|
|
During the past 20 years, the author has watch China move from being a developing country into an industrial superpower
Money Moves, 5/24: Chocomize Co-Founder Fabian Kaempfer talks with Bloomberg’s Deirdre Bolton about the business of customizing chocolate
The president's campaign has a new rule—no cell phones allowed
In honor of remote control inventor Eugene Polley, we recognize other influential but neglected inventors who have felt the sting of stolen glory
Forget Adderall. Traders now pop chia seeds to stay focused and energized
The Italian automaker and others are adding hybrid technology to elite cars
The storied bridge that links San Francisco and Marin County changed the face of California
Schools cultivate ties with startups before they're big successes
Dave McClure's traveling venture capital show scours the world for promising startups
Get Four
|  | JULY 29, 2004
By Stan Crock Iraq and Niger: A Twisted, Tangled Tale [Page 2 of 2] MURDEROUS OR MUNDANE? Trouble is, the President gave his speech four months later. So Butler's conclusion that Blair and Bush were in the same position and that both acted reasonably don't square with the Senate panel's conclusion. To make your head spin even more, the consensus of the U.S. intelligence community was that you could completely ignore the uranium issue and conclude Iraq was trying to reconstitute its nuclear capability. Why? It was buying such things as aluminum tubes, magnets, and machine tools. However, those are dual-use items that could have been purchased for completely innocent commercial purposes. Do you go to war over such ambiguous evidence? Just to add another 360-degree spin, the Financial Times recently reported that European intelligence agencies believe Niger had been trying to sell its uranium to rogue nations. Could all the statements actually be true after all, or is the paper getting woofed? If the Bush Administration and its defenders have credibility problems, one of its chief critics does, too. Joseph C. Wilson IV, the former ambassador the CIA sent to Niger in early 2002 to check out the allegations, doesn't come out well in the Senate committee report. He is portrayed as having said his wife, Valerie Plame, who worked for the CIA, had nothing to do with his trip, yet the Senate panel says she suggested in an e-mail he would be the perfect person in light of his contacts in the region. OPEN QUESTIONS. And in a July 6, 2003, New York Times op-ed piece, Wilson said his trip disproved the notion that Iraq was trying to obtain nukes. In fact, according to the committee report, Wilson's report said the Prime Minister of Niger confirmed a separate 1999 meeting with Iraqi officials and that the Nigerian leader believed the Iraqis wanted to buy uranium. Wilson himself puts all of this in a very different light. He told me his critics are lifting half of a sentence out of his recently published book and ignoring the second half. He wrote that other than serving as a conduit for the agency, Plame had nothing to do with the trip. So he was acknowledging some involvement on her part but suggesting that she wasn't responsible for his assignment. That, I'm reliably told, is true. The CIA is unclear about the sequence of events that led to her e-mail but holds out the possibility Plame did not initiate the discussion. And what of the meeting between the Iraqis and the Nigerian President? Wilson agrees it's a fair assumption the Iraqis wanted to talk about uranium. But Niger's President steered the discussion away from trade, so the topic never came up. Was this an attempt to acquire significant amounts of uranium? Or was it a sign the efforts went nowhere? Was this a reason for war? FOG AND CONFUSION. Wilson's Times piece, which suggested the Administration manipulated intelligence about Saddam, evidently prompted someone in the Administration to tell reporters Plame worked as an operative for the CIA. Was the motive merely to explain why Wilson was given the Niger mission? That's what some Administration supporters say. But such a disclosure normally would come in response to a reporter's question about why Wilson was sent. Yet it has been reported that five media organizations got phone calls about Plame's identity. It just doesn't add up. In fact, none of this does. And that's one of the problems with intelligence. Even in hindsight, people can disagree on what took place and what was reasonable to conclude. We can add all the human intelligence we want, and it's not likely things will get better. Don't expect smoking guns to make what's happening clear. It will be a matter of connecting dots -- but viewing those dots and the patterns that emerge through the distorting prism one brings to the task. Uncertainty and errors are inevitable. There's a lesson here, one articulated brilliantly in a graffito on a wall in Belfast years ago: "If you aren't confused, you don't understand the situation."
 Crock covers national security and foreign affairs for BusinessWeek from Washington. Follow his views in Affairs of State twice a month, only on BusinessWeek Online Edited by Patricia O'Connell Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
 Copyright 2004, Bloomberg L.P.Terms of Use | Privacy Notice |
Printer-Friendly Version
