Waxman Threatens to Subpoena CIA's Plame Documents

By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 14 May 2007

Congressman Henry Waxman, the Democratic chairman of the House Government Affairs and Oversight Committee, has threatened to use his subpoena power to obtain documents from the CIA related to events five years ago in which former Ambassador Joseph Wilson was chosen to travel to Niger to probe allegations that Iraq was trying to obtain yellowcake uranium from the African country.

In a letter sent Friday to CIA Director Michael Hayden, a copy of which was obtained by Truthout, Waxman said he wants the spy agency to declassify a February 12, 2002 memo and turn it over to his committee, which is vigorously investigating lax security measures in the White House that led senior members of the Bush administration to disseminate classified information about Plame's undercover CIA status to the media. Waxman set a May 18 deadline for the CIA to turn over the materials.

"On March 26, Chairman Waxman sent you a letter requesting documents relating to the accuracy of testimony by an unnamed [counter proliferation division (CPD)] reports officer cited in the Senate report," states the letter sent to Hayden, which is signed by Waxman and the Oversight Committee's ranking minority member Tom Davis (R-Virginia). "According to Ms. Wilson's testimony, information provided to the Senate by this CPD reports officer was 'twisted and distorted' to support the inaccurate claim that Ms. Wilson had suggested her husband ... for the mission."

"Ms. Wilson told the committee that the CPD reports officer drafted a memo to correct the record, but the CIA did not allow him to send it," Waxman's letter further added. "She also told the committee that the officer asked to be re-interviewed by the Senate, but the CIA denied this request."

Joseph Wilson is the husband of former covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, whose undercover status was disclosed in a newspaper column in July 2003, days after her husband wrote an op-ed in The New York Times accusing the White House of "twisting" pre-war Iraq intelligence.

Plame Wilson, who broke her long-standing public silence and testified before Waxman's committee in March, said she had nothing to do with selecting her husband for the fact-finding mission to Niger. In her testimony, Plame Wilson told members of Congress that a report issued in 2004 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence claiming that she was behind her husband's trip was untrue.

Plame Wilson said the Senate committee received a "twisted and distorted" report by an unnamed officer in her division who claimed Plame Wilson was responsible for her husband's trip to Niger. Portions of the CIA officer's memo were quoted in the Senate Intelligence Committee report and suggested that Wilson's trip was a boondoggle set up by Plame.

The CIA's public affairs officer did not return calls for comment. But according to the letter Waxman sent to Hayden, the CIA's director of congressional affairs, Christopher Walker, told Waxman's staff on May 3 that any documents the Oversight Committee needs pertaining to Ambassador Wilson's trip should be addressed to the House and Senate's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Those "are our oversight committees," Walker wrote, responding to Waxman and Davis's request for documents. So, "Any further questions ... should be addressed to those committees."

Waxman said Walker's position is wrong. The Oversight Committee, he said, "may conduct investigations of any matter." The House and Senate Intelligence Committees review and study the sources and methods of gathering intelligence. Waxman said his committee is not trying to undertake an investigation into the way the CIA gathers intelligence and, therefore, should be provided with the documents requested.

Waxman's committee "is seeking to assess whether there is any truth to the allegations that Ms. Wilson showed favoritism toward Ambassador Wilson, and whether the CIA interfered with the efforts of a federal employee to communicate with a Congressional committee to correct distortions of the employee's statements."

"We cannot accept the position espoused by Mr. Walker that the committee lacks oversight jurisdiction over the matters we are investigating," Waxman wrote. "Please provide the committee, no later than Friday, May 18," the classified memo related to Ambassador Wilson's trip. "If we have not received a satisfactory response by that date we will begin the process of invoking compulsory process."

In his recently published memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," former CIA Director George Tenet, Plame Wilson's boss, led readers to believe that Plame Wilson was partially responsible for sending her husband to Niger. Tenet, who devotes just five pages of his 549-page tome to the leak of Plame Wilson's covert status, and is somewhat critical of Ambassador Wilson's public criticism of the administration, said the genesis of Wilson's trip to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was attempting to acquire uranium - the key ingredient in building an atomic bomb - was suggested because the former ambassador had assisted the counter-proliferation division on a similar investigation in the past.

"How did this trip happen?" Tenet asked in his book. "Several [CIA] briefers received questions not only from the vice president, but also from the State Department and the [Department of Defense] about a February 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency report that first raised the possibility of Iraq having sought uranium from Niger. Someone had the idea that Joe Wilson might be a good candidate to look into the matter. He helped [counter-proliferation] on a project once before and he'd be easy to contact because his wife worked" at the CIA's counter-proliferation division.

The claims that Iraq sought uranium from Niger are also the subject of a separate investigation Waxman has been pursuing for the past few months. The congressman wants to know how the allegations about Iraq's pursuit of uranium from the African country made its way into President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address. The intelligence that the uranium allegations was based on - widely referred to as the "16 words" - turned out to be forged documents. Numerous media reports and documents have stated that certain high-level White House officials knew the intelligence was flawed, but cited it anyway in order to win support for a US-led invasion of Iraq.

The Niger-uranium issue, which the administration cited as fact, led former Ambassador Wilson to pen his op-ed in The New York Times in July 2003, stating that the White House was deliberately misleading the public, and that he had first-hand evidence to back up his claims because he personally traveled to Niger to investigate and found reports about Iraq's purported interest in uranium to be baseless. Wilson's op-ed led some administration officials to retaliate against the former ambassador by leaking his wife's name and undercover status with the CIA to the media, and suggesting that because he was married to Plame Wilson, the trip was the result of nepotism.

Waxman has subpoenaed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to compel her to testify about her role in the "16 words" controversy. Specifically, Waxman wants Rice to testify about whether she knew in advance that the intelligence was false. Rice said she would not honor the subpoena. For more than four years, Rice has said she could not recall receiving any oral or written warnings from the CIA about Iraq's interest in uranium from Niger as being unreliable. But Tenet said he personally warned Rice in late 2002 that the Niger claims were bogus. Still, despite the previous warnings Rice was given, she penned an op-ed on January 23, 2003, five days after Bush's State of the Union address, claiming that Iraq was actively trying "to get uranium from abroad."

Waxman has also asked Tenet to testify about the Niger allegations. On Monday, Tenet agreed to testify before Waxman's committee on June 19.