY-10)

 

Maxine Waters (CA-35), Lynn Woolsey (CA-06), David Wu (OR-01), and

Albert R. Wynn (MD-04) (plus one unrecognizable signature).

 

 

 

###

 

 

 

The full text of the letter to Fitzgerald (minus footnotes), which

includes details on the laws that Bush Administration officials

possibly violated, follows:

 

 

 

September 15, 2005

 

 

 

United States Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald

 

Justice Department

 

950 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

 

Washington, D.C. 20530

 

 

 

Re: Request To Expand Investigation

 

 

 

Dear United States Attorney Fitzgerald:

 

 

 

We hereby request that you expand your investigation regarding who in

the Bush Administration revealed to the press that Valerie Wilson, the

wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was an undercover agent for the

Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.). We believe that expansion

should include investigating the Administration's false and fraudulent

claims in January 2003 that Iraq had sought uranium for a nuclear

weapon, which the Administration offered as one of the key grounds to

justify the war against Iraq.

 

 

 

President Bush made two uranium claims, one in his State of the Union

Address to Congress and another in a report that he submitted to

Congress concerning Iraq, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza

Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and Secretary of Defense Donald

Rumsfeld made three other uranium claims. We request that you

investigate whether such claims violated two criminal statutes, 18

U.S.C., Sec. 1001 and 18 U.S.C., Sec. 371, that prohibit making false

and fraudulent statements to Congress and obstructing the functions of

Congress.

 

 

 

You have broad discretion to conduct this investigation. The issues

we raise are directly related to your current investigation and

clearly fall under your authority. The desire to discredit the

information provided by Ambassador Wilson regarding the lack of

evidence to support the Administration's contention that Iraq sought

uranium from Niger is the nearly-universally accepted motive behind

the leak of Mrs. Wilson's identity. In order to fully investigate the

disclosure of an undercover CIA agent's identity, it is clear that you

should fully investigate the reasons for that disclosure.

 

 

 

As we outline below, we believe that members of the Administration may

have violated laws governing communications with Congress with respect

to assertions about Iraq's nuclear capabilities. Ambassador Wilson's

efforts to publicly contradict these assertions seem to be the reason

for the uncovering of Mrs. Wilson's identity. It is very likely that

you would encounter these assertions during the course of your

investigation, and thus their legality should be the subject of your

investigation.

 

 

 

The Administration's Claims About Iraq Seeking Uranium Were False And

Fraudulent

 

 

 

The uranium claims of the Administration in January 2003 that Iraq had

sought uranium for a nuclear weapon were shown to be false because,

after intensive post war investigations, the Iraq Survey Group found

no evidence that Iraq had sought the uranium. In the months prior to

the war, weapons inspectors of the United Nations (U.N.) conducted

extensive inspections in Iraq and found no evidence that Iraq had

revived its nuclear weapons program. The Administration has never

produced any legitimate actual evidence that Iraq had sought the uranium.

 

 

 

The uranium claims were also fraudulent because although some in the

American intelligence community (including the C.I.A.) may have agreed

at the time with the British opinion that Iraq had sought uranium,

numerous people within the Administration did not tell the whole truth

consisting of the contrary views held by the best informed U.S.

intelligence officials. C.I.A. Director George Tenet told the White

House in October 2002 that C.I.A. analysts believed the reporting on

the uranium claim was " weak " and thus the Director told the White

House that it should not make the claim. Later that same day, the

C.I.A.'s Associate Deputy Director for Intelligence sent a fax to the

White House stating that the " evidence [on the uranium claim] is

weak. " The National Security Council (N.S.C.) believed in January

2003 that the nuclear case against Iraq was weak. Secretary of State

Powell was told during meetings at the C.I.A. to vet his U.N. speech

of February 5, 2003 that there were doubts about the uranium claim and

he therefore kept it out of his speech for that reason. The U.S.

government told the U.N. on February 4, 2003 that it could not confirm

the uranium reports.

 

 

 

Furthermore, the original draft of the State of the Union Address

stated that " we know that [Hussein] has recently sought to buy uranium

in Africa, " but after the White House consulted with the C.I.A., the

White House changed the speech to refer to the British view rather

than the American view. The final draft stated that the " British

government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant

quantities of uranium from Africa. " The parties involved stated that

they had no discussions about the credibility of the reporting and the

reason for the switch was to identify the source for the uranium claim.

 

 

 

However, in response to the uproar over the op-ed article by

Ambassador Wilson, C.I.A. Director Tenet issued a statement in which

he admitted that C.I.A. officials who reviewed the draft of the State

of the Union Address containing the remarks on the Niger-Iraqi uranium

deal " raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the

intelligence with [White House] National Security Council colleagues "

and " ome of the language was changed. " Tenet stated that " [f]rom

what we know now, Agency officials in the end concurred that the text

in the speech was factually correct - i.e. that the British government

report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. "

What this tells us is that although Administration officials, informed

by the highest ranking members of our own intelligence operation, knew

that the claim of Niger uranium going to Iraq was " weak " and could not

be confirmed, they were still determined to use it in the president's

address to Congress and fell back on the dubious language of the

British report. The Administration clearly sought to cover up their

own officials' doubts about Iraq's nuclear capabilities and hide those

doubts from the Congress and the U.S. public.

Motive

A motive for making such false and fraudulent uranium claims would

have been to thwart Congressional and U.N. efforts to delay the start

of the war. Pending at the time that the Administration made its

uranium claims in January 2003 was a Congressional resolution,

H.Con.Res.2, submitted by five members of Congress on January 7, 2003,

which expressed the sense of Congress that it should repeal its

earlier war resolution to allow more time for U.N. weapons inspectors

to finish their work. On January 24, 2003, a few days prior to the

State of the Union Address, 130 members of Congress wrote to the

president encouraging him to consider any request by the U.N. for

additional time for weapons inspections. On February 5, 2003, 30

members of Congress submitted another resolution, H.J.Res.20, to

actually repeal the war resolution.

Had it not been for the uranium claims in the State of the Union

Address, which sought to squelch congressional concern over the

impetus for the pending war, the number of sponsors for H.J. Res. 20

would have been far greater. The influence of the uranium claims can

be seen in the fact that 130 members of Congress signed the letter

before the State of the Union Address, but only 30 sponsored H.J. Res.

20, which was introduced after the speech. The Administration's

uranium claims thwarted the congressional efforts to delay the start

of the war since the Administration used the claims to allege that

Iraq had a nuclear weapons program -- despite the failure of the U.N.

inspectors to find such a program -- and thus falsely assert that Iraq

posed an immediate threat that needed to be nullified without further

delay.

Concerning the importance of the uranium claims, the report Iraq On

The Record, produced by the Minority Staff of the House Committee on

Government Reform, states: " Another significant component of the

Administration's nuclear claims was the assertion that Iraq had sought

to import uranium from Africa. As one of few new pieces of

intelligence, this claim was repeated multiple times by Administration

officials as proof that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons

program. " A nuclear-armed Iraq was a key reason, if not the most

important reason, used by the Administration to justify the need for a

preemptive war against Iraq. Rather than allow the U.N. inspectors to

finish their inspections, the results of which might have fueled

further congressional efforts and resolutions to stop the war, the

Administration commenced the war in March 2003.

The Administration's False And Fraudulent Uranium Claims Arguably

Violated Criminal Laws Concerning Communications With Congress

The criminal statute, 18 U.S.C., Sec. 1001, prohibits knowingly and

willfully making false and fraudulent statements to Congress in

documents required by law. The two uranium claims in the State of the

Union Address and the report to Congress concerning Iraq were false

and fraudulent, and are in documents that the White House submitted to

Congress. See House Document 108-1 and House Document 108-23. The

law required the president to give such reports. Article II, Section

3 of the constitution requires presidents to give State of the Union

Addresses. Section 4 of Public Law 107-243, which is the

Congressional resolution authorizing the war against Iraq, requires

the president to give reports to Congress relevant to the war

resolution and the president submitted said report on Iraq pursuant to

that law. Thus 18 U.S.C., Sec. 1001 was evidently violated.

The criminal statute, 18 U.S.C., Sec. 371, prohibits conspiring to

defraud the United States and is applicable since the Supreme Court in

the case of Hammerschmidt v. United States, 265 U.S. 182, 188 (1924)

held that to " conspire to defraud the United States means primarily to

cheat the government out of property or money, but it also means to

interfere with or obstruct one of its lawful governmental functions by

deceit, craft or trickery, or at least by means that are dishonest. "

Senior Administration officials arguably violated Section 371 because

their uranium claims had the effect of obstructing or interfering with

the function of Congress to reconsider its war resolution and to allow

further time for U.N. weapons inspections. If the whole truth had

been told, Congress may well have withdrawn the war resolution or

delayed the start of the war to allow further U.N. weapons

inspections, which would have shown what we now know; that Iraq had no

weapons of mass destruction and had not sought the uranium. However,

it should be noted that Section 371 does not require proof that the

conspiracy was successful.

Additionally, the Downing Street memos should be part of the

investigation as to whether one of the several ways in which the

Administration deliberately " fixed " the facts and intelligence on

uranium included its switch of the language in the State of the Union

Address to justify the war. These documents provide valuable insight

into the mindset of the Administration the summer preceding the Iraq

invasion.

Conclusion

The above matters are clearly related to your current investigation.

Ambassador Wilson's op-ed article focused on the uranium claim made in

the 2003 State of the Union Address and he concluded that

" intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to

exaggerate the Iraqi threat. " You are investigating whether any laws

were violated when Administration officials - in order to discredit

Wilson's claim and/or to retaliate against him - leaked to the press

the fact that his wife was a CIA agent. As set forth in this letter,

Wilson's original charge that the Administration " twisted " the

evidence concerns matters that are just as criminal as the

Administration's attempts to discredit Wilson and his charge by

revealing the identity of Mrs. Wilson as a CIA operative.

Justice Department officials in Washington certainly have the same

type of conflict of interest in this matter as they did in the CIA

leak case, which resulted in current your assignment. (See 28 CFR,

Sec. 45.2(a) prohibiting Department employees from matters in which

they have a conflict of interest).

Thank you for your attention to this request. We look forward to your

response.

Sincerely,

Maurice Hinchey (and his 40

colleagues mentioned in the release)

----------------------

Jeff Lieberson

Communications Director

Office of Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY22)

202-225-6335 (office)

202-225-1265 (direct)

202-225-0817 (cell)

jeff.lieberson