Altering History

In Prosecutor In CIA Leak Case Casting A Wide Net, on A1 this morning, Walter Pincus  and Jim VandeHei write:

In a 2002 trip to Niger at the request of the CIA, Wilson found no evidence to support allegations that Iraq was seeking uranium from that African country and reported back to the agency in February 2002.

But that's a claim, not a fact, and one disputed by the Senate Intelligence Committee's report in July last year--as noted in this story at the time by Susan Schmidt:

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he [Wilson] has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts....

Do we really have to go through this all over again? Guess so, because the Post, last time in the person of Howard Kurtz, keeps getting this wrong. Skating past the error with a  late and unacknowledged semi-sorta correction probably doesn't help spread the word to the rest of the staff. Maybe Susan Schmidt could write a memo?

More on this story to come.

UPDATE: Just wanted to check--today's story also states, without any third parties taking exception (say the Senate Intelligence Committee) that Wilson's wife Valerie Plame did not send him to Niger:

Using background conversations with at least three journalists and other means, Bush officials attacked Wilson's credibility. They said that his 2002 trip to Niger was a boondoggle arranged by his wife, but CIA officials say that is incorrect. One reason for the confusion about Plame's role is that she had arranged a trip for him to Niger three years earlier on an unrelated matter, CIA officials told The Washington Post.

That's CIA spin, and they're entitled to it. But the Double Super-Secret Susan Schmidt story on the Senate Intelligence Committee report said:

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said....

And the committee didn't seem confused by the earlier trip, noting it in passing. Schmidt:

The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.

Wilson is quoted later in the story as saying I don't see it as a recommendation to send me, but that's just for comic effect.

Comments

[JeanneB]

"One reason for the confusion about Plame's role is that she had arranged a trip for him to Niger three years earlier on an unrelated matter, CIA officials told The Washington Post."

Umm. Forgive me, but have you read ANY instance where someone seemed to be "confused" because they were thinking of the earlier trip? The reporters cite no instance of such confusion...I think because there is none. And it's pitiful that they would conjure THAT up as an explanation for why some people think she was involved in her husband's assignment.

MOST OF US believe she was involved because of the MEMO SHE WROTE recommending him for the trip!

Bad reporting. Really bad.