Barbara J. Stock: CIA Leak: Are We Investigating the Wrong Crime?

Democrats are despondent. Outwardly they are parading before the cameras saying how sad it is that Mr. Libby has been indicted. It is a sad time for the leftists. They were hunting for much bigger game.

In truth, no one really cares if Valerie Plame was �outed.� The liberals manufactured this non-crime so that they could claim that Bush lied about weapons of mass destruction. Stretching the envelope of reality to the breaking point, the leftists have made this claim: Bush sought revenge against Joe Wilson because his non-report didn�t support the president�s claim that Saddam was attempting to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger. With nothing better to do, the president and his staff decided to expose Wilson�s wife as a CIA agent, thus putting her life in danger and ruining her career. In a nutshell, that is what the liberals want Americans to believe.

What really happened? First, people must step back and take a close look at ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV. People have seen pictures of the flashy, sports-car-driving Wilson with his �outed� wife in Vanity Fair, but are most people aware that Wilson was a member of John Kerry�s election team? Wilson had every reason to sabotage the Bush administration. A job in the Kerry administration was one reason.

Wilson did have some time in Iraq and apparently put his life at risk by freeing 150 American hostages seized by Saddam just before the Gulf War. That seems to be his only claim to fame�until he saw the opportunity to return to the spotlight he loves at the expense of his wife, Valerie Plame.

Wilson has been caught in several lies by the media and in a Senate hearing. Wilson implied that the vice-president�s office sent him to Niger. That has been denied by the vice-president. Sensible people would realize that Cheney would not send a known Democrat operative on such a mission. Apparently someone within the CIA began looking around for someone to send to Niger. Suddenly, up pops a memo from Valerie Plame suggesting that her husband, the diplomat, be sent to Niger. How did Plame know about this job? Did she hear about it at the water cooler? Did someone go from cubicle to cubicle asking for takers? If Plame was a covert agent, why wasn�t she out doing something covert? George Tenet, who was the director of the CIA at the time, said he knew nothing about this assignment.

This was not the first assignment that Plame had secured with the CIA for her unemployed husband. Wilson made a trip to Niger in 1999, also at the suggestion of Ms. Plame.

Joe Wilson does not work for the CIA. He is not a CIA agent. He knows nothing about gathering intelligence. Yet, Wilson was sent to Niger on a rather important mission concerning national security. Wilson admits that he did nothing more than sit in a caf� sipping tea chatting with old friends. He came home and did not write up a formal report but gave an oral one in which he stated Iraq did not buy yellow cake from Niger.

It�s puzzling that Wilson would find ridiculous the mere possibility of Saddam trying to make such deal with Niger. According to a Nigerian mining minister, Wilson had reported to the CIA that Saddam had indeed tried to purchase 400 tons of yellow cake uranium in 1998. Why would the idea be scoffed at by Wilson that Saddam would continue to try buy the illegal item just a few years later?

One question that needs to be answered is: Did Wilson have any meetings or contact with French Ambassador DeVillipan prior to being sent to Niger? DeVillipan was the man who brought a promise from his boss, Jacques Chirac, that France would stand by America if Bush would bring the Iraq situation before the United Nations for a vote. Colin Powell, secretary of state at that time, urged the president to take his case before the United Nations partly because of that promise of support. Once France had succeeded in fooling the gullible Colin Powell, the rest was easy. France quickly put a knife between America�s shoulder blades and reversed its vote in favor of Saddam.

Chirac had all but promised his good friend, Saddam, that he could use France�s vote on the Security Council to prevent the United States from invading Iraq. Chirac was wrong. But France apparently had a back-up plan to discredit both Bush and Blair. That plan included a forged document from Niger indicating that Saddam had tried to purchase yellow cake uranium. If Bush and Blair could be fooled into believing the document was genuine, it could be used against them later.

It was that forged document that Joe Wilson referred to when he spoke to a Washington Post reporter and told him that he came to his conclusions about the Niger intelligence because it was based on a forged document. Wilson stated specifically that he knew the document was forged because �the dates and names were wrong.� The problem was that Wilson could not possibly have seen this document because even the CIA didn�t see that document until eight months later. Yet, somehow, Wilson knew it was forged. How could he have known then the reason it would be discarded as a forgery nearly a year later?

We now know that the document was indeed forged. An Italian agent named Rocco Martino�intelligence codename "Giacomo"�has shed some light on the origins of the bogus document. Mr. Martino has confessed to Italian authorities that he was commissioned by French intelligence to pick up the document from an agent at the Nigerian embassy. Martino claims that he didn�t know the document was a forgery. It was France�s ultimate goal to use the document to discredit both Bush and Blair in their claims that Saddam was acquiring weapons of mass destruction. Chirac�s plan seems to have worked beyond his wildest dreams.

So, Wilson, a loyal Democrat operative, is chosen to go to Niger on a quest to find out if Saddam was actually trying to purchase yellow cake on the suggestion of his CIA wife, Plame, also a loyal Democrat. There seems to be a great deal of confusion about exactly who requested an agent be sent to Niger and who within the CIA actually chose Wilson to go. Neither has been identified. Oddly, no one within the CIA seems to remember.

Did Wilson go, perhaps comforted by the fact that he already knew the document in question was forged? Was he taken into someone�s confidence not to worry about actually seeking the truth because the groundwork had already been laid to make Bush and Blair appear to be liars? Did Wilson have such a relaxed and pleasant time in Niger with his old friends because he knew before he went what his report was going to be? Did Wilson give an oral report instead of a written one so that if anything went awry, he could say he had been misquoted?

Were there two forces at work here? One force was France with its open hostility to the United States and support of Saddam and the other may have been the leftist forces in America who didn�t really care about Saddam one way or the other. George W. Bush was considered the enemy by the leftists and they would use any means necessary, even if it meant undermining the war effort, to discredit the president. Is it possible these two forces decided to work together? Was Joe Wilson the go-between?

The bombastic Wilson probably would not have been the first choice of either force because of his desire to be in the limelight. Such people tend to talk too much as Wilson did when he told the Post reporter that he knew the document he could not have seen was forged. That reporter, after realizing that Wilson could not have seen the document before making that claim, put Wilson on the spot when he later asked Wilson to explain himself. The best Wilson could come up with was, �He was mistaken.�

Interestingly, Wilson�s series of lies and �mistakes� were quickly overshadowed by the sound and fury of his wife being �outed� by the evil Bush White House. There was no reason to attempt to discredit Wilson. Wilson had already discredited himself. Even the Senate committee ruled that Wilson had lied or �misled� on several occasions, yet all of that was lost in the din of howling Democrats braying that �Bush lied.� Why has there been no indictment against Wilson for lying to a Senate committee?

Plame was no longer a covert agent. The law had not been broken by revealing that she worked for the CIA. Yet, demands were made by the leftists to appoint an independent counsel to investigate this non-crime. Democrats succeeded in taking the heat off Wilson and putting it on Bush.

Democrat talking points have gone from the �outing� of a CIA agent to �Bush lied to take America into an illegal war.� How did this happen? Wilson is right back in front of the cameras repeating his same lies and no one questions him. Liberal talking heads on television repeat Wilson�s lies as if they were fact.

The two-year investigation of a non-crime did not give the leftists the results they wanted. They wanted Rove and an implication that Bush was involved so that they could find a way to try and impeach this man they hate so much.

The leftist enemies of Bush care little about the war on terror or the threat of Islam that is facing America. They want one thing: Bush�s head. If they have to climb into bed with America�s enemies, so be it.

With so many important unanswered questions facing America, whether Valerie Plame was �outed� is the least important of them. Yet, it is the one getting all the attention. Why is no one investigating the real crime of possible treason against America and the treachery of a so-called ally?